The Art of Manliness - The No-Nonsense Guide to Simplifying Every Aspect of Your Life

00:00:00.000 I'll see you next time.

00:00:30.000 We begin with why it's so easy to get caught up in the consumerism-driven cult of clutter, how the clutter it generates extends far past a person's tangible stuff, and the cost it exacts from our lives in both financial and psychological terms.

00:00:42.260 Gary then explains how to simplify and declutter every aspect of your life, the material stuff, of course, but also the technological, informational, and even social things that end up cluttering our life.

00:00:51.760 Along the way, this self-described redneck hippie offers no-nonsense advice that refreshingly departs from the kind of soft-glow, artfully-arranged, white-background pictures of minimalism you might find on Instagram, because Gary's not on Instagram.

00:01:03.280 That would be clutter, according to Gary.

00:01:04.740 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash simple life.

00:01:08.340 Gary Collins, welcome back to the show.

00:01:22.900 Thanks for having me on, Brett. I appreciate it.

00:01:24.520 So we had you on back in June of 2020 to talk about your book, about going off the grid, living off the grid, buying a place, drilling a well, getting your own power with solar or whatever you want to use, propane.

00:01:38.360 That was episode number 622, for those who want to check that out.

00:01:41.240 You got another book out, and it's all about decluttering.

00:01:45.940 And I think this ties in with the previous books you've written, because I imagine you had to do a lot of decluttering and simplifying before you decided to move off grid.

00:01:55.680 But I'm curious, sort of your evolution of this, did the desire to simplify your life and get rid of your stuff come first?

00:02:02.480 And then you thought, well, I've already gotten rid of a lot of my stuff.

00:02:05.040 Why don't I just sell my house and move out to the wild?

00:02:08.500 Or did you have the goal, like, I want to live off the grid, so I got to sell my stuff to do that?

00:02:13.980 Well, I had the goal to live rural first.

00:02:18.020 Then the off-grid thing came later, but it was way before, because I grew up in the middle of nowhere.

00:02:22.820 So I was trying to return to that, and that probably happened, I don't know, gosh, five years before I left the government.

00:02:30.040 So it was way before.

00:02:31.420 That's 15, 16 years ago now.

00:02:33.280 So the idea was already hatched. 0.99

00:02:35.280 And once I started going through this life evolution, I realized I had too much crap. 0.98

00:02:41.820 And I'd fallen in. 0.97

00:02:42.920 We'll talk about the clutter and all that.

00:02:45.160 But yeah, I realized that I needed to downsize and declutter everything before I made the next move in the plan.

00:02:53.120 So it kind of, yeah, I mean, I would guess that it came after the original plan.

00:02:57.860 But it was one of those reality check. 1.00

00:03:01.740 You have a lot of crap. 0.99

00:03:03.360 What are you doing? 1.00

00:03:04.340 You need to get rid of all this stuff.

00:03:07.140 Right.

00:03:07.340 And this book isn't just for people who want to move off grid.

00:03:11.040 Like, this could be for anyone who just feels overwhelmed by all their stuff.

00:03:15.360 I mean, so you mentioned the cult of clutter.

00:03:16.760 Let's talk about, like, why we get all this stuff in the first place.

00:03:19.500 And you say it's because there's this thing called the cult of clutter.

00:03:22.540 What is that?

00:03:23.200 How do you describe that?

00:03:24.020 Yeah, well, we better backtrack because it gets a little confusing.

00:03:27.020 I have off-grid books, and then I have the Simple Life series, which is written more for, you know, the everyday American who's not looking to necessarily go and live off grid.

00:03:36.900 So they're kind of separated.

00:03:38.840 And decluttering your life is in the Simple Life series because it's general.

00:03:42.100 You don't have to want to live off the grid to follow what I preach in there.

00:03:46.520 And the cult of clutter, I came up with that phrase as I was writing it.

00:03:54.020 And kind of was like, you know, I went, what is going on?

00:03:57.060 Because I'd realized I'd always grew up poor.

00:03:59.120 I didn't have a whole lot of items.

00:04:00.320 We talked about this before.

00:04:01.320 My main items were my bike, my dog, my shotgun, and later my truck, my baseball, my, you know, my basketball.

00:04:07.180 That was it.

00:04:08.140 Those were my main items.

00:04:09.300 And I think as time went on, I'd accumulated a lot of stuff.

00:04:15.120 And it was because I'd left that kind of, you know, shelter of being poor, simple living, went to city living in the government, had more money, you know, than anyone in my family had ever had.

00:04:27.360 And I think it just, the society of our consumer society today was rubbed off on me and I kind of was buying in.

00:04:35.800 I hadn't fully gone into the cult of clutter, but I was in it for sure.

00:04:40.280 And for people to understand, it's this mentality of we all feel that we need a lot of objects and shiny objects, as I say, to make ourselves happy, right?

00:04:52.820 And it's the proof's in the pudding.

00:04:54.820 Our economy is based upon consumerism in the U.S.

00:04:58.400 70% of our economy is consumerism.

00:05:00.700 What does that mean?

00:05:01.560 We have to keep buying these items and these things to keep the economy going the way it's kind of developed right now.

00:05:08.800 And I argue with that.

00:05:10.000 I think we could not do that and the economy would be just fine.

00:05:13.120 It would just shift.

00:05:14.140 It would shift to something else, which would be a production economy.

00:05:17.160 So, yeah, the cult of clutter is kind of falling into that, I must consume, I must spend my time on the internet, on the phone, shopping, nonstop.

00:05:27.300 And that's kind of where it came from.

00:05:29.860 And besides consumer goods, what else do we clutter our lives with?

00:05:34.460 Oh, gosh, all kinds of things.

00:05:36.160 Right now, obviously, the big one is information and technology.

00:05:42.040 Those are two other ones that people are pretty immersed in.

00:05:45.220 And, hey, I'm no technophobe.

00:05:46.860 I use technology to run my company.

00:05:48.720 But I use very little technology compared to most people.

00:05:52.760 But information right now is a big one, right?

00:05:55.660 We're just inundated with information all the time.

00:05:58.880 And a lot of it is not good for us.

00:06:01.120 It's 24-7, the news cycle.

00:06:03.280 When I was growing up, you had the 5 o'clock news and you had the 10 o'clock news.

00:06:07.180 And depending what station you were on, some were 30 minutes, some were an hour.

00:06:13.440 That was it.

00:06:14.460 That was the only news you were getting all day unless it was a major update, you know, John Kennedy getting assassinated or something like that.

00:06:21.540 Or, you know, you would have a break and they'd tell you something major happened on the network.

00:06:26.240 Otherwise, that was it, you know, or you got the newspaper.

00:06:29.380 Now, I mean, you can literally turn on the channel and get bombarded anytime, anywhere, and not only that, but the internet.

00:06:38.100 I mean, social media.

00:06:39.200 I mean, 70% of fake news is distributed on social media.

00:06:43.600 It's nonstop.

00:06:44.960 So the information side is continuous.

00:06:47.640 And the relation to that, obviously, is technology because you use the technology to get drowned with that information.

00:06:52.780 And on the technological side, it's, you know, I always, I talk about this in the book about, do you need all these gadgets, you know, as an everyday person?

00:07:03.200 I run my business on a laptop, Wi-Fi connection, and I have a smartphone.

