Less Is More

You’re addicted to your phone. You’re loaded down by useless stuff. And you eat like a teenager. No wonder you can’t find the time to play outside, see the world, and get in shape. Fortunately,  streamlining your life—and having more fun—is easy: just do less. Here’s how.

- Jen Schwartz & The Editors

1 PURGE

BY CHRISTOPHER KEYES

The first piece of furniture I ever bought kept me up at night. I was 25 years old, and the offending item was a 60-pound oak armoire the color of whiskey and the size of a standard refrigerator. It wasn’t the price or the quality of its construction that triggered the angst. It was what it represented. I now owned something that couldn’t fit in my rooftop RocketBox. I saw my adult life beginning, along with a relentless accumulation of more stuff. That armoire was the loss of my freedom.

Looking around my house nearly 20 years later, my vision was prescient. I’ve collected more things than I want, and finding a place to put them all is a daily struggle. My twenty something anxiety wasn’t un founded, either. Research has revealed a troubling paradox: not only is clutter a cause of stress, but so is getting rid of things. For some people, the very act of shedding a possession triggers activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, the same parts of the brain that register physical pain. Which explains why millions of Americans, including me, have plunked down $10 for yet another possession: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, a bestseller by Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo. According to Kondo, dealing with your clutter can improve your well-being. “A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective,” she writes. “It is life transforming.”