505 | Excessful

The Minimalists talk about what to do with closets and containers that are overflowing with excess, what's keeping most people from minimizing, when to stop buying new things for your home, and much more. Discussed in this episode: What do I do with my two closets and three storage containers filled with excess clothes? (1:47) What's the last thing you minimized, and what prevented you from letting go sooner? (21:08) Sucky Ad: Dr. Chris Ryan talks about the normalization of deceit. (37:10) Listener Tip: "Storage" by Mary Oliver. (45:05) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn, and joining me here at Earthing Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California, is my good friend, he's back, TK Coleman. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, man. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about what to do with her closets and containers that are overflowing with excess stuff. And then we've got a question about what's keeping most people from minimizing. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. As always, you can check out the full two-hour maximal edition of this episode, where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description.

• 1:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free, because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes, they do. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219-7839, or email a voice recording to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Tina.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Hello, minimalists. This is Tina. I'm a Patreon subscriber. I live in Columbia, Missouri, in the US, and I need help with my overwhelming closet clutter and clothing supply with two full closets of clothing and three containers of clothing. I know this is linked to growing up with little and a low socioeconomic household.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  And when I had more disposable income in my 30s, I was able to buy more things I would consider a reasonable purchase. Fast forward to a really challenging marriage where I had little say in how money was spent, but I could spend a lot of money on clothing because it was something valued. I've literally whittled down because I used to have three closets full of clothing and I'm continuing on a slow journey of untangling from my things and consumerism because it's not serving me well, particularly psychologically. I feel the impact of the clutter.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  I landed on the documentary, your first documentary on Christmas Eve about four years ago and have been slowly moving through untangling from things.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I would ask for any help, suggestions on what I can do to keep letting go. And TK, I'm so jealous of you moving into a 400 square foot apartment because that's how I started my career. I had everything I wanted and that's where I'm trying to get back to. Thank you.

• 3:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, I remember those memes that people have been sharing over the last year or so. It was like how it started and how it's going. And I'm imagining Tina, like how it started. She's in this tidy little 400 square foot apartment, how it's going now. And then we flash forward and it's like closet clutter. That, that word came up, but she also recognized that it's a manifestation of some psychological clutter. So if Tina was one of your clutter counseling clients and she came to you and said, TK, what do I do? I've got these, these two closets. I've got these, these three storage containers filled with excess clothes, excess stuff. Where would you start?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  My first question would be, what's the hard part?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  She knows that it's time to let these things go. She doesn't need anyone to argue her into the idea that it's cluttered because it's getting in the way. But there's clearly something that's stopping her from just letting it go. Is it a lack of practical knowledge about where you could donate things, who you could give them to? Is it a lack of motivation? I just can't get myself to act on what I know how to do. Is there some resistance because the reason you're giving these things up is because you feel a little bit imposed by something external that maybe you didn't get to freely decide? I don't know, but I would love to unpack that and inquire into what is the hard part for you?

• 5:14Speaker 03

  One suggestion that I could give, just with what I do know, is that it always helps to organize as a precursor for minimizing. You know, you have to know what it is you're dealing with. This is why we have that out in the open rule where you drag things into the light. That's like a necessary first step for knowing how to get rid of things or having the courage to get rid of things. Because you can just see what you're looking at. You take inventory. And so I think it could be helpful with just starting there. You kind of know in general, you got a bunch of stuff you gotta get rid of. But can we take it and can we categorize it and sort it just like we might do when we do laundry? Because that makes it easier to talk about to other people. That makes it easier to take photos of it.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  That makes it easier to post some things on a website. That makes it easier to say, oh, well, this is a piece of low hanging fruit here that I can just take over there the next time on my way to work. And so just categorizing it, sorting it and organizing can be a first step because you don't have to know ahead of time what you're gonna do with it. But it allows you to look at things in a way that can bring you a step closer.

