A week in the life....

Observations and rantings of a minimalist....

- While engaging in an afternoon of mindless cartoon viewing with my daughter, I noticed that toy companies are attempting to extol the virtues of tinier and tinier toys.  All these teeny weenie figures!  I often lose my full size truck in the mall....er...airport parking lot, so how can little kids be expected to keep track of vitamin sized toys? You can collect (hoard) all 590 of them!  Microscope not included.

- Went to my daughter's school talent show.  Saw 6 year olds dancing to "Material Girl" swinging around shopping bags on stage.  Ah....get 'em while they're young.

- Had lunch with some friends who admitted they enjoy Antiques Roadshow and Storage Wars.  I paused, thinking about how AR has managed to convince nearly everyone that the stuff in grandpa's attic is worth far more than it actually is.  Trust me folks, the odds are slim that the old parchment document you found is a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence.  It looks old because that's how it was manufactured to look.  As for that little word at the lower bottom?  It says "Copy."  Missed that one 'eh?  As for Storage Wars....it took some convincing but I think I've finally got them to understand that you don't typically find a Delorean behind some old computer monitors and a ratty 1960's sleeper sofa.  Oh...and a camera crew just happened to be there.

- Actually watched an episode of Hoarders - Buried Alive...just to see...  Now I understand why people slow down for an accident.  I ended up watching four episodes.  I'm so ashamed.  Truthfully though, watching it is a good way to entice anyone to get rid of stuff, plus it keeps the weight off.  I was nauseous just thinking about that much junk....and could you imagine the smell.....?  Not interested in eating for awhile.

- So Apple came out with an iPad 3....That pretty much makes the iPad 1 a boat anchor worth about 50 bucks.  Time elapsed from cutting edge to obsolescence:...about 18 months.  My grandmother was proud that she had her sewing machine since 1944.  Now nothing makes it through more than 6 seasons before its garbage.  Way back in the day...it was only junk when it stopped working...and that condition only occurred after multiple repair attempts with tape, screws, paper clips and odd pieces of metal.  "Junk" meant dead, unfixable, absolutely no hope for resurrection. Even then, it might be stashed or salvaged in case the remaining usable parts could be used on another item that needed repair.  Not anymore.  Even if it works fine, but is outdated, its junk.  Especially if it uses software that is "no longer supported." Operational ability has nothing to do with it.  The manufacturer decides when it needs to be pitched.  What's wrong with that plan?

- My daughter came to work with me and observed that I was using a (quite dependable) Okidata dot-matrix printer.  "What's THAT?!!!" she asked incredulously...as if she we're looking at a prehistoric dinosaur skeleton.  I had to explain to her that a dot-matrix printer was from before she was born!  "Wow...that's totally ancient!"  I rolled my eyes.

- An "A" for effort.....I had two people this past week attempt to sell me coins that are currently in circulation.  Yes, those gold dollars look cool and different, but....they aren't real gold AND you can currently trade them anywhere for exactly one dollar's worth of goods.  Why are you looking at me strangely when I tell you I won't give you $5 each for them?  Yes....you THOUGHT they might be worth something...and they are.  One dollar.  Same goes for state quarters.  They are absolutely worth something.  Twenty five cents. Gotta love the spirit of anyone who wants to profit off pocket change.

- The Gift of Prophecy.....I can predict with pretty good certainty that your house will have one of these:  A George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine or some variant of it....  If you like to fish, you will have a Big Mouth Billy Bass...that plastic mounted fish that sings when you press a button. It's in the garage or attic currently.  If you don't have one, you used to.  Am I right?

- My daughter is still playing Animal Jam.  She now owns an entire city but still hasn't achieved "Epic Den" status.  It is strangely, always, just beyond reach. Hmmm.

Ah...another week...just when I thought I had seen everything, another Monday looms around the corner with the promise of new, exciting things for me to write about.  Have a great week!

We are liiiiving in a Material World and I am a Material Girl!!!!

There's No Escape for the Young

My daughter has been ruined.  My words mean nothing.

I noticed she's been glued to her laptop for the last several weeks....

I'm fully aware that her tech acumen readily outstrips mine and she regularly makes me look like a buffoon when it comes to computer issues.  "Dad, you need to reboot, go into msconfig and edit your startup items...." she'd say as I stared blankly at an unusual error message on my screen.  I'd look up...reminding myself that she was still just ten years old.  This is to be expected since when I was her age, my exposure to technology was limited to ownership of a digital watch that only told the time and a sandwich sized calculator that could only add and subtract. The world was different back then.

