Since then, we divided the collection in half, and I’ve given away boxes and boxes to people, including a big bookshelf of classic Russian, German and French literature I couldn’t bear to part with to my mother.

Sometimes I leave books one-by-one the L or 2 train (Manhattan) at rush hour, where I know they’ll find a good home. I always wait to see who nabs it– very interesting!

Now I live in a one room studio, so I have to be ruthless. I have two bookcases of the books that A) mean the most to me and represent who I am and B) classics on my “to read” list…personally, I like think of it as the nicest decor element available. But hey, I’m incredibly spartan/minimalist in all other respects, so why not. Like a secular nun, really: books excluded, everything I own that I took with me when I moved with me fits in a car. The books just added one more trip.

Truth be told, my two big bookcases feels rather meager, but it fills up a whole wall so it looks like a lot, haha!

Whenever I see a home without a lot of classic books, I think less of the inhabitants. Sad but true. If I could find a place to donate everything that would keep it as a collection, I certainly would.

Amy Jo is absolutely right. These are virtually the words I used to describe some of my own Stuff, much of which has been irreplaceably damaged, after I spent years trying to take care of it – yes, and additional money every month, so that I could have it. It was both valuable in and of itself, and represented a severe financial loss; but it was also symbolic of hopes and dreams I had, and a life I hoped to live, which is no longer possible. The loss of the Stuff also meant letting go those hopes and dreams, and saying goodbye forever to the person I was, and wanted to be.

Ugh.

I tell myself that I’m going to use the recipes. But that’s a lie.

Okay. I’m dumping them in the recycling bin tonight.

FREEDOM!

With an e-book reader you can store thousands of books in this one little device. The two main competitors are Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s reader, but the Amazon doesn’t even support PDF and the Sony supposedly doesn’t show them well.

After reading hundreds of reviews, I decided the BeBook looks quite appealing. The battery lasts basically forever and the screen is marvelous, never seen anything that looks so close to real paper. Supports plenty of formats too. Gotta love technology. Check it out!

PS- if interested, save 35 bucks on the thing at http://mybebook.com/ by entering in “sirdouglas@hotmail.com” in the discount coupon page upon purchasing.

Save space, save tree, and relax with less stuff!

Doug

I have a comic book habit myself but it’s not nearly as bad as your and I repeatedly read them. It’s more of a problem for me in terms of novels and stuff.

Not that it helps make it any easier, but I have a known cause for my pack-rat behavior. My mother was a terminal neat-freak. When she went into tidy mode she decided what got thrown out and nobody got any input. It is therefore baked into the deepest layers of my personality that tidiness means the loss of valued things. Quantity and clutter became a defense.

Now I am clearing out things in a GTD sort of manner. I pick a space, and work at it until I’ve cleared away all the clutter. I find an item, decide is it useful or not, ask myself if it can be replaced easily/cheaply if I need one later, and such. Still stressful and I have to take multi-day breaks to avoid stress-induced damage.

Who knows, if lifespans keep getting longer, I might even live long enough to finish this job.

Books especially: either they are good, then I give them to someone to read them (until they hit someone who forgets to give them back, or I tell them to give the book forward to spread it). Bad books I give to charity or sell them on ebay or just throw them out.
Clothing from last year, that I don’t wear anymore? Giving it away.

My problem is buying. I buy a lot of stuff I love, use for a short time, then sell it again. Especially brand new high-tech stuff like the newest DSLR or lenses.

I can afford it, but it is a real waste of money, so right now I’m trying to cut down my overexpensive shopping of brand new stuff, making it a fun exercise not to buy the newest, but instead buy the 2nd hand stuff of those who sell, who always buy the latest and greatest (just like I did before).

I’m not very good at it, though … yet

If your looking for a spot to purge your items to look my way. I need Christmas gifts for many. I always enjoy your blog and I love the updates!

I do think the hording is related to some kind of sense of lack and the stuff is to fill the space

I did the same with my music etc. In all I have rooms full of clutter on a single small hard drive. When i am moving from country to country all I need to move is a single computer instead of box after box of stuff

Now that the world has finally caught up on digital distribution I now buy everything in digital format to start with.

