Tuesday, June 17, 2008

If it's not beautiful, useful or loved...

Today, Zandria has a great post about trying to downsize one's possessions to 100 items. She goes into great detail about how 100 things can be defined and she asks her readers if they could live with only 100 things. This really got me thinking.

While I may not downsize to 100 items, I do need to simplify my life. I once read an article that said: "If it's not 'beautiful, useful or loved,' get rid of it." And I think I need to live that solid, if not common sensical, advice.

And not just regarding possessions. For every aspect of life: work, relationships, health, etc.

So, in honor of trying to surround myself with things that are either beautiful, useful or loved, I registered myself and my brother-in-law for the Silver Comet Half Marathon today. And I realized that it fits all the criteria: I love to run, the exercise is good (useful) for my health and strangely, it makes me feel beautiful.

Does anyone else have some advice along these lines?

5 comments:

Chris said...

Wow, I would not have guessed this line of thinking would lead to a half marathon. But good for you. I'll stick with 5Ks, maybe a 10K if I'm feeling wild.

In terms of getting rid of things... I could probably do with less TV time. I don't watch a ton of TV by any means, but it is sort of the old stand-by for ways to let my brain relax. I could probably derive more pleasure from sitting outside watching my dogs play or just talking to Meaghan.

I'd like to read more, too, but nothing too heavy if it's going to be a replacement for brain-dead TV time.

Senegal Daily said...

Beautiful, useful and loved: my Lyon Starbucks mug...and Jonathan. Maybe that's why most days I can be found sitting with both nearby.

Meaghan said...

This was beautiful and a great reminder!

I kind of use something similar when dealing with clutter. I really hate having tons of unwanted stuff filling up my house, so my motto is: if I haven't used it in about six months and it's not a highly-used holiday item, it's going to the Salvation Army or in a yard sale. Not quite so deep or meaningful, but if I ever become a professional organizer (that's actually a real profession), it will be my key rule!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout-out! I'm glad you enjoyed my post. I think it's always a good idea to be inspired to simplify, instead of relying on arbitrary numbers. :)

Stephanie said...

I don't have any extra advice, but I will say, this is really useful if you find yourself moving once a year... We really don't have a lot of extra stuff 1) Because we have like 500 square feet of living space and 2) like I said, we've moved once (or twice!) a year for the last four years and that means a lot of purging.