On Simplifying

It all started last summer. I was out of the most important space known to me...shelf space! Books were piled everywhere. Stuffed in corners. Crammed in cases. Packed in boxes. Riding around in the trunk of my car. I wore the identity of a bibliophile (and that of a book collector!) with a sense of pride. Sure, it was a guilty pleasure, but I loved to read and at least I was consuming ideas and not more useless electronic gadgetry, right?

There was only one problem. The slogan "Too many books, too little time" had become my life.

So, over the course of several weeks, I gave away and sold (for less than pennies on the dollar) boxes and boxes of books -- hundreds of volumes. I gained some shelf space and can now pack appropriate items in the trunk of my car. But, for all of that purging. I still have plenty of books. The effort at library reduction continues. In the meantime, I started other sorts of reductionist efforts.

I reduced some of me and lost twenty pounds.

I reduced the number of magazine subscriptions I have and disposed of (or gave away) the back issues of most of the dozens of unread issues.

I reduced the amount of paper that I allowed to remain in my filing cabinets and finally threw away the two file boxes full of class notes and research papers from both my seminary and my undergraduate careers -- even my prized "Contemporary Theology" notes from 1978, which I had hauled around through numerous household moves across multiple states, and which, I can honestly say I had never actually used for research purposes, but only as a form of academic memorabilia as I relived the memories of one of the best undergraduate experiences of my time in college.

Presently, I am reducing the archived e-mails in my multiple e-mail accounts and happily unsubscribing from the dozens of helpful "e-newsletters" I have accumulated to through the years.

Now, before anyone gets nervous, I doubt there will ever be a time when folks come into my office and it has the appearance of a zen meditation room. I'm not taking classes in Feng Shui. But the ultimate goal of simplification has to do with clearing space in my space so I won't be so cluttered in my head. Plenty of people have said it before me -- the more stuff we have the more the stuff has us.

Along the way, there are a couple of books (yes, I see the irony in this!) that have been very helpful in my journey:

Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture by Vincent J. Miller

Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth by David Richo

The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less by Marc Lesser

There are also several blogs that I read frequently:

zenhabits.net (written by Leo Babauta one of the authors listed above)

unclutterer.com (a personal organization blog)

lifehacker.com (I particularly like the personal productivity and "mind hacks" sections of this blog)

Finally, I've been reading a book by Dave Bruno entitled The 100 Thing Challenge, which chronicles his journey of living for one year with only 100 personal items and how he managed this while living as a husband and father in a typical suburban household in southern California. You can read a brief description of this project at

http://guynameddave.com/2010/11/a-first-contribution-my-100-thing-challenge-book/

As Bruno describes all that led up to his experiment, he offers two quotes that have provided a renewed sense of passion in my own journey toward simplification:

"The very act of acquiring so much stuff has turned us ever more into individuals and ever less into members of a community, isolating us in a way that runs contrary to our most basic instincts." (from Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, 2007)

"We are impoverishing ourselves in pursuit of a consumption goal that is inherently unachievable." (from Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, 1998)

I'll keep you posted on my progress on this, the first of my four major intentions for 2011. In the meantime, if you're a person who likes to read and who attends Trinity, Wauwatosa, there's a shelf in our Parish Lounge (which is located just next to our Parish Hall that I have dubbed the "Rector's Book Give-Away" shelf)...stop by, browse and take a book or two home with you...to read or to give away to someone else. New volumes will probably be appearing weekly!