Had I known what I know now I might not be nearly as in debt as I am. The idea of buying things simply to have them is very wasteful and oh so costly.

Great post JD

also we collect things, artifacts from previous times that we love to occasionally just look at or marvel over. true, so much stuff we don’t look at very often, but it makes for a wonderful rediscovery when we do. i look at our books and think, “if financial hard times come, we have lots and lots of hours of now-free entertainment.”

but yeah, i have stuff that i have kept for the wrong reasons. one time i upgraded my laptop’s memory and the store was going to give me a measly $5 for my old stick of ram and i thought i could get more on ebay, but i never got around to putting it up and now it’s essentially worthless. i have lots of junk like that unfortunately.

also, one big difference between our ancestors and us is that they did save a lot of fairly useless junk on the chance that it might be useful later. they were always finding creative ways of reusing things and prolonging the lives of the things that they owned. part of the reason why we live in a disposable world is that we are too quick to dispose of things rather than fixing things up or finding clever ways of reusing them.

junk can enslave us or set us free. a lot of it is in our mind. i don’t really understand the bare home aesthetic. homes like that strike me as not having as much character.

My wife is very anti-clutter, so we make the perfect Odd Couple, although I have been slowly coming around to her way of thinking. She does keep me in check, which definitely helps our financial and spatial situation.

Now if I could only get my parents to start purging a little…

I’m going through a major lifestyle change due to suddenly becoming the sole financial support for myself and my son AND remaining determined to continue homeschooling. We’re leaving a house that had walls of built-in bookcases (double-shelved with books) to a two-bedroom, no “extra space” home.

Reading this post was the kick I needed to be “okay” with purging my library. Truly, the only other option would be to rent a storage unit, and that’s sounding sillier by the second.

I’ve decided to do away with some of the “things” that have been ego enforcing purchases or things that have served to define who I am…but don’t really get used enough to justify having them. I’m talking about my $3,000 road bike and accompanying accessories, a boat load of books that prove how smart I am, a bunch of CD’s I could do without, an audiophile stereo system I can’t listen to loud enough to make worth it, a small hipsterish record collection, and some misc. electronic gadgets…GPS, SLR camera, etc.

I figure with the economy in a general state of continued tanking, I might as well get rid of it while I can and save for the money for stuff we really need. It will all be at a loss…which is why I like JD’s “sunk cost” analogy…no reason to live in the past, what’s done is done.

We are also thinking of moving into a MUCH smaller place soon to save money…and ridding ourselves of crap can’t hurt.

I try to keep that in mind before I buy things. By now, I know I won’t derive the same pleasure from those things after I’ve had them for a week or month or year as I thought I would.

It’s hard to quit the book habit though. I have managed to whittle my collection down to novels by favorite authors (which I do read again) and quality non-fiction books (which I do reference again for my own writing). Also, I dig the idea of supporting authors since I want to be one some day.

I save those and use them to decorate the Christmas tree each year. It’s a great time of year for remembering how much they loved Barney and Bananas in Pajamas!

I guess I don’t see how these books are a sunk cost. My comics aren’t getting in the way of being efficient, or of getting done what I need to do. The only time they’re ever really a pain is when I have to move them further back the shelf when I dust the shelves & house.

I do reread them, some far less than others, but I know if I ever need a gentle cheer-up after a stressful day, I can always pick up a Mad magazine paperback and unwind with Don Martin. I do get rid of a lot of things I don’t use – in fact, I get rid of my husband’s stuff sometimes when he’s not around and he’s never noticed so far. But I don’t see how owning Things or Stuff like books is a problem, especially since I hardly ever buy them, or I trade them in at the used bookstore for other ones.

I suppose I don’t understand how austerity is a big goal of frugality.

I know what my values are, but I don’t always remember how I got them until I pick up a book that I read when I was 10, or 15, or 37 and discover how profoundly it’s influenced my thinking and development.

I don’t think JD is saying people shouldn’t have stuff. If you like it and it makes you happy, then enjoy it. For me, before I buy anything, I ask myself where I’m going to store it, and unless it is consumable, if I like it enough to pack it up and move it in the future.

My 2 Cents