This year, as many know, I engaged in the latest round of what most sane people call “spring cleaning,” and what I refer to as “The MegaPurge.” Since the summer of 2010, when I had to help clean out my dad’s house so we could move him after a serious bout of illness, I made a bit of a promise to myself: When I die, I said, I don’t want to have an entire house’s worth of stuff for someone to worry about.

That’s not a slight against my father; we are from different times, had different goals in life, and, truth be told, the idea of living minimally is something I’ve always held close.

I don’t really own a lot of stuff, but I still own more stuff than I would like. My wife and I currently live in a not-large one-bedroom apartment, and we’ve learned to pare down. We’ve been to other people’s places, though, often of similar size, and the ratio of stuff-to-apartment usually reinforces our goal of living more minimally.

Now, we don’t live in a white cube with nothing but a single tea cup and sunlight as our only comforts. We both have computers, I have video games systems, and we have a full suite of furniture and kitchenware.

The MegaPurge is a twice-yearly way for us to keep honest. This spring’s was the most dramatic for me; I got rid of every piece of clothing I own except what I wear week to week; I got rid of 95% of my movies; ditto for music CDs; I sold or recycled or gave away the majority of my books (I still have to clear out my comics). I threw out half of my sketchbooks; trinkets I’d been keeping for years for no real reason; anything that duplicated something I already had and used or had no real value to me.

I know I’ll get rid of more of the things I own as time goes by. Mementos, picture frames, art materials I haven’t used in a while—all of this will start to diminish. But the trick to living more minimally isn’t throwing everything you own away and living out of a backpack; it’s the simple plan of regularly and honestly assessing what’s in your space, the last time you used it, and whether or not you have any real attachment to it. 

People these days—mostly because we’re bored, undervalued at work, unfulfilled in our lives, I think—try to build up mosaics of personality to demonstrate who we are—our DVD collections, our rare video game artifacts, our gear and tools—and I think it’s because we don’t get to express ourselves as much in our daily lives. We sure talk a lot—we show off the bands we love on our t-shirts, we wear brand names that we identify with, we dutifully fill out Facebook profiles—but we don’t have as much meaningful interaction with the world around us as we used to.

Try this sometime to see what I mean: take a dog for a walk, preferably somewhere quiet (if not yours, find a friend who will trust you to walk theirs). Don’t bring/use your cell phone. In the middle of your walk, ask yourself something like, How concerned am I with my DVD collection right now? I guarantee, you’ll suddenly realize a lot of what you worry about—completing collections, acquiring the latest gadgets, owning things—will recede to the point of irrelevance. You will start to care less.

Over time, your brain chemistry actually seems to change, because you will truthfully be less attached to things, matter, stuff. You will seek out more moments, and fewer representations of moments. (You will get to a point where you finally decide you don’t even need to share those moments through social networks—you’ll be content with having been there yourself.)

I tell you, it all sounds mad sometimes, but it’s the brightest path you could walk down. It saves you time, saves you money, saves you stress; it doesn’t cost anything, doesn’t impede your health or well-being (unlike, say, joining a cult), and it usually doesn’t even freak out your friends too much (unlike, say, becoming a fruitarian).

And when you die (or move), your loved ones won’t be cursing your name, sending them down their own dark spiral in retaliation.