• 6:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And sometimes for some folks, when that is too overwhelming, bringing everything out into the open. For some people, it's like, oh, I have too much stuff. And bringing it all out into the open, I know it's too much already. I came up with this this weekend. We were at our Sunday symposium in Orange County. And someone was talking to me after the event about these boxes and containers of things that they had moved around from several houses and never opened them. And so I came up with what I'm calling now the excess rule. And I asked this person, okay, those boxes, how much of your clutter is in those boxes? You've moved around from house to house, from place to place over the years? They said, well, if I looked at the boxes and I said, I haven't opened that since I moved

• 7:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  last time, or I look at a box and I say, I don't even know what's in that box. This happened to Nicodemus during his packing party when he boxed everything up. And at the end of it, he's like, oh, 80% of my things are still in boxes and I don't remember what's in half of them. Half of 80% is 40%. And ironically, this person said, I think about 40% of my clutter is in boxes where I either haven't opened them since I moved, or I don't know what's in those boxes. I'm calling this the excess rule. If you have boxes in your home, in your basement, in your garage, in your attic, in your cabinets, in your closet, in your spare bedroom, storage locker, that you haven't opened since your

• 7:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  last move, or you have boxes hanging out somewhere in your home and you can't remember what's in those boxes without busting them open? Man, that's a sign that those things aren't useful. If they aren't useful, they're probably clutter. And if it's clutter, I probably want to let it go. Now Tina, I will say this, because you talked about, you recognize, you have this link, you have this link that I grew up with very little. And growing up with very little meant that I had this ache for more. I wanted more. I'll say this, if you're clinging to anything in your home, if you're clinging to excess

• 8:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  clothes, if you're clinging to excess gadgets, excess electronics, excess decorations, excess kitchen utensils, if you're clinging to excess plates, or cups, or coffee mugs, whatever you're clinging to, you brought those things into your life for a reason, because you were aching for more. And you thought, I got more, that will complete me. So you got more, and you got more, and yet you continued to ache for more. And you keep holding on to these things because you're still aching for more, but it wasn't more stuff that you were aching for. You're aching for more meaning. You're aching for more of your humanity.

• 9:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're aching for more connection and love and significance. You're aching to show how unique you are with those clothes. You're aching to be the best version of yourself. And you thought those things would get you there, and it didn't. But now you're also aching to let go, in a way. Because you realize that these things didn't serve their purpose. I can keep holding on and keep clinging as long as I want. Because I'm clinging to the sadness, or maybe it's even making me angry. It's frustrating me to hold these things. That's why you call a show like this. But you're aching for something more, just like you were before you got these items. And the reason it's difficult to let go is because you thought they would give you

• 10:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the more that you desired, and they didn't. They didn't give you anything, except maybe a short burst of dopamine. Or maybe they even served a purpose for a period of time before you put them in the closets, before you put them in the storage containers. And now they're in a mausoleum of stuff. You're holding on to dead things and wondering why you feel dead inside. It's because you continue to hold on well after these things are deceased. You're still aching for more, but that more will not be found in the clinging. That more will not be found in holding on to the stuff. The more is found in letting go. It's more space, more calm, more peace, more serenity.

• 10:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's not found in your things. It's found inside you. Your peace can never be defined by those externalities, by the people in your life, by the career, by your house, by the square footage. And getting a 400-square-foot home isn't going to give you more peace either. Because it's really easy. TK, you can attest this. It's easy to fill up a 400-square-foot home. It may bring more chaos. It's the letting go, the making space, that will bring you that peace.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  One of the things you're bringing up for me is the distinction between letting go as concession and letting go as celebration. Letting go as concession is when you say, "The fact that I am in this position where I need to let go is evidence that I have failed. And by letting it go, I'm finally admitting to myself, what a fool, what a fraud I have been." I bought this guitar many years ago because I had the aspirations of becoming a guitarist. I never got around to doing it, and I keep hanging on to it, and I know I need to let it go. And letting it go is a concession. It's me admitting to the universe that I'm a liar,

• 11:52Speaker 03

  that I'm a fraud, that I'm a pretender, that I'm not a person of my word. Boy, just feel how that feels to even hear those words. You know, it just brings my shoulders down a little bit, you know? But then there's letting go as celebration. Letting go as celebration is saying, "Everything that I've done in the past is a reflection of what I deemed to be best at that time with the knowledge that I had. And where I am today is so important that I want to clear away anything and everything that limits my focus on what matters most to me. And so I can look at things that used to be important to a prior version of myself, but now they become a distraction.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  And so I am going to celebrate the future that I want to create by letting go of this thing, which though it once served me or expressed my vision for the good life, I'm gonna celebrate by letting it go so I can go all in on what I really want." And now you're experiencing that as a graduation, not as you having to make a concession speech. And so oftentimes, when people get to this point where they struggle with making that final step, it's because they believe they have to admit failure. But this isn't about admitting failure. This is about setting yourself up for success and letting go of the idea that just because you had to use a decision to discover something new, that doesn't mean that you failed. It doesn't mean that you're a loser.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  It doesn't mean that you did a bad thing.

