A year or two ago, I started to rethink my relationship with stuff. In particular, I reconsidered what I needed to have with me, and how I could start to reduce it. Mind you, I wasn’t going to really do without all of those things; I just needed to think carefully about how I could combine, or replace, several of the items.

It’s been an iterative process, but I feel like I’m comfortable with far less. I currently carry a small keychain that holds only a single house key, my car key and remote, and an ultralight mini Swiss Army knife.

There were several important milestones along the way – here are a few.

iPhone

The iPhone was a game changer. Not only did it finally combine my PDA with my cell phone, but with the later addition of the App Store, I now had continuous access to any piece of information I wanted. Not only that, but I could now bring at least some of my music with me at all times, too. I kept the ipod in the car for another year or two until I finally retired it.

Wallet

The iPhone helped me ditch most all of the cards in my wallet. Sure, I still carried around a few—a couple debit cards, another couple of credit cards, a few business cards, a Costco card, and so forth. But now it could all fit into a small bifold wallet, as opposed to the trifold that often exceeded an inch in width.

Ditching the watch

It took me a long time to warm to the idea of going watch-less. But, again, it was the iPhone that helped spur this on. I tried one week without a watch to see how difficult it would be. I’d awkward glance at my wrist several times during the first few days, but I really didn’t encounter any other serious downsides.

Reducing the keychain

The breakthrough here was simply realizing that I only needed to carry around keys that I might need to use today. That meant that I could keep all the others—the keys to my parents’ houses, my PO Box, the safe deposit box at the bank, the outdoor shed, and so forth—in another, nearly-always-accessible place, like my car or my home.

I also reduced the number of keychains I carried around, which I had in part used to separate all of those keys into “sections.” I didn’t need dividers anymore, and I decided that I could keep just one non-key. After quite a bit of thought, I ended up getting a lightweight swiss army knife, which included a small ballpoint pen (no more waiting for a pen when the dinner check arrives), an LED light, a small pair of scissors, a very small knife and a nail file. So while I no longer had an ASU medallion or backpacking boot on my keychain, I had replaced them with some useful tools.

What can you eliminate?

Are there any items you could get rid of?

The post Carrying less: simplifying and decluttering my pockets appeared first on rscottjones.

Here’s a simply way you can help ensure that all this stuff doesn’t add to what is for most people, an already cluttered life.

Adopt the One-in, One-out rule.

This means that for every new item of stuff that you acquire, you need you relieve yourself of some other item of stuff. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a like item (if you get a new ladder you don’t necessarily have to get rid of older ladder), though that’s probably the most common. There just needs to be a 1-to-1 trade.

This is a great exercise for thinking about what things are most important in our lives, and what things we hold on to just because he have them or once thought they’d be valuable.

Once you follow one in, one out for a few months, you may start to notice that it can influence your buying decisions. Suddenly, you may find yourself mentally considering the value of the new potential item with what you’d have to give up. And you might be surprised at what you discover.

So go ahead and give the One-in, One-out rule a try today.

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