The Importance of Streamlining our Stuff

When we look around at our stuff, we should ask ourselves: do the things in our lives bring us joy, or do they bring us stress? Or maybe more importantly: are they in the way, or do they contribute to our experience?

Most of us do a lot of things in our lives because we simply have all along. Without question, we buy clothes every week, or single use items sometimes every day.

How different would our lives look if we streamlined the things in our lives?🤔

What would more streamlined and intentional products look like?

Well, we are proud to be making products that create a more streamlined and intentional experience.

Our products allow for our customers to possess one single product as opposed to the continued purchasing and acquiring of many.

• That looks like having one LastSwab (or two for general and beauty) as opposed to a big box of many single use ones.

• It looks like having one LastTissue pack as opposed to a bunch of single use tissue packs scattered all over.🤧

• Or one small and compact pack of LastRounds instead a big pack of hundreds which are single use and packaged in plastic. 

It looks like having a few shirts that we love while they are being very versatile so we can apply them to many outfits. Not just shirts, but really any article of clothing!

It looks like having a single reusable water bottle instead of a mountain of single use ones.

🛋It looks like having only the furniture in our homes that we actually get value from. We don’t need to fill our space with stuff. Negative space, as we may learn, is actually really satisfying. Especially if it’s intentional!

And speaking of space, our house is also a product in a way, and streamlining that could look like downsizing. Since we really only use about 40% of the space in our home...studies show.

What we can save by doing this

Waste

It’s kind of funny when you think about it: intentionality can usually be achieved by going zero waste, or zero waste (or close to it) can usually be achieved by being more intentional. Or more minimalist.

When we streamline our things and find what actually adds value to our life, we will probably stick with that. And if we are to add something else into our list of things, it better be really good, and hopefully it’s replacing something else. This ultimately means less waste.

Clutter

Of course, if we are being more intentional about our stuff then we’ll have less of it. And this is a great benefit! 😰Think about all the stress we experience in any given day or week, why would we want to add to that by having so much clutter?

While being more intentional typically leads to having less stuff (because let’s face it, we have a lot), sometimes this isn’t always true.

Sometimes, if we reeeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyyyyy love earrings and they add a ton of value to our lives, we may have so many. But in this case maybe they don’t feel like clutter since we value them so much.

Physical clutter and mental clutter. That’s what we will lose with a more streamlined lifestyle. 

Resource demand

As we say over and over and over again in these articles, every single product requires resources to be made.⚡️

Of course, companies like us can strive to demand as few resources as possible in every product we make, but at the end of the day...if you don’t need a product then the most eco friendly thing to do is to not buy it.

That goes for our products as well. Our products are intended to replace a single us product that’s currently in use. They are not intended to get you to start doing something you normally don’t do. An example being: if you don’t use cotton swabs now then you probably don’t need LastSwab.

Less is best.👍

The feelings we may get from it

Alright, enough talk about resources and waste...let’s talk about us! How will we benefit and how will we feel?

Whelp, I can’t really say how you’ll feel because I’m not you!

There are feelings which come from having less clutter and also being more intentional. One of those feelings is usually relief once we go from a cluttered space to intentional space.

The feeling of fulfillment typically comes from living a life that is more intentional, one that is best for us, and one that is in line with our values.💙

Setting the stage

When we streamline the products in our lives, thus making them versatile, multipurpose, intentional, or reusable instead of single use, we are also setting the stage to do this in other areas of our lives.

If we are intentional about one thing, it’s not as if that just ends when we look at something else. 🧠That habit overflows into other aspects of our lives. Just like zero waste does to our mindset in other areas of our footprint. 

If we streamline the clothing we wear, we may just begin to streamline the food we give our bodies, or the way we commute. These things, like products, can have a massive impact on our lives mentally and physically, as well as the planet’s health. 🌎