The Law of Conservation of Crap

You’ve likely heard the saying, “What goes up, must come down”. This becomes all too real after you’ve thrown a handful of pennies in the air without running for cover. Forgetting gravitational escape velocity for a second, there’s a lot of truth to that statement, regardless of who first said it.

Similarly, the study of physics gives us the law of conservation of energy. This generally means that in an isolated system, energy is neither created or lost. It just moves around or changes its form. Let’s say that your home is that isolated system; a mini physics experiment in action day after day. Only instead of conserving energy, we’re conserving crap. You see, anything that is brought into your home must, at some point and in some form, leave your home. And so it must be true that:

What comes in, must go out.

Examples

The clearest example of this is groceries. Whatever groceries you bring into your home will leave your home in some form. Some of it will end up in the trash can. Some of it will leave, umm, via the bathroom. Some of it is used as an energy source for your body that is either burned as heat or, commonly, stored on your body as fat. Thus, whenever you leave the home, the groceries leave with you. The only problem is that they come back when you do. Rinse and repeat.

Some things take a very long time to leave your home, like furniture. You may purchase a piece of furniture and it may stay in your home for decades. Inevitably, though, it will leave your home via some means. At some point you’re going to die and your heirs may just think your precious sofa is a pile of garbage that needs to end up there.

Dirt that comes in gets swept or vacuumed away. Water comes in via the pipes and leaves the same way. Electricity comes in and is lost as heat. Mail, product packaging, toys, electronic gadgets, clothing, library books, gifts, personal care products, newspapers, etc. They all come in and at some point go away.

What’s Your Problem?

The problem is that having all this stuff in our homes is suffocating us little by little and we’re constantly trying to keep up with it. How many times a week do you empty the kitchen trash and what is it full of? Everything in that trash bag is something you brought into the home. The landscape is littered with self storage facilities that only help you to relocate some of your stuff for a period of time. It left your house, sure, but it’s not out of mind. You know it’s still there, lurking. Just waiting to be brought back in.

My personal trouble spots are gadgets, laptop bags, newspapers, Moleskine notebooks, and clothes. I struggle to balance the seemingly innate drive to acquire things with the mental knowledge that I don’t need most of it.

Takeaway — Literally

What we can do about this is to repeat the phrase, “What comes in, must go out”, when we are out and want to purchase something for you or your house. By doing so, you’re committing to bringing it in your home, holding on to it for a while, and then taking it out of your home. If that’s not something you’re willing to do, then maybe it’s not something you should bring into your home in the first place.

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