How to carry less: the three-object test

Most advice about carrying less is really advice about buying different things. The actual method is duller and more effective: stop carrying things for a while, then let back in only what you genuinely missed.

The three-object baseline

Start from the assumption that three objects leave the house with you: keys, wallet, phone. Everything else has to argue its case.

This is not a target to hit permanently. It is a floor to measure from, because it is very hard to judge whether you need something while you are still carrying it. The only reliable test is absence.

The two-week experiment

Empty everything onto a table. Put the three baseline objects back. Put everything else in a box by the door - not away, not in a drawer, just accessible.

For the next two weeks, whenever you actually need something from the box, take it, and write down what it was. Do not carry it pre-emptively the next day. Just note it.

At the end of two weeks, the notes tell you the truth. Items you reached for three or more times have earned a permanent place. Items you reached for once did not - that is what a shop or a colleague is for. Items you never reached for can go back in a cupboard indefinitely.

People are consistently surprised by two things: how short the earned list is, and how many items they were carrying for a scenario that has not occurred in years.

Then make the three smaller

Once the count is settled, the remaining gains come from volume rather than number. The three baseline objects are usually bigger than they need to be.

The wallet. Usually the biggest single win, and mostly through contents rather than the wallet itself. Run the audit in what to keep in your wallet first. If it is still thick afterwards, the format is wrong - a slim cardholder with a zipped coin pocket covers cards, notes and coins in about two centimetres.

The keys. A ring lets keys splay into a sphere; a key organizer folds them into a flat strip. Same keys, a fraction of the volume, and none of the noise. Method in how to organize your keys.

The phone. Little to be done about size, but a thinner case and no attached wallet keeps it flat - and keeps wireless charging working, as covered in charging through a case.

The things worth adding back

Two additions genuinely pay for themselves. A tracker, because it occupies a card slot and converts the worst outcome into an inconvenience. And a power bank, but only on days you know you will need it, not permanently.

Almost everything else people carry daily - the spare cable, the second pen, the emergency medication kit, the umbrella - is a scenario tax. Some of them are worth paying. The point of the experiment is to find out which.

Where it stops

Carrying less is not a competition, and there is a point past which subtraction just makes your day harder. If you are borrowing things from colleagues twice a week, you have gone too far.

The right amount is the smallest set you never notice. Three objects that assign cleanly to three pockets, and nothing that needs a decision - which is the system in the one minute pocket system.