That’s right. According to the US Census, “the average person in the US age 15 or older spent about 10 hours shopping for consumer goods per month in 2018, down from about 12 hours in 2003.” Can you imagine what that number is like now during Covid? Yet here’s a better question:
Do you feel like you have more time now than you did in 2003? Or even 2018?
If you answered “no”, you may want to take a little personal inventory. The time you save on shopping– the Internet has made it possible to buy everything you need delivered to your door—is now being spent on your purchases.
Think about it. How much time do you spend on a weekly basis on:
- Cleaning your things.
- Categorizing your things.
- Organizing your things.
- Rearranging your things?
- Losing your things and then trying to find your things?
- Moving your things and finding places to store your things.
- Working extra hours to make the payments on all the things you have purchased.
The time all these activities take adds up. It’s no wonder you do not feel like you have extra time even with less of your actual time being spent on shopping. The bigger issue, however, stands with what you could be doing with that extra time.
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
You may or may not know your why. Yet its probably a safe bet that your why did not involve the activities needed to take care of your things.
For many, their why becomes their mission. If you have a mission, you know this to be true: one of the most critical steps to achieving your objective is to remove things that interfere with meeting that goal. It’s one reason why people who embark on a mission often reduce the number of physical items in their life, opting for minimalism.
That’s not saying you shouldn’t have things. Just realize that as things accumulate, there is a trade-off on time allocation. If the current pandemic has taught us anything is that time can be spent in any number of ways. How we spend it can lead us to or away from happiness. But it is a choice we make every single day.
If you’re looking to simplify your life and remove the clutter, give me a call. We can discuss your options in removing the clutter. Just drop me a line by clicking the button below or call me at 508-246-6120.