00:07:08.280 That's about it.

00:07:09.680 And anything beyond that is clutter to me.

00:07:12.880 And everyone I know, I have friends who, they don't run their own business.

00:07:15.820 They've got a smartwatch.

00:07:17.000 They've got a laptop.

00:07:18.500 They've got an iPad or notebook.

00:07:20.320 They've got a desktop, you know, they've got, you know, just gadget, a smartphone, and it just goes on and on. 0.97

00:07:29.240 And I'm all like, why do you need all that crap, you know?

00:07:33.400 And not only that, but the technology, the way it clutters, too, is you have to learn it. 0.99

00:07:38.760 And then once you learn it, these tech companies aren't stupid.

00:07:41.880 You're getting an update and a new version every 9 to 12 months. 0.73

00:07:46.440 So it's a vicious cycle.

00:07:48.720 So, and what are the costs, if you think, are the cult of clutter, like financial, physical, emotional?

00:07:54.680 Well, we see it today.

00:07:55.960 Financial, it's huge, right?

00:07:58.000 You know, most Americans are eyeballs up in debt, you know, and that's where they're losing most of their sleep.

00:08:03.560 They struggle.

00:08:04.360 They live paycheck to paycheck, month to month.

00:08:06.700 And, yeah, so the financial is huge.

00:08:09.660 And I have a book called Financial Freedom, which is about living debt-free and how to live debt-free and how to get there.

00:08:15.260 Because I think it's important.

00:08:16.760 Gosh, I forgot we probably should talk about the three-legged stool real quick of the simple life.

00:08:21.280 Sure.

00:08:21.420 The three-legged stool of the simple life is optimal health.

00:08:24.320 Health is everything.

00:08:25.380 That's where I start with everything.

00:08:26.760 If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

00:08:28.860 And if you're unhealthy, you make really bad decisions.

00:08:31.580 You have bad cognitive function.

00:08:33.680 And then financial freedom by being debt-free, then finding your life purpose.

00:08:37.700 So, those all three are the core of what I teach.

00:08:41.120 So, yeah, the financial cost is huge because it keeps you on the treadmill of consumerism.

00:08:46.920 If you keep consuming, you've got to keep earning.

00:08:49.560 And we don't have an earning problem in this country.

00:08:51.840 We have a spending problem.

00:08:53.200 So, you know, if you make $15 an hour, you make what?

00:08:57.800 Make sure I got my math right.

00:08:59.080 It's $31,200, if I remember right, a year working 40 hours.

00:09:03.820 Most people don't work 40 hours anymore, you know, on salary.

00:09:07.460 You know, we're working 50, 60, 70 hours.

00:09:10.500 So, that puts you in the richest 1% in the world at $15 an hour.

00:09:16.500 We have plenty of money in this country.

00:09:18.440 That's not the issue.

00:09:19.260 We just spend all of it to include our glorious government and then some.

00:09:24.100 We just spend like drunken sailors at port call all the time.

00:09:29.200 And so, that's a huge part of it.

00:09:30.860 But also, the emotional and the emotional ties to the financial.

00:09:34.040 Because if you're worried about money all the time, well, you're going to be stressed out.

00:09:37.880 If you're stressed out all the time, your health is going to go, the chronic stress.

00:09:42.720 And so, it has this whole cataclysmic kind of effect of doing that.

00:09:47.560 So, yeah, there's a lot of cost to all of it.

00:09:51.660 And we're seeing it.

00:09:53.520 And, you know, the emotional cost is just having a bunch of – it stresses you out.

00:09:56.620 Like, just having all that stuff and like having to take care of it is just –

00:10:00.140 Manage it.

00:10:01.040 Manage it.

00:10:01.360 Put it somewhere.

00:10:02.180 Right.

00:10:02.320 How many garages do you know that are jam-packed right now?

00:10:04.760 I used to walk through my neighborhood before I sold my house in a residential area in San Diego.

00:10:09.820 I would count how many people could actually fit a car in their garage.

00:10:15.900 One car.

00:10:16.880 There was like two or three in the entire neighborhood houses I found that they could actually get a car in their garage. 0.99

00:10:23.240 It was just jam-full of crap. 0.99

00:10:25.400 Right. 0.99

00:10:25.540 That's why like I think storage facilities are like kind of – they're a booming business.

00:10:30.040 Oh, they're booming right now.

00:10:31.120 I have a friend who owns one.

00:10:32.860 And they say it is nonstop.

00:10:35.300 They get so many calls every single day.

00:10:37.780 Okay, we're not learning.

00:10:39.640 We're not learning our lesson.

00:10:41.120 We're just accumulating more crap and then we're moving it into storage units.

00:10:44.640 And then you got to pay for the storage unit.

00:10:46.740 And then you forget about it.

00:10:48.420 Right?

00:10:49.260 Put stuff in a storage unit for a year.

00:10:51.140 I'm pretty sure you're not going to remember what's in there.

00:10:53.920 Have you read a book?

00:10:54.940 It came out, I think, like the late 90s, early 2000s.

00:10:58.000 It's called Affluenza.

00:11:00.560 It's a good one.

00:11:01.440 I mean, it's a little hippie, but it's just about overconsumption and like all the costs of overconsumption.

00:11:07.060 And I remember reading that in high school and having a pretty big impact on me.

00:11:11.400 It made me think about the way we live our lives, our economy, and just how we buy stuff.

00:11:15.880 It made me rethink that and be a little more thoughtful about it.

00:11:18.900 So, yeah, Affluenza.

00:11:19.580 I'll put that in the show notes.

00:11:21.220 Yeah, I'll have to go check that out.

00:11:22.440 I call myself a redneck hippie, Brett, so don't be – I have my inner hippie that I'm connected to.

00:11:28.200 You got to have an inner hippie.

00:11:29.820 Absolutely.

00:11:30.520 It's a good balance.

00:11:31.360 And the other thing, too, is we know, okay, people have this drive to buy stuff because our economy is set up that way.

00:11:37.840 We have a bombardment with advertisements, and that's just the way we're wired from the womb.

00:11:43.180 You see – there's that statistic that kids can recognize more brand logos than they can art or something.

00:11:51.860 It's something like that.

00:11:52.580 But anyways, I think everyone who reaches that moment is like, man, I got too much stuff.

00:11:56.140 I got to get rid of it.

00:11:57.040 But it's hard.

00:11:58.520 Why do you think it's so hard to get rid of our stuff?

00:12:03.000 I would say the main – one of them is you get this emotional attachment to it, right?

00:12:09.140 And I talk about this.

00:12:10.220 What happens is you attach memories to your things.

00:12:14.960 And once you do that, it makes it very difficult to get rid of it.

00:12:18.380 And I know that firsthand.

00:12:19.380 And I talked – I don't know if we talked about it in the last interview, but I always talk about my dining room table I had in my house in San Diego that I had eaten at a handful of times.

00:12:28.340 But I spent six months driving myself crazy, finding the perfect table that was way too big, never used it, hardly.

00:12:38.100 But I had – when I went to get rid of it, I had an emotional attachment to it for some reason.

00:12:42.940 And I remembered shopping for it, setting it up, and how happy I was.

00:12:47.480 I finally found the table that matched and worked.

