#010 ✰ Beyond the inventory
A guide to change our consumption habits.
Good day to you!
We’ve been thinking a lot about the shape mystvff should take.
An inventory? As a first step, yes. But our mission stands beyond that.
We want to be a guide. A guide to help us change our consumption habits.
We believe that to do so, first thing is to have a starting point from where to celebrate your progress over time. And this, probably, is the inventory.
In a previous newsletter, I shared two questions I am now asking myself before buying anything. Since then -as a family of three- it’s helped us save close to 600€ the past 3 weeks. That’s a win! (Personal finance-related newsletter coming soon).
In today’s newsletter, I’d like to look at what I already have, and take action. Now me (inventory) together with future me (next purchase habits) define the person I want to be.
Knowing what I have, uh? Yes, so that I live the present. Keeping the things from the past that I cherish, while eliminating those that feel to me like a burden ; wishing things for the future without being obsessed by what’s yet to buy.
So! I currently have 314 stuff saved in the app. Before you go ahead and judge (ha! It’s pretty tempting, right?), a disclaimer is that I started with the outfit 😋, alternating with culture (books), which for me sounded enjoyable.
314 stuff. My bet is that I am… 16.7% done with my stuff. Which means that I am definitely not a minimalist (in case I had any doubt I secretly belong to that crew).
The challenges.
While going through the art of documenting your stuff - yeah, this is how I call it, so that it feels to me I am doing an artistic hobby 😎- questions naturally come up. Let’s highlight the two main ones I had.
How do I know what to keep?
Inspired by Yancey’s Bento (“a guide to self coherence”), a recent discussion with Ismael (Ghalimi scale, back in 2014) and quite a good number of sessions documenting our own stuff, we came up with this WIP -work in progress- frame that’s really helped us: 1) enjoy the process of documenting 2) be at peace with our decisions (to keep or not to keep).
While holding each item, it’s -very basically- about asking myself:
am I using this stuff?
do I like it?
… and then placing it on 1 out of 4 different piles.
Two are easy ; two are tricky.
Easys:
Useful + In Love => keep it, enjoy it
Not Useful + Indifferent => get rid of it (that doesn’t mean “goes to trash”, it can go away through gift, donation, recycling,…)
Funnily enough in my case, I didn’t have much of these.
However the following ones were a bit more complex to deal with:
Useful + Indifferent => refine it, i.e at some point I might want to replace them by something I really truly like / that has a story / I feel proud of.
Not Useful + In Love => reduce it, i.e “seriously Mathilde? Four coats while living in Lisbon?” Rank them and keep your favorite one. If this is too hard, do an in-between separation, meaning they stay home somewhere but ready to leave the house. You’ll probably forget you have them and that will be a good time to kiss goodbye.
Should I start documenting things that I know I will get rid of?
part of me says “nope, no way I am waisting my precious time if this is gonna go away soon!”
part of me says “of course, yes! How to celebrate downsizing if you don’t know your starting point?”
Mainly, we see a big challenge building a proper on-boarding, making you feel excited to open the app, because you know what’s yet to accomplish. We see gamification being an interesting angle. We’re heads down building the next version.
Work in progress, as I said…
How about you?
Did you start documenting your stuff?
If so, what are the questions you keep asking yourself? Are hard to tackle?
How would you answer the above questions?
Let’s keep the discussions running within the community. Join us here or hit reply!
Think a friend would love mystvff ?
The forward button works pretty well on your device. We’d love to have her / him join our waitlist of smart, optimistic and joyful people 🤩
Have a beautiful day 🌱
Mathilde