Mastery Milestones for Optimizing Your Things
1) Having a House and Car (If You Need One) That You Can Easily Afford, While Living Your Desired Lifestyle
Put simply, this is about not being house-poor or car-poor, where you have this awesome house or awesome car, but you can barely afford it and you're working 70-80 hours a week just to keep up with the payments. If you want to read more about shifting your attitude about your desired lifestyle and clarifying exactly what it is that you want, we have a great post on that here.
2) Keeping Ownership Costs Down on Your Vehicle
For most people, this means keeping your car 10 years or longer, though sometimes there are better arrangements due to tax breaks and being a small-business owner, whenever that works.
3) Having Less Than One Hour per Week Servicing or Maintaining Items That You Own
As a caveat, this excludes ongoing tasks like dishes and laundry, because we can’t avoid them. But for example, if you're spending all your free time mowing your huge lawn, or fixing your car, or taking care of your expensive golf clubs, or vacuuming your massive house, these things are not signs of mastery. They are more likely signs that you just have too many things, and you can't really even enjoy them because you're too busy maintaining them and taking care of them.
4) Get Rid Of Any Item And Clothing That You Have Not Used In The Last 12 Months
In fact, true mastery for this one is being in a good enough financial situation that you can just afford to give them away – you don't even have to have a garage sale. That being said, if you like having garage sales, or you need to sell the stuff, then go ahead.
5) Avoiding Impulse Purchases
The way I do this is to wait 2 weeks before making any large purchase of a new item or one that I hadn’t heard about before. That way, I can decide if I really want it.
6) No Storage Units Outside the Home + Having an Accessible and Usable Garage
Not everyone will agree with this point, but in the long run, if you're spending all your time managing your things, and carrying your things, and moving them back and forth, and paying to store them somewhere, then again, this is not mastery.
7) Being Able to Patiently Purchase Expensive Items at Ideal Times
If you know what you want, you can just wait. I wait every year. On Black Friday I buy a couple of things online, though I don't go into the stores and fight up. I just wait for a couple of things, the bigger purchases, because that's when they're going to cost the least.
8) Having All Your Photos and Important Computer Data Stored Securely and Automatically, and Backed Up Online
Don't underestimate the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your precious photos and important documents are stored securely and automatically.
9) Being Able to Evacuate Your Home in Case of Emergency with Precious Items in 5 Minutes or Less
This point is not because we're anticipating an emergency. Rather, it’s about being so clear on what's most important to you and having things together, that you could evacuate quickly if you needed to.
10) Minimizing Environmental Waste
For me this means recycling weekly, and de-cluttering every 90 days. Above all, it’s about keeping your life simple.