00:12:50.860 And because I grew up poor, we ate off TV trays.

00:12:53.560 We never had a dining room table.

00:12:55.200 And so it was kind of a big deal.

00:12:57.560 And we do that a lot.

00:12:58.700 We – you know, if a girlfriend, boyfriend buys you something, you put an emotional attachment to it.

00:13:04.240 It makes it very difficult to get rid of because instead of seeing an object, you're seeing a memory.

00:13:09.760 So you have to disconnect, and I'll give a good example that I did recently was I shredded all of my government awards and documents.

00:13:19.500 And not in hate or just because I was angry.

00:13:22.560 It was because it was taking up space, and I got sick of moving that stuff around.

00:13:26.480 I did.

00:13:27.560 I go, what do I need my pay stubs from, you know, 1998 for?

00:13:32.260 You know, I had everything.

00:13:33.540 I had kept all my records, which in the government you had to because they tended to lose a lot of things.

00:13:37.480 And you better have a backup.

00:13:39.480 And all the documents in these award letters, and people are all, why would you get rid of that?

00:13:44.200 I go, they don't mean anything.

00:13:46.160 What am I going to do?

00:13:46.940 Take them out and look at them?

00:13:48.820 Am I – you know, when I die, are people going to be, you know, jumping over themselves to get Gary's government award letters?

00:13:55.740 No, they're just – they're just things.

00:13:58.540 And so I shredded all of them and got rid of all – you know, a whole banker's box full of documents.

00:14:03.260 And it made me realize that I had emotional attachment to them, that they really didn't mean anything.

00:14:09.620 They had no effect on my life anymore except for moving them around.

00:14:14.700 And I think that's what happens.

00:14:15.820 You have to get past that connection of – and I always make fun of this, you know, the popular one, does it give you joy?

00:14:23.520 You know, I always make fun.

00:14:24.500 I go, well, my drill doesn't give me joy.

00:14:27.180 My hammer doesn't give me joy.

00:14:28.460 But I need them.

00:14:29.420 They're important.

00:14:30.080 You know, you want to discern things and categorize into usefulness.

00:14:35.960 Do they give me usefulness?

00:14:37.720 Can I use these things to better my life?

00:14:40.600 That's the key.

00:14:41.460 And I'm not saying get rid of all your emotional, you know, pictures and all that.

00:14:45.160 I'm not saying that.

00:14:46.660 But don't hoard them.

00:14:48.120 That's the problem is we tend to hoard those things today.

00:14:51.380 I don't know how many thousands of pictures are on people's phones today.

00:14:55.260 It's a lot, you know.

00:14:57.200 So now we're cluttering up our digital side as well.

00:15:01.200 Well, building on that idea of emotion or memories being connected to stuff, I mean, that's how companies sell us stuff, too, these days.

00:15:08.840 They don't really – they don't pitch you, like, the utility of it.

00:15:11.260 It's like, oh, you think of all the memories that you can get with this thing.

00:15:15.820 Like, they want you to be emotionally connected to the product and not look at its utility.

00:15:20.900 Because a lot of times there's, like, really no difference in utility between, you know, ex-oatmeal and other oatmeal.

00:15:26.020 It's just the branding message.

00:15:28.380 Yeah, it's about emotions.

00:15:30.300 Yeah, and you know who's really good at it, and this is an advertisement, and it will slowly kill you for sure, is Coca-Cola.

00:15:36.960 Coca-Cola is a master at branding and advertising.

00:15:42.260 Camel was pretty good, too, Camel Cigarettes.

00:15:44.020 You know, but they always – if you watch their commercials, and I do it as a business owner, I look at them, and I see what they're doing, and it's always this emotional attachment.

00:15:52.400 You have a Coke, and everyone in there is having this happy, joyous moment, and they're attaching that to drinking Coke.

00:15:59.280 That's a pretty heavy mental mind screw, you know?

00:16:04.200 That's pretty deep right there.

00:16:06.780 You know, but it's mastery.

00:16:08.720 And if you watch things in that way, you'll see how big companies make you get an emotional attachment to their product.

00:16:15.600 You don't look at the usefulness.

00:16:17.360 You just think it's going to make you happy.

00:16:19.640 And guess what?

00:16:20.780 It makes you buy it, even though you don't need it.

00:16:23.700 No, yeah.

00:16:24.400 But actually, I find, like, the commercials where they try to manipulate your emotions, it turns me off.

00:16:28.560 I actually like the commercials where they just tell you – I just like the commercials that tell you what the product does.

00:16:32.180 Like, the one that I like a lot is that one – it's, like, an annoying commercial that would appear, like, at, you know, 12 o'clock in the morning.

00:16:38.600 It was, like, some headache medicine you'd rub on your head.

00:16:41.480 And it's, like –

00:16:42.120 I remember that one.

00:16:42.680 It would just tell you what it is.

00:16:43.800 Rub it on your head. 0.52

00:16:44.780 Rub it on your head. 0.90

00:16:45.720 Rub it on your head.

00:16:46.500 And, like, you see, like, the pain go away.

00:16:47.900 I'm like, yeah, I want that thing.

00:16:49.700 You just rub it on your head, and your headache goes away.

00:16:51.300 Well, let's talk about decluttering different aspects of our life, because this is how you organize the book.

00:16:55.800 And, Ian, you said you start off everything that you do with your Simple Life stuff with health.

00:17:00.640 You think that's one of those –

00:17:01.540 Absolutely.

00:17:01.680 Part of that three-legged stool.

00:17:03.900 What does a cluttered health life look like?

00:17:06.780 Well, we're seeing it.

00:17:08.020 You know, unfortunately, we're the most obese and overweight we've ever been in this country, and by a long shot.

00:17:14.480 It's now estimated that 70% of Americans are obese or overweight.

00:17:18.980 That's a shocking statistic.

00:17:21.740 That's not going to work.

00:17:23.480 We clutter our lives with health, and there's a reason.

00:17:26.680 I have a famous saying I say all the time.

00:17:29.080 There's no money in healthy people.

00:17:30.780 And I used to work for the FDA.

00:17:32.060 I used to work for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

00:17:34.040 I saw it from the inside out.

00:17:35.840 I was on the cusp when the opiate epidemic broke out.

00:17:40.120 I was there.

00:17:40.880 I was investigating those as that broke out.

00:17:43.480 The doctor feel goods and all that.

00:17:45.200 I was there.

00:17:46.020 So I see how the health industry perpetuates us to stay on this wheel, because if we're not on the wheel, there's no money, because healthy people don't bring in billions and billions of dollars.

00:17:57.840 They don't.

00:17:59.220 And so what we do is we clutter ourselves up with all these gizmos, gadgets, all this, you know, sweat-wicking clothing.

00:18:05.400 I go, you know, I wear it, cotton t-shirt that I pay eight bucks for that goes through an evolution of life of five to 10 years before it turns into a rag and an oil rag at the end.

00:18:16.460 You know, we don't need all this stuff.

00:18:17.920 The human body is already built for everything we need it to do. 0.96

00:18:21.580 We don't need all this fancy crap. 0.78

00:18:24.200 What your body needs is good food and movement. 0.96

00:18:27.980 That's what it needs.

00:18:28.880 It is literally that simple.

