aftermath

This whole process was a very good experience for me. I got rid of so much junk and even though at this very moment my life is still a little cluttered, just knowing how much stuff I have gotten rid of is extremely satisfying.
Diogenes the Cynic basically associated possessions with unhappiness, and believed that the more one is able to live without possessions, the better off and happier they will be, because they are living in the moment and without anxiety. He took it to the extreme, living in a tub, eating the plainest food and wearing the coarsest clothes. I don't know if I agree with everything he said, but I think the less we tie up our happiness in things, the better off we will be, and he certainly seemed to have the courage to live out his convictions. Another great thing that has happened is that I've made so much more room now, it's as if my house has grown in size. The storage bins that I have been able to clear out will be more than adequate for storing the stuff that is left over. And finally, I knew I couldn't really do the 100 things challenge I mentioned in an earlier post, but this was something I could do to reduce clutter in my life. I reinforced something I knew about myself too, which was that I am much better at getting things done when I force myself to do something every day.
I hope other people out there are inspired by this small first step into doing something similar on their own. I do believe that possessions, especially unused posessions, have the effect of weighing you down, and when you rid yourself of some of those, you can live a slightly lighter existence. Plus, in the process of throwing things away, you really begin to realize what is important and what isn't, and you realize that there is less room in your life for what is just taking up space. Now the challenge is to apply what I've learned to other aspects of my life--and I think this was a great way to start down that path.

day thirty

So I thought and thought about what I might do for the last day of this project, and my friends of course had great ideas. I wanted to do something symbolic for the last day, but I didn't know quite what. One friend suggested I commit a crime and get arrested, therefore throwing my freedom away, but I thought that would be missing the point because of all the legal paperwork I would then have to deal with. Another said quitting my job might be a way to get rid of unwanted clutter, but that didn't sound too good either. I thought about getting rid of something that I didn't want to get rid of, but the whole point is to get rid of clutter, not give away stuff that you want to keep. Pretty much every day up until this point has had a theme as well, one day it's old clothes, old computer parts, etc.
So today I grabbed a bunch of stuff that was laying around randomly and the only thing I did differently this time was that I destroyed some of it with a two-by-four, so this blog could go out on a 'bang', but still remain on topic and on focus. This time it was old shelves, more CD's, a cd caddy, an envelope caddy, old clothes, etc. I have to say, it was quite satisfying to end it this way. Hopefully it marks a symbolic end to an activity I hope to be more aware of and curtail in the future.

day twenty-nine

Not a single one of these socks has its twin. Every single one is a solo sock. I did find two when I laid them out that matched, so score there. I think at this point I'm beyond any sort of logical explanation as to why I kept 9 unmatched socks hanging around. Really, what can you even do with unmatched socks? There are actually a lot of ideas, I liked the idea of using it as a swiffer pad or making a catnip bag out of it.
The last day is coming up. I'm pretty much out of ideas at this point; I'm down to the junk I do want to keep, while the junk I don't want to keep is gone. Looking around the house, I can't see any piles that I haven't decimated or eliminated, and it seems like since the beginning this blog has been about getting rid of not just one or two things, but piles and piles of things, and I think they are all gone. What's it gonna be?

day twenty-eight

I'm getting closer to the finish line and am actually starting to run out of things to get rid of. This is a little catch-all organizer that was supposed to just be used for personal items like cuff links, watches, wallets, that kind of thing. However, it has ensnared much more than that. However out of all this stuff, this was all I ended up throwing away: Not a lot really, although there are some interesting things, like the old OS for my drum machine (top right, looks like a computer chip), some oddly named lip balm (chicken poop??), some stamps that I have held on to forever, and will likely never use, as well as some random plastic pieces that I've kept because I thought that if I ever found what they came from, I would reattach them. I have never found where they came from, but now I know where they're going.
A lot of the stuff from this organizer got moved to different places (usually where similar stuff is), the rest got organized (I finally have all my spare buttons in one place), and now the organizer is close to what its original intention might have been. One nice offshoot of this project is that things that are alike are now getting their own space...games have their storage space, manuals have their area, CD's, etc., they are all coalescing into (small) piles where hopefully all I'll have to do is think of a type of thing I need, and I will be able to go straight to it.
I ran out of space on my camera, but when I clear some out, I'll take a picture of what it looks like now. It's a big improvement.
See, it looks better

