Tiny Grass » getting rid of stuff

The joy of getting rid of stuff

Arp — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:41:57 +0000

Yesterday we donated 7 bags of baby clothes. We can get rid of a lot more books than we thought since we’re going to get an e-reader sometime this year (maybe the Kindle 2 when it’s released). It feels really good to just get rid of stuff. Makes me, the prodigal packrat, look at things in a new way. I always wondered how the hell people had really spare & zen living spaces and I just might *get it* now. Get rid of anything that isn’t needed or used.

Hopefully today’s productivity will also entail

packing a barrel
translating, reading & signing our lease (legal docs in Costa Rica need to be in Spanish)
ordering some documents (birth certificates, etc) that we need for residency
figuring out the bank transfer action

As I learned in my high school French class, Petit a petis l’oiseau fait son nid.

Little by little the bird builds its nest. The only way to get all of our packing & prep done is to just do it bit by bit.

Finally packing – 1 bag down!

Arp — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:56:00 +0000

After weeks of workaholism on my part, we FINALLY did some packing yesterday. Trish purged her wardrobe of many articles of clothing (some 4 garbage bags worth – thankfully the clothing bin at the local FD had room). We packed one suitcase full of warm weather maternity clothes and stuffed animals until it was 50lbs. We’re working within the confines of Continental’s checked baggage policy – each of us gets 1 bag checked for free and can add a second for $25. Each bag can have a maximum weight of 50lbs, which we have to stick to because going over equals an extra charge of $50. And even that has a max of 70lbs, at which point they’d just refuse the bag. The good thing is that there are 4 of us, so we can check 8 bags for $100 extra total. Not a bad deal at all. So one down, 7 to go!

In the process we’re craigslisting, freecycling and just plain getting rid of Stuff. And that feels GREAT. I never felt possessions as a weight but getting rid of them feels like a weight lifting. Maybe it’s chi – who knows? I think getting rid of stuff that are remnants of a past life is really it. It’s hard to move forward if you keep looking behind and the closer we get to the move, the more I find myself looking forward and not back . It took me years to learn to just move on and stop wishing that this & that were different. In some ways, I don’t have a choice so there are no more excuses to procrastinate. And I don’t think it’s reinventing myself as much as just becoming me.

Shedding the past

Arp — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:53:41 +0000

I’ve been a packrat my whole life, but apparently I want to move to Costa Rica way more than I want my Stuff. Like a stash of old t-shirts – at some point, they were all so precious to me that I couldn’t part with them. A Catholic grammar school t-shirt and a high school sweatshirt – gone. (or rather, sent to Goodwill) And the concert t’s – echoes of a past me. T-shirts from Van Halen (age 14), Tesla (20-ish) and KMFDM (22-ish) – all gone.

Shedding stuff became a lot easier when I learned about the Pareto principle – aka the 80-20 rule. Generally, 20% of something results in 80% of something else. For businesses, the rule of thumb is that 20% of your customers result in 80% of your business. After reading The Four Hour Workweek, I immediately applied it to my wardrobe. I had 3-4 favorite pants & 3-4 favorite shirts I’d wear at any given time. The majority of everything else was rarely touched and I got rid of roughly 75% of my clothes. (I just did another round and ditched another 20%.)

Letting go of that made it easier to get rid of stuff around the house. And it really was letting go. Letting go of the past, of the life I thought I wanted. At the last meeting of our unschooling tribe I finally managed to articulate it – it was clinging to the stuff that I knew, at a time when I was almost rudderless in life. (For peeps in Pennsylvania, it’s guns & religion – for me, it’s a load of crap ) Now the focus on what I want my life to be is distinct, and I can shed all the stuff from times past.