Ok, I obviously love getting rid of stuff.
However, there are two deep, deep, subjects that I balk at dealing with...ever.
Most things, with years of practice and continued philosophical testing have started to come easy.
Money management, after years of practice that's easy.
Clothes, love to donate them.
Dust collectors (statues, odd n ends), VERY easy to get rid of (maybe a little too fun to smash or shoot in the desert.)
Cheap things that are easy to repurchase, why do I even own these?
As for my two worst subjects....
Books....I SWEAR, I WILL read them.
Papers....I'm pretty sure they reproduce. They are impossible to truly get rid of. Especially when I have a note of inspiration scribbled on an old receipt for a book idea that I've had.
The thing about books is I come from a book culture. My family is full of writers. My mom is a librarian. I grew up with two very tall book shelves set prominently in our living room. I've been writing since second grade. I'm an avid reader and like to quickly acquaint myself with whatever local library happens to be near by. I've always had a book shelf stuffed with books. I cry whenever I read about how the Nazi's burned books. Barnes and Noble is my happy place for spending money.
Granted, I'm not a stranger to donating books. It's just very, very, very difficult to convince myself that I will never read, re-read, or even reference a particular book. I try to think about it philosophically. Books are the absolute worst to move. They are heavy and awkward and if you're not reading them, they will collect dust. Once the knowledge or joy has been obtained, what use is it? I have a small collection currently with me and whole collection still waiting for me to sift through at my mothers house. Is it really worth it?
Yes.
Because I need them for professional reference both as a writer and as an aspiring body works expert.
What if I need reference materials when I retake certification exams?
What if this is the only reference I have to that particular inspiring myth?
It's a classic. I like to reread it.
Hello, it's The Hobbit.
I like books. I like having them. I like reading them. I like browsing my full shelf on rainy days and revisiting select passages. It makes my world complete. The only reason I'm not up to my eyeballs in books is because libraries exist.
I guess I can take comfort in knowing that I have the ability to donate books. It's just that more books than Marie Kondo would ever approve of still give me all kinds of joy. That's why, even though I love Barnes and Noble, I only visit once or twice a year.
As for papers. I do try, but I really do think they multiply. I try to revisit the subject on a regular basis for maintenance, but I'm pretty sure it's a losing battle.
We all have our struggles.
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
My Conversion to Living Tiny
I know. Two tiny living posts in a row, but I felt inspired. One of the keys to being a good writer is to sometimes allow your inspiration to carry you away.
Why do I love tiny living? What is the appeal? I grew up in the largest house on our 70's middle class street and managed to snag the largest kid bedroom. By all predictions, tiny should not have been in my living standards vocabulary.
It all started with a cat.
Yes. A cat. I'm one of those people who enjoy snuggling warm soft fuzzy things that purr at me and cover me with sticky hair. I'm unashamed. When I was eleven I realized I wanted a cat, really, really badly. So badly, that for two months I would only check out books with cats in them especially if they were purely educational to impress my parents. After some bargaining, I convinced my parents that if I managed to keep my room white glove clean for a solid month, then I could be the proud owner of a tiny kitten. I got two kittens and I proudly took care of their every puke and water need.
That exercise taught me that a clean room was a pleasant room especially when compared to the bed of stuffed animals, clothes, and plastic that used to be my floor. I also learned that if you don't want your shirt to be vomited on, it's better to keep it off the floor.
Years later, I realized that my personal stress level would be great reduced after taking time to reorganize my room. As a creative person, I loved to relocate my furniture and this was more easily done when the room was clean. I also got a sense of pride displaying my hard work to my family members.
Hard work, done well, feels good, after all.
This all contributed to my enjoyment of organizing tons of stuff into boxes. However, I didn't really start to see the benefit of living with less until I worked a couple of summers cleaning out homes for some wealthy friends of my mother. They had big houses. Really big. And it was full to the brim with stuff they hadn't touched in years. My job was to help them get rid of it.
I remember one particular room. It was completely stocked with enough ramen noodles to keep a soup kitchen going for a month. It was bought and stored with the good intention of being a food source in case something bad happened. A noble precaution, except the food hadn't been checked on for so long that three mice had chewed, peed and pooped on every single package. The mice themselves were found dead on top of the crispy noodles. Probably from ramen noodle overdose. Incredibly, they were also expired.