day twenty-seven

I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only one who has collected so much, well, junk, around themselves. It's not like I'm Fred Sanford and just collect it; what invariably happens is that there are things that I end up with that I don't want to throw away just yet, or need to put in a particular place. So when I'm cleaning around the house, I'll just pick it up off the floor or wherever it is and put it in, typically, a shoebox. And after awhile, those shoeboxes just add up. I have kept personal letters, notes, and cards from everyone for years, but the box that held this stuff has just gotten bigger, and even though I didn't get rid of a whole lot, it is definitely a light and more organized shoebox now. The yo-yo was just a cheap christmas toy that I was hanging on to.
I found an H.P. Lovecraft quote in this box that I must have written down a long time ago, and even now, I still ascribe to it. First of all, let me say I don't dislike people who are missionaries, or particularly religious; they're usually upstanding, trustworthy, reliable citizens, whom I respect. My deal is that I don't like being evangelized to; in fact, I find it insulting. For one, I don't come up to you and evangelize, why would you come up to me and do the same? Besides, evangelizing seems like such a worthless enterprise. I've read that Jehovah's witnesses believe that only 144,000 people make it to heaven. If that's the case, why on earth are they going door to door? They are reducing their chances of getting there. There are admonitions in the bible to do this, in particular the last verses in the book of Matthew. The problem I have isn't going out and baptizing people in someone's name (or whatever your particular evangelism calls for), the problem is that you are essentially telling them they will go to hell if they don't accept what you say. That to me is unacceptable, and a false choice. To me a similar statement would be, "If you don't do what I say, then you are a terrorist".

day twenty-six

Only five more days to go! I have a small filing box where I keep important documents, like tax-related information, health and wellness stuff, pay stubs and bank statements, and other related items. I actually went through this a little bit earlier this year when I did taxes, but when I was cleaning out another box, I found a sack full of bank statements that went back many years, and that got me to thinking I needed to clean up my documents box. I've read that you don't need to hold on to that stuff for more than a year, so I ditched those bank statements, along with a bunch of other stuff that was just taking up room. I made sure I shredded everything so that my personal information wouldn't end up in the wrong hands. There ended up being so much that it took two garbage bags to hold it all, and my shredder overheated three times before I could finish. The end is in sight!

day twenty-five

For most things people buy, you get a user's manual or some sort of documentation or warranty card for the item, whether it be electronics, or a George Foreman grill, or whatever. I try to keep all of these, but I haven't cleaned house in that department in a while, so this was due. So I went through what I had, removed what I no longer owned, and organized what was left.
I've always been somewhat enamored by the notion of picking up and just going and moving whenever it hits you, but mostly in my mind, not so much in real life. I'm definitely not as free as say, the guy from "Into the Wild", but it's always been interesting to me to not be tied to anyone or anything or anyplace; I think it's one of those back-to-basics / back-to-nature things which I think are important for people to do from time to time, to keep perspective on what is and is not important. I guess though that I find it more satisfying to have music stuff and other things that make me happy surrounding me than I find the notion of moving around all the time. I don't know how close I am to the idea of having so few worldly possessions that I could just up and move at any time with little to no preparation, but it's definitely closer.

day twenty-four

Technology has moved on, and the CD has gone the way of the dinosaur. In this case, most of the CD's here were made for a wedding I DJ'd last summer; however, I didn't make track lists, so they are basically worthless to me now, and I have all the music in my iTunes already. I also went through some old software that I won't use anymore, like TurboTax from 2003, driver disks for hardware I no longer own, and a copy of GigaSampler LE, which only runs on Windows 98. I think it's pretty safe to say I won't go back to that platform just to use a piece of software. It looks like I got rid of at least 50 CD's. There were also a few DVD-R's that I chunked, because they were already on my computer. There are some software CD's that I don't think I will use, but might make images of just in case, before I throw them away too. Before, I needed a milk crate and another storage unit, both filled, to hold all the disks. Now, it fits in one. Fantastic!
One nice effect from this project has been that as I've thrown something away, it has alerted me to more stuff that I don't need, leading to a kind of snowball effect. For example, a lot of the CD's I got rid of were backups for a multitrack recorder I just sold on eBay, so they were pretty useless. And going through my old books clued me in to the numerous college papers that I had accumulated and kept for no obvious reason. Additionally, I keep clearing out storage boxes, so it will be much easier to get everything packed away should I need to move or just to get things out of the living area. It has also really opened up my living space; when I first moved in, the only downside was that I had too much stuff for the space. Now however, it seems like my stuff fits much more easily. Fancy that. :)

