Earlier this month, I spent nearly a week in Fort Worth, Texas, attending the annual conference of my professional association, the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO). Even though this is my 13th year as a Professional Organizer, I still came away from the conference with my head full of new and exciting ideas and things to try.
One of the sessions that I attended was called A Day in the Life of a KonMari Consultant. The speaker was Amanda Jefferson, owner of Indigo Organizing, based in the Philadelphia area. In case you are not familiar with the term KonMari, it’s the name given to the Marie Kondo method of organizing. (If you are not familiar with Marie Kondo, then you need to get out from under that rock and read my most recent post about her!)
Amanda said something during her excellent talk that really stuck with me. She essentially said, “Someday means never.” I can’t even tell you how often I have heard my clients look at an item they haven’t used in years, and say, “I might need it someday.” Now I have a good response to that statement.
If you haven’t used something in years, and you can’t think of a use for it in the immediate future, then you really need to consider why it is taking up space in your home, as well as your psychic space. After all, the flip side of “I might need it someday” is “I might not need it someday”.
Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, who are known as The Minimalists, wrote a brilliant blog post called Getting Rid of Just-in-Case Items: 20 Dollars, 20 Minutes. They got rid of anything that they were saving “just in case” and hypothesized their 20/20 Rule: “Anything we get rid of that we truly need, we can replace for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes from our current location.” They claim that in the very few instances that they ever had to replace one of those “just in case” items (“fewer than five times for the two of us combined”), their 20/20 Rule has held true.
Next time you are tempted to keep something “just in case” or because “I might need it someday”, just remember that someday means never.