• 13:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I want to talk about both of those things real quick. The letting go piece, because if you can't let go, you can't move forward, right? And that's what Tina's saying right now. It's like, "I want to move forward." For her, forward is like... A more spacious place, or a smaller place, or fewer square feet in her home. Or maybe it's more of the things we talked about a moment ago with the calm and the serenity, right? But I can't move into that space until I let go of the things that are cluttering my, my space right now. And sometimes we bring those things in because of that idea of success. Just this weekend in Orange County at Sunday Symposium, I had everyone do that exercise that I love doing. I said, "Hey, I've got an advertisement of a person who's successful.

• 14:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What do they look like?" And people start throwing out, "Oh, they're wearing a Rolex, or they have a really nice suit on, they have a nice car in front of a really big house, and a nice driveway, and a manicured lawn, and these are the hallmarks of success. These are the trinkets that represent success." When we keep getting more and more and more, we often feel like a failure. Because when we get too much, we don't have success, we have excess. We're not successful, we're excessful. And holding on to all of those things in perpetuity doesn't make us more successful. It's a type of failure in a way. So, yes, it might feel like if I let go of this, I might be a failure. But you know when I know I'm a failure?

• 14:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When I keep holding on to things that no longer serve me. When I let the things be my master. Man, do I feel like a slave to my things. I feel like I'm being battered by my things. It doesn't feel like success at all. The thing I said at the event was that "Success without happiness is misery, which is failure." And that's where we are right now when we keep clinging. When we're excessful, we're not successful. We're failing in a way that looks good. It's a beautiful failure, but it's not really beautiful. It's just kind of pretty. It's a shiny failure, but it's still a failure.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  You know, you said something in the episode we did with Peter Rollins that someone called you out on. And when I read their comment, it made me appreciate just the different ways we can hear things. So you made this statement, something along the lines of, "You're clutterous evidence of bad decisions," or "physical representation of bad decisions."

• 15:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Poor decisions, yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Poor decisions, yeah. And I heard that in the moment as, "It's a physical representation, the fact that it is clutter is an indicator that right now, right here, in this moment, there is a process of bad decision-making that needs to be cleared up. Because if it's clutter, that means it's in your way. And if it ain't gone, then that means you need to embark on the process of like, cleaning up some decisions." But someone heard it as, "You even buying that thing in the first place was a poor decision, that that was a mistake." And I think that perception is something that can very easily hold us

• 16:34Speaker 03

  up. And I think there's just room to let go of the self-judgment and to just accept that at every stage of life, we're gonna be able to look back on a prior stage with the wisdom of hindsight and say, "Boy, was I unenlightened then." It is a fact that right now, we are idiots to the self we will be if we're lucky to be around 15, 20 years from now. We don't know what we're talking about to our future selves. We're gonna hear this, and we're gonna cringe. But right now, it's an expression of what we think right now. It's an expression of what we know right now. I can't access the wisdom of 60-year-old TK and adjust myself in light of that. I've just gotta go with who I am now. But when I get to be 60, I hope I'm gracious enough with the man that I am today to say, "Hey,

• 17:18Speaker 03

  man, the kid was just, you know, sharing his heart. The kid was just doing the best that he could do." And we can be gracious with our past selves when it comes to the possessions that we have. It's not evidence that what you did was wrong, but it's evidence that where you need to go requires you to make some adjustments and realize that what worked in the past won't carry you forward into your future.

• 17:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right. A beneficial decision. Decision today becomes a poor decision when I continue to cling on to something into a period in which it ceases to add value, when it becomes obsolete for my life, because now I'm dragging that forward. Man, is that weighing me down. Yeah. Tina, I would love to keep helping you with your clutter. You know, the minimalists, we do this twice a year. It's called Simplify Everything. It's a five-week course and we talk, we tackle all these different areas of clutter in our lives, not just the physical clutter, but also the emotional clutter, the mental clutter, the financial clutter, the digital clutter, the career clutter, calendar clutter, and even relationship clutter. So

• 18:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the question I ask for you is, what if you could remove all of the clutter in your life? Well, after helping millions of people heal their relationship with stuff for more than a decade, almost 15 years now, we created our first ever decluttering course, and we call it Simplify Everything. And it's five distinct weeks, it's 17 different video lessons, me and Nicodemus and TK, 45 clutter problem areas we address, 135 decluttering solutions, 50 minimalism resources, a 30-page workbook, and a student forum, so you can interact with everyone else who's also decluttering these different aspects of their life. We start

