Transcription
Having too much stuff really stresses me out. When my life is cluttered, I just feel this weight in my head. It's like everything that I own is is taking up a tiny bit of real estate inside my brain. And then when I finally declutter, I have mental clarity and calm and it's amazing.
So, over the past couple years of my minimalist journey, I've created some rules for myself that not only have helped me keep my house clutter-free, but also have improved my finances and almost every area of my life. Let's start with the process. Here's the deal. Decluttering is a process. If you want a a shortcut, a cheat code to never have clutter in your house again, I don't have it. Especially when I'm the only minimalist in my house and I have a couple kids, things get cluttered. So, that is why if you expect it to be a process and you have systems in place to like once a month go through and declutter a bunch of stuff and maybe it's even using the three box rule where you can go room to room and have a box for keeping, a box for donating, and a box for selling. Whatever your process is, you need to have that in place so that you can continually go through and get your house and your life back to the condition where you feel the best. Don't expect it to always stay there. Trying to be perfect is is also extremely stressful, but it's a little less stressful when you have a process.
The one-touch rule sounds small, but it really makes a difference around the house. This is something that me and my wife have implemented that when we pick something up, we're not going to just move it to a different location. We're not going to pick it up off the floor and then put it on the counter. If I do pick something up, I'm going to put it away right away. This really helps moving problems from location to location or just making more work for yourself. Just have a rule that if you're going to pick something up, put it all the way, not most of the way. And as small as it is, it makes a really big difference.
The latte rule clutter addition, nothing to do with coffee, unfortunately, cuz I really want coffee. Hang on. I shouldn't have said the word latte. Your real latte factor that probably makes a bigger difference is that $50 worth of crap on the shelf. It's the new piece of furniture that you've got and never used. It's the $400 worth of shirts or dresses or whatever it is that you have in the closet that you've only worn once. That stuff can often make a much bigger difference than going out and getting some coffee every day cuz like should be the first thing that you don't cut. The last thing that you do cut shouldn't be anywhere. Should never cut out coffee.
The favorite rule. Did you know that this is my favorite jacket thing that I have? And this is my favorite shirt that I have. And these are my favorite pants that I have. This is my favorite coffee cup and my favorite coffee mug. You're currently being filmed on my favorite camera. That's also my favorite couch right there. I have a rule that I will not spend a dime on anything unless it is going to be my favorite. And how many favorites do you need? Not all that many. You need like a couple. As far as shirts go, I'm I I need a decent amount of shirts cuz I'm pretty sweaty. That doesn't just apply to your clothes. cuz it applies to everything. Get one good thing and then be like, I'm never going to buy another jacket until this one falls apart. I'm never going to buy another backpack till this one falls apart. I'm never going to buy another coffee cup until this one it's it is falling apart, but it still works. So, I'm never going to buy another one unless it like literally starts leaking. It's not always the cheapest upfront to do this, but if you calculate the cost per use, then even though that this coffee cup is actually not that expensive, but let's say it was like $30. If I use this 300 times, what is that? 10 cents per use. I don't know. I dropped out of high school. That is better than a $10 coffee cup that I only use for a month because it leaks all the time, right? So, even if it's three times more expensive, if you look at the cost per use, it's actually way, way, way cheaper. Same thing with mugs. I used to buy mugs all the time for like a couple bucks, and now I have a few mugs that I use every single day. They're all pretty much the exact same thing. Yes, they're more expensive, but I get to have my favorite stuff of everything that I own all the time. Isn't that amazing? You should try it.
Now, another one of my favorites real quick is Wisefi. It is a completely free budgeting app that I actually personally invested into and have been working with, and they are actually sponsoring this video. Like I said, Wisefi is a completely free budgeting app. They're trying to be like the Mint replacement. Right now, the goal is just to be the absolute best possible. Give all the things that the paid ones have, but for totally free. They'll figure out how to make money later on down the road. Honestly, they're really, really good, even though they just launched. There's a link down below if you want to check them out. Not only can they do all the basic things like track all your expenses, categorize stuff and all that. But one of my favorite things is that they show the impact of long-term goals. If you pay off this amount of debt every single month, you'll get out of debt sooner. If you put this much into goals, you'll reach your goals this much sooner. Right? So, you can see the impacts of your daily decisions on your long-term finances. And the best thing is if you're trying to save money, you're trying to get a hold of your finances, you're trying to get better, you don't have to pay a bunch of money in order to do that, which is nice. So, if you want to check out Wise, I will leave a link down in the description. Thank you so much for everybody who's already downloaded it, been leaving reviews, all that type of stuff. Super super cool to see this do so well so soon. Link down below. Check it out.
The one shelf rule. So, this is going to be a little bit different for everybody, but for example, this is my camera shelf, my new bookcase, by the way. But I have a rule for myself where I'm not allowed to buy any more camera gear than will fit on this shelf. I have the the camera that I'm filming on, too. But that's it. I'm never going to get more than one shelf's worth of stuff. Same thing with mugs or cups or clothes. If you have a small amount of space, just limit that to being like, I'm just never going to get more pairs of pants than fit in this drawer. If the drawer is getting full, I have too many. And you can gauge things that way where you have limits based on a shelf or based on a drawer. And that can kind of force you to stay over. If you start like, "Oh, well, I need a bigger dresser or, oh, I need a bigger closet or I need a second junk drawer." You've gone too far. That is your sign to turn back around, empty the junk drawer. As depressing as that is, sometimes you have to do it every 6 months and go through and get a rid of all the crap that you realize that you didn't actually need, but that you were avoiding because it was stressful. It was stressful.
