258 - Minimalism
Downsize your life?
Minimalism isn’t always for everyone. But some of us find a lot of power and freedom in reducing clutter in our lives. Additionally, there are studies that show how having too much clutter in your home can negatively impact your finances and relationships. The average American home has tripled over the past fifty years, and the storage industry is now one of the fastest growing industries in the nation. Having so many things costs money, which is a good incentive to take a critical look at your possessions and consider whether or not you should keep them all.
In addition to the practical standpoint of costing money, clutter has been shown to also raise cortisol levels, contributing to stress, reduction in sex drive, fitful sleep, high blood pressure, and a myriad of other problems. Cortisol elevates throughout the day, but when we get home in the evening, it should naturally start to decrease as we relax and unwind. However, those of us with exceptionally cluttered homes may find that our cortisol levels aren’t decreasing as they should when we get home at the end of the day.
Why can’t I get rid of it?
We have distilled the main reasons why people collect things or have trouble getting rid of things from a broad range of articles and lists about clutter and minimalism:
Perceived value: This item was expensive, may gain worth in the future, or even owning this item increases my value as a person.
Sentimental attachment: The item either commemorates a memory I’m attached to, or even simply the memory of acquiring the item.
Saving for someday: The item might be useful “someday,” and throwing it out or getting rid of it is wasteful.
Listen to the full episode to delve deeper into each reason and learn some ways to manage clutter in your life!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're having some real talk about clutter, minimalism, and relationships. It's been shown in research and many of us can just relate to this personally that being in a messy cluttered space actually increases anxiety and depression and decreases our well-being and our sex drive. More than just that, it can actually lead to fights with our partners and our friends and it can make it more difficult to start new relationships. We're also going to talk about some common misconceptions about minimalism and explore how we can use some concepts from it in our lives to actually improve our relationships as well.
Emily: You just get me and Jase today again. Yet again, Dedeker is out. We wish her well. She's had a death in the family and therefore, is just off of the show for two weeks just because she's gone home and taking care of business and stuff and being with her family. Unfortunately, we do not have her on the show again today, but we wish her well and can't wait to have you back hopefully next week Dedeker because we miss you so much.
Jase: Yes. Let's jump into this.
Emily: This is something that you and Dedeker actually do so much and something that I'm trying to employ in my life more. I'm always so impressed by the two of you living in this very minimalistic way to me. Can you talk about just real quick what minimalism is just for the layperson who doesn't really employ that necessarily in their life?
Jase: Totally. We'll get into this more in depth later but I do want to clarify right now, I think minimalism is a very interesting philosophy and it's something that helped me a lot in downsizing my life. I don't want people to think that this episode is about saying, "You should be minimalist" or that there is a particular way of doing minimalism that we all should do.
I actually don't think that's true. I don't think that minimalism is for everyone. I also don't even think it's necessarily the best way to be. I know that for some people though it is really rewarding. Essentially, it comes down to this idea of not holding on to more stuff than you actually need or value. It's like focusing on what's important to you rather than just having a lot of whatever-- the stuff that's not important as well as the stuff that is important. Everything from-
Emily: That makes a lot of sense.
Jase: -technology to our clothes or whatever. I had a one-
Emily: That's a big one for me.
Jase: -clause. For me, electronics like cords and adapters were something that I just had boxes of.
Emily: I remember. When we lived together, that was definitely-- We had this closet that just ended up being like our bullshit closet. There were so many chords and random electronics and random things in there. Some of it we did need and some of it was stuff that you actually used but it also was just an amalgamation of many, many different years of compiling things and just letting it sit.
Jase: Yes. Exactly. While having chords in itself isn't a bad thing, it is if it's-- I didn't know some of them didn't work.
Emily: What is this?
Jase: I didn't know which ones worked and which ones didn't. It ended up taking up space, like you said in that closet, and then it also ended up contributing to time wasted looking for it. It turns out that clutter in our lives has been shown in lots of different surveys and studies and just anecdotal evidence that it really does affect our relationships too.
Emily: That's really interesting. I'm trying to think how that's the case. Does it talk about that in these studies, why this would be the case?
Jase: Why-- what would be the case?
Emily: Why does someone have maybe a less successful relationship or moments of less success in their relationship if they have a lot of clutter in their lives?
Jase: Let's start out by looking at some stuff just about not relationships specifically, but just more like personal well-being. These are just some interesting stits and stats that we pulled from various places. The first one here is that-- I've heard this a few different places but that during our lives, we will spend about a year of our lives looking for misplaced items.
Emily: That's an incredible statistic. Just unbelievable. That an entire year just take it off of your life by looking for stuff that you have no idea. That's always my keys. I have no idea. It gets lost on the couch more times than I can say. I thought that I had completely lost my RayBan sunglasses, and they were just in the couch. They were in the couch.
Jase: Geez.
Emily: When in doubt, look there.
Jase: Also, this one's interesting, the size of the American home has nearly tripled over the past 50 years.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: Which is interesting when you think about those of us who live in apartments we're like, "What are you talking about? No one can afford homes anymore". It's true that over the past 50 years, homes have gotten so much bigger at the expense of our yards. People don't have yards as much anymore. Homes have gotten bigger. Not only that, but also storage lockers like offsite storage, that industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the entire real estate market.
Emily: Yes. It's one of the best things to invest in, period.
Jase: It's a $154 billion industry of storage.
Emily: Wow. I can't even fathom that amount of money.
