Shopping mania in reverse? Tip-toeing toward the long goal of minimalism.

@jbartus

Then my soul shall be bare before all.

Let the Meh shine forth unmediated and unfiltered.

/giphy "shine forth"

@f00l that GIF is such an accurate depiction of Link v. Gannon battles.

@jbartus
/image giant close with clutter on shelves

@Kidsandliz huh?

@therealjrn

I am working on the idea right now that if I already have 3x-5x times more than I could ever possibly need of something or other, the least used among them go.

Esp if I forgot I owned them.

Esp if it’s an insulated coffee thingie, and not among my 30 most special favorites.

But keeping personal anxiety and complicated perpetual indecision from assuming control of the higher brain functions is the biggie methodology of the moment.

@SSteve

Esteemed younger brother and wife have always practiced a philosophy of not ever allowing possessions to own them. Instead, they had personal connections, bonds with persons far and near, and shared experiences. I think they made good choices here.

I had somehow slid way into so much stuff (hello, storage industry) “that might be useful”.

And then I would forget much of what was put away. And then the idea of dealing with it became fraught and I avoided; and the failure to deal with all became a source of stress and “felt inadequacy”.

Not sure what changed? But something did. It’s time.

Or I hope it’s time, in the sense that I hope I follow thru.

/giphy "follow through"

@narfcake

It will be a long time before I get close to any art-t-shirt decisions. And some of them do get worn.

If I do decide to jettison wearable t-shirts, I’ll let you know. But I doubt I have any unusual or rare ones.

Speaking of which, did you ever design t-shirts? I searched your UID on the “all shirts” page on woot and came up empty.

Just yesterday was wearing
…

Perfect for post-feast.

Right now I am in the stage of opening boxes at the storage thing and going

“uh, why didn’t I goodwill this or recycle this or give this away a decade ago? D’oh!”

Or,
“why the fuck would anyone ever keep this?”

/giphy why why why

I have basically been paying for storage for years and years, for things I either had/have no plans to use, or forgot I owned.

Hey, brain! Come out, come out, wherever you are!

@f00l No worries. Just figured I’d throw that out there before any “get away from me”.

The only submissions I’ve made was for catshirtswoot and owlshirtswoot. My background is on a drafting table, not an art board. AutoCAD, yes. Photoshop, no.

@narfcake

AutoCAD, yes. Photoshop, no.

Don’t know either one at all, so you are ahead of me.

@f00l Basically, I resemble this with the plans and all:

https://shirt.woot.com/offers/purrductive?ref=meh_com

@RiotDemon Wow- that must be a sight to behold there.

@RiotDemon

I am trying to stop and reverse “collecting” somewhat in my life.

Nothing against collecting. I love beautiful things and lovely, fun, and/or meaningful collections.

But, right now I want (in my fantasy existence) to look around and see far fewer projects and to to-do’s involving “things”. I want to be within distant sight of “Caught-Up” instead of living in the land of “Overwhelmed”.

I want to have a small, intimate, personal, “unfinished project area”, not an unsorted locker full of all that.

I let stuff go for years, as I did with the storage locker, which is an enormous pile of projects for a perpetual and unachievable later.

I don’t even want that later now.

And the “unorganized aspect” was allowed to become a source of low-level constant anxiety, sometimes escalating, and a monthly fee expense.

Time for me to stop.

In our consumer-driven first world, it’s pretty easy for me to overdose on “things” and not realize it for a while.

Your life sounds organized. And you like how you have handled your possessions and you enjoy displaying them and living around them. So, as long as your current way of being gives your pleasure and contentment, it’s a good thing, or so I would think.

I know a couple who love have seasonal things. Halloween is their most fav I think.

They keep some few of the large supply of decorations out full time. The rest are stored (in orderly fashion) in the garage or a spare bedroom, and those get changed out seasonally or (if not a calendar seasonal theme) by mood.

(The way they make this always-fun:)
The have friends and family over to help with the change-outs. Theme decorations, with innovations each time.

They they, jointly with co-horts, throw a bunch of get-togethers at their place. Some for family. Some kid-friendly. Some for college buddies. Etc. Some with lots of alcohol. Everyone brings stuff and helps with expenses, prep, and cleanup.

Obviously, it helps to be naturally gregarious and outgoing, love being a host, be cheerful, extrovert, and upbeat by temperament, and a born organizer, to enjoy doing this.