• 19:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with the physical clutter. We start clearing out the physical clutter from your home, from your apartment, from your car, and then we start moving on to these other areas of clutter, the hidden clutter that's behind the physical clutter. We do this twice a year, and enrollment opens on October 1st for our next round. SimplifyEverything.xyz is where you can go, and you can get on the email list there because it opens up October 1st. We'll let you know as soon as it does open up. But Tina, I'd love to give you for free a enrollment. Professor Sean, if you could reach out to Tina and give her enrollment to the Simplify Everything course that opens up on October 1st. For everyone else, SimplifyEverything.xyz. We'd

• 19:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  love to see you in the course. Last time we're doing it this year on October 1st. All right, before we get back to our callers. It is time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chats question of the week. This is where we attempt to answer your questions with the short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. At our Sunday Symposium this weekend, I just, right before the event, I went to my computer and I pulled up minimalmaxims.com and it just puts one maxim up there at a time. And I refreshed it seven times so I could get eight different maxims. And those are the ones I printed out. And we just started playing around

• 20:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with those. Because quite often what happens is I will, or you will, wrap up an answer to a question with a pithy answer. We've expounded on it for five, or 10, or 15 minutes and now let's, let's put a nice little tidy bow on it. In our live events, we started unpacking like, okay, what else might this maxim mean? So you can buy all of our minimal maxims for free over at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox for free, including five new maxims every Monday. If you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com, we'll also notify you of Simplify Everything when it comes out. But we will never send you spam, or junk, or advertisements. We will start your week with

• 21:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a dose of simplicity, though. All right, the question of the week this week, TK. What's the last thing you minimized? And what prevented you from letting go sooner? What is the last thing you minimized? And what prevented you from letting go sooner? Before we get to our pithy answers, let's see what some of our listeners had to say. Jenny said, "I finally shredded paperwork I had from two houses ago, as well as digitizing a collection of research papers, and then recycling the paper." TK, why do we, we put off these things that feel so overwhelming, but they don't actually take that long to accomplish? Sometimes, we're just scared.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  That's a dramatic word. I'm afraid, you know, a fear is for monsters, right? Fear is for horror movies, but sometimes we're afraid of little things like just clean out that closet, just go through all those papers in the file cabinet because you know, there's something more fun in the moment to do, something more comfortable in the moment to do. We don't get around to it. And then after it builds up, it just kind of gets like stronger and stronger in our minds like this huge thing. And then we finally just motivate ourselves to do it. We say, why did I take so long to do this? This was easy. It was kind of fun. We're connecting by working together. My wife and I just had a day like this where we just sat down for an hour and just went over so many things that because of travel and work, we haven't been

• 22:36Speaker 03

  able to go, go over. And I just was going into this session like, oh, just, I don't feel like doing this. But afterwards I was like, man, I feel so connected to you by just doing this. Like, we should do this every week, right?

• 22:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right? This just happened because Ella was gone for a few weeks at the end of summer. And so we were going through the house and just tidying up some things. I, you know me, I'm a psycho with time. I'm rather monochronic and I have timers all around the house. And what show was that? Was that, um, was that a, no, it wasn't, I mean, Denzel Washington, The Equalizer is always doing the, the watch thing. That's kind of me. But there, I think it was maybe in Mr. Robot where the, the timekeeper person, but there's also in The Matrix as well. I think there was a timekeeper in there. And for whatever reason, I have this relationship with time where it soothes me in a way where I will set a timer. And so you're making me think of two things. For this, I, we set a timer and I said, I just

• 23:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  want to spend 22 minutes going through the house. And we did, and whatever we, we took care of was done. And then that was it, right?

• 23:41Speaker 03

  When the timer goes off, no matter what, you've got to stop?

• 23:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Yeah. I finished with the task that I'm on right there. And that's it. Right? And I did this at the end of last year, the same thing that Jenny was talking about with some paperwork. I needed to shred some paperwork. I don't have a, a shredder at home. And so for whatever reason, because I don't have a shredder at home, I will take it here into the studio and do it because we have a shredder here. And so I had these files in my file cabinet. I said, okay, I'm going to spend one hour going through the paperwork, determining which one I need to keep, which paperwork I need to shred. And because I knew like, oh, I've been putting this off for a while. It's gonna take at least an hour. I must work really hard to get it done in an hour. I was done in seven minutes, TK. And that seven minutes felt so freeing. I spent seven minutes on this task that in my mind,

• 24:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I've built up all year. This is gonna take me hours and hours and it was seven minutes. We make a monster out of these, these tiny little things that are so insignificant. As soon as it's in the rearview, it is so freeing. Christina said, "The last thing I minimized were my kitchen appliances, glasses and dishware. I no longer host family holiday gatherings because my kids do. It's so nice to be the guest and I get to have my kitchen be minimal." Yes, every life change is an opportunity to let go. That's my minimal maxim for this week. And I think Christina really highlights that here.

