I remember subtraction being a big deal in first grade. There were dinosaur eggs on the classroom bulletin board with our names on them and, although I distinctly recall not liking subtraction (addition was so much easier!), I loved my teacher and school and wanted to do well. I don’t know what the dinosaur eggs were about, but I do remember that I got pretty competitive with a boy in my math class and desperately wanted to beat him. Conclusion? Subtraction was important–in fact, wholly fundamental to my six-year-old self’s sense of success.

I reencountered subtraction decades later, albeit in another form. You see, by this point, I had amassed more than dinosaur math certificates. In my defense, it was a ‘normal’ amount of stuff for someone my age. Nothing too excessive, although it seemed less than others due to the fact that I was extremely organized.

One day, as many have, I stumbled onto a channel about minimalism. This coincided with the season in my life where I planned to leave my job and travel for a while, and suddenly, I became obsessed with the idea of fitting everything I owned into my car (a compact vehicle), or perhaps, a single backpack? In other words, it was time to subtract.

Beginning with the KonMari categories–clothes, books, papers, komono [miscellaneous], and sentimental–I quickly discovered that this was going to be a long-term project. All of the categories were thoroughly represented. I had much more than I realized, quietly tucked away in neat little boxes and file folders. And binders. As a teacher and writer, the binders were clearly a #situation.

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Who was I kidding? All of it was a situation! And Marie Kondo had neglected to include a “digital papers” category. We weren’t even going to think about that. The computer claimed I had in excess of 50,000 files. Gulp.

When I took a step back, The Things looked like a museum of yours truly. Every puzzle piece of my life was represented, in one way or another. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the old, the new, the places, the people, the traveling–everything. I valued my story, reflected often on my journey; but did it all need to be physically represented? Why did it feel like a weight, anchoring me to… me?

Two memories resurfaced here. One winter morning at school, there was a fire drill. I was in a serious ‘dance is everything’ phase at the time, to the extreme that I used to wear ballet slippers to teach [Spanish] in all day. When the alarm went off and we all filed outside to a freezing wintry wonderland–flakes swirling all about–the only thing I had time to do was to slip on my boots over the dance shoes. I didn’t grab my key fob or phone or anything. And I still remember standing out there, absolutely freezing, realizing that if it had been a real fire, I didn’t have anything. Nothing. And it was so incredibly freeing.

A similar thing happened when I was living in Argentina. It was the day before we were flying home, and I had a ton of laundry to do. So I filled a bag with all of the clothes I had brought with me, and walked to the laundromat. It was a different place than I normally frequented, and there, you put the bag over a counter, and they gave you a ticket: you returned a few hours later to pick up your things; I was unaccustomed to this, having always done my own laundry.

However, I had just read about businesses “disappearing” overnight, and a startling thought entered my mind as I walked away: what if the laundromat wasn’t there when I returned? All of my clothes, gone in an instant. I was only a block away, but the thought–no bag, no nothing–made me feel lighter than a feather, lighter than I’d ever felt. [And numerous empanadas and pastries full of dulce de leche consumed while there, assured me that it wasn’t my physical weight!] I skipped back to my apartment, joyful as ever… while also wondering, why?

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These memories lay dormant until I began sorting through my things. The big names in minimalism and decluttering were onto something: “Living With Less” (The Minimalists); “Be More With Less” (Courtney Carver); and my personal favorite, “I Think We Could Be Friends” (The Minimal Mom). The overarching idea here led me right back to my first grade math lesson–subtraction. Very un-mathematically, however, less was now proving to be more.

I knew that I couldn’t succeed with subtraction now just because I wanted to impress my teacher or beat a classmate. I knew that I couldn’t escape it by moving onto multiplication or geometry or algebraic functions. I was subtracting now for myself, for clarity. We had to make our peace. When I was six, I didn’t have enough life experience to think about deleting. The concept itself was probably frightening. But now it was time to tidy up The Cluttered Museum, my museum.