Another house was so littered with tiny random things like paper and beads that hours of work felt like doing nothing at all. I remember sitting in a tiny five by eight work studio and just looking at the stacks of paper, crafts, music charts, and other tiny bits of stuff. The piles of things were stacked higher than my shoulder as I sat on the floor and I thought, "If that tipped over, I could be buried alive, and no one would ever know."
During those summers the question kept popping up over and over, "Who needs this much stuff?" The answer, of course, is always, "Well I do. That's why I bought it. Even if I can't remember why."
I learned a lot about the psychology behind keeping stuff that summer. A lot of the stuff they hadn't touched in years was labeled generally as, "just in case," or, "the project I started, but never finished, but I am going to finish it someday." While, "just in case" can be largely justified in terms of emergency or food storage, I feel like the second one is more emotionally based than logical. Honestly, it just seemed sad. It was a stress that wasn't necessary and it effectively cut off entire rooms from access to those who lived there. Those projects hadn't been touched in years. I knew they weren't going to finish it. They knew they weren't going to finish it. Yet they were content to let that project eat at the back of their "to do" list that is never completed. They were content to walk by open doorways or peak in the drawers of their home and feel the tiny pricks of guilt for not doing what they said they were going to do. Every. Single. Time. For. YEARS.
For some people I guess that works. It might even be a comforting thing. For people like me, it would be like continuing to eat sugar with a bad cavity. I can understand being desensitized to the thing, but that tiny prick of guilt does leave a mark somewhere in the esteem area of the subconscious.
Next reason for liking the tiny life style. I moved. A lot.
We all know moving is a pain. We also all know that moving with a lot of stuff is even more of a pain. Between college semesters, I got really good at downsizing to the bare essentials of living, if not to the bare essentials of play things like board games. The goal was to always pack into as few compartments as possible without overloading anything. Especially, if I knew I was going to be living on a top floor. This was also a time of my life when I began to get a real sense of cost vs the earned dollar. Money, particularly quarters, became extremely valuable. Living in an apartment with six girls who cook and only one fridge also taught me the value of space saving. Note: it's rude to take up fridge space with a pizza box, it's much better to store the pizza in a stack container or a ziplock.
After college, that dollar became even more important. I really wanted to live independently, but I really couldn't see a way clear for me to do it. Then, I learned about the tiny house movement. I was so enchanted with the idea that I bought the first two seasons of Tiny House Nation and spent a month researching composting toilets. My boyfriend at the time was more inclined to talk about general financial gains and design technicalities than to consider actually living in one, but I was hooked. Fiscal responsibility is very important to me. I also loved the idea of travel, of uniqueness, and customization for a smaller price a lot better than living in a house I couldn't afford. In that lifestyle there seemed to be a lot more time for living. I also liked the idea of not having a lot of "stuff" to deal with.
I still am.
Currently, I live in a shared apartment, but I really only use the space in my kitchen, my 8x4 bathroom, and my 8x8 bedroom. I don't really buy stuff. Whenever possible, I get rid of stuff. I moved states and packed all I owned into a tiny Subaru. Recently, I managed to fly with just a carry on back pack for the weekend using the Marie Kondo method of folding. I love how people are getting hooked on this idea that less is more.
There are at least ten different blue prints sketched out in my sketch book with ideas and designs for different rooms and living spaces. I plan to someday live in a tiny house all of my own, whether mobile or solid is yet to be determined. In the meantime. I continue to live in a way that tests myself and my ability to go tiny. Hey, 20-50,000 to build a home is still nothing to sneeze at. If you plan to build a tiny home, it's better to do years of testing first.
Why do I love tiny living? What is the appeal? I grew up in the largest house on our 70's middle class street and managed to snag the largest kid bedroom. By all predictions, tiny should not have been in my living standards vocabulary.
It all started with a cat.
Yes. A cat. I'm one of those people who enjoy snuggling warm soft fuzzy things that purr at me and cover me with sticky hair. I'm unashamed. When I was eleven I realized I wanted a cat, really, really badly. So badly, that for two months I would only check out books with cats in them especially if they were purely educational to impress my parents. After some bargaining, I convinced my parents that if I managed to keep my room white glove clean for a solid month, then I could be the proud owner of a tiny kitten. I got two kittens and I proudly took care of their every puke and water need.
That exercise taught me that a clean room was a pleasant room especially when compared to the bed of stuffed animals, clothes, and plastic that used to be my floor. I also learned that if you don't want your shirt to be vomited on, it's better to keep it off the floor.