Jase: Totally. I guess the point of that is not just to be like, "Whoa, crazy numbers". The point though is that having stuff costs us money. Having a lot of stuff and needing to have a big enough house for it, costs us money and paying for offsite storage, costs us money. That's just from a practical sense, but then also, it's been shown that clutter increases our cortisol levels.
Emily: Very important.
Jase: Cortisol is an important hormone. It does good things too, but having too high of it, is what's responsible for things like high blood pressure, loss of sex drive, stress--
Emily: Lack of sleep.
Jase: Yes. Not getting as good of sleep. Totally. Something that was interesting in some studies about this one is that our cortisol naturally goes up during the day. Generally, it's a little bit elevated. Hopefully, not too much but it's like a little more elevated during the day but then when we come home at night it's supposed to dip back down. It's like as we're starting to wind down and relax and reset and that's how we recover when our cortisol is lower. When the cortisol is higher, it's so we can be doing our stuff. It's helping us to perform. You need that energy.
What they found is that when people have cluttered homes that that cortisol level would stay high. They would come home from work to clutter and that cortisol level instead of lowering like it's supposed to, it's going to stay high. The studies found this to be especially true for women and their explanation is probably that women have been taught to take on more of the responsibility for the home, and therefore, their reaction to clutter is going to be more one of feeling like, "This is a problem I have to deal with". Whereas that didn't tend to affect men as much in these studies.
I think that it all really depends. I also do like this idea of there's just another piece of evidence of why-- say if you're a straight man who lives with a woman-- who lives with a female partner, if you have a feeling like, "I wish that we had sex more often".
Emily: Do the dishes.
Jase: Clean the house, do the dishes, get rid of the clutter because there's science backing it up that she's coming home, her cortisol is staying high which is going to kill her sex drive, she's not going to sleep as well. You're basically making her life shittier and also not getting what you want just because you’re not helping enough. If you needed some more reason, there you go.
Emily: That’s really good. That’s a really good thing to remind everyone out there and speaking of housework related chores, the kitchen is actually one of the areas that gets cluttered the most. I can definitely tell you that from experience with all of the dishes that are currently sitting in my kitchen right now because we don’t have a dishwasher and everything has to be done by hand. Yes, it definitely is one of the things that couples argue the most about and this is according to the National Soap and Detergent Association getting rid of clutter--
Jase: I didn’t know that existed. Yes.
Emily: I know, I love that and getting rid of clutter would eliminate 40% of housework in the average home. That’s fascinating. I do know we-- what was I going to say? We have a lovely woman who comes and helps out and helps to clean our house which is a huge privilege. I know Jase's roommate when he lives in L.A uses-- yes, we have the same contact to help us clean our house and she's wonderful but I know for myself, every time that happens, I find myself wanting to pick up beforehand to help her out. To clean up beforehand and get all of the crap out of there so that it really really makes a big difference.
Yes, I feel so much better when I come home to a clean house that everything looks amazing and just simply because there’s not so much crap strewn about. That’s easier said than done sometimes but it does seem to make a difference I think for sure.
Jase: Yes, definitely. It’s something that during this time of year, after it’s been cold, unless you’re in Australia, it’s been cold lately and--
Emily: Especially where you are in Seoul, Korea.
Jase: Yes. It actually hasn’t been too bad this last week but yes, fairly cold here. It’s like we’ve been cooped up inside a lot more during the cold times and this is the time when there’s also a lot of tension often in relationships. A lot more arguments.
Emily: Interesting. Cabin fever.
Jase: Right, cabin fever. More arguments are happening and its like we have this thing that we could be doing which is de-cluttering instead of waiting till Spring to do it. If we did it during this time when we’re more likely to get into fights and things anyway, I think it could really help us a lot in our relationships as well as our personal lives.
Emily: Yes, I think that’s great. Can we talk now about some misconceptions about minimalism? People like Marie Kondo and just talk about what minimalism is and what it is not.
Jase: Yes, so here's a fun little definition of what minimalism is not. Minimalism is not about owning a specific small number of things, it's not about being some wealthy privileged solopreneur, it's not about joining some elite club.
Emily: Is that a word? Like an entrepreneur, a solopreneur. I love that.
Jase: Yes, but like a solopreneur. I'm a business owner but it’s just your one-person business where you make up-
Emily: I see okay.
Jase: -a Tim Ferriss type something. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not about joining some elite club and it's not about being adorable while you throw away everything that you love like Marie Kondo. Some people will try to say it is those things, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Either because they themselves are minimalists and are like, “I’m so much better than everyone. I am so successful now because I own 16 things” and whatever it is or people might say that it's those things because they’re like, “Minimalism is stupid. It's all just these elite jerks who are privileged and just buy things and throw them away.”
Emily: Some specific shout outs that we wanted to give or to say blackminimalists.net and the Afrominimalists.com. Yes, I wanted to throw this out there, I did see it right around the time that Marie Kondo was being super predominant in Netflix and everyone was like Kondoing there life and stuff that I read an article, I think it was either in the Atlantic or the New York Times about the fact that a lot of families who are first-generation families who come over from another country, how minimalism maybe doesn’t serve them in the same way that it does other people just simply because they’re bringing over artifacts of their time in the previous place in which they live.
Really important memories and stuff like that and just to get rid of it or maybe what some people perceive minimalism is being just well, you have to get rid of and de-clutter your life. Take away all of the things that were sentimental to you and get rid of your sentimentalism but that that may not be serving people who do come from these other places and want to hold on to a part of the life that they had there. That is just something to think about here and again, we're not saying that with all of this, we're rather just trying to show you how it can be implemented into your life in ways that help. Yes.
