Minimalist Mondays: Decluttering Sentimental Stuff

My one-hour uncluttering sessions has shown me what a pack rat I am, thanks to genetics. My mom is a hoarder, too. If our tiny house were a cardboard box, it will be bulging on the sides, ready to break any minute. I didn't want to live like that.

Judging from the stuff I own, I'm closer to living like my mom. I just don't notice it because we have more space. It's hard to let go of stuff you don't need especially if you've spent a lot of money for them. Getting rid of sentimental stuff such as old letters and knickknacks is next to impossible.

Then I asked myself, why do we keep old letters or sentimental stuff? Based on my research, two main reasons emerge.

Sentimental stuff helps us remember. Our memories are faulty and at most, embellished. So we keep sentimental stuff to aid us in remembering important events in our lives. There is scientific basis on why nostalgia makes us happy. In our memories, we seem larger than life. We remember ourselves as cooler or braver than we actually were at that exact moment so we hold on to those memories.

Sentimental stuff reminds us that our lives have meaning. When we read old letters from people telling us how much we have touched their lives, we are persuaded that our lives are valuable. The gifts we've received tells us that at one time, we were special to someone. Sentimental stuff is a reminder that our lives matter.

While the occasional reminiscing sessions are good for us, there are dangers in overindulging in nostalgia.For one, we could get so caught up in our memories that we fail to live in the present. Past successes can stifle us with fear that we might never duplicate our awesomeness. Thinking too much about the past can also prevent us from embracing new experiences or forming new relationships.

That is why it is essential for us to manage our sentimental clutter. We can keep SOME sentimental stuff, but not ALL of them. But how do we decide which ones to keep and which ones to ditch?

Here are a few rules that I've come up from uncluttering my old sentimental stuff:

1. Old letters

Keep Pile:
a. Letters from my immediate family and extended family I am fond of. - I am at that point in my life when I've realized that you're stuck with your family whether or not you want to. You might have great friends, but in the end, when the going gets tough, it's really your family you go back to. That's why I kept each letter from my immediate family.
b. Letters from old friends that I am still in touch with.
c. Letters from old friends that struck a chord or reminded me of who I was before.

Destroy Pile:
a. Letters from friends turned enemies (echoes of evil laughter in the background) It's so freeing to finally destroy these. I've read them once and vowed that I will only choose friends that have a positive influence in my life.
b. Random notes from people I barely remember
c. Love letters from past loves. Mind you, some of them were very eloquent, but I figured, what's the use of keeping them? I already decided to love one person as my husband, so what's the use of reliving these moments? Is it to brag that you were attractive once upon a time? I don't have any use for them anymore, so ditch them I did. (After my husband read some of them and taunted me goodnaturedly about them.)


2. Sentimental Knickknacks:

I decided to designated a certain box for my sentimental knickknacks. I am only keeping a shoebox for my "single" days, so I have to be selective with what I am keeping. Anything that does not fit that shoebox will have to go.

To make letting go easier, I've decided to keep a snapshot of the things I am getting rid of to remember them by. I am planning to keep a scrapbook page and journaling about them to preserve the good memories.


3. Journals:


This is by far the hardest to part with because when I was in college, I was insane enough to burn all my journals that I have kept since my high school freshman year. All 15 notebooks.I don't want to explain why I did this, but I've regretted doing this. I have very few memories of high school and I would have loved to know what I thought then and how far I've gone. 

Since I've regretted burning my journals, I am hesitant to part with the ones I have now. After leafing  through them, I am loathe that someone else will read them. They are all the products of an indecisive, depressed, and confused person, someone I once was, but am not anymore. So what do I do with them?

There's this advice from Unclutterer.com that talks about old journals:

• If you wrote them for therapeutic reasons, as a way to work through problems in your life, then go ahead and burn them.
• If you wrote them as messages to your future self, then keep them.
• If you wrote them as a record that you were alive in that moment, then keep them.
• If you wrote them to vent your frustrations, then burn them.

 It sounds like good advice, but I don't want to do this in haste. As of now, I am veering towards the following:

Keep Pile:

1. Good memories of important events in my life
2. Bad memories that taught me something about life- I think I'm going to put my present perspective. Thinking of doing a scrapbook of this, but I'm not sure yet.

Destroy Pile:
1. Negative memories that still make me feel bad when I read it. These memories hold me back and
2.  Embarrassing thoughts and experiences that I have written down that I don't want anyone to know.

But I'm still undecided because there's something about censoring my memories that still makes me uncomfortable, perhaps because of my journalism training. I don't want a glossed-over past, but I don't want to be dragged down by negativity either.  (Update: I chose one of the journals about an episode in my life that still causes me pain. I tore each page one by one over a cup of coffee. How liberating it was. So there's some good advice about journals. I'm keeping my journal documenting my experiences in Japan for my daughters.)

