Susan recently read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Today I read the blinks for Stuffocation, which listed the Kondo book as further reading. Taken together, our conversations have been about reducing both our current stuff and intake of new stuff.
This is stuff that other stuff came in. I store it compulsively (but not really the other stuff…).
So I made a list, categories that describe nearly everything I own: clothes, packaging, swag, games, hardware, misc. tech things, boxes of notesbooks and paperwork, and bags.
My game plan:
- Clothes – get clear containers for articles that don’t hang. Had my eye on the drawers from Muji for some time.
- Packaging – these boxes that stuff comes in. That pile above is what I’ve been storing, and will be recycling tonight. Moving forward, I won’t be keeping packaging from anything once I’ve determined it is not defective (generally within a week).
- Swag – This is stuff I get in subscription boxes, which I intend to give away (I’ll post something here once I do that!)
- Games – These are the card, board and role-playing games and accessories I have. I am going to get a better storage solution for these.
- Hardware – This is a bit of a problem for me, I admit. Gadgets “spark joy” for me, and though I’d like to reduce the landfills, learning about consumer electronics is actually important to me on many levels.
- Misc. tech things – These things are the batteries and thousands of micro-USB cables I have. I will be disposing/distributing those very soon.
- Boxes of notebooks and paperwork – I have about six banker boxes of papers that need to be digitized. I’ve spent the last decade learning how to back things up redundantly, securely, privately and cheaply. Now it is time to act.
- Bag – I collect bags, but my back dictates that most of them are useless for my purposes. So I will be distributing those, as well.
Let’s see how this goes…