Jase: Yes, like we’ve talked about before with co-dependency or in talking about how entangled your lives are. It’s more like if you listen to this episode and you’re like, “Oof, yes, clutter is negatively affecting my life. Let me see if some of these ideas can apply to me and can help me to improve that area of my life" rather than looking at it as like, “I only own 10 things because I can’t afford more things. And now you’re telling me I have to get rid of them? No.” That’s completely not what we’re saying here.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: If you see, “Yes, this is a problem for me,” then hopefully, this can help you.
Emily: Absolutely. What is minimalism?
Jase: Yes, so this definition comes from the minimalists.com that I really like the way they put this here. They say-
Emily: Is this the same minimalist podcast people or is this something else?
Jase: -yes. This is it.
Emily: It is. Okay, cool.
Jase: Yes, the same guys that do the minimalist podcast and there was a documentary called the minimalists.
Emily: I totally didn’t see that. I need to look at it.
Jase: From their site. Theminimalist.com. Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom. What I like about that is it’s not about having certain numbers of things but it’s about-- the point is to focus on what’s important. I think that’s something I want us to keep in mind throughout this whole episode.
Here’s another quote from them. “Minimalism doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently wrong with owning material possessions. Today’s problem seems to be the meaning that we assign to our stuff. We tend to give too much meaning to our things often forsaking our health, our relationships, our passions, our personal growth and our desire to contribute beyond ourselves.
Want to own a car or a house? Great, have at it. Want to raise a family and have a career? If these things are important to you then that’s wonderful. Minimalism simply allows you to make these decisions more consciously. More deliberately.”
Emily: I like that.
Jase: It actually reminds me a little bit of what we talk about on our show. We're not saying everyone needs to be polyamorous or everyone needs to have lots of partners but more like let's actually do it-
Emily: Be deliberate about it.
Jase: -yes, let’s do it intentionally. Let’s do it consciously. Whatever kind of relationship we're going to have. I really like that.
Emily: I like that very much. Let's talk about in both of our lives and maybe in Dedeker’s, you can speak for her a little bit too but just because you're with her so often, but how minimalism shows up in our lives. I can talk about this because it's been prevalent. Recently when I go to China and live for two months, I live in an apartment and I can take two bags with me and that's it. The apartment is furnished but it doesn't have any knick-knacks or anything in it like my apartment in Los Angeles does, and I love it. I just absolutely adore having so much less shit and so many less clothes.
That's a big one for me because I really hold on to clothing. I have a lot of clothes that I've had since I was in high school even. Just because they're nice pieces and they still fit and blah, blah, blah. I just want to keep them and why not? But because of that it's caused me to have-- to just gain so much more over time because I'm still buying stuff possibly at a larger rate than I'm getting rid of things. It definitely has caused me to have so much more over the years.
That has become really apparent to me when I go over to China because I have so much less and it's incredibly freeing in so many ways just to have so much less. I know when I came home this time, I really was like, “Just get rid of it all” and I have stalled on that a little bit more but one of the first projects that I did was come back and get rid of a bunch of my bathroom stuff and makeup and old things that I just had lying around and really go down to what I absolutely needed and what was necessary.
Jase: Though I have a question for you. This is interesting.
Emily: Please.
Jase: When you said it was so freeing to be there with less clothes, before-
Emily: Less options too.
Jase: -right, so before you went and did that though, if someone were like, "Hey, you need to pair down to half of your clothes" I'm imagining in China you had way less than half of your clothes, right?
Emily: Oh yes, way less.
Jase: Like I said, a tiny fraction . I was just like, that's interesting, that if you were to just say, "Hey, Emily, you need to pair down to half as many clothes as you have now." That seems awful. right?
Emily: Yes, but I did it.
Jase: Yet your actual experience of living that way and granted it was temporary, but your actual experience was not like, "Oh gosh, I never have what I want to wear." It was freeing, that's so interesting.
Emily: I re-wore a lot of the same stuff over and over again and I did pack for Winter because I was going to Shanghai in Winter and so it's not as though I had a bunch of Summer stuff as well, but I was very deliberate in my choices when I was leaving to go over there and really like what is going to serve me best and then also when I am when I'm working at Disneyland, I wear the same thing underneath my costume over and over again so I was like, "I'm going to wear that every day that I'm working and then I can take a few extra things that I'll be wearing on my days off." That was it and it was freeing.
It's something to think about, I will say when you put yourself in a situation or whenever you're in a situation where you have less, even if it's on a trip or something like that, it can show you, "Hey, maybe I can live with this much stuff or with less than I generally have that's always in my house" because I don't have to take as much time trying to figure out what the hell to wear every day, stuff like that.
Jase: It's interesting just the process of getting to less stuff can feel scary and can be difficult but often--at least my experience has been that having less stuff has almost all of the time felt freeing, has felt so much better of like, "Oh wow, I like all of my stuff more."
Emily: It's good.
Jase: The things I have I really like and if I start to be like, "I don't like this thing." I'm more aware of it instead of just like, "Oh yes, throw that in the closet with all the other things I don't really use or stick that in the closet with all the other clothes I don't wear." If I have something where I see myself now with a lot fewer clothes, I just keep looking at that and going, "I don't really want to wear it." Then it's like, "Cool, why don't I get rid of that? Why don't I give it away or donate it or something while it's still nice instead of having it sit in my closet for 10 years and then eventually need to get rid of it?"
Emily: I have stuff since high school and when was high school? I graduated in 2006, oh boy. Maybe and then add another four to the that, almost 20 years old. I think I have some things in my closet that is almost 20 years old. That's incredible 20 years.