How about you? Do you keep sentimental clutter? What do you do to manage them?

I'm a Doll, Too!

I'd like to thank Krissy for religiously giving me an award and here's what I got! Don't you just love them? They remind me of the beehive ladies from Baltimore and I just love weird hats. I'm going to post the rules.

 

The rules are:

1. Remember to link back to the person who awarded you!

2. Select 5 more bloggers that you think are dolls and link them at the bottom.

3. Tell about a character from a book/ movie/ drama that you like most.

4. Post the picture and title on your blog  permanently if you like.

I also found this the perfect time to explain about why I have Haruno Sakura of the anime Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden as my avatar. She's the first person that I thought of when Krissy gave me this award.

I watch Naruto with my husband and to tell you the truth, my most favorite character here is Sasuke. Sakura used to irritate me so much because all she does is cry and she's completely useless in the series. She's the Japanese anime version of Bea Alonzo or Judy Ann Santos in early Pinoy soap operas. Frankly, she irritates me so because she reminds me of me, the crybaby.

But when we watched Naruto Shippuuden, I was completely blown over by the change in Sakura and her abilities. I only watched her during the battle with Sasori. Gone was the crybaby Sakura. Instead she was replaced by this completely bad-ass person who uses her strength to protect her loved ones. None of my descriptions could suffice so I'm going to provide you with a Youtube video of this battle:



Now, isn't she amazing or what?

My only complaint is that Sakura in Naruto Shippuuden is uglier. Can't the animators have made her more feminine? It wouldn't hurt if she remained prettier. So I found this picture that is the better version of Sakura.



The Sakura vs Sasori battle was the last episode of Naruto Shippuuden I watched. Which reminds me that I have to start watching it again. We stopped for a while because no matter how much I love this anime series, it does tend to be a little slow. All those wasted minutes just looking at two characters staring at each other and trading insults can get a little boring. To anyone who's reading this who knows what will happen to Sakura, please no spoilers.

So I'm passing on this Doll Award to Joybeth, Tiara, Golden, Tara, and Mariel. 

Introducing Minimalist Mondays

"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." -Lao Tzu

Lately, I've been attracted and terrified with the concept of minimalist living. Terrified because I'm the complete opposite of a minimalist. Attracted because I find in it the peace that I've been craving.

You see, I want my life to be grand and beautiful. Now there's nothing wrong with this goal. In fact, I think all of us have this goal in one form or another.

However, in my pursuit of the "grand and beautiful life," all I've ever felt was discontentment. I am always looking out for the next best thing. If I've got it good now, I want to have it better.

It's an endless pursuit and I am out of breath. I am burnt out.

So I decided to stop and think about the "grand and beautiful." Having a grand and beautiful life takes work. It's work that burns me out; work that eliminates time with what really matters to me, my family.

Minimalism gives you that. Minimalism tells you that you are enough and when you feel that you have enough, then you're left to focus on the essential. It that's what minimalism promises, then I'm ready to give it a try.

So in the spirit of Krissy's Make Me Smile Mondays and Tara's Things I Love Thursdays, I'm going to start Minimalist Mondays. It's a chronicle of what I'm going to learn about minimalism and whether or not it's what's right for me.

This is the guide that I'm using right now:

Click here to view more details

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits announced that all his e-book sales for the next 31 days starting two weeks ago will directly go to Doctors Without Borders who will be going to Haiti for medical missions. I instantly bought the book. (It costs $9.95, by the way) Let me tell you that I usually don't buy books on the fly. That could get expensive. I only buy books that I've read and loved. So this is a step up for me. I thought, if I hated the book, at least I know that the $9.95 I spent went to doctors who are helping Haitians. I'll do a review of this book next Minimalist Monday.

The Easiest Way to Accomplishing Your Goal: How I Formed the Morning Exercise Habit

I started January with so many goals that I was frozen into inactivity by the sheer magnitude of them. I also slacked off on my work because I felt so discouraged that I didn't even accomplish a single goal from my list. Pathetic, right? I felt so hypocritical going all Amadeus-y first day of January and not even fulfilling one goal. So instead of being all ambitious, I decided to stop the downhill slide and start small.

Focus on only one goal

Because I was overwhelmed with my goals, I focused on a single goal: to become healthier and more fit. Since I have gained weight over the holidays and I didn't grow any taller, I'm the little teapot personified. I resolved to form a morning exercise habit. To be more specific, I have to exercise for an hour everyday. I don't want to feel listless day in and day out and it doesn't help that my kids like to poke me and gleefully shout, "Mommy, your tummy feels like jelly!" Besides, I feel more motivated when I feel beautiful and so if I can ace this, I feel that the rest of my other goals will be easier to fulfill.