The suitcase rule. I recently moved and did this exact thing where I went through everything that I owned and I was like, if I had to take a backpack and and go somewhere, what would I actually keep with me? And that allowed me to get rid of a bunch of stuff. So, if you can just kind of imagine that you're about to move or, you know, you're about to go on a trip somewhere, what are the 10, 20, 30 things that you would bring with you? And then when you look at everything else, why do you have it? Does it fall under just in case, which is uh another rule I try to avoid is like like just in case I get bigger, just in case I get thinner? Uh just in case I need my Hawaiian shirt for some reason. I actually do need that for Hawaiian Gabe if I ever bring him back. See, I'm doing it right now. We keep so much stuff that is just in case. So, use the suitcase method to find like the few things that are very essential to you that actually needs and not wants that actually you would pick out. Let that be a barometer for everything else. Like why are you keeping this? Cuz technically when you go on vacation, when you travel somewhere, when you move somewhere and you only have those few things with you, aren't you much like lighter and you love what you're wearing all the time and you don't have to think about all the other junk, like you could just live like that all the time.
The invisible rule. This one's quick, but if you're looking through your closet and you're like, "Oh man, I forgot I had this shirt." Or you're going through your junk drawer and you're like, "Man, I forgot we had these." That's a sign to let them go. Don't overthink it. If you forgot that you had it, give it to somebody else.
The pinky rule. If you want to stop buying things, which is generally why your house is cluttered, is because we have too many things. We bought too many things, then use this rule. The trick here is to figure out your hourly wage. So, let's say that you earn $2,000 a month and you pay $1,000 a month towards your rent. Then if you earn, let's say, $20 an hour, you need to subtract that by half because in order to actually get $20 that you keep and can spend, you have to earn $40 cuz 20 of that goes to rent or utilities or whatever. So now when you're spending $20, it's not one hour of your life. It's actually 2 hours of your life. For most people, if you calculate all your bills, it's actually like four hours of your life because most people spend most of their money just to on their, you know, phone bill, their house, their car, their insurance, all those type of things. So, when you calculate that, you can't trick yourself into saying like, "Oh, I could just go work an extra hour to make this $20." Cuz it's not actually how it works. In reality, it's 2 hours, it's 4 hours, it's 7 hours in order to get that much spending money. So like before you do something like would I trade a little bit of my time, a little bit of my life in order to have this shirt, in order to have this thing. Sometimes the answer is yes because it's your favorite and you love it. You're going to use it all the time and the cost per use is insane. So like why not? But most of the time you're lying to yourself. You can't actually afford it. And for me, that scared me out of buying like a lot of stuff because I realized like I won't go to work for an extra day just to like go out for a nice dinner and drinks and then buy like one t-shirt cuz I have to work an entire day or sometimes 2 days in order to pay for that like couple hours of enjoyment and that seems really stupid to me. I don't like working that much and so that can just trick your brain into not being dumb. If you do like some of these rules, I have a list of 50 other rules down in the comments. You can check it out. It's free ebook. Pretty cool.
The borrowed time rule. If you're just keeping stuff because it has sentimental value or you used to use it or you feel embarrassed because you spent a lot of money on that hobby and now you don't do that hobby anymore. In fact, you only did it like three times even though you spent $1,000 on all the gear for it. That means the money is gone. The time is gone. Like you're you're living in the past. You're not living in the present at that point. Now it's just taking up space in your head for old guilt or whatever. Like just let it go. It it's really okay. this is your permission to do that. I've fallen in this trap many times where I get into a hobby for like a week or a month and then 4 years later I still have the gear for it like sitting somewhere taking up space and it's just like it's okay. Just sell it. Get 20 bucks if you can. Move on. There's going to be new hobbies. You know, you should own it.
Here's the thing. If you cannot afford to actually own the thing that you have, whether it be your car or your clothes or your vacation, don't buy it. The amount of stress that having debt, especially high interest consumer debt, has on people is insane. Like money is the leading cause for divorce. It makes people cry. It's like incredibly stressful to have debt. I believe it's like one of the top financial goals for people is to get out of debt. So, if you're buying things that make you feel better for a few minutes, few hours, a few days, but you're going to have debt for weeks or months or years, it is not worth that trade. Declutter your debt. declutter the crap that doesn't add anything to your life that you're spending your life in order to buy and you're actually like becoming a slave to somebody else. Like the Bible says, the borrower is a slave to the master. That's what happens when you buy stuff you can't afford with money that you don't have. Don't do it. Just let it go.
So, don't forget to check out Wisfi with the link down below. There's also some other cool links for things that I use personally that also help support the channel. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing and commenting and liking. It's been so cool. We're closing in on 750,000 subscribers, which is like I literally can't even believe it.