Jase: It's a thing, if you're still wearing them that's one thing. It's not to say like, "Get rid of stuff that you're using." It's more about the stuff that you don't. This is all well and good to talk about in theory and I think when a lot of people that I talk to personally about clutter, and about minimalism and things, they go, "That makes a lot of sense, I definitely have a lot of things, I have a lot of clutter, I'm sure I could do that. That sounds great." But then actually trying to do it is often very difficult and so I made a list of three main reasons why we either collect the things or have trouble getting rid of the things.
This is pulling from different people's articles, different people made different lists but these are the ones that from those three, I boiled them down into these three. I'm just going to go through this.
The first one is what I've called perceived value. This is like, "This thing could be valuable someday." Or, "This thing was expensive when I bought it, so it's valuable." Or, "Owning this thing makes me valuable." I think that last one--
Emily: That's the big one.
Jase: Yes. The second one is sentimental attachment. This is attaching lots of meaning to the stuff. Either memories that this thing commemorates some sort of memory or even just the memory of me getting this thing. There's a lot going on there. Then the third one is saving for someday and this is kind of the like, "I don't want to get rid of it because it might be useful someday." Or, "I don't want to hear from my mom all the time." It's like, "Someday my kids might want this or my grand-kids might want this."
Emily: That's a big one for my mom too and I'm like, "No, I don't know about if I have a child ever in my life, maybe won't ever happen so we'll see."
Jase: Last one is it that it seems wasteful to get rid of it, it's even like, "I don't even have a real purpose for this thing eventually, but it just somehow feels wasteful to get rid of it." We're going to go through each of these three reasons why it's hard to get rid of things or hard to evaluate if we should get rid of something. Getting rid of it isn't always the right answer.
We're going to go through each of these but before we do that, we're going to take a quick moment to talk about how you can support this show and how you can keep this going as well as getting some cool stuff for yourself hopefully that's not contributing to your clutter and actually helping you to downsize though or get better things instead of just anything.
Emily: More meaningful. As we get into this, we just want to remind you that all of these reasons that we're talking about, the perceived value, the sentimental reasons and the saving it for someday, those definitely do have validity. They have value but the purpose here isn't for us to just tell you what's actually worth keeping and what isn't but it's just to get you to start asking those questions for yourself like, "Do I really need this? Is this really providing value to my life?"
Again, with all of these, we just want to throw that out there. Let's get into the first one which is perceived values, This thing could be valuable. There are collectors out there, I think of my best friend, James, when we grew up he had a stamp collection, he had a coin collection. I'm thinking right now he has like busts of composers and he has a Star Trek fleet of all of these little Start trek, cool little-
Jase: Miniatures?
Emily: -miniatures. I think they're fleet of airships or whatever, I'm not Trekkie so, I'm not quite sure but it's a lot of collections in his house for sure. That's really cool and if you're a dedicated collector or someone who creates a museum for your home, that's all awesome but the problem can come when we collect without intention, when we're just like, oh, I'm going to get this and this and this. Even the coin collection sometimes, if it doesn't necessarily have intention, it can just add to a bunch of clutter.
Jase: For me, this was my baseball cards from when I was a kid.
Emily: Wait, you are into baseball?
Jase: I'm not but I was as a kid.
Emily: Oh you were? Oh wow.
Jase: I would go to minor league games that were nearby and I had baseball cards and things and I had a--
Emily: I don't think I ever knew this about you. Jeez, you learn something new every day.
Jase: It was one of those things where I ended up keeping a lot of this stuff for a long time after I had any interest in it because there's this idea and you always hear these stories on the news about someone who finds out that their baseball card collection from when they were a kid is now worth $50,000. That's the thing, it's usually not even a million, it's like 100,000 maybe, I don't know.
Emily: That's still a lot of money, that's ridiculous.
Jase: Still a lot of money, but it was like I was keeping these things in a very not intentional way. I wasn't spending time looking at them. It wasn't something that I continued to research or to see which ones I had and what sorts of sets would make better ones. I think that's a really interesting hobby but it wasn't mine but I still kept the stuff anyway because it was like, "At one point this was important so maybe it'll be valuable someday. I can't get rid of it." It just ended up collecting dust and not being kept in good condition so it's not even going to be valuable even if it might have.
Emily: Totally. It's not like you're putting on their little sleeves or whatever and keeping them all filed. I guess most of us don't really keep things as nice as maybe a collector would, a collector that you would think of putting everything in this very neat setting and watching them grow in value over time. We do just as you said, let them accumulate dust and then they end up just this clutter as opposed to something that brings us joy.
Jase: I see, myself included, when I had space, you know, for me, downsizing helped me get rid of this, but I had a lot of things like pop figures or action figures or miniatures are things that would just end up being clutter and being in the way when you're trying to find stuff or get to things rather than being something that I was actively interested in and that brought me joy all the time. Or maybe they brought me joy for a little bit, but after a while, you'd stop seeing them. Now it's just another thing that makes dusting take longer. Now there is more stuff on all your shelves.
Emily: The tchotchkes.
Jase: I had this thought last time I was visiting Dedeker's sister with her. Dedeker's brother-in-law, ger sister's husband collects Transformers toys. The thing that I was really struck by at their house is that they have a room where there's a couple of bookshelves that have all the Transformers toys on it, but they're -- they're free of dust, they're immaculate, they're displayed nicely.