• 25:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like, "I had a life change. I was a host for a long period of time, but that was just a label. It's not my identity as a host, but if I, if I, it's part of me. It's who I am. I'm a host. I can't get rid of these things because these things are also me. They're an extension of me." As soon as I realized, no, that was a label. That label doesn't apply to me anymore. How freeing is that? Not only do I let go of the label, but I let go of the things because I'm not clinging to that identity anymore.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  You know, we all dream of being generous, being the Santa Claus of the situation, the host of the event, the person who gives to those in need. I want more so that I can help more, but how many of us dream of being the person who receives? Being the person who gets to experience the power of generosity by allowing someone else to do something for us. And life sometimes gives us these opportunities. The opportunity to play the host, but then it gives us the opportunity to feed someone else's joy that comes from letting them play the host and us being the one who receives from another person's generosity. Both of those things are beautiful.

• 26:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Whitney said, "I recently minimized a bunch of pictures and videos of my kids." Oh, boy. I know how difficult that could be, right? She said, "The thought of permanently destroying," she put that in quotes, "permanently destroying parts of their childhood felt too heavy. Then I reframed it in my mind." I'm actually cultivating a careful collection. So originally, the story was, I can't let go of these. I'd be permanently destroying my kid's childhood. I wouldn't want to permanently destroy my daughter's childhood either. And so that forces me to hold on, to continue to cling to this excess, right? Then I reframed it.

• 27:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Instead, I'm actually cultivating a careful collection. What I mean, the same exact action was done. One is viewed as permanently destroying. The other was viewed as curating a collection, a carefully, or I would just say, an intentional collection of these things. And I think this reframing is so powerful. This actually happened to me and Bex recently, accidentally. So Bex sent me a text message and it was like a flirty, sort of sexy photo that she was sending me, not of her, but of like, from Tumblr. And, and like, we do this all the time, especially when we're apart, because we live apart half the time. I love you, baby. Here's a picture of somebody else. Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah. You get me. I get you.

• 27:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hey, you're Catholic. You believe in iconography, right? So she sends this to me and it like crashes my text messages, like completely. I can't even open her texts anymore. No way. Yeah, now, I had to like shut down my phone, restart, and it's fine as long as I don't go into her texts. The moment I go back into her text, same crash. And so there was only one way to fix this. It was to, well, permanently destroy our text messages, right? I had to delete her whole text. And at first, I got the sense of, oh, no. Oh, that's like over a decade of, of text messages.

• 28:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, yeah, guess what? I had to do it, but doing it was fine. And I started to tell myself, okay, what am I afraid of?

• 28:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm afraid I can't go back and look at those old text messages from the past. Okay, how often do I do that? Well, never.

• 28:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what if the answer was, well, once a year? Okay, I won't be able to do that. What am I afraid of by not being able to do that? Well, I'm afraid that I'll lose those memories. Oh, so the memories are in the text message? No, no. But I'm afraid I'll lose those triggers to those memories. Okay, is there another way for me to trigger the memories? And as soon as I start going through this and just looking at my fears, not judgmentally, and not saying, "The fear is bad," but okay, why am I afraid of that? That monster started to shrink really small. You know, the objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Like, for me, it's like, the objects that we fear are much smaller than they appear. Ooh, you could tweet that, Professor Sean, if you were on social media. And if Twitter was still a thing, I suppose. Here's one more for you.

• 29:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Denise said, "I recently got rid of a bunch of makeup and hair products. I've purchased so many over the last year and ended up not liking most of them. But then I held on to them because I felt bad tossing them. I finally gave away some and tossed the rest. It feels so good to only own the items I use and the space looks cleaner, too." Now, TK, I think that owning less is often the shortcut to spaciousness. We were talking about this earlier with Tina. It was like, get rid of the... And I'm not telling you to get rid of anything. If you get rid of those closets full of excess or the containers full of excess, you're actually gaining something. You're gaining space.

• 30:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, you may be gaining a whole lot of other things like freedom as well, but in the physical world, space is a real thing, right?