00:18:30.400 And so what we do is we buy all these, you know, 15 different, you know, bars and energy bar and a protein bar and this and, you know, how many people I've forgotten, how many people I open up their refrigerator and it's pretty much all condiments and packaged food and that's it.

00:18:49.020 It's all this stuff.

00:18:51.280 It's everything's packaged, you know, and you just keep accumulating food too.

00:18:56.760 I've seen that happen to you go in and literally open a shelf and it's like just every food item you can known to man and half of it's never been touched.

00:19:06.440 So we clutter ourselves up with all these food items.

00:19:09.660 And when it comes to the human body, it's very simple what we need.

00:19:12.980 And this isn't everyone.

00:19:14.840 Don't worry.

00:19:15.840 I'm not anti-vegan.

00:19:17.440 I'm not anti-vegetarian.

00:19:19.700 I don't, I'm not dogmatic about what I preach.

00:19:22.300 I go, if it's working for you, don't, don't fix it.

00:19:25.800 Not right.

00:19:26.500 But here's the fact.

00:19:28.520 The human body is geared to eat very simple things.

00:19:33.020 Animals, nuts, seeds in very low numbers.

00:19:37.760 Also fruit, very low numbers because fruit is not every day in most of the world.

00:19:42.460 And it was usually low glycemic and literally vegetation, you know, grains were not consumed all that much.

00:19:50.300 That's more of a modern thing of agriculture from 10,000 years.

00:19:54.080 Literally, that's what we ate.

00:19:56.060 That's what our body is geared to consume.

00:19:58.240 Once we start getting into these pseudo products and these pseudo fats and, you know, highly processed carbohydrates.

00:20:06.100 Well, guess what we got?

00:20:08.140 We got what we have today.

00:20:09.860 And also we moved a lot.

00:20:11.940 We, we moved every single day.

00:20:14.720 There was no, you know, we had downtime, you know, but there was the human body is a working piece of machinery.

00:20:23.220 You know, that, that, that shelter doesn't build itself.

00:20:26.620 The firewood doesn't go get itself.

00:20:28.460 That food doesn't just come to me in the grocery store.

00:20:31.300 I had to go get all these things.

00:20:32.580 I had to do these things daily.

00:20:34.260 And so I think that's, if you put it in that context, it becomes less cluttered, right?

00:20:41.460 Because that's that people, when I tell them that they go, that sounds way too simple.

00:20:46.080 I go, it is, but it isn't easy.

00:20:49.440 Doing that is hard.

00:20:51.420 And so look at that.

00:20:53.400 When you look at your, the human body and what you're supposed to consume and how you're supposed to move in those basic elements,

00:20:58.180 you'll see how quickly your life is cluttered up with food, exercise, gizmos, and just everything under the sun that you don't need to be healthy.

00:21:09.620 Prescriptions, you know, multiple prescriptions.

00:21:12.760 Most of your health conditions today are caused by our poor diet and lack of exercise.

00:21:18.700 Well, and going back to that idea of being cluttered, like the food aisles and grocery stores are a lot more cluttered than they were 30 years ago.

00:21:25.400 Oh, yeah.

00:21:25.700 And you give the example.

00:21:26.440 There's 48,000 items.

00:21:27.560 Right.

00:21:27.760 An average grocery store.

00:21:28.700 Right.

00:21:29.000 And like, again, this is, because we're a consumer-driven economy, companies got to figure out, like, well, one thing that spurs humans to do something is novelty.

00:21:39.120 And so instead of selling more Cheerios, just like regular Cheerios, what do you do?

00:21:43.680 Well, you come up with like 20 different types of Cheerios.

00:21:46.360 Yep.

00:21:46.560 And that's what we have.

00:21:47.160 Like, there's like, you talk about in the book, when we were growing up, there was Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios.

00:21:52.200 Now you go to the cereal and there's like, I don't know, five different types of Cheerios now?

00:21:56.300 At least.

00:21:57.980 Talk about Doritos.

00:21:59.480 I think worldwide.

00:22:01.120 I think, I can't remember the math or what I had in there.

00:22:03.740 I think there's over 100 different flavors of Doritos now worldwide. 0.81

00:22:06.600 It's something ridiculous.

00:22:08.840 And you just go, it fascinates me because as a rational person, don't get me wrong, I've been there too. 0.97

00:22:18.280 I just go, how did we get here?

00:22:20.220 This makes absolutely no sense to be happy and to be healthy.

00:22:26.320 None. 0.99

00:22:27.100 We don't need this crap, but that's the cult of clutter. 0.99

00:22:30.900 It's in everything we do. 0.99

00:22:33.160 It's in our health even.

00:22:34.780 You know, it's in our food.

00:22:36.120 It's in our, you know, our health system, you know, hospitals.

00:22:40.520 You know, to get healthy, they go, well, Gary, you're going to have to take this statin drug.

00:22:47.220 You're going to have to take this hypertension drug.

00:22:50.140 Oh, and you know, and then they go, oh, and as a last, maybe you should get some more exercise.

00:22:55.140 When they should be going, okay, Gary, you need to get more exercise first.

00:22:59.360 And you need to start eating a little more fruits and vegetables and a good healthy protein source.

00:23:05.020 Instead, it's how can I get you on a product, which is a pharmaceutical drug?

00:23:11.660 I worked in it.

00:23:12.860 It's sad.

00:23:13.960 I'm not against pharmaceutical drugs.

00:23:15.780 I'm not against immunizations.

00:23:16.980 I'm not that guy.

00:23:18.140 But we consume these items as a fix it to instead of actually fixing the problem, the root cause of the problem,

00:23:26.660 we're just putting Band-Aids on everything.

00:23:28.540 Right, and I think they do that because lifestyle change, it's simple, but it's often not easy to do

00:23:34.560 because you're trying to go, you're trying to change habits that you've had for years.

00:23:40.060 And so, doctor, well, that's tough.

00:23:42.080 They'll recommend you do that, but in the meantime, like you said, here's a Band-Aid we can put on.

00:23:45.960 But that's just kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit.

00:23:50.360 Well, and usually the pharmaceutical drug you take to put the Band-Aid on has a whole host of side effects

00:23:55.620 that you've got to take another prescription drug to counteract the side effects of the first prescription drug.

00:24:01.060 And it turns into this kind of slippery slope.

00:24:04.120 And, you know, on average, the average Americans on three to five prescription drugs, especially after age 60.

00:24:10.880 So, we're definitely a pharmaceutical lifestyle.

00:24:15.200 And again, it's chasing the shiny object, right?

00:24:17.460 Instead of doing the thing that makes sense that you should be doing, we're watching commercials.

00:24:23.120 Wait, that drug says, and this is another thing.

00:24:25.840 It's only New Zealand and America where pharmaceutical companies can advertise.

00:24:30.420 It used to be only America. 0.83

00:24:31.560 We're the only countries that allow it.

00:24:34.060 And there's a good reason for it because the country's realized it creates this desire,

00:24:38.800 this false desire through slick marketing for you watch that commercial of,

00:24:43.920 hey, they look really happy.

00:24:45.980 All I need is that pill.

00:24:47.620 If I take that pill, I'm going to be just like those people in the commercial.

00:24:51.660 So, decluttering your health life is basically simplify your diet.

00:24:54.660 You don't need a bunch of processed food.