Honestly, I had this great fear that she was perhaps hacking into the Bank of America computers....That perhaps any day now a pair of men in pressed suits, sunglasses and earpieces would knock on my door and ask to speak to my daughter for a few minutes about some internet irregularity that was traced back to our house.... I warily slunk over and asked..."So....whatcha doing?"

"I'm on Animal Jam...." she replied smugly.

I had not the foggiest idea of what it was...so I sat down and watched her gaudily clad unicorn-like fantasy creature galloping around a tropical island, magical pet frog in tow.

"This is my den...." she added as she proceeded to trot through what appeared to be a huge virtual multi-level expanse of a mansion.  It had amenities I could only dream of...A waterfall in the living room, an indoor pool, a fully stocked bar, 70 inch LCD TV...there was a banquet table complete with a royal feast, some huge glowing one-of-a-kind icon or shrine or something that she had surrounded with multicolored swiveling barstools....In another place there were what appeared to be hundreds of virtual stuffed animals...no less than 30 alligators of different colors all neatly lined up...panda's, horses, armadillos.  The walls were covered with tchochkes...flags, mirrors, sconces, paintings....everything.

I was horrified.  "You're a HOARDER?...You're Hoarding in cyberspace???!!!" I snorted while cupping my head in my hands.  My failure as a parent was complete.  I felt like sobbing...All those words about materialism and she does this???  If she couldn't have everything she wanted in the real world, I guess there was always cyberspace where she didn't have to worry about whether or not daddy would say yes...

As I sat there in shock, she showed me all of her acquisitions, large and small.  "I want to be on Epic Dens, but I need more stuff" she casually mentioned... There's a virtual stuff acquisition contest????!!!  Animal Jam, my ass!  This should be called "Keeping up with the Virtual Joneses."  or "Cyber Materialist Spoiled Princess.."  My mind was out of control.   Still horrified, I queried..."Why do you need 30 alligators?"

"I won them. Besides dad, it's just the internet."  She rolled her eyes in normal prepubescent female fashion.

I didn't know what to say.  She had a point, but the mere thought of an online game pitting kids against each other to see who acquire the most crap makes me shiver.  How can that not somehow translate into real life behavior?  I found myself asking the usual questions.... "What are you going to do with 30 alligators?"  "Why not 50, or 1,000 alligators?  When does it stop?"  My daughter wrinkled her face in disgust.  "Dad!  It's just a game!!!"  I laughed.  She was right.  But she lined up the alligators so nicely...like soldiers.  It was cute....but still horrifying.  At least she didn't approach me each morning asking for my credit card number so she could buy more virtual-currency with which she would gamble with the hopes of winning more alligators.  That would have put me into orbit.

As I'm typing, she has won more cyber-gem currency and is asking me what she should do with it?  She wants a full sized castle.  I agree, but note that maybe it would be better to save up, take a trip somewhere and move into a smaller castle that's easier to maintain.  Then I remembered...you don't have to maintain a virtual castle.  It just shows up when she clicks on the website.

In cyberspace, she can have all the alligators she wants and won't have to worry about where to store them.  I certainly won't be tripping over them in the living room.   I should be thankful.  I think.

If storage and practicality isn't an issue on the internet, should I worry?

What's Hiding in Your Drawers?

Not in THOSE drawers.  Besides that.

I hate drawers.  Its too easy to stash crap in them.  Knowing that, I've made a concerted effort to minimize the total amount of drawers in my place.  No big cabinets.  No dressers.  No place to hide anything except for two small filing cabinets... for business and important stuff.  As a result, if I end up with small items...like maybe a cool keychain, a roll of stamps, a couple of flash drives...I have to deal with them immediately.  I end up walking around, looking like a human bobblehead trying to figure out where to stash the little buggers.  I'm forced to deal with everything and make a decision about each item.  Usually.

There's one small drawer next to my desk and despite my best efforts, it manages to fill up with doo-dads in about a week.  USB cables, extra keys, a spare case for my phone, a checkbook cover...Darn it.  Drawers are evil.

