I read a LOT about minimalism.  A theme that crops up over and over again is getting rid of multiples of things.  When I was decluttering some kitchen cabinets a few months ago, I realized we were OVERRUN with coffee cups.  It was like they’re been breeding in there or something!  Now I am SUPER INTO MINIMALISM.  But the rest of my family is not (yet).  So when I say things like, “I’m getting rid of all our cups,” I know my husband is going to FREAK OUT.  I have to take a more measured approach to maintain peace and marital harmony and encourage this transition rather than create defensiveness against it.

How’d I do that?

Here are the questions I asked (Most are pretty typical of minimalism):

How many do we really need on a DAILY basis?  2, for our daily coffee

What about handling contingencies like crazy life that prevents kitchen cleaning for a couple days? We have a BIG family, so we MUST do dishes at least every 2 days or life is unbearable.  That means 4 cups.  (For our ship to sail smoothly though, it’s daily dishes.)

What about guests?  This is a frequent defense to purging, but I encourage you to ask this followup question honestly: What do you USUALLY do when you have a ton of guests?  Anytime we have more than maybe 4 guests drinking anything, we go disposable so it doesn’t matter anyway.*  Bam! Purge it!

*If for some reason we were going to have several guests and REQUIRED real cups, I could always borrow from friends.  A super-unlikely exception shouldn’t hijack the decision-making process.

Are we really ready for permanent removal or is archive storage the answer?  We were not ready to permanently remove them, so they’ve been in storage in the basement.  I know it’s been several months, so I’ll bring that up in the conversation to donate them.  Usually, I’ll write a note that amuses me like “Will I miss these?” and date it so I have rock hard evidence that we should let go.

I asked Dan to pick his 4 favorite cups and I picked mine.  That’s 8.  And just like a bad TV show, 8 is enough!