day twenty-three

Today I'm throwing out more A/V cables, computer parts, and used printer cartridges. However, I don't want to just throw all the stuff away, some of them have salvageable parts that I know should be recycled or that people can use. In a way, this blog is turning somewhat into a how-to on how to responsibly dispose of things that should not go into a landfill.
For example, this blog has been hell on batteries for my digital camera; I have run through a pack of eight in about a week. I found that locally, you can recycle batteries at the library right down the street, in addition to Walgreens stores around town. I had forgotten about that, this was a good reminder. I will just collect all I have before I take them in. I don't think they accept laptop batteries, but I may be able to recycle them through the manufacturer. I also found another chicago city government project that will recycle old computer parts, and it looks like it's free. A lot of this information comes from earth911.org and of course cursory Google searches. There are some IDE and floppy cables I am getting rid of as well, that will go to this recycling center. (My next computer won't even use IDE, at least for hard drives, since SATA is the new standard.) I checked into dropping some of this computer stuff off at a local Staples, but they charge, and like I've mentioned earlier, it just doesn't seem right to charge extra for something that is the right thing to do, especially since it would be free to throw the stuff in the garbage. I also have some old speaker cable, RJ-58 cable, and printer cartridges to get rid of. Hopefully the recycling center will take that stuff as well.
more (crappy) pics:

day twenty-two

This was an easy one; I forgot that I even had these. One of my jobs in the last few years was putting up christmas lights at the zoo, which I did for two years. So these are definitely from that period of time. I have two unopened boxes of christmas lights as well, but I didn't throw those away, my opinion for this project is that I should only throw things away that I should have thrown away already but haven't. Unopened boxes of christmas lights that I might use don't seem to fall in that category for me. If I get desperate towards the end though, who knows what might get chucked?

day twenty-one

I actually had to think a little bit tonight about what I would throw away. A lot of the obvious stuff I have already thrown away. However, when I was going through books the other night (which I donated to the Salvation Army last night, along with a bunch of the stuff that has appeared on this blog), in that box of books was another collection of mostly college-era papers and personal items, like letters and cards and my letters for making the Dean's list. I wasn't able to get rid of as many as I was able to the first time, but at least I have pared all that college stuff down to one box. I also came across a lot of the old decorations I've put up in the past; they are mostly collage type items, that seems to be my favorite way to decorate. I kept most of the decoration stuff, but that stuff may end up in the bad stack before the thirty days are up.
Perhaps counterintuitively, everything seems more cluttered right now than it did before. However, there are a couple of reasons for this I think. One, a lot of this stuff was in boxes in a storage area, and so they were not in open, but now that they are, I can see how much room they were taking up, and I am waiting to re-pack those items for the end of this project. And by bringing all these old boxes out of storage, I am finding out how much of a smaller footprint I could be making, or how much of one I have already been making. Another thing is that once the thirty days are up, I should have plenty of room to store whatever's left and reorganize everything, but right now, a lot of what didn't get thrown away is sitting out waiting to be stored again, creating a lot of extra clutter. But undoubtedly, with all the stuff that's been thrown away, it should free up lots of space and should be far neater around the house after I'm done. Also, as soon as all the stuff I sold on eBay is shipped, that should help out, as a lot of that stuff is sitting about. The nice thing is that things are going in piles, which should be easy to store again, especially since I've already cleared out a storage bin or two and they are just waiting to be reapportioned.

day twenty

This one wasn't too hard...it was already all in one place and ready to go. I just had to put it in a box and send it off. I had even decided what I was going to do with them already...in this case, donate them to the AIDS Healthcare foundation. I just had to make sure all my data was off of them (although it can still be gotten off by a determined person I think), but I did the best I could. I did keep one extra phone for emergencies.
I seriously need to make a trip to goodwill today after work, because I don't know how much of the stuff that hasn't gone straight into the garbage they will take. I think they take books and clothes, but I'm not that sure about the other stuff. We'll see, and I'll report back here.