Maybe subtraction wasn’t scary, the more I thought about it. Artists and chefs began with a clean palette. Developers started with an empty lot of land. Designers craved the simplicity of white walls. It had to do with possibilities, that scintillating sparkle of newness. The winds were shifting. I wanted all that and more. But the process was arduous, taxing, exhausting. The more I decluttered, the more there seemed to be.

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Months passed, and my organization abilities were refined as I researched more and more about the topic. Cass from Clutterbug helped to explain why my organizational preferences did not always work for other people. Miss Minimalist pointed out how to be extraordinarily honest with yourself and Declutter Your Fantasy Self, whereas this list from the Making Lemonade Blog allowed you to plod along at your own pace, gradually decluttering mini categories. Eventually, I started making progress, and then one day, I realized that–just as Marie Kondo encourages–I was surrounded by the things I loved.

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Stuff comes in, stuff goes out. But these days, I find the latter much more common. This subtractive process of getting rid of the superfluous and being intentional about everything you own, of surrounding yourself only with things that spark joy, of sitting with your things and really thinking about why you are holding onto them, has changed everything.

Let us not forget that this is, most assuredly, a process. Evidently, my training began at age six.

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There has been an effort in recent years to quash inaccurate definitions of minimalism–to streamline, to declutter, to get to the heart of what exactly this movement and philosophy are all about. While extreme minimalists and ultralight packing lists may be awe-inspiring and provide shock-value, true minimalism is about one thing: getting rid of the superfluous in your life so that you can concentrate on what is most important.

Let us be clear from the beginning that this is not about owning a fixed number of possessions. Rather, it is about understanding what you value and why, from that thing underneath all that stuff that you haven’t seen in seven years and didn’t remember you had (the physical) to how you spend your time on a daily basis (values/principles). It can be delightful to rediscover an item that you haven’t thought about in forever, a buried treasure of sorts hidden behind that other thing you didn’t remember, but were you really treasuring it if it was stashed away and forgotten? The things you care about, you also care for: you take care of items if they are truly of value to you.

Minimalism, then, begins with physical decluttering: a tedious, painful, and eventually joyful process where literally everything you own is evaluated or “graded” by you, the Omnipotent Teacher. International organizational guru Marie Kondo proves your spirit guide here: “Does this spark joy?” While certain aspects of her books may be over the top for some, the focus on what to keep, as opposed to what to throw out, is refreshingly optimistic. Instead of losing yourself to a negative downward spiral of what to get rid of, focus on what you love and let go of the rest.

This letting go, this physical cleansing, allows–in feng shui terms–to begin to move the stagnate energy in your life. When you think deeply about what is important to you, you become more intentional and particular about how you are living your life. You step back to reevaluate how you are spending your days, your life. If you feel stuck, you probably are; but minimalism can help you to escape this Quagmire of Immobility–unless, of course, you are referring to immobility in the sense of not being allowed to leave your home legally. That, however, is an entirely different subject, ha!

In all seriousness, the process of minimizing everything you own is not exactly a walk in the park; it is tough work. Who you were ten years ago is not who you are today: your values and principles have changed, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly, dependent on personal circumstances and general life experiences, as you grow older and wiser. Taking time (our most valuable asset) to sort through our lives and evaluate what is of value to us now, in this particular stage of our lives, can prove both surprising (new values) and life-affirming (old values, or reinforcing staple principles that will stay with you always). We must be judicious but also not wallow for too long in the past, as objects conjure up memory after memory in the Time Capsule called You.

When we rid ourselves of the superfluous, of the clutter clogging up our lives, we define who we are and what is important; we see more clearly: our vision suddenly comes into focus. The realization that we have not had 20/20 vision all along can be jarring but also, ultimately, a welcome reboot and reset. Focus on what is valuable to you and let the rest go.

**Let me leave you with a curated (intentional!) list of resources to peruse HERE, should this topic interest or motivate you to begin. As always, thanks for reading.