Not at all my personality profile. But really fun if it fits the person/people.

@dashcloud
@RiotDemon

Re “sight to behold”

You’ve posted some pix. Would love a few more.

@f00l will do soon. Will have to resurrect the nail art thread.

Your life sounds organized.

@f00l no way. I’m a fucking mess.

@RiotDemon

If you are enjoying your life and possessions,

and you are not filled with overt or secret anxiety,

And you do not get constant reminders of how you are totally ignoring Important Things,

and you are more or less at least as competent an adult as the next person,

I bet you’re doing fine.

/giphy "all good"

@mfladd

Exactly. I acquired stuff thinking “someday when”.

And now I don’t want that “someday” anymore.

Some if it gave me pleasure in the use of it. Or the ownership of it.

Some of it only have me pleasure in the acquisition. I never used it. Some never got unboxed.

Now I want to think I have far fewer projects I’m behind on.

If I am living in “project arrears”, and I’m only doing whatever because it seemed like fun several years ago; then even if it’s a worthy activity, I want the “time starts now” freedom instead.

@mflassy

I’m too lazy for garage sales, and don’t want to tolerate the intrusions.

But if you are (and you verify to my standards) resident within, say, 60 miles of 76101 (FW downtown PO);

And you know your way around, locally, including the back roads and the construction;

And you are able to drive to come to FW, to my various designated locations, on schedule and on time, to do pickups (lateless completely not cool);

And you have an adequate vehicle for transport;

And dealing with you is very low maintenance, speedy, efficient, polite, pleasant, and with zero hassles;

And I am not expected to load your vehicle or otherwise deal with your end of things;

And you are happy enough to plan and verify arrangements by voice call if I ask for that (I will);

And you are happy to meet in the highly monitored busy parking lots of police stations;

And all contacts are at my convenience/whim in terms of time, place, and conditions;

And you are less trouble than dealing with Goodwill and similar

Then you might be allowed to come get some kinda useful, kinda worthless free junk to take home.

/giphy "if you can keep your head when all about you"

@f00l

@therealjrn

Hey, there, troublemaker. You watch it, now.

Please dont feed the Beastie. Beastie is on a diet.

/giphy Beastie.

@f00l

And you are happy to meet in the highly monitored busy parking lots of police stations;

You lost me by this.

@mflassy That’s SOP for meeting strangers to do transactions, such as selling stuff on Craig’s list, local eBay sales and such.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR DRUG TRANSACTIONS

@therealjrn

I’m well aware.

I don’t mind meeting there, but I don’t like forcing myself to be happy to be there.

@therealjrn

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR DRUG TRANSACTIONS

Hopefully no first hand experience…

@mflassy Who, me? Um…I’ve heard about it…yes…definitely.

@therealjrn

Any chance I could fly you to Texas just so I have a witness in case anything happens?

@therealjrn

I cleaned out and got rid of my storage lockers full of contraband, narcotics, criminal proceeds, intelligence-destruction agit-prop, felony evidence, black magic, Illuminati items, proof that the Earth is flat, plans to destroy financial institutions and networks, and my special Santa Claus kidnapping paraphernalia, etc, some time ago.

I sold all that to various politicians in a giant private auction that allowed only Members of the US Congress as purchasers, plus a few especially corrupt local political types by personal invite.
The bidding was something else.

/giphy "evil Inc"

Now all I have left seems at the moment to consist of way way way way way too many kitchen storage containers.

Another “why the fuck did I do that?” moment.

@mflassy

Re meeting in police station parking areas

You said

I don’t mind meeting there, but I don’t like forcing myself to be happy to be there.

No need to be happy during the meeting if you wish otherwise. Just be pleasant.

/image Harvey the rabbit Jimmy stewart

@f00l

I cleaned out and got rid of my storage lockers full of…black magic…proof that the Earth is flat…some time ago.

Good thing you mentioned this now.

While I appreciate the offer, there’s nothing which I would want now.

@mflassy

if I come across blood and guts, proof of extra-terrestrial-directed human- breeding programs, high-quality blackmail material, or “start your own crime warlord gang” kits-in-a-box, I’ll let you know.

@thismyusername so cramped… Eek.

I wouldn’t mind one as a towable home for a nice road trip, but long term… No way.

