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An Easy ... Free Way to Increase Your Happiness
Once again, the people of Denmark have topped the charts as the happiest people on Earth. 23rd happiest are the Americans.
Interestingly, Americans own and consume more than twice as much as the Danes. The average home in the US is 2,330 square feet while in Denmark it's 1,884. The US home, on average, has 350,000 items in it!
The size of an average US home has doubled in the last 30 years, while the average number of people living in each household has decreased by half. We continue to consume and collect more and more things and thus require more and more space.
If you would like to be happier in your life, you could consider living more like the Danes and scale down the amount of things you own. You spend a lot of time and money maintaining and storing all of your things. By scaling down the amount you own, you can spend your time and money doing something you really love.
Scaling down makes getting and staying organized much simpler. When you're organized, you can live more comfortably using less space. Consider the amount of utilities, land, and items consumed by a 5,000 ft2 home compared to that of a 1,500 ft2 condominium. If you choose to live in a smaller space, being organized makes it possible to live comfortably.
As a professional organizer, the most common two questions are, "How do I decide what to get rid of?" and "How do I know I won't need that item in the future?"
My answer is: Find all the things in your home that are not useful or meaningful and get rid of them. If, at some point, you decide you do in fact need that item, you would easily be able to find another one on Craigslist, Ebay, or one of the online free markets across the US.
For example, if you had an unused bookcase, you could sell it on Craigslist for, let's say, $40. Then, say, one year later you decide that you actually do need a bookcase. You would be able to find a used on within a week or two. Usually you would find one that better suits your needs as well. Also, the $40 you sold the bookcase for a year ago would have been saved or spent on something useful and you would not have had an unused bookcase in storage.
You can let go of everything in your home that is not useful or meaningful if you are willing to trust that the items you need will be available to you when you need them. When you take this step, I am willing to bet that your level of happiness and the amount of money in your bank account will both increase!
Sources: Statistics Denmark. 2008. Denmark in Figures 2008. Available at http://www.dst.dk/asp2xml/puk/udgivelser/get_file.asp?id=12750...sid=complete. "Average" (taken as typical) Danish home is 110 sq. meters, or 1,184 sq. ft. Demographia. 2006. Second Annual Demographic International Housing Affordability Survey. http://www.demographia.com/dhi2006.pdf. (2200 square feet for new American home in 2006.)
About the Author Heidi DeCoux is the publisher of Life Made Simple e-Magazine, a professional organizer in Minneapolis, and creator of the Fast-Filing Method home office filing system. Heidi energizes her readers' by simplifying their homes and schedules. For more info, free tips, and to receive her FREE Report:The Fast ... Easy Way to Get Organized and Stay Organized Forever, visit ClearSimpleLiving.com.
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