You can tell that time and attention is put into it and that he's pretty active in like knowing-- He'll be able to tell you like, this thing is rare because it's from this particular series or this one was more commonplace, but I just really like it because of this character, blah, blah, blah or I know what the value of this is or I'm looking for this one to complete this part of the set. If I find one for under this amount of money, I'll get it.
He's a very conscious collector of that particular thing. That was one thing that struck me as like, "That's the kind of collecting that I'm that I've never really done." Most people I know, who have a lot of random action figures don't collect them like that either. Then two, was that that was it. That he didn't also have a collection of pop figures and GI Joes and model trains and whatever.
Emily: He limited it to one important thing to him.
Jase: Exactly, so that he actually can devote the time and attention to it.
Emily: That's great. This is interesting the next one that we wanted to talk about, which is that it was expensive when I bought it and or it makes me valuable. This is a rough one for me because I do think of certain shoes even that I know were that either like my mom bought me as a gift that was super expensive, but that I truly never wear anymore and that I eventually had to part with or things like that just got a know, "Hey, I truly don't use this anymore."
This is interesting because it can potentially be related to attachment styles but if you put those attachment styles on to stuff, so if we were raised when we were little with not very much, we might think that success is measured by having something like clothes or shoes or books. If you did have parents that got you a lot of stuff as a kid, honestly, like I was-- I really didn't never have to want for much. I just continued that into my adult life. That's a similar thing. Similar or different. Just based on what happened in your youth.
If we were raised with a lot of stuff, we may just still have that association or we might think that owning shelves full of pop figures or toys that we don't actively take care of means that we're free from the rules of our parents or society or whatever, and that we're adults and we can do whatever we want.
Often though, accumulating a lot of stuff sometimes gets us into debt, and it costs more money to have more stuff. Again, I know this from experience, because that is the thing that I'm really trying to work on this year, especially is that if I see something and I want it, I don't necessarily need to buy it. I can just tell myself, "You know what? You know what's more important? It's getting rid of your debt rather than having another cool dress or whatever. You really don't need to frickin buy another thing."
Jase: Also the freedom one I think is very interesting. I have a lot of friends who weren't allowed to have certain things as kids and so for them, it's like having all their action figures out in the living room or whatever. It is like a sense of, "Yes, see, this is my life. I get to do what I want." It's like a way of asserting freedom. I know that at least for me, a big difference that I noticed once I finally started paring down my things was that I felt more free when-- I wasn't like, "gosh." I couldn't move because it's so much work. I have to bring so much stuff with me to move.
Yes, moving sucks. Moving is stressful, but there are degrees of just like I'm trapped. I'm trapped in this apartment. I can't ever move because there's too much stuff it would be awful to try to move. Or just feeling like, if I am going to move, I have to be sure the place is big enough to fit all my stuff. It was like I ended up feeling more trapped because of it, ironically not feeling the freedom that maybe I thought I would have by having that stuff.
Emily: For sure. This is something just to touch upon because again, I very much can relate to this, that sales at a store or limited time offers, they work in this similar way because they prey on our human instinct not to miss out on a scarce resource or not to get like a deal, but they're not really scarce resources in the same way that we might think about it from an evolutionary standpoint. Gosh, how many freaking times have I looked and seen like J Crew’s having a sale or J Crew’s having like 40% off of new items. "Oh my God, let me look at it." It happens all the frickin time.
That's, I don't know, 100 bucks or something that I could again throw at my debt rather than just doing the next frickin t-shirt from J Crew that I have a million of already.
Jase: Let's look at how this applies more philosophically to relationships. This is something that I think is interesting. We don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but I think that if we look at it at relationships, there's some interesting things here. The first one that comes up for me is labels and rules. What I mean by labels is things like needing to call someone a boyfriend or girlfriend or call them primary or nesting partner. Whatever the order like I need to have that label put on me. Whatever it is.
Then also I think rules where we're trying to say if you're with me, you're not allowed to do these certain things. Our default way that society does monogamy has a lot of rules, whether those come from religious teachings or they're just unspoken rules that we just assume everyone--
Emily: Often they're unspoken.
Jase: Right. Almost always outspoken. Then we also put a lot of value on labels in society. We've talked before about single people being perceived as being less happy and also less responsible and things like that compared to married people. I do think that we do internalize some of that. Like that idea of owning lots of pairs of shoes makes me valuable. It's like getting to have this label, makes me valuable. In both, they're this way of taking an external thing and trying to give yourself value from that.
Emily: Let's talk about multiple partners and how this maybe applies to the idea of-- I think the mainstream dating world or non-monogamy sometimes can see acquiring partners or sexual conquests or whatever just as the thing to do simply because we can. I know that we have talked about that too in non-monogamy that am I really polyamorous if I'm not constantly going on dates and constantly trying to find someone new? Am I missing out on someone amazing out there? Maybe I shouldn't say no to getting into a new relationship, things like that.
Jase: I found that's when I struggled with so much.
Emily: I know you did. I remember that for a long time and now you're just like, "Whatever. I don't need to go crazy here."
Jase: The one for me for a long time even before I was polyamorous even when I was just like casually dating or whatever, is that if someone wanted to date me, I had a very hard time saying no because it's like you were saying about the sales are the limited time offers, it's like that scarcity mentality. It's like, "If I don't take this now, I'm going to miss out and I'll be alone and everyone else will be dating and having sex and I won't." That's the psychology that's going on. I think people do the same thing with staying in relationships too. We have this scarcity mentality of if I don't get this thing when I can and I don't keep it as long as I can, then somehow I'm less.
