Hey all. I thought I’d mentioned this here but evidently not: I just got back from a 3-week holiday. My whole family visited from the UK. Mam, dad, sister, brother-in-law, and two nieces.
Ages ranged from 9 to 78. We visited Sydney, Canberra, and the Gold Coast. It was amazing, but you know that old cliché that I need a holiday to recover from my holiday? Well yeah, that’s definitely true.
I threw away half the office
I got back, took the few personal items out of my bag, and put them on my desk. Pencil case with a few pencils and charging cables. Notebook. Glasses case. Battery pack. Wallet.[1]
Not much. I travel light. But still, I saw them there and was immediately filled with a tiny dread: that of putting them away in a messy drawer.
So what option was there other than to pull everything out of every drawer and throw half of it away? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The time felt right. End of the year: might as well start 2025 with a clean slate. I took a bunch of photos but it’d take too long to embed them here. Here’s an iCloud shared library of the 'before’ if you’re interested. That’s each drawer’s contents laid out on my desk.
If you don’t throw it away…
Lucy started to do the same, and while neither of us are hoarders – those photos don’t show that much stuff – we had a startling realisation.
Which is that if you don’t throw this thing away, somebody else has to. Maybe not for a while. Depends when you die. But, eventually.
So those 16 cards I was ‘saving’ in a little box along with my still-current bank cards. Why? My old UK drivers licence. PADI diver cards from 2003. Expired Qantas frequent flyer cards. To what end?
It’s not like I considered them mementos. I didn’t get them out and spread them lovingly on the table. They were just there, waiting to be thrown away. So I did, along with anything else that I don’t actively use.
Tending towards minimalism
On a scale of minimalist (1) to hoarder (10) I’d put us at a 4. In counting what I put back in the drawers – not counting, say, individual pencils – I have 112 items.[3] @Skjolnir over on the Discord has 700 items in his life, total.
But I’m comfortable that everything in those drawers has a use. I questioned every item: do I actively use it? Would I pay to put it in storage?
The result feels amazing. My (physical) desktop now contains a laptop, a trackpad, a keyboard, and a mouse. Every drawer is neat and only contains what’s necessary. As disposable items age out, I won’t replace them. And I’ve got an entire drawer empty.
I definitely recommend this. There is an undeniable mental clarity that comes from having less stuff around you. Less stuff means less decisions.
Decimal.Business
And so, back to work with a clear mind. We’re both 100% focused on the upcoming Decimal.Business system. Christmas means nothing to either of us so, other than allowing ourselves a watching of Die Hard with a Vengeance and a bottle of something bubbly on the 25th, we’ll be working hard to get it out as soon as possible.[4]
For those of you who’ve pre-purchased, you have our deepest gratitude. We’ll have it with you as soon as humanly possible.
In daily life, I don’t carry a separate wallet. Apple Wallet (the software) handles my bank cards, and Apple Wallet (the magnetic one that sticks to the back of your phone) holds my drivers licence[2] and a couple of business cards. But when travelling I take a couple of extra cards – health insurance, medicare, credit card – so these go in my tiny Bellroy wallet which typically stays in my bag. ↩︎
Which I hate having to carry around – I don’t drive, on a typical day – but I’ve been burned one too many times by not having ID on me. As soon as the ACT introduces digital licences, I’ll stop carrying the magnetic wallet. ↩︎
Now tracked in a spreadsheet at
12.14 Inventory. ↩︎We feel like we’ve seen the first two movies recently enough. ↩︎