Yesterday, I glanced into one of my file drawers...it was full to overflowing with gosh-knows-what so I got out the shredder and went to work.  Bills from 2004, account statements from accounts long ago closed, instruction manuals from items I no longer owned, passcodes to long-defunct websites.  Amazing.  I cleared out a full cubic foot of space....  That's a stack of paper a foot tall...not bad.  I felt much lighter despite having eaten lunch just a few minutes earlier.   New problem though.....I've got more drawer space to drop crap into!  The only solution might be to get rid of the whole cabinet.

Sometimes when I clear out houses I have to sort through the junk drawers.  Often the contents at the rear have physically merged with the wood of the drawer itself resulting in an odd conglomeration of materials typically held together by old disintegrated rubber bands.  Archaeologists 5,000 years from now will have a field day trying to decipher what the pencil-staple-paperclip-eraser-bottle of whiteout-ketchup packet-thumbtack-melted rubber band object was used for.

Cleaning it out isn't the solution.  Get rid of the whole cabinet. 

The Ongoing Urge to Complicate Things

I've been doing well keeping things simple...until an urge hit me.

For those who don't already know, I'm a recovering real estate junkie.  Give me a crappy looking house that smells terrible and some profit potential and I'm your bitch.

What I noticed is that with most projects I've tended to grow weary near the end.  I was always anxious to jettison the current property, take the profit and move on.  It rarely worked out as simply as that and I've been reminding myself about all the time /financial/ personal juggling that has to go on when I get involved with a property.  Over the last few days, I've been muddling over a potentially tres chic project that would test my limits in more ways than one.

The property is in a premier location but has a host of issues, not the least of which is a potentially monumental expense down the road (in the form of an assessment.)  The upside is ownership, future profit potential and possibly dwelling within a magnificent and historically significant space in a great spot.  The place is tugging at me and I've needed to make the pro / con list.

The biggest con was that I would not be simplifying my life, but just the opposite.  The place needs an enormous amount of work and there would be a constant outlay of money and opportunity costs.  On paper the project has all the hallmarks of a money pit and the logical side of me has pretty much dismissed the whole shebang.  But why is there such a desire to toss myself back into the grinder?  I live in a great spot at what I consider to be reasonable cost.  Am I bored....perhaps crazy?  What about human nature causes me to be restless and not satisfied with what I have?  These are things I must constantly grapple with and I suspect most people do the same in varying degrees.  I have to remind myself what the goal is and that if I'm bored, I should get on the bike or go to the museum or walk on the beach....not buy a money, time and sanity sucking property.

It's cute but....nothing I should be doing if I'm bored.

A week's insanity....

Some weeks are a firm reminder of why I chose to live with only a little....My job is to help people.  It is a job I enjoy greatly but in many cases, there is little I can do.

Monday: I visit a large storage unit loaded with items of absolutely no market value...mildewed clothes, rusted pots and pans, broken furniture, Tupperware with no lids.  This is one of four units that have nearly the same items.  Gentleman had claimed "there are some really good things in there".... We check...not a chance.  I recommend a bobcat and a dumpster.  Four units times about the five years each has been a trash receptacle.  That's a lot of rent...get out your calculator...

Tuesday: Visit a home whose interior defies description. My guess is that living conditions are far better in distant third world countries during a famine or infectious disease outbreak.  I can't see the floor... it is covered with an odd conglomeration of old food, clothing, cat hair and ten thousand personal items.  I see half a laptop, about a half dozen remotes, a chair leg....Anything that was of value has been used as a scratching post, a chew toy or is stained or broken.  Looks like a year's worth of frat parties occurred and nobody bothered to clean up after each.....there's nothing salvageable of the five or so items they WANTED to sell.  The seller's felt the other 9,995 items should be scraped off the floor, boxed and transported to their new home because they might need them....Sigh.

Thursday: Visit to a hoarder extraordinaire... A woman who has kept everything she ever bought for the last two decades.  She is aware she has a problem, but seems powerless to rein it in.  Just last week she spent over $3,000 on QVC.  She has three large outbuildings filled with items, many of them never removed from the packaging.  I have to explain that she has grossly overpaid for all the items and there is no hope she can recover an amount even close to the price she paid despite the claims on TV that these items are of "heirloom quality."  Just not on this planet.  She stares at me blankly.  She doesn't understand why this is or that she has fallen victim to the band of thieves that hawk garbage on TV that can be purchased with only four easy payments plus processing and handling.