Emily: Going to lose it or I'm not going to an opportunity again, maybe. It is interesting our instant gratification and yes, I know for me that's a big thing it's just so in the moment getting something and feeling good about is really interesting. I don't know, that's just something to think about there that we don't-- it may instantly feel good and spike our what-- endorphins or something along those lines like--
Jase: Dopamine. I think it's the one you're looking for.
Emily: Dopamine. Yes. Then eventually, it's probably not going to necessarily fulfill you in the long-term. That next article of clothing, it may feel good in the moment but then afterwards, you might be like, "I don't know, I maybe shouldn't have done that," and that might feel worse.
Jase: Yes. Can I hit you with just a fun little statistic before we move on to the next topic here?
Emily: Please. Absolutely.
Jase: This is interesting. 3.1% of children in the world live in America, but 40% of the toys for kids in the world belong to American kids.
Emily: Ooh, boy.
Jase: 40% of the toys in the world are owned by the 3.1% of children who live in America. Then of the average, I forget what the number was, it's like 100 something toys that the average kid has, they play with 12 of them. It is this thing of like--
Emily: I feel it's like my cats. My cats have a million toys, and they play with like two of them, and then all the rest of them are just, whatever.
Jase: I think that it's not just to say like, "Gosh, we're terrible and excessive," even though we are, but it's also to look at that and go, I think that we're reflected in that as adults too. Where it's like say, I own 100 pieces of clothing, but there's really this smaller set that I love.
Emily: That I actually wear.
Jase: Right. That actually wear more often. Just stuff like that where it's like we lose sight of that because everyone else is doing it. It's like, "Well, whatever, everyone else's kid has 100 toys and my kid needs to have 100 toys." I think we do the same with other things.
Emily: I think it's hard. I know for my mom, it was hard for her to not want to just give me what I wanted. I get that. I mean, jeez, for your kid--
Jase: It's like how we show love, I think, to our kids and to our partners.
Emily: Yes. Gift-giving is really high on my love languages and I want to do that as well for my partners or for people that I care about in my life. Yes, that's an interesting thing to think about as well. There are many ways in which to show love and that's not a bad one, but, yes, it's something to think about.
Jase: Okay. All right. Next topic.
Emily: Sentimental, which is attaching a lot of meaning to the stuff that you have-- either just memories of the thing or the memory of getting the thing. I know for my mom, and I think just for many parents in general, there tends to be a lot of stuff of your kids growing up and their paper that they wrote that they got an A on in seventh grade and stuff like that, and it becomes so much.
I know, we live in a digitized world now much more than we did, but my grandmother would have just boxes and boxes and boxes of photos, photo albums, things like that. It's fun to look through them but my goodness, there's so much stuff that tends to get piled up that one can look at over time. I don't know if your mom does a similar thing?
Jase: Oh, yes. For the past couple of years now, whenever I'm home, I will try to help my mom go through things-
Emily: Yes, me too.
Jase: -and get rid of stuff. It is tough. The sentimental stuff is tough. The funny thing I found is, one is when I'm going through sentimental type stuff like boxes of like, "Oh, these are things from your childhood" or whatever, there's a lot of things where you have to have that debate of, "Is this thing really that important or is this just another one of those papers?" I think there's that. Then also in going through it, there's also just a lot of crap that gets mixed in with it. Okay, maybe it's like this drawing that your kid did in first grade, and it's like, "Okay, maybe I do want to keep that," especially if it was surprisingly good or surprisingly interesting for some reason.
Okay, maybe you want to keep that, but I found that often in finding that thing, you'll also find five other papers with random scribblings on it. Just like nothingness. Then, on top of that, the fact is, yes, I've got this thing which just sits in a box buried with unimportant crap. It's really going through and being like, if you're going to make the argument that this thing is sentimental and worth keeping, then keep it well. Do something to keep it safer and keep it better or keep it more accessible. If it's not, don't just pile more shit in with it and just keep it because, I don't know, it's important.
Emily: My friend James, who I talked about before on this episode, he had a big tragedy when he was in college. His house burned down. It was a really intense time but I know his parents have talked about since then that it rid them of so much of that sentimental stuff that they were hanging on to because he's one of three boys and they just had all this stuff in the house. Really it allowed them in a way to just cleanse themselves of that. It was also terribly tragic and intense, but in a lot of ways, they saw the good in it just because it did help them get rid of a lot of the stuff that they just had around.
Jase: Yes. Actually, I was just talking with Dedeker about this and I'm sad she's not here to hear it-
Emily: Oh, of course.
Jase: -but her family's home just burned down two years ago in Paradise, California fires. Their whole city burned down, not just their house. Similarly, she lost everything of hers that was there. Her mom lost everything. One thing on the flip side, to be like, she is sad about some of the things that got lost. In a way, she said it's been freeing sometimes, but it's also been sad sometimes when she realizes that she doesn't have this particular photo or some sentimental thing. Something that we are talking about is digitizing photos, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Scanning photos and having them in digital photo albums so that we can actually have them in a place where we look at photos, which is on our computers or on our phones instead of sitting in boxes where we don't look at them. It's one of those things where, by putting that off, there is the potential to lose everything. Whereas, being intentional about what you're keeping might also prompt you to digitize more of those things, and then you'll be able to have some of them. That's something that she's been thinking about now of like I want to be sure I'm saving stuff in a more intentional way instead of just being like, I'll stick it in a box and put it over there, it will be fine.
Emily: I think that's saying something. The fact that two of the most important people in my life lost everything to fire is-- yes, it can absolutely happen. Yes, that's something to be aware of, and just evaluate the things that do really matter, and maybe compare them to each other. See what is the most valuable thing in terms of your sentimental stuff. Like those pictures, which one do I really care about here? Which ones can I just get rid of?
