Doing Without

My car is at the repair shop to be worked on tomorrow.  Right now I have no mode of transport except my feet (and maybe a rusty bike in the garage).  There is a feeling of being unbalanced.  Something I’m used to having near me at all times (my car) isn’t there now.  This is a good feeling.

Not being able to drive wherever I want does limit my freedom. That’s not the good part, because BLDB is all about increasing freedom.  The good thing is that having something I’m used to suddenly gone adds drama to my boring life.  It forces me to think creatively about alternative ways to get things accomplished.  Or even to reconsider the need to accomplish things I’m used to doing by habit.

Downsizing Audio Equipment

I’m thinking about buying an iPod.  Don’t worry, I’m not giving in to a consumerist urge to buy something just for the sake of having a new toy.  Buying an iPod might be a way to minimize audio equipment.

My current audio setup consists of a large old “boom box” type stereo with two cassette decks and a single CD player, along with AM/FM radio.  I also have at least one bankers box full of old cassette tapes which I never listen to, about 40 CD’s, and a small collection of songs I bought from iTunes.  The stereo is a rather large black plastic monolith with takes up a big part of my desk.

The idea is to sell the stereo and replace it with an iPod and a radio/speaker unit.  That would take up much less desk space.  With no tape player, there’s no need to hang onto the box of cassettes, so they could be thrown out or given away.  The CD collection can be loaded into iTunes and copied onto the iPod.  I’d keep the CD’s of course so I can legally play the music, but they can be packed away instead of sitting around my desk in piles of clutter.  The speaker set would have an AM/FM radio built in so I can still listen to my stations, and it may include a remote control which I don’t have now.

A more radical idea is to get rid of the stereo and tapes, and not replace it with anything.  Do I really need a set of speakers on my desk?  The computer with iTunes could be the music player.  I would miss having a radio, which I use every day.  I’m no audiophile, but the little built-in speakers on my computer aren’t very good for music.

Anyway, there’s no definite plan yet for this, but I do think that I need to go digital to reduce my audio stuff.  Any suggestions?

How Did It Get Like This?

That is the question organizing expert Peter Walsh would ask on the TV show Clean Sweep.  I loved that show!  When the re-runs were played on Saturday mornings a couple years ago I recorded them and kept my favorite ones.  (Collecting episodes of  an anti-clutter show – how sick is that?) The usual answer from the homeowners to Peter Walsh’s question was some nervous laughter, and “we just never threw anything away”.

People who grew up during the Great Depression learned to keep as much as possible “just in case”, so they could survive with low or uncertain income.  They typically retain these habits their whole lives.  My grandparents were like that.

I suppose I went through my own personal economic crisis during the four years I was semi-homeless and unemployed.  Keeping all things with potential usefulness was a survival tactic for me that was necessary.  Now that I’m no longer in a survival mode, it’s still tough to give up those ingrained practices.

Add to this – the fact that as a kid I used to collect things as a hobby.  Rocks, electronic parts, magazines, plastic models, etc.  Nothing of real value, just stuff that was only important to me.  That mindset probably prepared me to enter my period of compulsive hoarding, triggered by the lack of income.  During that time, things that were broken beyond repair were thrown out, along with real garbage like kitchen waste.  Everything else was stored and packed away in case I could use it for something instead of spending money.

It wasn’t just my stuff I collected!  When helping a friend move, they usually had things that they didn’t want to take with them.  I’d accept this stuff – toaster oven, lamps, a chair, books, etc.

Lots of stuff was from my grandfather’s house that I took after he died.  Looking back, I know that I took way too much from that house.  Furniture mostly.  We hired someone to clear out the house prior to sale, and I could have left more there for them to deal with.  But the stuff reminded me of growing up and visiting the grandparent’s house.  It was the first death of a family member I experienced as an adult, and the grief seemed easier to bear with their possessions near me.

Reduction Hiatus

Little has happened this past month on the reduction project, partly due to going on a summer trip, but mostly feeling overwhelmed by how much has to be done.  The small house for sale in the neighborhood has been a distraction, but I must stop thinking about it because it’s in such poor condition that it needs to be torn down and rebuilt.  I can’t afford to build a house from scratch.

My goal was to get rid of the storage unit by the end of August, but I’m still renting it.  My mind is still spinning from one whirlwind week in July when I sold off lots of furniture and tossed so many things in the trash.  I suppose my biggest problem is how powerless I seem to be regarding getting rid of the other people’s things.  One way or another though, I want to empty that storage unit before the snow falls – otherwise I’ll be stuck renting it for another winter.

Been thinking that I should change the name of this blog to better illustrate what it is about.  The Bakelite Doorbell is a symbol of the problem I have with stuff, but a web surfer seeing the name wouldn’t think it was about minimalism, anti-consumerism, clutter psychology and such.  Most of the web searches that land here are people looking for actual doorbells!