Last March as I was preparing to do my taxes, I found my Goodwill receipt after a closet purge around Thanksgiving last year.  I had donated:

• 30 shirts
• 2 dresses
• 5 pants
• 4 skirts
• 3 sweaters
• 1 pair of jeans
• 2 shorts
• 12 pairs of shoes

I remember thinking as I was collecting these items how insanely lucky I was to have so much excess.  The thing was, this was my second go through my closet, and the previous pile was much, much bigger.

How had I accumulated so many clothes?  And why did I decided to bring all of them from Michigan to Washington when we moved out here 3 years ago?  Now that I think about it, I also did a purge back then which resulted in 3  x 30 gallon garbage bags full of clothes.

I struggle with the “just in case” rules:

• I can’t get rid of this white shirt, just in case my 5 other ones are dirty.
• I can’t get rid of these jeans, just in case I lose weight and fit back into them.  Those jeans were expensive!
• I can’t get rid of these blister causing dress shoes, just in case I want my calves to look good AND be miserable at the same time.
• I can’t get rid of that dress even though that that hemline is dangerously high.  What if I decide I’m going to start clubbing again?

Here’s the deal – none of these scenarios will ever happen.

My 5 other white shirts will never be dirty because I am a laundry nazi.

I don’t need to lose any weight to get into those jeans because my weight is just fine – in fact, I was probably underweight when I bought those jeans TEN years ago!

I pretty much exclusively live in shoes with arch support a la Dansko’s because comfort > good looking calves.

And finally, let’s be honest – I’m never clubbing again.  It’s too loud, I don’t want to dance for 4 hours and the shoes definitely aren’t worth it.  These days, making it past 11 p.m. just isn’t something I really aspire to anymore.  I’ve accepted I’m just getting too old for that nonsense.

So why do I have a hard time parting with these items? I have literally toted them across the country with me, just to have them sit in a dresser never to see the light of day ever again.  These articles of clothing actually make me feel worse when I try to convince myself I’ll wear them again, adjusting and readjusting the fabric to make it look somewhat flattering.

Might as well give my stuff to Goodwill to help my taxes and maybe some other unfortunate soul can buy it for a reduced price to put in their closet, never to be seen again.

Enter Minimalism

This is not my first exposure to minimalism – my dad, or Papa as I affectionately call him, first introduced me to this now popular movement when I was a teenager. Before I moved from Toronto to Michigan, Papa preceded my family to live by himself in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment for 3 months. When we first arrived, we were aghast to discover how he had been living during that time in an essentially empty apartment.

He had one plate, one bowl, one spoon, one knife, one pot and one pan. He had lived out of a suitcase with all his other personal effects.

It didn’t really step into the zone of ridiculous until we peeked at the master bathroom. There was a walk-in shower WITHOUT a shower curtain. In order to solve the dilemma of getting water EVERYWHERE, Papa chose to angle the shower head toward the wall. Problem solved.

When asked why he didn’t just buy a $3 shower curtain, he answered, “But why? I can shower just fine by turning the shower head!”

My sister and I shook our heads at the absurdity of it all, but now I realise even in his extremism, Papa hit upon something that I’m just scratching the surface of today.

Consumption

As I observe the spending habits of my patients, friends and fellow doctors, I find we are in a constant state of consumption.  We’re all chasing that thing that will make our life complete – the newest phone, fitness tracker, piece of clothing… you name it, the marketing gods will instill in you the “need” for you to have it.

Inevitably though, it’s never enough.

Doctors are THE WORST

In The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko, they essentially spend the entire book ripping into doctors as being the most uninformed, financially illiterate consumers of all the professions out there.

And quite honestly, I have to agree with them.

In residency training, we go from making less than minimum wage for all the hours we work to making over six figures when we make it into attending status. Despite the concurrent six figures in student loans, the majority of us see this windfall and subsequently start funneling our money into things that we had “denied” ourselves because of all the delayed gratification over the past decade of training.

In roll the luxury cars, the fancy big house and all the tech gadgets you could ever dream of.  In the meantime, we don’t actually accumulate any wealth but rather incur more and more debt.  We become trapped into our day to day jobs because we now have to finance our expensive lifestyles that everyone envies, not realising we must work 50, 60, 70 hours a week in order to keep living this way.

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” – Dave Ramsey

Let it go, let it go…

What if I let go of stuff cluttering my life?  How much time do I waste every morning going through my wardrobe, bypassing the clothes that I keep around “just in case” to get to the things that I actually use? Would I gain more time for myself instead of tending to things that add no value to my life?

What if I chose to collect experiences, not things?  The highs of hiking through Maui, hearing the breeze filtering through the clattering of bamboo shafts or the feeling the brisk alpine air go through me as I looked out on the Austrian mountain range have stayed with me much longer than any high of buying anything.

The look in J’s eyes as we experienced these times together is etched into my memory – this is what I live for.  

 

Now, I’m not saying we should stop buying things.

But, we should be more intentional about our consumption.  Are we just collecting things to fill a hole in our hearts that mass advertising dug out for us?  Or is there a purpose to what we buy and what we do?

Could we better our lives when we allocate our time and money more intentionally?

Could this millennial doctor truly practice minimalism?

I hope as I share my journey with you, you may find some benefit.

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Follow me on Instagram as I get rid of/throw out one item every day on my next 30 Day Challenge: Minimalism starting 6/1/18.

Photo taken of Mt. Hood peeking through the clouds at sunset.