Being locked inside the past year has really highlighted how much crap we've accumulated over the past 10 years. When you look around the house for a place to put a few hand weights and get a workout in and it requires you moving stuff, it's not a good sign.
The walls feel like they are closing in on us. The house small. So, we've slowly been working our way through things.
Photos and Posters
We've been accumulating a pile of posters of various sizes that we kept saying we would get framed some day.
We've spent the past 10 years (I'm not lying, it's 10 years of True/False posters) just moving this pile of posters from room to room. Well, we sucked it up, paid the price (it was too much), and are getting them framed finally.
I'm carrying around dusty and faded Walgreens' envelopes that contain poorly shot photos of my 8th grade graduation. There's the high-school senior camping trip, shot on a disposable camera on a particularly hot June night where not a single one of my friends isn't a sweaty mess.
These things bring warm memories, but why do I have a plastic tub I haul out of storage in the basement every few years to flip through a few envelopes and say, "Yep, these pictures are still here."
I've been using an app by Google called Photo Scan which takes 4 pictures of your actual photo and stiches them together to give you a high res, low glare digital image.
That's right, I'm going fully digital. And I'm not going to stop at pictures. I'll probably do concert tickets, cards I've kept over the years, maybe even some drawings I have.
Junk Drawers
We started going through various junk drawers. We have six lighters, two of them work. Throw away the other four.
There's four screws buried in the back of the drawer that look like they went to some patio furniture, but I can't figure out what. Gone!
We had a freaking key ring that looked like a cartoon janitors key ring. Some of them are labeled with people's names, but most of those people have moved 2-3 times in the past five or so years. The likelihood that any of these keys work, is pretty low.
The spare garage door opener... why do I have this?
- Someone broke my garage door a long time ago trying to open it with the latch done up
- My garage hasn't had electricity in it for years. (Been waiting for a storm knock that shit over and let me get a new one)
I've got a stack of broken down boxes for graphics cards for my old desktop computer, the old Chromebook, LEGO sets. Why am I keeping this stuff? What drives a person to think, "You know, someday, I may pull the RAM out of my computer and I might need a place to store them."
And then there's the box of wires. Yes, the trusty box of wires. Why do I need 8 VGA cables when I have 0 monitors that use them? What about my 32 micro-USB cords for phones we haven't had in years? What about that one Apple cord that appears to be for a forth Gen iPod? Throw it all out.
Kitchen Junk
We used to go to a lot of beer festivals and special pourings. So I have an overly full cabinet (s) with various tulip glasses, pint glasses, sampler glasses, tall girl glasses, pilsner glasses... we don't need it. Anymore, I drink beer from the can most the time. At the very least, I only need one or two of each type.
Same goes for mugs. There was one Christmas where Sal really wanted some nice mugs and I think literally everyone bought her a set of mugs. I'm decently popular, but I don't know if I'm ever making coffee for more than like 8 people at a time. I don't need 14 mugs just in case I host a small coffee party.
And how many years did the company we worked for think, "You know what would really inspire my employees, a knock-off Yeti tumbler with the company logo on it." Sorry Wells Fargo, I don't have any room in my cabinet for your crap anymore.
And gadgets... single use gadgets. In the moment, that apple slicer sounds like a great idea, but I also have $100 knives that do the same job in almost the same amount of time.
Why do I have 3 food torches? (Does anyone want a nice food torch still in box?) I eat French Onion soup maybe 3 times a year and barely ever make desserts or cocktails that would require a torch, yet I have three of them.
Hobbies of Years Past
I bought a workout bench, it was cheap and had too many attachments. I couldn't use it. Gone. Sold for $20.
Pickling was something Sal picked up for a bit, but we haven't touched that stuff in a couple years. Gone!
The giant drafting table I used for drawing, it's collecting dust and taking up space. I'll try to sell that in a few weeks.
Brewing. I miss brewing. I like brewing a lot. Unfortunately most of my friends that I used to do it with got jobs at actual breweries and don't do it for fun anymore.
I still kicked the tires on it every now and then and would do a brew on a day off until all my grain got infected with bugs. I tossed the ingredients. So I either need to invest a few hundred dollars in ingredients and CO2 and replacement hoses or I need to cut my losses and sell my equipment.
With my knee and how busy I usually am, I just don't have the time or strength to do brewing anymore.
Essentially I don't want to end up 60 years old with a garage and basement full of stuff I don't use, stuff that I move from house to house with that one scenario in the back of my mind where I might need a PlayStation 3 power cord or I wish I kept that wire drawer.
I find the less stuff I have, generally the happier I am. Having stuff makes me feel like I need more stuff.
So if you're looking for some good stuff, check the Goodwill in the city cause we've been making weekly deposits there.