Jase: Which ones are the random pictures of my feet?
Emily: I was going through my photography phase. Yes. Exactly.
Jase: Also, I would say, with the paintings from elementary school or something, say you have a bunch of those, take a few that are really meaningful, and thank the others and let go of them. Right?
Emily: Yes. Ding, ding.
Jase: I think that that also then makes the ones that you do keep be more valuable. It actually gives you more of a feeling of like, yes, I get to experience the joy of the sentimentality of this thing instead of it just being one of many similar things that I don't enjoy, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Then the other one, this came up a lot in going through stuff with my mom. Is like, "Which of these things are sentimental in a positive way, and which things are keeping you in the past and are sentimental about something that doesn't bring you joy?"
Emily: That's interesting.
Jase: For my mom, things from her ex-husband or something. Where it's like--
Emily: Oh, that's a great one. Gosh, my mom had so many things from my father that he had bought her when he was helping around and stuff, and she totally rid herself of all of it, and it was so unbelievably freeing for her.
Jase: Wow.
Emily: That's a really big one.
Jase: Stuff like that. It doesn't even have to be pictures or whatever or things with that person, and maybe you do want to keep them for a little bit, but
it was even things like books on our bookshelves, it would be like--
Emily: The furniture, like a random chair or something-- she got rid of the entire bed set and got something else that was cheaper but hers and not something that he had bought her.
Jase: On the subject of books, someone told me this years ago, I wish I could remember who it was but they were talking about books. That basically saying that books, a lot of us think books are valuable, they make me smart, they make me important, and we'll often keep books even if we haven't read them and they're not next on the queue. I think we all have had this experience of we have a book or several books that have been on our shelf for years and every time we see it we go, "Man, I should get around to reading that book." And then we don't.
This person basically was making the argument of having that book there is actually causing you distress and anxiety every time you see it even on a subconscious level because it's reminding you of the fact that you're failing to read it. Basically, they're saying, when you're trying to downsize, it's look at it and go, "I'm going to read that. I'm going to read it now." Or say, "I'll donate it. I'll get rid of it." We have this weird thing of somehow reminding ourselves of that anxiety is good for us somehow even though in reality, you're still not reading the book and it's been years.
Emily: Interesting. Let's talk about saving it for someday. This idea that something that you have, that you've kept around for a long time that maybe a sentimental in a way like this might be useful someday. My kids might want it, my maybe kids that I might have, I don't know.
Jase: This one's my third one with all the cords in electronics, it's like, oh, well, I might need this type of cord or I might someday get a thing that needs the same type of adapter, right?
Emily: Yes, like Josh and I had boxes of electronics that we-- I had so many frickin iPhone and iwatch boxes and my computer box and shit.
Jase: Oh, I see. Boxes of boxes.
Emily: Yes, just like the box. Not anything is even in it, it's just the frickin box and it's like, "Why in the world do I have this still?" But we had a frickin whole cabinet full of random ass boxes. Stuff like that. You probably won't need it. It's fine.
Jase: I think the box one is interesting because Dedeker likes to bring that one up a lot too.
Emily: Why? Because is that something you do or?
Jase: Well, it is something that I do sometimes and I've tried to become more conscious of it because I've seen both sides. At my parents' house, they'll have boxes and boxes and boxes and I've had closets full of boxes for things that I've bought I guess with this idea that maybe I'll want to return it or I'll need this box when I'm--
Emily: What if I've had it for frickin five years? I do not need the frickin box.
Jase: Right, or maybe I'll need this box to put it in when I move or maybe I'll resell this thing and then I'll need the box. I found out that I just ended up with a bunch of boxes.
Emily: Exactly, you can move it in a better way than just putting it back in the box.
Jase: The one thing I will say about this is I do think there are certain circumstances where keeping those boxes does make sense. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit on our list of things to talk about this here, which is this is the difference between something that's just in case and something that's just for when. This also comes from the minimalists.com. I really like this, but basically, it's like, just in case, is what we're talking about that, right?
It's like maybe someday I might need this for that. I might need this in some unknown situation that may or may not happen. That's like a just in case and we end up holding on to a lot of crap. Whereas just for when, is I have something that I'm not using right now, but there's a concrete time in the future when I know I'm going to use this thing. The example is buying toilet paper. If you're like, "I can never have anything that I'm not actively using." It's like you buy your toilet paper, one roll at a time.
Emily: You're not going to do that.
Jase: That's silly because you know you're going to use it, so it's okay to buy it in advance. I think with boxes, this same logic can apply where for me, for a couple of years, I was buying either a phone or a computer with the intention of I'm going to sell this in a year and then I'm going to buy the new one. Basically, I crunched some numbers and did some math--
Emily: Wait, are you saying that you don't do this? You do still do this? You did this this year.
Jase: No, I do still. For those, I keep those boxes because I can sell it for more in its original box and I know concretely, I am going to sell this.
Emily: That's like your one vice, I swear.
Jase: Electronics? Yes, I love them.
Emily: Your frickin state of the art computers and state of the art phones every single year and I have the same computer that I've had since 2015, and I'm like, "It's still trucking."
Jase: Here's the interesting thing though, is that now what I'll do is, I'll very intentionally be like, I'm going to sell this phone or this computer and I'm going to get a new one. What I used to do was-- maybe not quite as often because I couldn't afford to do it quite as often, but I would get the new phone or the new computer and I would keep the old one, which would end up in a closet and would eventually stay there until it was totally useless. I had my iPhone-1 for eight years after that. I think I still had my iPhone-1 when you and I-
Emily: That's like a relic.