Form a Trigger

A trigger is what you do right before you do a certain habit. You have to connect a habit to a particular trigger. This means doing your habit at the same time everyday.  For my morning exercise habit, my trigger is to place an exercise DVD into the player at exactly 9:00 A.M. In fact, I tricked myself into the exercising habit by saying that the only habit I'm going to form is to place the exercise DVD to the player. I did this religiously for thirty days. Now, at exactly 9:00 A.M., music from the exercise video starts to play in my head. It is relentless and quite annoying, so I have to exercise. I have successfully formed a habit! Yay!

Reward Yourself

Thirty days of doing something religiously can be tiring. Believe me, it's easy to slack off and break the thirty-day streak. Since the habit to exercise is not really that fun (unless you're a masochist and derive pleasure from burning muscles), I decided to reward myself right after sweating and toiling. I allowed myself to watch one episode of my favorite series or an hour of reading a book after I did crunches and other unpleasant things the exercise lady forced me to do. So the thought of watching an episode of Glee or Ugly Betty right after exercising kept me going for thirty days. What's great about this is you'll notice that after you have formed the habit, you don't even need the reward at all.
 
Now I wish I could tell you that I formed washboard abs after those 30 days, but sadly I did not. But I am more energetic every day and I don't have to huff and puff whenever I climb the stairs. I have also noticed that I became more cheerful perhaps from being able to wear my fitted shirts once again.

So now that I have my exercise habit down pat, I'm moving on to another habit which is to declutter for an hour a day.

How about you? What kind of habit do you want to form? What's keeping you from meeting your goals?

The Best Time to Think about Retirement is when You're Young and Beautiful

The Sun Life Planner that Tara gave me (I didn't technically win it. In my excitement to win, I kept checking everyday when she'll announce the contest winners and when I couldn't wait any longer, I asked her and reminded her about it. So, because of my obsession, Tara gave me one!) came yesterday! Yay! Here are the pictures of this gorgeous planner:

What's cool about this planner is it has a goal for the month and a kind of blog post thingy every end of the month which forces me to record my thoughts at the end of the month. It also has images from budding photographers that showcase Filipino culture like this one:

This is my favorite photograph because I love old people, all those stories they can tell you and the wisdom that they have from experience. This photo got me to thinking about retirement.

When you're young and beautiful, the last thing that you'd like to think about is that time when you lose all your beauty and have wrinkles. Coming from someone who's thirty with a husband and two young children and with teeny laugh lines (nay, not crow's feet) on the corners of her eyes, I personally think that the best time to prepare for retirement is when you're young and beautiful and I'll give you two good reasons why:

1. You're not saddled with kids yet. Kids, no matter how cute, can get very expensive and like any doting mom, you'd want to have the best for your child. So, it's going to be harder to squirrel away some cold hard cash for your retirement when you're totally lusting for the whole set of Lemony Snicket hardbound books for your child. When you're young and beautiful, you'll have more money for yourself and one of the best ways to pay yourself is to put something away for retirement.

2. You can harness the power of compound interest. Now, I'm not going to be all mathematical here. (Remember me getting all Luna Lovegood-ey when it comes to calculations?) If you want real numbers, Get Rich Slowly explains it well here. Of course, you have to factor in the inflation rate and the taxes if you're going to keep it in a savings account. But the essential thing here is that time is your friend when it comes to saving for retirement. You'll still have more money if you start saving for retirement at 23 than at 30.

I know that it's hard to save up for your retirement when there are so many beautiful baubles and gadgets to tempt you along the way. You might even think that you deserve them because you're working so hard but it only takes a little imagination to see yourself old and hopefully still beautiful, but penniless. Will you depend on your children during that time when they also have their own family to support? Would you want them to resent you secretly for not being financially responsible enough to save for your retirement?

Imagine these two scenarios:

You're already 65 years old. You might be matronly but thanks to all the age-defying products you've used, you're still beautiful. Imagine that you already have grand kids and you can spoil them rotten because you have your own funds. You can read all the books that you want because you have all the time in the world. You can travel (although, I sincerely believe that travel is for the young); you can enroll in a dance class to keep yourself fit. The world is your oyster because you have saved for your retirement. 

Contrast that to a 65-year-old matron who has to take care of her grand kids because she's living with one of her kids. When you're feeling the pain of arthritis, you have to ask your adult daughter/son for medicine. The money that's supposed to go to your grand kid's formula goes to your arthritis medicine. The money that's supposed to fund your kid's MBA is funneled to your medical bills...

For the life of me, why would you choose the second scenario when you have the power to prevent this from happening at 22? So start saving at least 10% of your monthly income. Start saving something and start saving NOW. Don't be old, still beautiful, and penniless. Be old, still beautiful, and financially independent.

Do you have a retirement fund? What's keeping you from starting one?