For a few years now, I’ve been on a quest to lead a “minimalist” life. Inspired by the Japanese organisational expert, Marie Kondo, I began chucking out garbage bags full of excess “stuff” – handbags, shoes, unused sporting equipment and other assorted detritus collected over nearly four decades inhabiting this earth.

But what began as a simple spring clean, has had surprising and far reaching effects on my life, spreading far out beyond the top of my wardrobe.

At work, I’m throwing overboard extracurricular commitments that distract me from my central cause: helping you, dear Fairfax newspaper reader, make sense of the world around you, particularly anything with a dollar sign in front of it.

Facebook is trying to sell us stuff, but there’s nothing new about that. Photo: Dado Ruvic

Minimalism has also had spill over effects on my body. I’ve begun to make more conscious decisions about the quality – and more importantly quantity - of food I put in my body. I’ve also begun paying more conscious attention to the way I choose to spend my precious time, prioritising exercise over other activities, like watching TV. As a result, I’ve lost about 13 kilos in the last year and a half. And this week I ran 7 kilometres continuously for the first time in my life.

In my friendships, and other relationships, I’ve become more acutely aware of the impact other people have on me. I’ve been forced to make some difficult and painful decisions about who I choose to spend the most time with. As the famous minimalist maxim goes: “You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”