Jase: -when you and I lived together, which was many, many, many years after that, wasn't a relevant phone at all.
Emily: That shit came out in 2007, I know when I got it. We lived together starting in 2011. That's amazing.
Jase: I would keep things like that and what I realized when I did some number crunching later is I was like, if I intentionally sell this thing right when I want to get the new phone, it ends up being like I get some good money for the thing because it's only a year or two old as opposed to holding on to it for "maybe", and then eventually it's worth nothing. That was something for me just on the boxes there, and that was a tangent.
Emily: No, it's all good. Wait, what's just for when? Essentially, that same thing, is still like just in case and just for when just like you might need more stuff eventually and then just in case is like, well, I know that I'm going to sell these things.
Jase: Other way around.
Emily: Okay.
Jase: The "just in case", is that like, why are you keeping this thing? If you look at stuff in your house and you go, "Why am I keeping this?" And you say, "Well, just in case." Which means I might need this or want some time. I'm going to keep this old pair of pants that doesn't really fit me and I've never really liked them, it's not comfortable. I'm going to keep it just in case of--
Emily: I feel like I need to wear them at some point and if I want to be uncomfortable.
Jase: Maybe I'll want it as part of a costume someday. We can come up with reasons like that. Here's the trap is that every now and then, one of those things that you kept just in case will come in handy. It happens to me, every now and then it's like, "I do have that cord because I did save that thing." Or "I do have a box that'll fit this thing because I kept all these boxes." Every now and then, it pays off and that's what keeps us doing it. It justifies it to us, but if you think about it, hear this, according to LA Times, the average us household has 300,000 things.
Emily: Wow, that's a ridiculous number. 300,000?
Jase: Yes. I was like, "No, I don't have nearly that many things." When I started downsizing and getting rid of things, literally, you know, when you go to Goodwill, and there's this big-wheeled basket type of thing, it's not like the shopping baskets with the big rubber donation things.
Emily: I know exactly what you're talking about. You can fit in multiple people on those things.
Jase: I filled up, I think, three of those while completely with the bags of stuff I had and I still had a bunch of stuff left. It's mind-blowing how we can just-- everything just gets crammed into little corners.
Emily: Little nooks and crannies.
Jase: Anyway, what I'm trying to get out, though, is that maybe every now and then, one of those things will become useful later. What we will tend to see, like, "See that was useful." But what we miss out on is the fact that we've been spending more money for the more space to keep all these things. It's been causing anxiety in our lives, potentially causing fights and arguments with our partners. We've been paying this very large cost that we tend to not notice for a very small reward.
Emily: We hope that this was helpful to you all today. We wanted to wrap it up just by saying that, minimalism, we hope that it can help you in your life, it can first look like just an extension of disposable culture,
just like get rid of everything and then buy new ones--
Jase: And get rid of them.
Emily: Yes, totally, exactly. Clutter has been shown to contribute more to over buying and buying things that you already have like say, you have a can opener and you can't find and it's like, "Well, crap. I guess I got rid of that or something." And then you buy another one and then you realize, I don't know, a year later, you have five frickin can openers. This is often just because we can't find things, we have too much. We can't remember if we have this thing and the clutter--
Jase: Not just that we can't find them, but we can't remember if we have them because there's too many things.
Emily: Exactly. There's too much stuff just clouding our life. When you you're trying to look for something and you can't find it just simply because there's so much stuff around, it's like I can't get rid of those things in my mind that I'm seeing in order to find the thing that I'm actually looking for and we may do things like I do often, which is use retail therapy as a way to avoid being at home in our clutter and then that just causes us to get more clutter so we hope that this helped. Maybe just think about things, think about ways in which you can de-clutter your life, because hopefully, it will help you to become a happier person in various ways and help your relationships to be happier as well.
Jase: Yes. Something that I really appreciate about the Marie Kondo approach to de-cluttering is that it's not about this question of, you can only have this many clothes or like, you can't have any of these sorts of things or your drawers all have to be empty. It's just being honest with yourself about, does this thing bring joy to my life, does it spark joy, as she says, does this bring joy to my life or does it not? Is this actually adding stress and anxiety to my life or is this something that I'm holding on to because I think I have to?
I really like that way of looking at it.
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: The last thing I'll say that her other thing is, when you are getting rid of something, is to thank it. For her, it comes from-- she was like a Shinto shrine maiden as a younger woman and for her, it tied up in this idea of things have spirits, essentially, that you are actually talking to that thing and thanking it, but I found for myself, even not believing in that, that that practice has been really helpful because then I don't feel like I'm just callously throwing away everything that I once cared about, it's like, "No. Hey, this thing was great. Let me take a moment to really appreciate how great this was when it was great and then also either let go of it to the trash or maybe even better, is to give it away or donate it to someone who it will be joyful for.
How many times as college kids did you find stuff at a thrift store that was like, "Oh my gosh, wow, I finally found this thing that I needed so badly and I can't afford to get one." And now you might have that same thing sitting in your house, not bringing you joy, causing you clutter, causing stress in your relationships and in your life. You could be giving that joy to someone else and bring more joy to your own life, so that's awesome.
Emily: Heck, yes. Love that.
Jase: For our bonus today, if you want to stick around, our Patrons, you're going to get our bonus episode, we're going to talk a little bit more about some of these just-in-case situations as well as sharing something called the 2020 rule. As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and the year is 2020.
Emily: You're right. Wow. 2020 hashtag.