It’s so easy these days to get stuff without even thinking about it. That’s Amazon’s whole value proposition. How to go from thinking about something to buying it in mere seconds.
But getting rid of stuff is another matter altogether.
My dad mentioned that some people are trying to get to the point where they only own 2,000 things. And others are even more extreme, trying to get down to 500 or less. I’m assuming he got this from that show about hoarders they’ve been watching. Then he laughs and says, “Your mom and I are probably more in the 100,000 range”.
It kind of stuck with me because I’d never really thought about assigning a number to quantify how much stuff I have. Or should have. (And what exactly is a discrete “thing” anyway?)
I tend to hang on to stuff that might be useful in the future. The problem is, I can’t keep all that stuff in my head. Even in our small apartment, I forget what little doodads I might have squirreled away, which means that when I need something, I’ll just go out and buy it—only realizing later that I already had something that fit the bill.
Stephanie and I almost always have some paper grocery bags by the door filled with odds and ends for Goodwill. Predominantly clothes, but occasionally housewares. It’s like our household is constantly molting. You’d think at some point we’d just be down to nothing, but it almost never makes a dent. And it’s not like we’re constantly shopping either. Stuff just accumulates.
I have a real problem getting rid of stuff of value. Old electronics. Special equipment in good condition. Unusual or rare items. I sold a handmade lamp base on eBay a while ago and with the cost of packing and shipping, it ended up costing me to get rid of it. It would have been cheaper just to Goodwill it. At the same time, it makes me happy knowing that someone who actually wants it now has it.
Putting things on Craigslist is easier, and dealing with people locally removes shipping from the equation, but still it’s a lot of work, writing the ad, taking and uploading a picture, doing the back and forth with people over email, setting up a place and time to meet. Half the time I don’t even get a response. Or people express interest and then bail.
All this work just getting rid of stuff, and it’s no wonder people become hoarders. It’s so much easier to just do nothing. To stack and squirrel, rather than filter and pitch.
That said, I want to get rid of stuff. A lot of stuff. It’s my new mantra.
I’ve been washing my hair with a shampoo bar for three months now. I’d given up bar soaps for body wash years ago, but even before then, I never knew it was possible to shampoo with a bar. Shampoo was always, and has always been (or so I thought) liquid. I’ve been on a “real soap” kick as of late, thanks to Dr. Bronner’s, so out of curiosity, I ordered three sample bars from Chagrin Valley Soap and Craft: Chamomile & Citrus, Rosemary Lavender, and Lavender & Spice.
I was kind of surprised they didn’t come with instructions. I mean, how is one supposed to shampoo with a shampoo bar? At first I just rubbed the bar directly on my hair, but that tended to create uneven lather and a lot of hairs stuck to the bar. Now I just rub it between my hands and then work the lather into my hair. Even though it doesn’t always look like a lot of soap in my hands, it usually lathers up quite nicely. Each of the sample-sized bars (pictured above) lasted about a month and a half of daily use.
The only downside (compared to traditional shampoo+conditioner) comes when I’m washing the shampoo out of my hair. As soon as it’s gone, my fingers stick to my hair, kind of like skin against wet rubber. So rather than running my whole hand through my hair, I just comb the tips of my fingers through. It makes me wonder if any of their other samples are less “sticky”? On the upside, I found my hair easier to style outside of the shower—more willing to hold whatever shapes I twisted it into.
Not long after we started making cheese, Stephanie began talking about getting a separate fridge to age harder cheeses. In most cases they need to be stored at a fairly controlled 50-60°F, sometimes for a period of months.
Anyone who’s been in our kitchen should be laughing. It’s not big. In fact every bit of available space is used for something—without it feeling packed. And I’m not sure I wanted a “dorm fridge” any where else in our small apartment. Or at all. Mostly I didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I hate buying things just because I’m excited about something new, and then I end up never using it.
One night I thought back to those weird thermoelectric “peltier” coolers that you find at places like Brookstone. Most of them are small, which is good, energy-efficient, which is also good, and they’re supposed to be whisper quiet, which is super good. Turns out they have a corner on the wine refrigerator market because they just don’t get that cold—which is perfect for wine. And as it happens, cheese.
They are a little more expensive than your average dorm fridge, but I’m willing to pay for silence. In the end we found someone on Craigslist who was selling the exact 16-bottle model we were looking at, unused and at a discount, because it didn’t quite fit in their apartment. As you can see, it fits in ours. Score!
And by my calculations, even if we stop making cheese, we probably won’t stop drinking wine.
Shortly after Stephanie and I moved into our apartment in San Francisco we bumped into our landlords measuring the hallways. “Yay,” we thought, they’d be replacing the ratty old carpet soon! Turns out we were right about the “replacing the carpet” part, just not the “soon.”
Come last week, while Jean-Claude and Sabine were crashing with us before flying back to France, the carpet replacement began.
Here’s how it used to lookAnd here’s how it looks now (of course the natural light helps)