00:24:56.600 Simplify your exercise.

00:24:57.780 If it's just walking, hiking, do that.

00:25:01.560 And you don't need a lot of stuff to do that stuff.

00:25:06.260 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:25:10.660 And now back to the show.

00:25:12.460 Let's talk about decluttering your financial life.

00:25:14.380 So, what does a cluttered financial life look like?

00:25:16.340 I imagine that's a lot of consumer debt.

00:25:18.660 Well, it's a lot of consumer debt.

00:25:20.080 And I use the example, in the book Financial Freedom,

00:25:23.820 I run us from childhood to older adults in retirement.

00:25:29.460 So, I walk through the system of how we become perpetually in debt.

00:25:34.860 And the system is built that way.

00:25:37.180 And I go, you know, financial institutions don't have, you know,

00:25:40.460 these buildings, these high-rise massive buildings on every corner

00:25:43.900 because they're into making sure we're all financially free.

00:25:47.900 Those buildings are built with our money.

00:25:50.460 So, obviously, it's in their best interest to keep us on the cycle of debt.

00:25:56.880 And think of it this way.

00:25:58.500 You know, perpetual debt, it starts very early on, even earlier now.

00:26:03.320 I remember when I first went to college, you know, the first day as a freshman,

00:26:07.740 there were credit card tables for credit card bank company,

00:26:11.240 financial institutions and credit card companies all over campus.

00:26:14.640 And they gave us $500 instant credit, just fill out the application.

00:26:20.820 Oof, boy.

00:26:21.900 You know, now you can get them as a teenager.

00:26:24.100 I mean, your parents, I know people give their 16-year-old a credit card.

00:26:27.420 That's insane.

00:26:29.140 You know, how about you learn to, you know, earn your money and keep your money.

00:26:33.640 Don't go into debt.

00:26:34.720 And what happens is it slowly piles on itself, right?

00:26:38.120 So, you get that first credit card.

00:26:40.340 We're done.

00:26:41.060 We're teenagers.

00:26:41.600 Of course, we're going to charge stuff we don't need.

00:26:43.960 They know that.

00:26:45.600 And so, then it starts, we're told, now you need to get a car.

00:26:49.060 I bought my first car cash.

00:26:50.300 It was $1,500.

00:26:51.960 You know, I bought it 15 and a half.

00:26:53.500 I'd been working since I was 13.

00:26:55.360 So, I paid cash for it.

00:26:56.700 But now we're told, not only don't buy a car that you need, buy the fanciest car and finance it, right?

00:27:03.220 Because, again, the commercials make everyone look happy.

00:27:05.740 So, it's getting out of that mindset of, oh, I can afford it if I can finance it.

00:27:11.040 And then you go college.

00:27:12.680 Now we're increasing, you know, student loan debt is out of control.

00:27:16.240 Matter of fact, it's the next bubble coming.

00:27:19.820 And then, you know, they go, well, go get a house.

00:27:22.860 Well, now your house, you don't buy a house that fits what you need.

00:27:25.940 You buy the biggest house you can possibly afford because they tell you you can afford it.

00:27:30.060 By the time you line all that debt up, by the time usually right around $25,000, $26,000, you're almost in so much debt that you can't get out of it.

00:27:38.800 You're in the system now.

00:27:39.900 The system has you.

00:27:41.760 And not only have you accumulated all that debt that you may not be able to pay off, you can, but it's going to take some sacrifice.

00:27:48.080 That you keep adding more and more debt.

00:27:51.240 So, now you've got the one car.

00:27:52.840 Well, now you're married, you're having kids, you've got to get the next car.

00:27:56.000 You know, then the house isn't big enough.

00:27:57.680 So, now you go upgrade house, you go further in debt.

00:28:01.360 And I also proved in the Financial Freedom book that I did it math.

00:28:05.200 It was all simple math.

00:28:06.600 Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.

00:28:09.100 I proved, because I was in real estate, and I still am, I still do it as a side business, that the average American will lose money in their house.

00:28:16.780 And I got a bunch of pushback on that in the very beginning.

00:28:19.460 And I go, go read the book.

00:28:20.560 I go, go do the math done in it.

00:28:22.900 And I learned it from selling a house that I made a profit on.

00:28:25.900 And I went back and I said, man, I don't think I made a profit on that house.

00:28:30.300 So, I went back and did all the math.

00:28:32.140 And I'd lost, I don't know, $20,000, $25,000, even though it showed I made like $35,000.

00:28:38.140 Because it's shown, you know, they tell you that, so you think you're making money.

00:28:46.720 But even if you do really well, like the market right now, unless you bought 12 months ago, and you're going to flip that house really quick, and it's hot, sure, you'll make money.

00:28:56.340 But most people live in a house six to seven years, and then move on and get another one.

00:29:03.040 You literally will, if you did that your whole life, you will burn over a million dollars doing that process.

00:29:09.700 You know, it's, you know, the financial side, it's just, it's part of the cult of clutter, because we keep buying these items that we can't afford.

00:29:18.920 Then we finance, and then it keeps piling and piling and piling until, well, not only you overwhelmed with the things you've bought, they have financially overwhelmed you as well.

00:29:30.900 All right. And so, I guess the simple thing of that is just keep your finances simple, pay cash when you can, and avoid debt.

00:29:40.800 And like, if you have debt, the way you declutter is to start paying that down.

00:29:44.460 Yeah, paying it off.

00:29:45.300 One by one.

00:29:45.820 And you lay it, right. And there's different, like, everyone's got their way of, you know, the best way to pay down your debt.

00:29:51.440 Your advice is like, find what works for you, keep it simple, and just take action and do it.

00:29:55.100 And that's, isn't that the biggest problem? And I always tell people, we're also a country of pontification and yelling.

00:30:02.740 I'm all, stop. Stop yelling. Stop blaming everyone else. Just do it. Action. Action pays the bills. Action is life.

00:30:12.220 You know, if you're not doing something positively every day to better yourself, it's going to get ugly.

00:30:19.740 And we're kind of seeing that. You know, we're seeing a lot of people today who've lost their way.

00:30:24.380 I've been there. And that's what I mean. I'm not pointing fingers and saying I'm the, you know, supreme being.

00:30:29.420 I'm this life clairvoyant of perfection. I am not. You know, I struggle every day just like everyone else, too.

00:30:35.580 But one thing I don't do is I don't give up. I always, every day, I have something set to better myself, to better my life.

00:30:44.920 And if you keep that attitude, you know, the first couple years are rough. You know, we've all done it.

00:30:50.060 You know, you get stacked up in debt. You haven't, you know, you've lost your purpose.

00:30:54.200 You don't know what you're doing in life. You're kind of floundering.

00:30:57.740 And you go, it's kind of hopeless. So what happens is people give up and they don't do anything positively.

00:31:03.720 And you end up in this vicious whip cycle, you know, and I think that's what ends up getting us in the cult of clutter, too, is we're buying items to kind of fulfill us.

00:31:14.360 We think it's going to fulfill us. It makes us happy for a short period of time.

00:31:18.180 And once that happiness runs out, we go get the next item.

00:31:22.080 It's just inner wiring. It's a dopamine hit. It is truly a chemical hit.

00:31:27.820 And again, the companies know this. They know if they influence us the right way, that will do it.

