minimize daily

the aim of daily minimalist is to document my journey of minimizing the bad and focusing on the good: in health and habits and possessions.  i hope that i can offer advice to those to are starting or who are already on this journey.

one of my smaller goals and habits i want to develop for 2015 is to maximize garbage day.

every space around your home can be de-cluttered and organized a little bit each day.  granted, some spaces need to be managed with a "mini project" that may take an hour or more.  but as you clean and organize day by day, find things to toss.

a lot of people will be taking down holiday decorations this week.  this is a great time to maximize your garbage day.  most of our holiday decorations are stowed in the master bedroom closet.  after i took out the empty boxes, i took advantage of the empty space and minimized my wardrobe.

any shirt or set of pants i had not worn for several months, i dumped in a big garbage bag (to be donated to a thrift store).

i took took out several boxes sitting on my shelf; went through them.  most of the contents were old CDs and DVDs.  all the CDs had already been ripped to mp3s; those that were not ripped to my digital library were later ripped that day.  the CDs were then tossed.

another box was full of old pictures.  the plan is to scan every picture we have and then get rid of the physical pictures.  i estimate about a quarter of my pictures have been scanned and digitized.

another box was full of our children's old school works: essays, art, poems, etc.  these too will be scanned or digitally photographed before being tossed.  most of our kids's work that is worth digitizing, has already been digitized.  this box was a leftover from a previous digitization project.

the master bedroom closet can take some time to minimize.  take it in chunks.  minimize half of it one day and then tackle the other half another day.

but back to the point - minimize daily; take full advantage of garbage day.  yes, you'll need to have a few minimization projects, but there still is a lot you can do on a daily basis.