How DayOne Makes Minimalism Easier

September 15, 2018

A couple months back, I discovered minimalism and dove in deep. It’s made a huge impact on our lives and I intend on writing a full post about it but for now, I really wanted to share how DayOne has made this process easier.

Part of decluttering is removing things that may have sentimental value but don’t provide any true value in your life. This is where most people really have a hard time in their minimalism journey. I don’t think we realize how often we let these types of items accumulate in our lives. I’m not a sentimental person but I definitely had way more of these items than I ever expected.

Getting rid of something that was given as a gift, especially from a beloved family member can be really hard. When my grandfather passed, he left me a metal dog nutcracker. I don’t eat nuts that require a nutcracker (and it was a pretty ugly trinket) but for 5 years now, I’ve moved this thing from closet to closet and from state to state. Each time I saw it, I remembered my grandpa and all the things he taught me but the thing is: I only saw it once a year or so when we moved. When I started minimalism, I decided that I wouldn’t waiver: if something didn’t have a purpose or didn’t spark joy, it was going. I decided that anything that was sentimental in anyway, I would snap a picture, put it in DayOne with a quick note, and move on.

I had no idea how great this would be! A couple days in I started actively looking forward to getting rid of these items. Their original purpose was to bring me joy but they weren’t anymore. By adding them to my journal, I knew that every single year, I would get to see that come back in my daily review and I’d get to smile and think about the person that gave it to me and why it was important.

My house is clear (or getting there) and my journal is packed! I can’t wait to look back at my journal over the next year and remember all these wonderful gifts and the loving people in my life.

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I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Heroku

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