Years later, I realized that my personal stress level would be great reduced after taking time to reorganize my room. As a creative person, I loved to relocate my furniture and this was more easily done when the room was clean. I also got a sense of pride displaying my hard work to my family members.
Hard work, done well, feels good, after all.
This all contributed to my enjoyment of organizing tons of stuff into boxes. However, I didn't really start to see the benefit of living with less until I worked a couple of summers cleaning out homes for some wealthy friends of my mother. They had big houses. Really big. And it was full to the brim with stuff they hadn't touched in years. My job was to help them get rid of it.
I remember one particular room. It was completely stocked with enough ramen noodles to keep a soup kitchen going for a month. It was bought and stored with the good intention of being a food source in case something bad happened. A noble precaution, except the food hadn't been checked on for so long that three mice had chewed, peed and pooped on every single package. The mice themselves were found dead on top of the crispy noodles. Probably from ramen noodle overdose. Incredibly, they were also expired.
Another house was so littered with tiny random things like paper and beads that hours of work felt like doing nothing at all. I remember sitting in a tiny five by eight work studio and just looking at the stacks of paper, crafts, music charts, and other tiny bits of stuff. The piles of things were stacked higher than my shoulder as I sat on the floor and I thought, "If that tipped over, I could be buried alive, and no one would ever know."
During those summers the question kept popping up over and over, "Who needs this much stuff?" The answer, of course, is always, "Well I do. That's why I bought it. Even if I can't remember why."
I learned a lot about the psychology behind keeping stuff that summer. A lot of the stuff they hadn't touched in years was labeled generally as, "just in case," or, "the project I started, but never finished, but I am going to finish it someday." While, "just in case" can be largely justified in terms of emergency or food storage, I feel like the second one is more emotionally based than logical. Honestly, it just seemed sad. It was a stress that wasn't necessary and it effectively cut off entire rooms from access to those who lived there. Those projects hadn't been touched in years. I knew they weren't going to finish it. They knew they weren't going to finish it. Yet they were content to let that project eat at the back of their "to do" list that is never completed. They were content to walk by open doorways or peak in the drawers of their home and feel the tiny pricks of guilt for not doing what they said they were going to do. Every. Single. Time. For. YEARS.
For some people I guess that works. It might even be a comforting thing. For people like me, it would be like continuing to eat sugar with a bad cavity. I can understand being desensitized to the thing, but that tiny prick of guilt does leave a mark somewhere in the esteem area of the subconscious.
Next reason for liking the tiny life style. I moved. A lot.
We all know moving is a pain. We also all know that moving with a lot of stuff is even more of a pain. Between college semesters, I got really good at downsizing to the bare essentials of living, if not to the bare essentials of play things like board games. The goal was to always pack into as few compartments as possible without overloading anything. Especially, if I knew I was going to be living on a top floor. This was also a time of my life when I began to get a real sense of cost vs the earned dollar. Money, particularly quarters, became extremely valuable. Living in an apartment with six girls who cook and only one fridge also taught me the value of space saving. Note: it's rude to take up fridge space with a pizza box, it's much better to store the pizza in a stack container or a ziplock.
After college, that dollar became even more important. I really wanted to live independently, but I really couldn't see a way clear for me to do it. Then, I learned about the tiny house movement. I was so enchanted with the idea that I bought the first two seasons of Tiny House Nation and spent a month researching composting toilets. My boyfriend at the time was more inclined to talk about general financial gains and design technicalities than to consider actually living in one, but I was hooked. Fiscal responsibility is very important to me. I also loved the idea of travel, of uniqueness, and customization for a smaller price a lot better than living in a house I couldn't afford. In that lifestyle there seemed to be a lot more time for living. I also liked the idea of not having a lot of "stuff" to deal with.
I still am.
Currently, I live in a shared apartment, but I really only use the space in my kitchen, my 8x4 bathroom, and my 8x8 bedroom. I don't really buy stuff. Whenever possible, I get rid of stuff. I moved states and packed all I owned into a tiny Subaru. Recently, I managed to fly with just a carry on back pack for the weekend using the Marie Kondo method of folding. I love how people are getting hooked on this idea that less is more.
There are at least ten different blue prints sketched out in my sketch book with ideas and designs for different rooms and living spaces. I plan to someday live in a tiny house all of my own, whether mobile or solid is yet to be determined. In the meantime. I continue to live in a way that tests myself and my ability to go tiny. Hey, 20-50,000 to build a home is still nothing to sneeze at. If you plan to build a tiny home, it's better to do years of testing first.
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