This underlies each of the seven attitudes described so far. Whenever something catches your attention, whenever you start thinking about what it is or why it’s there, always ask yourself whether you might discard it.
Anything you see. Anything you pick up. Especially things that you normally wouldn’t think were very important.
It’s a very simple idea. Look at everything from the point of view of getting rid of it. The following situations show the behavior of people who don’t have a discarding mentality.
I wonder what this is. It’s open… The telephone bill breakdown. The bill was bigger than I expected this month. Perhaps we should switch to a cheaper company like Tokyo Telephone. What’s all this other paper in the envelope? Telechoice? ISDN? Guide to NTT Services? Perhaps the wife wants to have a look. It’s been left here, so I won’t move it.
They’re all from last year. They’ve just been left here. Mm… a lot of these people I haven’t seen for ten years at least. Oh dear, all these pictures of people’s children. That’s not going to cheer me up. Well, that was a waste of time. I’ll put them back in the rack.
Which glass to choose? I’m never sure, but I suppose this is the best for beer. Oh dear, I nearly knocked over the one next to it. I got that as a giveaway. It’s got the name of the beer company on it, so I don’t really like to use that. Still, I’ll keep it just in case.
It’s good having the Internet. I don’t have to go all the way to Kasumigaseki to see official statistics. I just print them out. For some reason it’s much easier to look at figures on paper than on the screen—at least if you want to study them carefully. Good. That’s that. I’ll file the printout. I may want to use the data sometime. It would be a pain to have to look it up again.
Why’s that in the way? I nearly trod on it last night too. Who put it there? Well, I’m the only one here so it must have been me. Last week’s Weekly Asahi? Have I read it properly? I’ll put it on the table.
Changing a situation requires energy. The easiest course of action is to do nothing.
If you see something, and it’s what you’re looking for, you’ll pick it up and use it. You probably won’t notice anything you’re not looking for, unless there’s a particular reason.
You’ll notice some things just because they’re in the wrong place—toilet paper in the living room, pajamas on a dining chair, your travel pass on the washing machine. Whether you actually put them back in their proper places depends on how tidy you are. But there are other things you’ll notice because they look bad, redundant, or in the way. These may be good candidates for disposal.
It’s the same with things you pick up. Some will belong in a specific place, so you may just want to put them back there. That’s fine. But if you stop and wonder for a moment what to do with something, then it’s very likely that you could discard it.
All of the things that feature in the situations described above could be discarded—the telephone bill details, the New Year cards, the beer glass, the data printout, the magazine. If they were obviously trash, they would have been discarded straight away. But because they appear to have some value you forget that getting rid of them is an option.
The moment you notice something is the moment to get rid of it. If you don’t, it may stay there for a long time.
This makes me reflect on just how good a custom the Japanese people have in the end-of-year clean-up. I’m not sure how it was in the past, but these days it’s a major event—an occasion for getting rid of things that have built up over the year. Families clean everything inside and outside the house and throw away what they don’t want. The clean-up makes us notice things and consider whether they can be discarded. The piles of garbage in the streets at New Year clearly mean that thinking “maybe this could go” is far from extreme.