Doesn’t it feel better to have wiped the deck clean in our second KonMari the Crap out of your Life blog post?

Did you do it?

Have you been practicing the tips to remove all the “good stuff” overload that can become a burden?

Yes, my lovelies, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Now, if you took my advice, you have just enough good stuff in your life to keep you satisfied but not too much that it weighs you down.

And I bet it’s all wrapped up in a neat little roll and tucked away in a cute container in your drawer. ( If you have no idea what that means, you need to watch Marie Kondo on Netflix, seriously! )

Now I would like to take a good look at your surroundings. No, you may not ignore the overflowing laundry basket, the bowing shoe rack, the piles of unread magazine subscriptions (seriously, are paper magazines a thing anymore?), the bins of baby clothes from 2011, or the scrapbooking supplies that have been gathering dust in your dining room for eons.

But I don’t want you to pick it up and find out if it “sparks joy” just yet (again, Netflix, if you don’t know what I am talking about). I want you to understand why you keep accumulating and keeping all of this in the first place.

Did you know that Americans have the biggest houses in the world? OK, Australia >actually has the biggest houses in the world (by a smidge but we have more people so….winner!  You can fit SIX UK houses in the average American home or SEVENTEEN Chinese homes – that’s freakin’ nuts!  As for “stuff”, yeah, we blow them all the rest of them out of the water!

Why do we have these mammoth houses with mountains of stuff?  Probably, you might think, to make us happy. Truth is, studies show we are getting more miserable by the second.

Could all our crap be making us SAD?

Those dang studies show that’s part of the reason – a big, honkin’ part!

So, before you sort through your physical stuff I want you to pick up your emotional stuff first.

  • Why do you have 87 pairs of shoes
  • Why do you have 20 tubes of lipstick? (I am a self-proclaimed lip gloss junkie)
  • Why do you STILL have all those baby clothes?
  • Why do you keep getting the bigger, more expensive car?
  • Why does a family of 4 need to live in 5,000 sq ft of home?

Now, you may very well state that you “like all the things”, and that’s OK. But think about the true cost of getting and maintaining them – does that change anything?

Can you really afford all THAT or do you dread the credit card bill, or are you competing with the Joneses and fear losing? Do you enjoy working 50, 60, 70 hours a week and missing out on your kids and spouse’s lives to make the mortgage and car payments?

Does THAT crap spark joy?

Probably not.

So before you shuffle around your material things and decide that, no, the Jordache jeans from 1987 no longer “spark joy”, figure out why you need these things in the first place. If the answer is something you don’t like or doesn’t spark enough joy to warrant your material goods – get rid of it.

Knowing WHY you started this collection of stuff in the first place and figuring out what really “sparks joy”, the real joy, not the kind you get after clearing the shelves at Macy’s after Christmas clearance sale, in your life.  It will be easier to get rid of it all ( or a lot of it) because the root of your problem has been addressed.

What could spark more joy than that?