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Absolutely, man, absolutely. And it's the realest thing because it is the basis for our relationship with things. It's because we have space that we have the capacity to interact with things. And so staying in touch with that and learning how to contextualize things by being sensitive to the very things that make them possible or non-things that make them possible, that's the key to our freedom.

• 30:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, the non... The space is one of those non-things that makes it possible to interact with our things.

• 30:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Um, I wonder, is anyone else holding on to makeup or hair products? Just this past weekend, I had a hair product I hadn't used in a while. I bought it because I needed it while I was on the road. I couldn't get, I didn't have access to what I needed. And then I brought it home with me like, I'll keep using this, but I didn't like it. But I held on to it. Why? Because, well, I felt bad getting rid of it.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 31:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, so it was just in a landfill already. It was my house. I was turning my house into a landfill. How many things am I going to hold on to before my house becomes a trash dump? And so, yes, there are some things that we have to let go of. And some things I obviously try to sell or donate or recycle. But then there are some things that get thrown out. That's okay. I need to get it out of my space. How about you? Is, is there anything else that is, that is in your home? Like a makeup or hair product? Let us know in the comments if you're holding on to anything that you no longer use. Let me do one more with you, TK. Jackie said, I recently let go of my childhood Monopoly board game from 1985. I couldn't let go at first because I ascribe sentimental value to it.

• 31:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But then I used the 2020 rule to see these games are only about $20 on eBay. That made it easy to donate. Yes, the good old just in case rule, AKA the 2020 rule. That's in the minimalist rulebook over at theminimalists.com-rulebook. You can download that for free. Now TK, this actually reminds me of your time-tested minimal max. I'm one of my favorites. There are no sentimental items, only sentimental people. Would you please expand on that for us?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  That's right, man. The items have no value, no meaning, no beauty apart from the way we appreciate them and the way we use them. We imbue everything that we own with the magic and the meaning that makes it so awesome and worth celebrating. And when, once we realize that and we reclaim that, we reclaim that beauty, we reclaim that power, it becomes easier to let go of things. Why? Because we know that we are the ones who have the power to transmute them. It's sort of almost like a spiritual kind of Midas touch. Midas ain't afraid of letting go of that piece of gold because Midas knows that whatever he touches becomes gold. Now, I know I'm kind of twisting the story a little bit, but it's sort of like that.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  When you know that whatever you touch with your heart, with your imagination, with your sense of wonder, it becomes gold, well, you're not so worried about that brick that you turned into gold. It's just a brick. You're the one that made it valuable.

• 33:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's true. And when I started letting go of my mom's stuff, I realized that I was doing myself a disservice. If I kept 10,000 of her things, I'd be watering down the sentimental items. So I went back to Ohio after I was dealing with all of her things. And I realized that if I have a handful of things, they have five sentimental items, they're way less watered down. They're actually more valuable to me. And yes, I do ascribe the value and the meaning to them. They're not intrinsically sentimental. But now I don't have to worry about struggling with 10,000 sentimental items because I need to hold on to all the sentiment. No, I touched it. I turned it into gold. And I'm not worried about letting it go. How about you listeners? What's the last thing you minimized? And

• 34:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  what prevented you from letting go sooner? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What's the last thing you minimized? And what prevented you from letting go sooner?

• 34:22Speaker 03

  The hardest clutter to release is the yes that betrays your no. I just had some time to spend with my beautiful, wonderful, precious little goddaughter and niece. And she's figuring out the word no right now. And she's really mastered the phrase, or at least the utterance of it, no, thank you. And she uses it when she gets the slightest whiff of something entering into her experience that she wants nothing to do with. No, thank you. No, thank you. You can say her name, Emily. No, thank you. It's her way of saying alone time. Don't bother me. Don't take what I have. And so there was this funny moment

• 35:04Speaker 03

  where mom is trying to help her open up a little snack. And she says, can I help you? No, thank you, mine. And she says, can I help you open it? No, thank you, mine. And she's trying to, she's struggling. She can't get it open. Can I help you open it? No, thank you, mine. And she sees, she goes, oh, yes. And on the surface, this is funny because we all know that experience of babies kind of getting a feel for no, but at the same time, she has a really profound understanding of no. She understands at an intuitive level that no is your ally. No is your friend. No has the power to protect you. And yes, there's a need for discernment and prudence with knowing when not to say it, but you have to know when you're going to say no. Just like with business, they say, what's your exit strategy?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Everything you do in life, you gotta ask yourself, when do I give myself permission to quit? When do I give myself permission to stop? When do I give myself permission to opt out? It's okay to help people. It's okay to sacrifice myself. But if you don't have answers to those questions, then you're not being generous. You're being unintentional and lazy. When do I give myself permission to say no? And you can answer it however you want, but you gotta answer that.

