Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
When Less Becomes More
You hear the phrase, “less is more” tossed around a lot these days. But how exactly is less more? There is the design aesthetic based on the idea that by stripping things down to their essentials you make a bigger visual impact, but for those of us living with kids and blenders and laundry, it doesn’t seem like a reasonable look to go for.
But when you think about it in more literal, rather than visual terms, it can start to make sense. For example, recently my younger son did an amazing job letting go of two shelves worth of toys. We always weed before the holidays, but this year he is also switching to a smaller room and we wanted to eliminate one bookcase. We shipped the Magna-Tiles off to a cousin in Montana, and passed the drum, blocks and marble run on to neighbors, and in the process he rediscovered the drone and found the long-missing piece of the Nok Hockey set. So even though he has fewer toys, he has been playing with and enjoying those toys more—a big win for a 12-year-old in the PlayStation era.
Clients often have a similar experience after I’ve worked with them to reduce their wardrobe. Instead of feeling like they have nothing to wear, they can see everything and because they have rediscovered clothes they had forgotten, they feel like they have a whole new wardrobe instead of a shadow of their former one. Afterwards, they have often told me that being reunited with their old clothes made them feel like they had more rather than less.
In this season when retailers want us to believe that more is always better and too much is never enough, it’s good to remind ourselves that less can be more even for those of us who daydream of empty countertops and spare, white decor.