It's the most wonderful time of the year!

 Happy New Years!  Let's throw away everything!

 It's the most wonderful time of the year, new years!  It's my favorite time of the year because to me it means over committing.  It's my favorite new years pass time, flush with resolutions.  This year I plan to set aside a boat load of money, eat Whole 30 (for like a real 30 days), write a blog post a week (yeah, no problem).  Oh and I'm doing this thing, The Year of Less (The Year of Less).  Basically the year of less is you forego buying new shit, and needless shopping activities like buying lattes by the gallon, and you get rid of a bunch of your surplus shit.  The consequence is that you have less things which equals Buddha like contentedness.

My life is already designed to be relatively small.  I live in a 480sqft apartment.  I don't have any additional storage.  I really don't like to own too many things.  However despite living small by design I still have managed to accumulate a lot of things.  Some of these things have been given to me by friends when they saw and were scared of my lifestyle.  These things include: a bed, a couch, dishes (plates, bowls, silverware, and kitchen utensils).  Those are pretty standard for living.  The things that I seem to accumulate in excess seem to be: vinyl records, books, and art supplies.  While these things are not inherently bad they seem to represent some state of being anchored to the inanimate objects.  I once aspired to be a van dwelling road junky, but realistically that never came to fruition.   I traveled the U.S for about 3 months by way of Corvette and thought this is great I should do more of this.  I came home to get my life in order, both objects and bills, and never left for the road again.  That was four years ago.

In addition I have found coupled with my staying in one place lifestyle that I've started to accumulate things. I've started buying things sometimes for the sake of starting this project, but never moving forward.  I have a host of online services that seldom get used.  I pay for these things every month.  I used to joke about having a gym membership, but never working out as a type of fat tax.  Now I pay for Kindle Unlimited but also have a pile of unread books in my apartment.  I suppose that's some sort of dumb tax.

The point is that accumulation seems to be my default.  Sometimes I purge and get rid of things, but I hardly keep a practice of ensuring I don't get more.  So far my basic defense against accumulation has been living in a small apartment and even that's starting to get cluttered with unused items.  My bank account is drained by unused services that represent the hopes that I'll read more or be more creative.

My strategy is hardly unique.  I've already gotten rid of all the major things in my apartment that have been stagnant that I know I need to get rid of.  This includes clothes and items set aside for Goodwill.  Throwing away things I think aren't even worth giving to other people for free.  That leaves me with all the camouflaged and emotionally attached items.

When I say camouflaged items I mean the things that hide in every day life.  A good example here is my Ninja Professional blender.  I bought the blender, with the hopes of drinking myself thin on the Keto diet, during a different over commitment.  It now sits in my kitchen, dusty, hiding between my coffee maker and electric kettle.  The tricky part here is finding such things, but once I identify I don't use an item I really don't have too much trouble getting rid of it.  

 

To eliminate camouflaged items I have gone through my apartment section by section in great detail.  I started with my bathroom, then to my coat closet.  After that my book shelf, clothing closet.  The main studio area of my apartment.  The drawers of my computer desk. Then finally my kitchen.  I looked at each item and asked my self if I really need this item?  When is the last time I used this item?  When do I plan to next use this item?  Any items that I couldn't identify a clear answer on at least one of those questions was obviously out.  Some items however were tied to a dream.  For instance my Go Pro Hero 3.  I used it to take a bunch of photos when I was on the road and thought it'd be a great dash cam when I went back out (assuming I went back out).  Items like this are tough because they'll be used "someday", but not with any clear time line.  Ultimately I decided to list the item for sale online.  It's not  that it wouldn't be a great item to have for future adventures.  The problem is that the future adventures were not embedded in any concrete reality.  I had to let go of the possible hopefulness for a better reality right now.  If I do get to the point in the future where I have a mobile reality I could negotiate buying a used dash cam then, thus breaking the weak justification.

Then there are the emotionally attached items.  Sometimes these items have value to other people in the world, but often they only have value to me.  An example of this is a birthday card.  The cards financial worth is nearly nil, but it holds value to me.  One card isn't so much a problem.  Every card that you've ever been given is a pile starts that to become an issue.

 

I still don't really have a great technique for letting go of objects with emotional attachment.  I thought about taking a picture of some of the sentimental objects that are mostly flat memories.  After all it's the thought that counts right?  But in reality sometimes you want to have an artifact laying around reminding you that someone cares about you.  If I relegate these memories to a digital location there is a good chance I'll not stumble through the online album the way I sometimes comb through an old box in the closet.  Maybe that's just being old fashion.  I'll have to work on it.

So far I've been able to eliminate a fair amount of junk.  I've gotten rid of a fair amount of books I was able to admit to myself I would never read and if I would I could go back and get a digital copy.  I've sorted out a fair amount of bulk vinyl to get rid of.  I've assessed and eliminated three keyboards.  And I've finally started listing my old weed vape (long over do).  All in all the beginning of change feels really good and gives me an activity that reduces my mental burden.  I give it a full two weeks before I want it all back!