• 36:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when do I give myself permission to say yes as well? I don't want to become the vice president of no. I had a guy who I worked with way back in the corporate days. Ryan and I both worked with him. And whenever you would go to him with something, he would always say no. And we used to call him the vice president of no. And so we found ways to make him think it was his idea. So that if we want him to say yes to something, it had to be his idea. Like, I was looking for like mind tricks to implant these thoughts in his head. I'd be dropping subtle hints around the time. And eventually, he would bring it up. Oh, that's a great idea. And as long as it was his idea, then it was a yes, because otherwise, it was no. And no one wants to show up in life with that disposition. No, no, no, no, no.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  You also don't want to get stepped on with yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, either. What you're talking about is the intention behind the yes, or the intention behind the no. TK, we still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. We usually do the segment called Right Here, Right Now, where we talk about one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. But I wanted to take our sucky ads segment and pull it forward from page three to page one, because I was listening to our friend, Dr. Chris Ryan. He's a previous podcast guest on The Minimalist. You've been on his show. I've been on his show. One of my favorite podcasts. And he had this really great rant about advertisements. So I wanted to play that. Maybe we could have a brief discussion about it. Take it away, Savvy D.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  I get annoyed by advertising, but annoyed isn't the word. I'm outraged by advertising. And I feel like one of the worst things that has happened to American culture is the normalization of deceit, which in my experience is primarily sort of shuttled into our consciousness through advertising.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  We're lied to, you know, this is not news, you know this, but we're lied to constantly. If you're in this social world, if you see billboards and you watch TV, or you watch YouTube, or you scroll through Facebook, or whatever, it's just lie after lie after lie, trying to attract your attention, steal your time, scam you out of money, playing on any insecurity that they can possibly identify.

• 38:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, the preying on your insecurity. He goes on to talk about how like, if you Google like pancreatic cancer, you're gonna get some, immediately get smads for like crystal treatments and things that, you know, it's people just preying on your insecurity and the, he's called it the normalization of deceit. And so it's not always like blatant lies. It's not like this thing is going to make your penis larger, although that's out there too. There's plenty of that, right? It's capitalizing on our insecurities, it's capitalizing on our fears, it's capitalizing on our lust, our desires in ways that are hyper seductive.

• 39:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When I see a really effective, beautiful ad. It works. When I see targeted ads on Instagram, I had to set up a rule in my own life. I call it the advertisement rule. I no longer buy anything from a direct ad that I see on social media, or even from a Google search. This happened to me recently. Bex and I were looking for one of those kneeling chairs without a back, so it kind of rocks back and forth. And we found one, but it was from a sponsored result. And Bex didn't realize it was a sponsored result at the time. And it was like this really beautifully branded luxury version. It had all of these so-called testimonials there, right? And she

• 40:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  sent it to me, and I thought she had done her due diligence. And so I'm like, okay, great. It's more expensive than the cheaper ones, and we get it. I'm like, wait a minute. This thing's a piece of crap. And I started Googling around, and the brand was like this $60 brand that we spent over $200 on. Wow. It was, I guess, not technically a scam. I don't think they did anything illegal, necessarily. But they were supposedly selling a high-end product, but they were just repackaging a cheap crappy product. And I went back and forth to them on email. I said, hey, I want my money back. I'm going to send this back to you. And if not, I'm going to report you. And we're going through all this. Now, that's taken up so much of my time, and my attention,

• 41:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  my energy. It's really frustrating me. And that was the time when I came up with that rule. I said, I'm never buying anything ever again. Because I thought back to all the times that I've bought a black t-shirt off of Instagram, or a pair of pants, or something from a social media ad, and something that's hyper-targeted to me, and it's something I would otherwise buy. I buy black t-shirts. So it's not like it's just selling me things I wouldn't buy. But it's selling me inferior versions. And that's what seduction does. Seduction overpromises and underdelivers. At least, that's one way to think about seduction. And it gets you in this frenzy, this impulse, right? That, oh, yeah. You know what? I guess I have been thinking about buying a new pair of pants. And there's an ad for a pair