00:31:35.520 So another area that you talk about our lives being decluttered, I think people only think of this as this could be cluttered, is your social life.

00:31:44.240 So what does a cluttered social life look like? And how do you get a handle on that without being a misanthrope?

00:31:51.380 Yeah, yeah. And I blame social media for that today.

00:31:55.440 I grew up, I still have the same friends that I grew up with as a young child.

00:31:59.880 Some of us were babysat together. That's how far back it goes.

00:32:03.720 And I've always kept my social circle very small.

00:32:08.060 And what I notice is it definitely decreases drama, for sure.

00:32:11.580 But with social media, now you can literally communicate.

00:32:14.700 And it's not all bad.

00:32:15.820 Yeah, I mean, you can find people you never would have met otherwise.

00:32:19.080 But what happens is you kind of get on this slippery slope of thinking, well, I've got to have, Jeff has a thousand friends.

00:32:28.220 I need 2,000 friends. I need more than Jeff.

00:32:31.100 And it becomes overwhelming because a human can only really manage about 10 close relationships.

00:32:39.700 After that, it starts to become unmanageable because it's just too much of your time trying to manage these relationships, right?

00:32:46.400 Real relationships, not surface.

00:32:49.060 I mean, these are connections.

00:32:50.500 These are people that you would give your shirt off your back to help them.

00:32:53.840 You would do anything for them.

00:32:54.880 You talk to them on a regular basis.

00:32:56.520 And I think with that, we get cluttered by surrounding ourselves with too many people.

00:33:02.180 We get in too many cliques.

00:33:03.660 We start, you know, accumulating, I wouldn't say friendships, but associations.

00:33:09.880 And again, we can't manage them.

00:33:11.940 And then not only that, but you start to bring in all this drama because, you know, humans, we, I don't know what it is.

00:33:17.420 We love drama.

00:33:18.360 We love it.

00:33:18.960 And we love, you know, imparting it on other humans.

00:33:22.620 So with that, I always tell people, keep your social, your close social groups very small, you know, and it doesn't mean you can't have multiple.

00:33:30.520 Like, like I have people I ride my bikes with, you know, that's a group, but they're not, not, they're not super close.

00:33:37.420 They're people I ride bikes with.

00:33:38.860 My super close friends are people I talk to on a regular basis, right?

00:33:42.880 I can tell them my deep feelings, you know, I can, I can share things that I wouldn't share with other people.

00:33:50.660 If that makes sense, you know, keep your group small.

00:33:53.760 Don't, there's a point where you have enough friends and I'm not saying you, you hide yourself or anything like that, but.

00:34:02.340 But most people actively search out relationships that they don't need.

00:34:09.000 Well, another area too, I think it's kind of related because you mentioned social media, is having a cluttered information life.

00:34:15.940 And I think, I think everyone understands kind of has felt that, that having so much information at their disposal is just making them miserable.

00:34:23.320 What is it?

00:34:24.620 I mean, so what, what, what have you done to declutter your information life?

00:34:28.900 You know, I get it in low dose, especially the news, the news can be brutal.

00:34:35.740 And also I just, everything that I do far as reading information, I try and make it educational, right?

00:34:43.180 So it's something I can learn from instead of just sitting there absorbing information that I do not need.

00:34:49.660 You know, getting caught into these information vortexes, YouTube, I'll, I'll tell people to run two experiments.

00:34:56.680 I don't have a tick tock account.

00:34:58.700 I don't use YouTube.

00:35:00.420 I don't, my channel's kind of dead has been for years, but go to YouTube on a incognito browser and see what comes up.

00:35:11.280 It is ugly.

00:35:13.720 It makes me lose all faith in humans. 1.00

00:35:16.140 I mean, it's the most ridiculously stupid mind wasting crap known to man. 1.00

00:35:22.520 And someone had a tick tock link that I didn't, I didn't realize it was a tick tock link. 0.99

00:35:26.780 I don't have a tick tock account.

00:35:28.240 And so it kicked me to the homepage and said, Hey, you need to sign up and have an account.

00:35:33.680 And I'm all, no, not really.

00:35:34.760 And I saw what was trending.

00:35:38.080 Wow.

00:35:39.600 Wow.

00:35:40.360 Stay away from that stuff.

00:35:41.640 You know, if it's not something that will better your life and you can learn from it to improve yourself, you got to be careful with it.

00:35:50.400 Don't go down those rabbit holes of, of useless videos and things like that.

00:35:55.780 You know, I'm not saying, you know, never do it, but you have to be really, really careful with that information because it will derail you.

00:36:04.920 It will get you completely off track before you know it, especially the news cycle.

00:36:09.300 My news cycle is I put it on in the morning and it's a business channel and I hear it in the background.

00:36:15.240 I don't sit down and actively watch it.

00:36:17.700 I get enough information.

00:36:19.360 I have, I've podcast two that I'll listen to that aren't just straight news just to keep me up to date.

00:36:25.740 That's all I need.

00:36:26.700 I just need to know what's going on. 0.98

00:36:28.200 I don't need 24 seven of, you know, Democrats evil, Republicans are evil. 1.00

00:36:34.700 I don't need that crap. 1.00

00:36:35.840 I don't need it. 0.99

00:36:36.640 It doesn't help my life.

00:36:37.960 It does not make my life better.

00:36:40.180 So I think be very careful with the information you get in and just make sure it's useful.

00:36:44.080 It's something that you can, that you can utilize is the easiest way to put it.

00:36:48.400 Like I watch TV.

00:36:49.540 I have a TV, you know, I watch discovery history, you know, net, net geo, net geo.

00:36:56.380 Those are my main channels and I don't like sports, but I will watch very little sports

00:37:01.620 now compared to what I used to as a young guy.

00:37:04.380 I would watch the NCAA tournament when I was in college, start to finish.

00:37:08.060 I'd watch dang near every game, every televised game that was on.

00:37:11.140 I'd sit myself in front of that TV and I would watch it all day long.

00:37:14.980 I take days off from work for it.

00:37:17.320 I don't do that anymore.

00:37:19.280 All right.

00:37:19.760 So just be thoughtful about the stuff you consume, like just find the stuff that actually

00:37:22.740 provides you value in your life.

00:37:23.960 And there's some things we've written about this on the site.

00:37:25.820 We'll link to it, you know, ways you can do audits of your information consumption.

00:37:29.480 You can set them, you know, apps is where you can use technology to help you see where

00:37:34.420 you're spending most of your time at.

00:37:35.580 And you can be like, well, do I really need to spend that much time there?

00:37:37.720 And actually to Apple's credit, they've actually got, you know, things on their phone now where

00:37:42.040 you can see how you're spending your time.

00:37:44.220 And then you get your, your weekly, what is it?

00:37:46.180 The weekly screen time.

00:37:48.100 Yeah.

00:37:48.620 Yeah.

00:37:48.800 And then you can go into the settings and say, oh, I don't want, I only want 30 minutes of

00:37:52.620 this app or whatever, this website.

00:37:54.620 So take advantage of that.

00:37:56.840 So we've been talking about decluttering is kind of, kind of abstract things, health,

00:38:00.880 finances, social circles, information.

00:38:02.620 Let's talk about decluttering actual stuff.

