What happens if you run out of hangers?
I’ve never been much of a clothes collector. I like nice things. I like comfortable things. I wouldn’t call myself a fashion expert. For years my closet grew. I rarely got rid of anything. Every time I ran out of hangers, I’d just buy more hangers. Problem solved.
A few years ago, we did a home renovation. It was big enough that we had to move out of the house for a few a while. Packing up was a nightmare. I had no idea how much stuff we’d accumulated over the years. Mostly out of a desire to not pack up everything, I took a really hard look at what was in my closet. Anything I hadn’t worn in a year I donated. A year felt like the right timeframe since it included all four seasons in the northeast.
The more I got rid of, the better I felt. Even though it was all in a closet and out of my way most of the time, just knowing I had less stuff was a weight lifted off of me.
The other day I was hanging some stuff in my closet and was left with two shirts that had no hangers. I thumbed my way along the curtain rod hoping to find a couple hangers hiding in the cracks, but found nothing. I took out my phone, went to Amazon and searched up “hangers”. Then I stopped. What if instead of buying more hangers, I just got rid of some clothes? I put down my phone and quickly found a couple items to let go.
I’d experienced what author Leidy Klotz calls “subtraction neglect,” in which people or teams consistently prefer to improve situations by adding more, never to take away.
Work-wise, I was a subtraction neglector for years. Every new project or task was just added to the pile. Nothing was ever removed. I just bought more hangers. We just found creative ways to reprioritize so we could keep it all on the list.
High | Medium | Low
became
High | High/Medium | Medium | Medium/Low | Low
At some point in work I saw the same thing I saw in my closet. If we didn’t stop doing some things, we were just spreading our focus thinner and thinner, eventually doing nothing well.
My team and I came up with a workshop to fix this. We called it “The Subtraction Workshop”. Unlike most workshops, where the end goal was to come up with some new idea or solution, the end goal was to remove something. We were really excited about the concept. Lots of clients loved the idea, but none of them would sign up. It was too scary and too different. We still haven’t done one.
What about you? Would you add more hangers or subtract some clothes?