• 41:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of those pants. They look really good on Instagram. Look at that influencer who's wearing the pants. And I've been tricked so many times, not by a scam per se, but something that is like scam adjacent. And I love what Chris was saying here with the normalization of deceit and preying on our insecurities. On page three, I want to have maybe a 10 minute conversation with you about this because you and I have different insights about advertisements, but they are relatively nuanced. We do this sucky ad segment pretty regularly on the podcast. We'll review different ads, but I wanted to review this concept of advertisers that prey on our insecurities. And I want to take a moment to just thank our Patreon subscribers

• 42:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  as well. For over 10 years, well, 15 years of the minimalist, we've never done an advertisement on the minimalist website. For a decade, we've never done ads on the podcast. We started the very first episode with, this episode's brought to you by nobody because advertisements suck. Now, I pinch and hold myself there, and that's unfortunate in one sense because I know we could have made so much money, more money by doing ads on the show. And yes, there's a way to do advertising more responsibly than others. I'm not saying there isn't, but I opted out in advance. And so on page three, I want to talk to you about that idea of letting go in advance and the cost of letting go in advance as well, but also the benefits

• 43:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of, of letting go in advance because we decided to do that. And I didn't know if this podcast would be around for a year, or certainly not for a decade. We've, we've developed a really fervent audience. About 1% of our audience supports us on Patreon, and that's thousands of people who are paid Patreon subscribers. They get access to the long form podcast every week and a bunch of other things we do there. Most of what we do is over there on Patreon. You can still listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can watch the video version there on Patreon as well. But we set that community up because we want to reward people. For helping us stay advertisement free. But I do have a request for you right now. So maybe this is our right here, right now segment at this point.

• 44:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I would like to ask you, would you be willing to support the minimalist podcast on Patreon? Subscribe to the private podcast. You can get seven days for free if you head on over to there. The link's down in the description. We'd love for you to support us, continue to keep this enterprise advertisement free. Yes, it keeps us paid and our families fed. And that's Savvy D and Professor Sean and the rest of our team, post-production Peter and Jeff and Dave. We have employees here that create what we're creating here and we're doing it without advertisements. And that's quite the risk. We don't put ads on our YouTube videos. We don't sponsor what we're doing here because we don't want to be beholden to that advertising model. But that works only if you're willing to support us.

• 44:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So that's my question. Would you be willing to support us? Would you be willing to try out the private podcast? I'm certain you'll get a ton more value over there. The episodes are more than twice as long. We answer three times as many questions and we'd love to see you on Patreon. I'll talk to you more about that coming up on page three. But first here is a quick insight from one of our listeners.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Hi there. My name is Matt and I'm from Saugerties, New York, currently residing in North Adams, Massachusetts. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Josh and Ryan and TK, actually, a few years ago at an event in New York City. And I'm calling it today with a, not so much a tip as much as it is a poem. I am reading a poem a day, every day this year, and I came across a poem called "Storage" by Mary Oliver that I think is right up your alley and would be right up the alley of a lot of listeners. So I just wanted to share that with you. This is a poem, "Storage" by Mary Oliver. "When I moved from one house to another, there were many things I had no room for. What does one do? I rented a storage space and filled it.

• 45:52Speaker 05

  Years passed. Occasionally I went there and looked in, but nothing happened. Not a single twinge of heart. As I grew older, the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. So one day I undid the lock and called the trash man. He took everything."

• 46:13Speaker 05

  I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things, burn them, burn them, make a beautiful fire, make room in your heart for love, for the trees, for the birds who own nothing, the reason they can fly.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  Thank you guys so much for all of you, all that you do. It is such a pleasure to have gotten to meet you and to be a follower of y'all's journey. Uh, thanks for everything. Hope you enjoyed.

• 46:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, Matt, thank you so much for that lovely poem. Mary Oliver is certainly one of my favorites. TK, not a single twinge of the heart. What a good way to talk about, when we're talking about excess, you see all that excess and I can look at that and say, oh, not a single twinge of the heart. Not tugging at my heart anymore, except the lack or the loss might be tugging, but the things themselves, they don't make me feel alive. Those are dead things sitting in their clutter coffins. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, we'd love to hear from you. Send a voice memo to [email protected]. We'll feature your voice on a future episode.

• 47:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Up next, page two and page three, but first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 47:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 38% of episode 505. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Here's my favorite. When will I be able to stop buying new things for my home? We've had a long conversation about marriage and we had some good disagreements about advertisements and we talked about your version of a rich life versus my version of a rich life, plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist's private podcast on Patreon. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to the very first episode.

• 48:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's a full decade of archives. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this. Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.