DeKlutter: Vol. 2 Trimming The Fat

I am in the process of decluttering my life, starting with an inventory of my possessions. Over the past four years, I have accumulated a mass of things that lies chained around my neck, albatross-style, keeping me from an easier lifestyle. The main goal in life is a collection of experiences, and what we truly crave when we purchase media is not the product itself, but the act of consuming it. Except in the case of Criterion Collection DVDs, the packaging on those is amazing.
In preparation for a move to Los Angeles, I am attempting to rid myself of at least half of my possessions, to both facilitate ease of movement and free up a certain spiritual junkroom that has arisen as a result of too many possessions. I’m not against owning things. I’m not some sort of strict ascetic who believes objects keep one from achieving some measure of spirituality and actual happiness, but I do notice a correlation between the sheer amount of things one hoards and a decline in ability and willingness to opt for experiences over increasing the size of one’s collection. I could have done a lot more cool things and roadtrips in college, but I spent most of my money on comic books, video games, and DVDs. I could have eaten some truly amazing dinners, gone seen some really cool shows and taken a rafting trip down a lazy river, but instead chose to increase the size of my collections, regardless of the actual desire for what I was purchasing.
My first problem in that regard was Criterion DVDs. I decided I wanted the Criterion Collection, without regards to my enjoyment of the films I was purchasing. I went on a spending spree, ebay, Amazon, and the used DVD guy in the student union saw frequent purchases from me of movies I had never seen. Of some movies I still haven’t seen!
Following that was comic books. Though I got better at this near the end of college, I initially didn’t read the books others had while limiting my purchases to that which people I knew weren’t buying. I would buy six issues of something I didn’t enjoy the first issue of, out of a sense of “completing the run”. I have three full boxes of comics I will never read again, another box I probably won’t read again because of time constraints, and only one box I continually delve into to reread. If you figure each box holds 100 comics, that’s $1,200 in wasted cash flow, right there. Each box holds more than 100 comics, sadly.
The timesink in reading 300 comics I didn’t love was considerable, with each issue taking anywhere from ten to thirty minutes to consume. At the lower end of that rate, that’s fifty hours of potential productive time wasted. That’s a whole screenplay, revised once over. That’s 100 pages of comics script. And that’s the low estimate!
I purchased a large number of trades and hardcovers just to finish the collection, such as all the Ultimate Hardcovers of Spiderman, Xmen, The Ultimates, UFF – at $30 a pop! Granted, I got rid of most of these when I traded them in to complete some Vertigo series I truly loved, but most of those Ultimate books I stopped enjoying halfway through, but kept buying because they looked so good on the shelf.
No more! Ten Criterions went up on Amazon today, as well as some hardcovers, and a few trades. I have a stack of books that will lose me money on shipping that I’ll probably sell in bulk to the used bookstore. The less to take with me, the better. There’s a certain crippling problem involved with having too many unread books on the bookshelf. If I only own a handful of books, I’m more likely to read them. With a hundred or two, I’m unlikely to be able to decide which one I want to read next. In New York, I had ten books with me, and read one a week, buying a new one only when I had run out of material. The system worked beautifully.
So really, that’s the focus of today, clearing out the physical clutter. Getting rid of junk. Looking at something and deciding if I’m keeping it because I’m sentimental or because I truly intend to get more use out of it.
Chances are, I won’t.