@thismyusername

Please donate!

@duodec

I hope you keep some of your dad’s books. I wish I had some from my Dad. He was never a great reader, bit there were done. Either they’ve been given away, or put away.

My step-mother is a fantastic person, honest, kind, hardworking, generous, forgiving. But there is some distance. We don’t discuss with her at all about Dad’s personal stuff. It’s just the way things have worked out.

I don’t mind that much. I hold onto physical things too dearly sometimes. That must change.

Trying to see things through other eyes now.

@f00l There were over a thousand books, many handed down to him (that I read growing up), many he bought, many were gifts. We brought maybe 120 home, which is still a lot of shelf space we don’t have (we’re both bookworms too; when we last counted and purged we sent ~200 books to the library, and still had ~1000 books on the shelves, and in boxes, and in closets, and under the beds, and… well, you know). The books we brought, I picked to bring, they’re not likely to be purged (certainly not soon); I expect many will be handed down (assuming the nieces and nephews even want them) in coming years. I have one nephew who is deeply interested in American history and will probably take that subset of books with great pleasure. After I re-read at least some of them.

We’re slowly doing another book purge, which is much harder now that the easy choices were made. Got to make room for all these, and despite Kindle apps we still buy some books (we both prefer reading real ones). Its harder to work out making room for the other items we brought home. More purges or sales.

This year after each season we’re purging our seasonal decorations. Stuff not used in 2 years (with a few heirloom exceptions) is sent to charity. Autumn is down to 1 box, Halloween to two (and one is a ceramic Jack-o-lantern my Dad bought for us a couple of years ago). Spring/summer is one box. We have 24 boxes of Christmas decor and the tree. We expect to put the tree and at most 14 boxes back up next year. Thats a category purge in action.

Step by step, type by type.

@duodec

I have purged my book collection by the thousands a number of times. Had to, for space reasons.

Once I did it in Manhattan. I just took books to the street and set them out for free.

I met some cool people that way. And some people insisted on giving me $ even tho I asked for none. One person even bought me a $50 gift certificate at the local espresso place (not a chain, pre-Starbucks) as a thank you.

Now I try to limit physical books to vintage books, to those books that matter to me in some big way, or where there is a large bonus to owning the physical version.

Having so many Kindle books and similar helps.

I like reading on devices now, as much as physical books, for typical books.
Bought my first Kindle in 2008? So it took me most of a decade.

But I’m still bad.

When there was an estate sale for Ex-Speaker of the House Jim Wright and his wife, I bought some books for $1 because they were serious and interesting reflections of his political life and times, and also those books had his bookplate in them.

(My grandmother used to lecture him at events, in his early years. He [all politicians, I suppose] had to keep staff people to deal with political obsessives. Some of his staffers supposedly still remember deflecting her.)

@Kidsandliz

My issues are more at my storage place. It was so intimidating to take on that I procrastinated big-time.

Now for some reason it feels “do-able”.

I’m into kindness in these matters, with self, or others, unless finances or health/safely or mental illness make it impossible.

This is one story I heard the short version of, the story itself is decades old:

One relative lived across the street from, and was friendly with, a lovely going-on-20-years-widow whose health was getting more fragile, so the widow had considered moving in with one if her local children, a daughter also quite close to my relative.

My relative had visited in the house a few timed and seen lots of stuff, but nothing odd or dysfunctional.

But widow had lived alone in a large 2 story 5 bedroom house for two decades. Once you got past are areas people might see, it turned out the house was filled to the brim. The widow had somehow managed to keep this private from her children.

It all came out during the discussion of the move and the choice to sell the house. The kids were horrified, and their first instinct was just too go thru everything and clean it out in a single marathon manic effort.

The mom resisted, felt she was being railroaded, and said in that case she would refuse to move or sell.

The kids backed off. They agreed it could take time. The local kids all went into a supportive group therapy with Mom, and Mom also agreed to go into personal therapy.

They started on one room, and let Mom “learn over time” how to let go of things.

The held periodic garage sales when they had enough stuff in the discard pile to justify one. Mom over time was willing and happy to stop being quite so isolated. She started to trust the process.

It worked out. The was not so much dysfunction as in some instances.

The family had resources, and all of them were kind and patient people. The Mom knew she needed to change, and was willing, and had the emotional capacity to do it.
It brought them closer.

