1 Decluttering Idea: Aspirational Identities - June 2, 2021

Good morning!

I hope you’re doing well.

Here’s today’s decluttering idea: Beware of aspirational identities.

We all dream of doing great things. Maybe it’s learning Japanese, becoming an incredible golfer, or creating quilts from old t-shirts. In my 20s, I dreamt of building a supercomputer out of old Pentium III desktops.

Now there’s nothing wrong with dreams and aspirations. In fact, they provide much-needed motivation to keep going when life gets hard.

But aspirations cause trouble when they encourage us to amass clutter. Like in my younger years when I collected computer parts for a supercomputer. Every new motherboard felt like progress toward my goal. Each network interface card kept the dream alive. So I stockpiled them.

Truth be told, I never actually got the old computers running. I never networked them together. I didn’t even study how distributed systems work. My plate was full with work and school and socializing. But collecting computer components felt like progress. So I kept collecting.

Looking back, I see that I’d created an aspirational identity. Future me was going to do a mountain of work to create a supercomputer. Gathering computer parts was simply fuel for this fantasy. Nothing more.

Eventually, my interests turned elsewhere, and I let go of this aspirational identity. When this happened, I had no trouble letting go of the boxes of computer equipment that cluttered my basement.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve let go of other aspirational identities, like learning Japanese. When I let go of this, it was easy to donate the Japanese language books that I’d not cracked open in 15 years. Same story with the French and Italian language books.

I have a lot more examples but I think you get the idea.

So don’t hold on to useless stuff like I did. As you declutter, consider which items represent aspirational identities. Ask yourself, “How much clutter does this aspirational identity create? Is it worth it?”

That’s all for today. Let me know if you have any decluttering questions.

And check out my complete Decluttering Toolbox: http://stewiewrites.com/decluttering/

Have a great week! Stewie