The One-Year Box

I’ve been working to purge my apartment of unnecessary items for the last few months.  I started out by getting rid of the obvious; clothes that I no longer wore, books that I had kept for years and would never read again and DVDs that I bought on a whim and had no intention of ever watching again.

For the most part I would say that this first go around was pretty successful.  I had eliminated a lot of things that I no longer needed.  I made a pretty sizeable donation to Goodwill with the clothes and the public library was more than happy to receive my stack of books.  I made a few dollars by selling the DVDs, but nowhere near the amount I had paid for them.

Despite all of my success, I found that I still had a long way to go.  The problem wasn’t that I felt I needed the things that remained in my apartment but rather I had developed an emotional attachment with these items.

The other day while reading a website I came across a brilliant idea of what I could do in order to eventually eliminate these items, but without the commitment of having to do it immediately.  The idea was using a “1-year box”.  What you do is gather up all of the items in question, seal them in a box and post date it for one year from now.  If in that time, you didn’t need anything from that box, get rid of it without opening it.

It is amazing how such a simple idea can be so powerful!  I only recommend that you don’t put anything of personal value such as photos or other irreplaceable keepsake items into the box.  I started my 1-year box the other day and will add to it until it is filled up.  I will update you on the results in about a year!!!

I do not support putting your kitten in your 1-year box.