______, You Are Using Too Much!

by doug88888

Tomorrow I will be detailing the first of the 7 types of muda. This post is really just a precursor to get you thinking about the concepts of eliminating wastefulness in your life.

Following a lean lifestyle is about doing more with less. Reducing your movement leaves you with more energy and more time. Use less time and you can get more done. Creating less rework makes what you have done more value-added. Use less materials and you reduce your costs.

The title of this post begins with a blank on purpose. Name a product or resource you use and challenge yourself, can I use less?

A core idea to those of us that follow a lean lifestyle is the concept of challenging the status quo. Too often we do what we do because that’s the way it has always been done. But must we?

Really, think about this.

• Just because we have always laid a stream of toothpaste across the entire head of the toothbrush, does that mean that less won’t work?
• Just because we have always filled up our glass with milk, does that mean we can’t survive with less?
• Just because we have always used a full softener sheet in the dryer, does that mean that half of one won’t work?
• Just because we have always filled the dishwasher container full of detergent, does that mean half filled won’t work as well?
• Just because we’ve always left the shower water running the whole time we are in it, does that mean we always must?
• Just because we’ve always turned on all the lights in the room, does that mean we need to every time and all the time?

In the course of our lives we use hundreds of products and many resources. Each has a cost associated to it. Over our lifetime, we use these resources hundreds or thousands of times. Even small reductions in usage, added up over time will have huge impact on our lifetime savings of time and money.