Read The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun for Free Online Page A

going to clear out your closet and drawers!”
    “Oh. Well, okay,” he said agreeably. I shouldn’t have been surprised by his reaction; Jamie loves order. He turned off the TV.
    “But we’re not going to get rid of much,” he warned me. “I wear most of this stuff pretty regularly.”
    “Okay, sure,” I said sweetly. We’ll see about that, I thought.
    Going through his closet turned out to be fun. Jamie sat on the bed while I pulled hangers out of his closet, two at a time, and he, much less tortured than I, gave a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down—except once, when he insisted, “I’ve never seen that pair of pants before in my life.” He got rid of a giant bag of clothes.
    Over the next few weeks, as I adjusted to my half-empty closet, I noticed a paradox: although I had far fewer clothes in front of me, I felt as though I had more to wear—because everything in my closet was something that I realistically would wear.
    Also, having few clothing choices made me feel happier. Although people believe they like to have lots of choice, in fact, having too many choices can be discouraging. Instead of making people feel more satisfied, a wide range of options can paralyze them. Studies show that when faced with two dozen varieties of jam in a grocery store, for example, or lots of investment options for their pension plan, people often choose arbitrarily or walk away without making any choice at all, rather than labor to make a reasoned choice. I certainly felt happier choosing between two pairs of black pants that I liked rather than among five pairs of black pants, the majority of which were either uncomfortable or unfashionable—and which made me feel guilty for never wearing them, to boot.
    Who knew that doing something so mundane could give me such a kick? By this point, I was jonesing for more of the clutter-clearing buzz, so while a pregnant friend opened her presents at a baby shower, I quizzed my fellow guests for new strategies.
    “Focus on the dump zones,” advised one friend. “You know, the dining room table, the kitchen counter, the place where everyone dumps their stuff.”
    “Right,” I said. “Our biggest dump zone is a chair in our bedroom. We never sit in it, we just pile clothes and magazines on it.”
    “Junk attracts more junk. If you clear it off, it’s likely to stay clear. And here’s another thing,” she continued. “When you buy any kind of device, put the cords, the manual, all that stuff in a labeled Ziploc bag. You avoid having a big tangle of mystery cords, plus when you get rid of the device, you can get rid of the ancillary parts, too.”
    “Try a ‘virtual move,’” another friend added. “I just did it myself. Walk around your apartment and ask yourself—if I were moving, would I pack this or get rid of it?”
    “I never keep anything for sentimental reasons alone,” someone else claimed. “Only if I’m still using it.”
    These suggestions were helpful, but that last rule was too draconian for me. I’d never get rid of the “Justice Never Rests” T-shirt from the aerobics class I took with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when I clerked for her, even though it never did fit, or the doll-sized outfit that our preemie Eliza wore when she came home from the hospital. (At least these items didn’t take up much room. I have a friend who keeps twelve tennis racquets, left over from her days playing college tennis.)
    When one of my college roommates visited New York, we waxed lyrical over coffee about the glories of clutter clearing.
    “What in life,” I demanded, “gives immediate gratification equal to cleaning out a medicine cabinet? Nothing!”
    “No, nothing,” she agreed with equal fervor. But she took it even further. “You know, I keep an empty shelf.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I keep one shelf, somewhere in my house, completely empty. I’ll pack every other shelf to the top, but I keep one shelf bare.”
    I was struck by the poetry of this