7 Random Things I Noted While Throwing Away 465 Items
By: Mathias Barra
Tags: Minimalism, Self Improvement, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Games

A month ago I first heard of the 30-Day Minimalism Game from Kevin Alexander. It has a simple concept: Get rid of one thing on the first day of the month. Two things on the second. Three things on the third. So forth and so on.

That’s 465 items out of the house by the end of the month.

I had just come back to my hometown 10 days before and thought it was a perfect opportunity to declutter the house I grew up in. Knowing how much I kept in my younger years, I figured it’d be child’s play.

In the end, it was just what I needed. Do you need it as well? My experience may help you find an answer.

There’s a lot of obvious stuff.

I know it. You know it. We all know it. There are things lying around our homes that should have been gone long ago. You know where they are and they help start this challenge without much of a sweat.

For me, I had a drawer full of items with an unwritten tag “could be useful someday somehow by someone, but who knows”. Yes, I didn’t write it because it’s too long.

I dove in there and threw out without hesitation children googles I hadn’t used for 20 years, my broken nunchuck, books I barely read 10 pages of before being bored, and so forth.

There’s no other way to say it. It felt good.

Open that drawer or turn to that room where you throw every random thing. There lay the keys to a great start.

Don’t get cocky.

By day 8, I felt on a roll. I also knew I had a collection of the magazine KOREA from 2010 to 2020. That meant I had 120 items, ready to be thrown away, minus the few ones I hold dear. That’s when I made a mistake.

I decided to count each edition as half an item. Suddenly, instead of counting for 24% of the whole challenge, I had 12%. I felt it would be okay but that was without thinking about the end of the month.

If you have an enormous house and a tendency to hoard, then play this game twice and allow yourself to do that the second time around. Once you know what you’re in for.

Count one item as one and keep playing. The real challenge comes later during the month anyway.

Embrace the memories.

As the month passed by I found myself looking at books I liked as a child but knew I would never read. I kept the ones I loved (Oh my dear Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy) but I knew the rest had to go.

It reminded me of a time, before smartphones, when I always had a book in my hand. My mother used to force me to stop reading during meals. A few years later, as I was watching YouTube on my phone, she asked me if I ever read anymore. I didn’t.

Sometimes you’ll make hard choices.

I always kept my ex-girlfriends’ letters in a corner of my house where nobody could find them. I never looked at them and felt bad for keeping them. This month, I took a picture of each, buried it deep in an external disk, and threw the letters out. My exes have had a large impact on who I am today and letting go wasn’t easy so I let myself go down memory lane as I held them in my hands one last time.

As you go around your home, you’ll go through highs and lows. Both are worth you spending a few extra minutes to remember the past.

Spend time away from technology.

When I started it took so little time to find what to throw away, I kept listening to podcasts or thinking about other things. As time passed by and I threw away items I cared for in the past, I disconnected from technology.

The longer you keep throwing away things, the more time you spend on each item. Technology prevents you from focusing on this task so you’ll end up turning off all technology at one point.

In our overly-connected world, this is a positive change you could enjoy. After spending hours upon hours throwing stuff away, I became more at ease with silence. Since then, I’ve switched that time to read books for longer periods. (Yes, I started reading again two years ago.)

Focus on the experience and forget others. This is about you, your past self, and your future self. Don’t let the world get in the middle of this.

Make a mess to clean.

As the piles grew, I found my house becoming messier. It felt like a good metaphor for what those items did to my mind.

These items were always cluttering my mind somehow. This month, they were out in the open, showing their true colors. They weren’t things I treasured. They were things preventing me to move forward.

To get a clear mind, I needed to declutter it. This required finding what was the cause of the clutter in the first place.

Through throwing away many things, I created more space to live. I also created more space for the things that matter. I found a cute drawing I had completely forgotten but loved dearly, to hang on the wall.

Make a mess so you can see what matters or not.

You’ll make hard choices.

I began the month thinking I’d just make more space and get rid of things I didn’t need. By the end of the month, I had made some tough choices and gotten rid of things I never thought I’d throw away.

The Puma flip-flops I bought when I was 16 years old, in middle school, and still used, were torn out for years. The inside part made my big toe touch the ground because of how much I used those. I knew those had to go but putting them in the bin was emotional. They had traveled the world with me and seen more than any other item I ever held. It may seem pointless to you, but I loved those flip-flops.

It gets harder after you’re done handling the obvious. Don’t stop. This is where the game becomes truly useful. These choices will show you who you are and who you want to become.

Remember the past, but make the hard decisions based on your present and future.

What matters isn’t what you throw away.

The whole game is about getting rid of what you don’t need anymore, what’s outlived its lifespan (like my flip-flops). The real lesson, however, isn’t in what you throw away. It comes from what you keep.

You won’t see me throwing away my purple GameBoy Color anytime soon nor my first Japanese textbook. Those matter much more than all I threw away. No matter how many times I play Donkey Kong Country on my GameBoy or look at my first words of Japanese, I can feel true love for both.

What you keep is what you truly care for. It’s what shaped you and might continue to do so. Spend time enjoying your last moments with what you throw away.

But once you close your front door, both literally and figuratively, don’t open it again.