This is our culture....we are taught that the acquisition of things defines us, makes us worthy.  In the end, it is acquisition that weighs us down and wastes our time and resources.  I come home, still sneezing from cat dander and decades old dust and collapse on the sofa feeling utterly defeated.  The "stuff" has won this week.  It has silently infiltrated our homes and wedged itself firmly in our closets and outbuildings like some unseen squatter.  It is not easily dislodged.  Maybe next week.

Yup...For most people it doesn't look like this.  There's an abundance of CRAP out there...

The "Season."

Ah yes....that season is upon us again.

I started seeing the first Christmas sale hints not long after Labor Day....the sun was shining and if I can recall correctly, I may have been at the beach.

Fortunately, the business of ridding people of things has kept me busy enough to ignore the procession of invented holidays....Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Dollar Taco Tuesday....oh, wait, not that last one.  Facebook posts proclaim..."Only 16 more presents and I'll be done with Christmas shopping."  Funny how folks appear to want that process to end...sort of like cancer treatments.  I've listened to acquaintances lament about how they are dreading spending the holidays with mom, dad and all the belligerent cousins.  Christmas has, in many ways,  become a necessary evil that comes once a year...followed closely by the filing of income taxes.

Yes...Tis the sea-son for re-gift-ing....fa la la la la.... The season of family...giving....of waiting out in the cold at 1AM in front of a big box store.

This year...the statistics are in.  Consumers have spent a record amount on gifts.  More stuff for me to sell I guess.

As I watch the cars line up at the mall entrance, I'm content knowing that my family knows me now.  They don't ask what I want this year.  They know better.  My sister, also a minimalist to some degree has made a pact with me.  We will not exchange gifts.  Our gift to each other this year has been the new places we experienced together.  That's enough for me.  That makes me happy.  Thanks....I have everything I need.

I DO remember the warm feelings associated with Christmas as a kid.  Of course there were wrapped toys....but those were the days before I gave up the childhood practice of wanting everything that looked colorful or fun.  I can't remember what I received but I do remember staying up past my schoolnight bedtime to watch Charlie Brown, Frosty and my hour-long favorite that included colorful characters like Yukon Cornelius and an elf named Herbie who wanted to be a dentist.  I remember mom baking cookies, stringing up miniature lights and the smell of NYC pretzels and chestnuts at the big tree in Rockefeller Center.  The things I received were incidental (not at the time...but I realize they are now.)  It was the experiences that were important.  The smells, sights and tastes ...I remember vividly.  The things...I do not.

Next up...New Years resolutions!  Can I make it past January 15th?

Funny how the original caption of this picture mentioned Christmas shopping being stressful.
Holiday shopping....Meh...

Creep

One of the things I've learned about the accumulation of personal property is that it occurs slowly but incessantly over a long period of time.  Its not like we go from a zen-like empty house to a cluttered disaster in a few weeks.  The stuff sees to creep in and take up residence slowly...hiding in our closets and drawers and perhaps out in plain sight until one day we look around and say..."Where did all this crap come from?"

After coming home last night, passing out from fatigue and then waking up somewhat refreshed this morning, I am suddenly feeling that stuff is making its way back into my space. I'm not happy about it.

My desk is a shambles.  The amine DVD's I picked up at last nights auction for my daughter sit by the TV.  I also picked up a cheap blender since I didn't have one...but I seem to have survived without this bulky piece of kitchen machinery for the better part of a year...what made me suddenly need one...?  I'm looking at the shoes scattered on my floor with utter dismay.  I have six pairs?  Why?  My daughter and I decided to take on a project and build a cool floor lamp that resembles one I saw while vacationing in NYC...Now I have another lamp.  I now see 4 lamps in the living room....  No...I'm not pleased with myself.

Folks that know me think that minimalism comes easy.  Not in our society it doesn't.  Despite the fact that being an auctioneer exposes me to people who have an accumulation problem, which generally keeps me on track....sometimes the fact that items can be purchased for a comparatively small amount of money at auction makes buying them attractive...whether I need them or not.  So...being an auctioneer can be a double edged sword.

Usually, when I look around and find that the state of disarray is intolerable I will begin the periodic eviction process for my unwanted material guests in earnest.  That day is coming soon.  I feel it.