00:38:04.900 And we talked, we kind of hit on a little bit, but it's basically just ask yourself, look

00:38:10.200 at something.

00:38:10.600 Do I use this?

00:38:11.580 Does this thing provide value?

00:38:12.860 It's not, does it spark joy?

00:38:15.280 Because again, we're trying to disconnect that emotional connection to our stuff, but

00:38:18.560 just, does this useful?

00:38:20.720 Yes.

00:38:21.080 Then keep it.

00:38:21.660 If not, get rid of it.

00:38:23.240 Yeah.

00:38:24.020 And I, when, and also buying things, you know, I look at it, there's a couple of different

00:38:28.560 ways, but the first thing you should ask yourself when you're going to get a new item

00:38:31.800 is number one, do I need it?

00:38:35.300 Ask yourself, do I need this?

00:38:38.140 Then go down and go, can I afford it?

00:38:41.300 Those are your first two questions.

00:38:43.060 Then the third one is, can I live without it?

00:38:46.340 That's when you're going to purchase.

00:38:47.860 It's very similar to when you're looking at things that you have.

00:38:51.320 Have I used it in the last year?

00:38:53.420 Does this thing have a purpose?

00:38:55.680 Do I need this?

00:38:56.680 Will I utilize this thing I have?

00:38:59.280 Or is it just sitting here collecting dust?

00:39:02.340 If not, get rid of it.

00:39:04.580 And don't, you know, sit there and think about it.

00:39:08.040 And it's yes or no answers.

00:39:09.540 I tell people there's no, well, kinda, there's not that it's either yes or no.

00:39:14.820 Because otherwise, trust me, I've done that.

00:39:16.840 I go, well, I haven't used that recently. 0.99

00:39:20.000 But you get in, once you go, but you're screwed. 0.88

00:39:23.620 It's either yes, no.

00:39:25.560 And you look at the item and you go, okay.

00:39:28.020 And one of the easiest ways, this has amazed me.

00:39:30.000 And I know other people have done this too.

00:39:31.420 I have put items out on the curb or out on the corner and they're gone.

00:39:36.240 I've had items gone in 15 minutes.

00:39:38.100 I put free and someone drives by and they load it in their truck to clutter up their garage.

00:39:43.580 And I'm amazed at how quickly you can get rid of stuff once you put your mind to it.

00:39:48.840 And I talk about how I sold all the items in my house almost in 48 hours on Craigslist.

00:39:53.880 I just fire sale. 0.98

00:39:55.420 So I went, I don't need this crap, threw it out in the garage, staged everything and sold it. 0.97

00:40:01.660 Just said, no reasonable offer will be refused. 0.98

00:40:04.720 Take it.

00:40:06.180 And I always tell people start in the garage because that's ground zero of junk collecting is the garage.

00:40:12.960 I go, go in your garage and start there.

00:40:15.180 And it's going to be overwhelming.

00:40:16.720 Guarantee it.

00:40:17.560 I've been there. 1.00

00:40:18.600 And you look at all the crap in there. 0.99

00:40:20.280 And the first thing you do is like, I may need that. 0.99

00:40:22.880 And the odds are you won't.

00:40:25.900 The only kind of exclusion I make in that is tools because I'm a tool guy.

00:40:30.200 You know, I got a lot of tools, you know, tools you don't use every day.

00:40:33.540 But, you know, I inherited tools from my grandfather that I still have.

00:40:38.540 And I don't use them all the time, but they will get used.

00:40:42.060 And tools are expensive and they're hard to replace.

00:40:44.240 And you can gift those.

00:40:46.380 Those you can give away, you know, later in life.

00:40:50.060 Those are kind of a tricky one.

00:40:52.280 But I also get rid of tools.

00:40:54.340 If I buy a tool like I had a hardwood floor nail gun, I used it once.

00:41:01.760 I didn't need it again.

00:41:03.040 So it sat in my shed for a couple months.

00:41:05.540 And eventually I went, I'm not going to use that again.

00:41:07.940 I'm just not.

00:41:09.120 If I do, I'll go rent one.

00:41:11.200 You know, this was a big project.

00:41:12.580 It was cheaper just to buy one.

00:41:14.260 I'll go rent one next time.

00:41:16.440 And I got rid of it.

00:41:18.140 But, yeah, I think if you start in your garage and you just take a good look around, collect a pile.

00:41:23.860 And the golden rule I always use is, have you used it in a year?

00:41:28.500 You know, if you haven't used it in a year, there's a good chance you probably don't need it.

00:41:33.000 Clear it out.

00:41:33.840 And then go room to room to room.

00:41:36.680 Do it stage by stage.

00:41:37.980 And once you do it once, you're not done.

00:41:40.220 So I do it every six months.

00:41:42.000 I'll go through drawers.

00:41:43.400 I go through rooms.

00:41:44.100 And I go look around.

00:41:45.700 It doesn't end. 0.99

00:41:47.020 Hey, I accumulate crap too. 0.99

00:41:49.600 Still. 0.99

00:41:50.680 I'm a lot better at it.

00:41:52.200 My decluttering sessions are fairly quick now.

00:41:54.780 But if you can follow, just keep a system.

00:41:58.320 And it doesn't have to be neurotic.

00:42:00.240 Just clear everything out.

00:42:01.740 You don't need the first run.

00:42:03.260 Six months later, go back.

00:42:05.020 And there will be items that you thought you needed.

00:42:07.520 And you'll go, I don't need that.

00:42:09.700 I haven't used it.

00:42:11.260 And it's this process that never ends.

00:42:14.500 I tell people, yeah, you have to keep doing it.

00:42:17.080 We're item collectors.

00:42:19.780 It's goofy.

00:42:20.580 I don't know what it is about us humans, but we collect things.

00:42:24.200 And I would say subconsciously at times.

00:42:27.900 We don't even know we're doing it.

00:42:29.940 No, I like the idea of decluttering your garage first.

00:42:31.700 Because in my experience, that's where stuff you don't really need anyways ends up.

00:42:36.900 So it's just like, well, you've already put it there.

00:42:39.700 And it's kind of on its way out.

00:42:41.400 Just get rid of it.

00:42:42.100 It's the boneyard.

00:42:42.920 Yeah, it is. 0.99

00:42:43.440 It's the boneyard of useless stuff. 0.95

00:42:44.880 Yeah.

00:42:45.520 And then another thing too, it's sort of like avoiding clutter.

00:42:48.940 It's another heuristic that I've been using too before I buy something.

00:42:52.300 It's like, okay, do I need it?

00:42:53.320 Can I afford it?

00:42:53.900 But also it's like, do I want the maintenance cost of this?

00:42:58.680 That's something like, we had a podcast where we talked to this guy who's like, his whole

00:43:01.680 thing is maintenance. 0.93

00:43:03.000 Change it to a maintenance mindset.

00:43:05.100 That really can change how you think about buying.

00:43:08.920 It's like, you think, I want this car.

00:43:10.760 But you don't think about, I'm going to have to buy tires for it.

00:43:13.580 I'm going to have to like do this 20, you know, 10 years now, five years.

00:43:16.980 Do I want to do that?

00:43:18.320 Maybe not.

00:43:19.420 And you don't get the thing.

00:43:21.040 So I think that's another thing about, are you willing to pay the maintenance price for

00:43:24.300 this thing as well?

