The pared-down lifestyle

I have too much stuff. This became abundantly clear in the recent move from Yeovil - I had boxes and boxes of books that I didn't even bother to unpack while I was down there, and which I'm unlikely to read again. I have about 40 VHS tapes that I don't watch, which aren't good enough to replace with DVDs, but which I don't really want to just throw away...

And there's the issue. Like most people, I accumulate things at a far greater rate than I dispose of them. Throwing away a perfectly good book is a notion that is alien to me. (And, by 'throwing away', I don't necessarily mean binning. But giving away to charity, auctioning off at anything less than I paid for it, or whatever, the net result is the same - I no longer have the item in question, and have made a loss on it.)

Anyway, a sensible response to this is to cut back on getting new things. It's probably not necessary to buy another twenty t-shirts when I only wear about a third of the ones I already own.

Except, it doesn't work. Not only will people still give me new clothes (for Christmas, birthdays, or whatever), but there is an entirely valid case for continuing to buy new books (you want new things to read, and public libraries become less good once you've read all the big names in your chosen genres).

So, I've been giving some thought to the question of how to deal with this accumulation of stuff in a sensible, long-term way.

Now, ideally, I think I would switch to an entirely virtual wireless lifestyle. Clearly, the value of a DVD, CD or book doesn't lie with the shiny plastic or the pulped tree - it lies with the data enclosed within that wrapper. Therefore, you could in theory invest in a couple of Terabytes of hard-disk space, and store your entire DVD collection as a set of (big) files, your entire music collection as MP3s, and all your books in some eBook format. Then, add a tablet PC and iPod (wirelessly), and set up an 802.11a link to your 'DVD Player' device, and you have all the same functionality at a fraction of the space requirement. What's more, to get a new tune/movie/book, you just download it from the internet, and don't need to leave the house.

Sadly, the technology isn't there yet. eBook readers are a pain, and the books aren't available. Wireless networking is decidedly non-trivial. Internet bandwidth makes downloading movies impractical. And Terabytes of storage don't come cheap.

The virtual wireless lifestyle doesn't address one other issue, anyway, which is that some things really do have value in their physical form. These include your appliances and furniture, but is mostly concerned with clothes (can't do much about the others, except think of switching to composite devices, which generally suck).

Where clothes are concerned, I think a mindset needs to be developed that they are temporary investments, rather than something to buy and keep. So, once something wears out, it gets thrown away rather than repaired (this attitude wouldn't apply if the rate of acquisition was much lower). There are a certain number of sets of clothing a person actually needs anyway, and a certain number of 'back-up' outfits that they might reasonably use. So, the trick would seem to be to determine what those outfits are, and invest in complete sets of clothing to fill those points. Then, anything that is superfluous should be disposed of. Thereafter, when any new item of clothing is acquired, it should be a replacement for something in the wardrobe, which should therefore be discarded.

Case in point: I have nine 'regular' shirts and nine pairs of general use trousers to go with them. (Actually, my target for both of these is eight, but never mind.) Naturally, when a shirt wears out and needs replaced, I will go out and buy a new shirt. However, since I'll only buy a new shirt to replace one that's worn out, it makes sense to dispose of the worn-out shirt at the same time (that's hardly rocket-science, but it's astounding how many people fail to take that step).

The controversial part of the process comes about if I should be given some shirts for Christmas. At this point, we assume, I have eight regular shirts that aren't in line for replacement, plus some number of brand new shirts to add to the collection. This creates a problem, since it's quite alien to throw away a perfectly good shirt just to make room.

There is, however, a solution that mostly works. As we know, Christmas is at roughly the same time of the year each year. As, indeed, is a given person's birthday. Now, you can probably guess that you might get some number of shirts for one of both of these occasions. So, what to do is identify the two or three shirts that are closest to their end, and wear them heavily for the six weeks before Christmas (even better is if you've got some that need replaced - just delay). That way, you save wear on your better shirts, and have a couple that are almost ready to go when the gifts arrive. And if they don't, well, you would have had to replace them at some point anyway.

I'm currently in the process of sorting all this out. I'll be checking back in with some progress reports as I implement this pared down lifestyle...