Update: The Salvation Army took the dartboard, the VCR, the banjo, my old clothes, and all the old books, although they somewhat balked at the books. This place looks like the place I'll start to put together a halloween costume. ;-)

day nineteen

Before I start today's post, I'd just like to let you know where I got this idea from. I had heard of a project called "100 things", and this was my derivation on that theme. But the idea is the same...declutter your life.
So today's items are some things that have been just sitting around the house that I likely won't use. I still haven't planted anything in either of these containers (which was presumably why I was keeping them), plus they would probably both need holes drilled in them, and I don't have a drill. Also, I didn't purchase either of these items, they just ended up in my possession. (The tall one used to hold my umbrella, which is missing now, and the other was a planter for a plant that died a few years ago.) Buh-bye. and buh-bye.

day eighteen

I collect boxes. Well I shouldn't say 'collect'--whenever I buy something, I tend to like to keep the box, so I have a storage area where I have all these boxes stored, so I went through that stuff. Some of the boxes I still kept, but I determined that these boxes would probably never get used, no matter the situation, so they got tossed. Particularly funny is the 10 year old plus answering machine box. I still have the answering machine, but I don't even know if it works anymore. I did keep a few boxes, all of it music equipment boxes, but as you can see, I did throw away a box that one of my recording devices came in; it's in a rack now, and I doubt I will move it out of the rack, so bye bye.
I'm beginning to think that 30 days might not be enough. It seems like every time I go to throw some stuff away, more stuff appears. In the box of old books I found yesterday, there are a bunch of decorations from my former house, and a whole lot of papers and things I should go through. If you had asked me about that stuff, I couldn't have told you that I had it, which I think is kind of a bad thing. You should be aware of the stuff you have, if you are not aware of it, you probably don't need it.

day seventeen

I found a box today that had in it, among other things, a bunch of books, so I used it as an opportunity to go through my old books and get rid of the ones I don't want or need anymore. For example, I doubt I will ever need to have a book that tells me how to use Solaris 2 or Flash MX. You might be asking, why is he throwing away a bible? I don't remember how I even got it, but the inside cover says it was a gift from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'm not a Mormon, and I have another bible anyways. The Zen book came from an extended family member, and I swear, that is one useless book. I could never get into it, and it was sent as a gift. This is another one of those items that I should've have gotten rid of long ago, I just never did. And of course, I don't really need the Chicago tour guides...not so much. I've been here long enough, I don't need a tour guide book anymore. The red book in the upper right is a book that I've had since college, it was just laying around somewhere at college and I ended up with it. The book is so bad, the library threw it in their 'discarded' pile. If even a library won't keep a book, it's probably a bad book. The ESP and You book actually has something interesting to say about ESP if I remember right...basically the main thing I got out of that book was the ESP can be achieved, that it is mostly a state of mind, and that through relaxation and breathing techniques, and that if two people both do this, that there can be some ESP-type communications between them. Which to me, seems almost believable. Here's hoping someone will get something out of these books.

day sixteen

In my day life I work in tech, so having this stuff lying around isn't surprising. What is surprising though is that I kept these items, but had no intention of using them again. One of the CD drives I actually taped closed; that's a pretty good indication that it doesn't work. To be honest, I think I had it in an old machine to just keep there from being a gap in the drive bays. Now though, I no longer have that luxury, as anything that isn't nailed down has to go. The power supply burned out awhile ago, I have no idea why I kept it. I think that I thought it wasn't really blown, but I turned it on and got nothing, so it's getting chucked. The laptop battery at the top is dead too, no reason to hang on to that.
One nice side effect of this project is that every time I go into an area to start throwing stuff away, I find other stuff that's ready to go to, for example, those black dividers to the right. Those were originally part of a CD stand, but that stand is long gone, yet I still have those dividers. Why? Partly because at some level, I have amassed enough stuff to not know what the heck I have.
Another issue I have is putting this stuff into the landfill. So, I went into a local Staples because I heard that they had a recycling program. However, like a lot of these recycling programs, there is a charge. It's hard to do the right thing when the right thing to do is harder than the wrong thing. I did find some websites with information about the topic for Chicago area. My best bet is to just collect all the electronic items into one stack and then just pay the 5 or 10 dollars to have the stuff recycled. I guess the right thing sometimes costs you, but in a way, that's good, because it makes you appreciate that you did the right thing.

day fifteen

All this stuff came from the top of my dresser. I've been wanting to do something about this for awhile, and occasionally I do clean it up, but usually as soon as it gets cleaned, it starts to collect more stuff. There are old bus cards, phone numbers and business cards which I'll never need or use, a coupon for a free drink at Frank's (those cards get around more than a slutty ex-girlfriend), some random sunglasses that aren't mine, and coin rollers, which I used to use, but it turns out these days if you take change into a bank, they just unroll it and put it into the coin counter anyway. Plus other stuff--as usual, more junk I don't need or want, but never made time to get rid of. The pictures below are the 'before' and 'after' pics of my dresser -- what an improvement. The simple fact that messy areas of my house are getting cleaned up is almost worth it, even if I weren't getting rid of all this junk as well.