00:43:25.920 Well, and that's like technology, right?

00:43:27.660 That's why exactly is technology is, again, I'm not a Luddite, but all this technology,

00:43:33.760 when you buy this useless time, like I said, you got to waste time learning it, updating

00:43:37.980 it.

00:43:38.680 And then once you learn it, usually the new version's out.

00:43:41.380 That's, I mean, it starts turning into this vicious cycle.

00:43:44.700 And, you know, I have my issues with Apple, but what I like about Apple is, you know,

00:43:48.840 I've used their technology for a very long time.

00:43:51.700 Now, I like that I can get a long time out of my laptops.

00:43:56.960 They're solid built.

00:43:58.420 They don't drown me with updates and they work.

00:44:02.260 I told the story of, I'm not, I'm none too fond of Microsoft and Bill Gates.

00:44:08.520 I won't get into that.

00:44:09.600 But I took my PC out after my 15th millionth blue screen of death because it was wasting

00:44:15.620 my time.

00:44:16.160 I just was so frustrated with it at this point and reloading windows 18 times.

00:44:21.980 I took it out in my front yard and took a sledgehammer to it.

00:44:25.520 And I use it as an example.

00:44:27.480 Hey, I, people use Microsoft.

00:44:29.620 Hey, whatever.

00:44:30.260 It's your choice.

00:44:31.120 But for me, it was this kind of cleansing effect.

00:44:33.900 If I went, this thing is eating all my time.

00:44:37.520 I spend more time maintaining this, this piece of technology than I use it.

00:44:41.980 And it's that kind of example, you know, I have a big truck that is part of my lifestyle.

00:44:48.120 I have to have that truck.

00:44:49.460 It's, it's a tool.

00:44:51.320 And I'll tell you what though, it's a one ton diesel. 0.65

00:44:55.700 They're a pain in the butt to maintain and it's expensive, but I suck it up because the

00:45:03.320 benefit of having that truck is I can do everything I need to do. 0.91

00:45:07.240 Trust me, there's days when I don't want to deal with it.

00:45:11.180 You know, an oil change on that truck's 140 bucks, 150 bucks.

00:45:16.020 So trust me, I know.

00:45:17.880 And, but the thing is, if you buy that truck and you don't need it, I couldn't imagine.

00:45:23.000 And I see this in the city all the time, like Southern California, these guys own my truck

00:45:27.120 and they've never gone off road with it.

00:45:30.380 You know, it's all jacked up.

00:45:31.580 It's a $80,000 truck.

00:45:33.440 And I think of all the maintenance and all they do is drive it on the five, 405.

00:45:39.540 I'm like, oh man, do you need that?

00:45:42.920 When a, you know, a, a little car would do just fine.

00:45:47.880 So yeah, you have to think of those things, but again, it's us chasing that shiny object,

00:45:51.880 right?

00:45:52.100 I've done it.

00:45:52.740 You know, that we, we think we need that truck because it's cool.

00:45:56.900 I'm going to be cool if I got that truck and you don't see all the money that's going

00:46:02.700 to be wasted in not only purchasing, but maintaining that truck.

00:46:07.300 So yeah, that's a really good example.

00:46:09.880 And so we've been talking about how to declutter, but we're not just doing this just for decluttering

00:46:13.740 sake.

00:46:14.140 I mean, you make this case, once you do this, like you can do the things, like you can fill

00:46:18.100 your life with things that really bring you joy and really bring you value.

00:46:21.560 So it could be hobbies, good friends, whatever that just really, once you, that you get all

00:46:27.440 that stuff out of your life, you have more room for that stuff.

00:46:29.660 Well, when I talked about that, one of the, the things that caught me off guard is once

00:46:35.840 I did all this and I did it fairly quickly, I went, I went head first and once it was done

00:46:41.460 and I'd settled into my little place that I had rented and gotten rid of everything, I

00:46:46.700 remember sitting at my little computer desk and I went, what am I going to do?

00:46:52.320 I had all this free time.

00:46:54.720 I didn't have all this debt.

00:46:56.240 I cut my expenses down by two thirds and it was a little overwhelming and it shocked

00:47:02.460 me that I got, I actually was overwhelmed with freedom.

00:47:06.900 And looking back, I'm saddened by that, that I was, that freedom overwhelmed me.

00:47:14.280 What?

00:47:15.280 You know what I mean?

00:47:16.420 How far down, down the hole had I gone to where living a life of freedom was overwhelming?

00:47:23.440 That told me we were definitely on the wrong road.

00:47:27.140 I went, you should not feel this way of living a free life.

00:47:30.680 You should be joyous.

00:47:31.700 You should be happy.

00:47:33.140 And instead I had a good decent chunk of overwhelming time trying to figure out what do I do?

00:47:38.520 What do I do with this free time now?

00:47:40.840 How do I make this, turn this time into something positive?

00:47:43.860 And I try and write about it and share everything in my podcast and everything I do of my journey.

00:47:49.800 The good, bad, the ugly, all my mistakes.

00:47:52.960 I let her all fly.

00:47:54.260 You get to see it all for the most part.

00:47:56.700 And it's because I'm on this journey.

00:47:58.460 I'm trying to figure this stuff out myself.

00:48:01.980 And yeah, once you declutter, you're going to have to realize you got to fill that time.

00:48:06.240 You better figure out something positive to stick in there,

00:48:08.820 or you're going to be right back where you started just in a different place.

00:48:12.280 Well, Gary, where can people go to learn more about the book and the rest of your work?

00:48:16.940 My website's the main place to go.

00:48:19.220 I sell all my books there.

00:48:20.600 Everything I sell, my podcast, everything's on there.

00:48:23.620 It's the simple life now, N-O-W.com. 1.00

00:48:27.160 Don't go to the simple life.

00:48:28.200 You'll go to Paris Hilton and I think Nicole Ritchie's website.

00:48:32.420 I think it's defunct now.

00:48:33.860 But go to the simple life now.

00:48:35.780 My podcast is another great place.

00:48:38.960 Just renamed it, rebranded it.

00:48:40.500 It's now the simple life with Gary Collins.

00:48:42.760 So very easy to find.

00:48:44.200 Go there and you'll find all the things I do and all my books and all my information and all that good stuff.

00:48:50.160 Fantastic.

00:48:50.440 Well, Gary Collins, thanks for your time.

00:48:51.540 It's been a pleasure.

00:48:52.580 Brett, I appreciate it.

00:48:53.660 Thanks for having me on again.

00:48:56.080 My guest is Gary Collins.

00:48:57.600 He's the author of the book, The Simple Life Guide to Decluttering Your Life.

00:49:00.640 It's available on his website, thesimplelifenow.com.

00:49:03.120 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash simple life.

00:49:06.160 You can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:12.280 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast.

00:49:18.460 Check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives.

00:49:21.880 Well, there's thousands of articles written over the years.

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00:49:37.060 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

00:49:41.100 It helps that a lot.

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00:49:43.420 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you would think would get something out of it.

00:49:46.920 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:49:48.620 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:49:49.920 Remind not to listen to the AWIM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:49:53.320 We'll see you next time.

The Art of Manliness - April 12, 2021

The No-Nonsense Guide to Simplifying Every Aspect of Your Life

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