I’m not in that league. I haven’t stuffed a house with “whatever”.

I just simply hate being owned by the need to deal with this. I would like to be free of it. Free of the stuff. Free of the need to deal with it.

@f00l My storage unit is a hassle as well. I had put the contents of my house in there when I was homeless and then there was no room to empty it all out when I lived in 450 sf. Was supposed to move it here except the truck I rented was broken so had to use a much smaller one. Now it is 180 miles away and without a place to stay with the cats (the oldest 3 need daily meds they can’t skip and boarding cats that need meds is expensive) it becomes hard to be there long enough to do something about it.

Place I am in isn’t big enough for all of it, but moving it here into another storage unit would facilitate going through things to down size. I didn’t have time to downsize before I moved. Had been working on that when I had everything in storage but when the unit is so packed you can’t even get at everything (and most was in boxes of which I’d want some of the things in the box but not other stuff) it was overwhelming how to deal with it. I’d take a box into the hall, sort through it and then end up with 2 boxes - keep and sell, putting the get rid of in my car. It was so cramped in there that having multiple partly filled boxes was space problem. Plus I had trouble getting down and putting back up the boxes that were over my head.

Had I been able to afford it I would have rented 2 empty storage units and moved to them the stuff I wanted to keep as I got to things in the existing unit. The other one would be for stuff I wanted to get rid of that I couldn’t get rid of right away, this second, today, car was already full… or wanted to try to sell first. I’d keep these open boxes in the “new units” until they were filled…then get rid of the original unit once it was empty. In an ideal world anyway LOL

Got this job less than 2 weeks before it started and had to move, find a place to live, pack in like 9 days… I have been getting rid of, selling… things I brought here I decided I can do without (although doing so in this small town limits the speed in which I can find a buyer and I am finding people are paying less for things here, was better in a bigger city). If I could ever get to the battered women’s shelter used store when they are open (very limited times) I have a pile in the livingroom to go to them that I tried to sell and it didn’t here (or people wanted me to drive 50+ miles to deliver - craigslist here isn’t just this town, in fact it is labeled for the nearest big town which is 95 miles away).

I finally reminded myself that I can’t take into account sunk costs. Yeah I know they teach that in accounting. Goes against everything my brain wants to believe; that I’d be better off just calling someone to buy, at whatever low price they’d give me, someone to buy the furniture still in there (which would free up a bunch of space) since if I’d add up what I have paid for the unit, likely the value of what is in there is approaching the cost of storing it. Trouble is there is still stuff in there I want/need that was supposed to come here that couldn’t with the truck downsize the day of the move so I can’t just sell the contents of the unit to some estate sale company. I wish the storage place would allow me to have a garage sale there that would help. Against the rules.

@Kidsandliz
Maybe you need a weekend assault on the storage thing in some decent weather.

Go thru it and grab what you want.

It would prob cost way too much to bring the rest to new location to sell so just donate what is clearly leaving, until you have cleared out some place?

Then repeat. Until you know you have sorted out the personal things or have enough room to do proper sorting?

Once you know you’ve got what you want to keep, sell the rest as is on site
There is some website for that. The storage places use it for selling the contents of unpaid units, but individuals can use it too.

If you sell the contents on site, you don’t even have to truck if off somewhere. The buyer does that.

Units where individuals are selling the contents of their own storage units go for quite a bit more more than the abandoned units, my site manager tells me.

Storagetreasures.com perhaps?

If you’re not going to be around to meet buyers, then perhaps someone you know will do that and split the profits. That no-kill shelter? Or perhaps the location manager will assist.

I dunno. Seems like a good idea to get unstuck. If any of that might be useful.

Re CL sales or FB sales, make it clear in the listing you only deliver locally or don’t deliver, no exceptions.

Seems to me that being anything other than definitive, protective, and efficient with your own time can make a nightmare of everything.

On CL, i rarely do favors, and I make that clear up front. People want total convenience, promise everything, and never/rarely follow thru.

The more favors they request, the less likely to show up? Or show up and lowball? In some cases at least.

@f00l Well now you know you have to live to 150 so that purchase wasn’t in vain. LOL

@UncleVinny

How about searching for

“Marie Kondo” lot

?

You don’t want just one.

/image “Marie Kondo”

@f00l too bad there’s no easy way to sort by most expensive shipping!