BEFORE


AFTER

day fourteen

Another outdated technology. Storage has gotten so cheap, and so compact, that storing things on removable disks doesn't seem a very good way to do things anymore. This drive was given to me by a friend, and at the time it was useful, because I needed to get some data off old disks, but I haven't used this in forever. I still use ZIP 250's in one of my music machines, but I have two of those already, so this seems pretty obsolete. In its time, it was pretty good, but now, I can get 64GB on a pen drive. It makes 100MB seem pretty small.
There's a couple of other things (pictured below) that I will take to the recycling center as well, but I'm going to try to sell them on eBay first. If they don't sell, no big whoop, I'll take 'em to get recycled. If they do, then hopefully someone will make good use of them. But whatever the outcome, they are getting out of here.

day thirteen

First of all, who uses VCR's anymore, right? (I do actually, I have another one attached to my tv and I use it to pick up and sometimes record tv channels over the air.) I'm kind of a late adopter when it comes to new gadgets, especially if the gadget I currently have works fine. I didn't get a DVD player until three years ago, and even now I hardly watch DVD's. I guess the reason is I don't watch that many movies at home, I have enough distractions to let myself start watching movies regularly. This VCR was given to me by an ex-girlfriend's dad, and I tried not to take it, but he insisted. I thought maybe I could use it to dub VCR tapes, but I don't think I've ever done that. I'm putting this into the stack that's going to a recycling center. I think one reason I haven't wanted to throw some of this stuff away, especially electronics, and especially if they still work, is that I don't think this kind of thing should end up in a landfill. Ideally, I could give it to someone would want to use it, but it's not worth the trouble of finding them. So off to the recycling center it will go.

day twelve

I've figured out where a lot of the stuff I've been throwing away has been coming from. People give you gifts, and for whatever reason, you hang on to them, even if you don't need them or want them. Take this dartboard for example. I got this as a Christmas present maybe five years ago, and this is actually the second one, because as soon as I opened the first one, it didn't work at all. I took it and exchanged it for this one, which wasn't that much better. I haven't even seen this thing, much less played with it, in that time, so obviously this has to go. Granted, as a kid I used to play with my brother all the time when he came to visit, but now it just doesn't seem relevant.

day eleven

Wow, I have a lot of crap. In today's haul, we have a town house box top, the eyepiece for a microscope, some papers from first year at Millsaps, and some mardi gras beads. What is baffling to me is why I would hang on to this stuff for so long. I guess the answer is that I didn't really mean to keep this stuff, I just never decided to throw it away. And I don't see it much of the time, so as they say, out of sight, out of mind.
All this stuff came from a footlocker that my parents gave me a long time ago. Footlockers don't seem to be a terribly great way to store stuff, or a very good piece of furniture, but I guess they do well enough in both to warrant this one sticking around. (That was my Andy Rooney impression, did you pick up on that??) I have to give it props for its longevity, though. I'm going to go put it on notice -- it had better do something great in the next two weeks to keep it from getting the axe!

day ten

I have had this box of papers since graduating college. And it's heavy! There were notebooks and folders from at least 10 separate classes which I had been keeping, I guess, to go back to at some point and review my notes, but really, was that ever going to happen? In my defense, when I went through all these papers last night, there was still some things that I decided not to throw away, like some photocopied articles, some of my better papers from college, that kind of stuff, but it sure felt good to throw those things away. As you can tell by the pictures, the paper stack was a good foot and a half, two feet tall. That's a lot of papers.
I think that, at least now, there hasn't been any pain as relates to throwing out any of this crap, it's all been cathartic. Each time has been mostly a feeling of, "wow, less to deal with, awesome!" I wonder if I will get to the point where I don't really want to throw stuff away? I'm one-third of the way in, so we'll see as this project gets closer to the finish line.

day nine

What says "throw me away" this holiday season better than cassette tapes? Some of the tapes were mix tapes that were in such bad shape that I doubt my piddly little tape player would play them. Most of the tapes are from a tape grab a store was having down the street. They were going out of business and were selling them 10 for a dollar. I just got everything that I thought might be remotely listenable. There are still some tapes I want to transfer, but I weeded the herd out a good bit. I mean, what's the point hanging on to tapes? The quality is just going to degrade, plus, nothing that I spend time in has a tape player anyway, and I have most of them on cd or on disk. The one thing that I liked about tapes was making your own mix, and you could throw them around in your car and they'd be fine. Please feel free to have a laugh at my expense when you see what some of the tapes are. :)