Category: 101 things in 1001 days

Decluttering my life

When I upgraded my phone to the HTC Dream with Android and I was constantly checking email, facebook, identica/twitter, SMS, gtalk and so on as frequently as I fidget, I realised I’d hit rock-bottom.

When I’m at work, at home, or even on the road, I have lots of distractions. I think about things that I did in the day, about things I have still to do. I got to know this as a good thing, called “multi-tasking.” I learnt that the feeling of being in multiple places at a time is a good thing, because I was “getting more done.”

Folks over at Zen Habits refer to this as “mind clutter.” Like post-its on my monitor and blinking LEDs on my phone, mind clutter distracts and gets in the way of the really important things, like getting work done.

The first thing I dropped were Facebook games. I’m actually pretty embarrassed about how much time I wasted in those horribly simple, yet time-consuming flash games. The awful feeling of withdrawal for a few days afterward made it clear that it was an addiction. It wasn’t easy but it was an easy choice.

From that vantage point, the next step was pretty clear.

Already I wasn’t checking facebook too often. I ignore most requests and check events only infrequently. Most of the content in my profile come from my identi.ca hookup and this selfsame blog. Why duplicate all this information, even if it is automatic? That just seems not very… minimalist of me.

My decision to axe facebook from my life came a few days after I started organising my most recent dinner party as a facebook event. I ground my teeth and bore with it for a couple more weeks but TODAY. I. AM. FREE.

I realised that feeling torn apart by everything I “have” to do wasn’t really a good thing at all — I rarely did all those things, so for each incomplete item I feel a little guilty, and yet my life remains quite good and wholesome. Clearly, I didn’t need to do them and I certainly don’t need to feel guilty about anything. My expectations for what I can do were just unnecessarily high, so I should lower them, and just… do less. But what I do do, I ensure it is the best I can do. That has implications on my work of course, but most importantly it means I will offer only the best to my personal relationships. And that precludes the cheap, crass, impersonal facebook. That means that, though my facebook account remains active, I will no longer be checking it unless someone is trying to get in touch with me.

Goal “Quit Facebook” is complete!

Influx of belongings

In the very-bottom-basement of my building, past the parking stalls, is a storage area with individual lockers for tenants to stash their crap. The area is cool and dark and, barring the random flood, fairly secure. Measuring at roughly 36 cubic feet, it allows for stashing quite a bit of crap.

With M moving in slowly in the past month, being “cramped” is an understatement. The closet — the huge but damnably inefficient closet! — is full again in spite of massive purging. Two boxes of summer clothes await to go into storage, with several more piles of unwanted/unneeded clothes sitting in the hallway, waiting to be given away.

Up until recently I haven’t made much use of the basement locker; what I used to leave down there were so unused that I probably should have tossed them instead of storing them. A few months ago, when his moving-in was only some eventuality set some time in the future, M helped me put in shelves and organised/threw out a lot of junk. Which is incredible foresight for this weekend, because we managed to fill up half the locker. That’s 18 cubic feet of crap.

Even still, the influx of belongings took me a little by surprise — after all, M has been living out of this flat, practically speaking, for many months. It was a bit of wake-up call to the fact that M also owns things! Things such as some beautiful cups and bowls, tons of artwork, a full set of pots and pans and a whole lot of baking implements.

The quest to find a place for everything have not been easy. M’s driven by the need to put things away; I’m driven by the need to give them away. He wants more shelves, I want to make do with the existing shelves. I firmly believe that we can live without the things that we can’t fit into this apartment. It could mean that I have to give up the chance of having a wok, but when I already have a frying pan AND a grill pan (which I haven’t used since I reduced meat consumption), how often am I really going to use that wok?

So the purging continues. I’m considering putting some of my sweaters away until next year (or what I call “pseudo-purging”), since I have quite a few. That way, perhaps at the end of this season, some of them will be worn down enough to warrant tossing out. Did you know that I have never tossed out a single sweater, due to its condition? I have grown too large for some older sweaters, but I’ve never, until this week, tossed any out due to being too crummy. It wasn’t until I examined all of them with a more critical eye that I realised how pile-y some of them have become. Good-by, turtle-neck sweater dress! I wish I threw ye out last winter!

I’m glad that at least, from now on, our locker won’t be storing this sort of crap year after year. Anyway, back to purging so I can make room in my life for the things I do love.

Purge

For years I’ve kept a bunch of socks whose partner has gone missing or discarded. These singletons were for someday. Someday I might buy a pair of socks which are similar looking enough that I could wear this singleton again. Or someday I might need a lot of rags for stuff and I’ll be able to use these as scrap fabrics. Or someday I might come up with some neat craft project and I’ll need lots of socks.

I’ve always been a bit of a (read: a major) pack-rat, and I’ve excused that as a sort of resourcefulness I learnt from my mother. However, lately my mind keeps wandering back to simplicity and purity. From John Maeda’s TED talk to my folks’ stories on living frugally but happily, simplicity is in everything I see.

Jumping around the Zen Habits blog has become a very enjoyable past-time, and it wasn’t long before I found the articles about wardrobe planning. So it’s no surprise that last weekend I threw the singleton socks all into a bag and gave them away, along with about a third of my wardrobe which I no longer wear. The biggest key that turned itself in my head was the realisation that most of my wardrobe belongs in either the past or future: I have enough old band uniforms to fill up an entire shelf which I haven’t worn since I quit the bands, and I have some odd pieces which I told myself I would wear “when I find other pieces that would make it work.” Neither of those are conducive to having a stylish wardrobe for today.

Anyway, autumn is arrived in Vancouver, so I’m dedicating next weekend to switching seasons in. Vancouver is temperate enough that I can get away with wearing a t-shirt in combination with hoodies and sweaters and the nice! new! snow jacket I purchased last year — so it’s been very easy to not systematically review my wardrobe and purge outdated things at the end of each season. So, even though I’ll still have t-shirts for the winter, I’ll be packing away my bright summery ones (and in the process, throw out the ones I haven’t worn in two years).

Obviously there is no “end game” for a wardrobe, which will always evolve as I move through my life…. but this particular goal will be considered complete when I have pared my wardrobe down to a single armoire. Did I mention I hate my giant but unusable closet and plan to rip it out and put an armoire in its place? (Relatedly, who was the fucktard that came up with walk-in closets being the “standard” of North American homes? Much rather have a walk-in pantry.) With fewer belongings, my room will feel even bigger.

Day Zero

I was bumping around on the Internet last week when I found this neat little challenge: to do 101 things in 1001 days. I’m bending the rules a bit though, to be a little less stringent and more fun. I don’t see any sense in having a list that I simply add to then check off — it should motivate me to do something because I’m excited about it, not because I have to do it! The list is posted on me site. Some of the items are vague; they will become more specific as I become inspired to do something in that direction. Things like, the length of the novel I want to write, the sort of dinner parties I want to host, where I want to go back-packing… It will be updated as I go along. Each item has a spirit which will be honoured more than the letter of text. Obviously there’s no benefit for me in cheating, but more importantly, the exact criteria for completion may change as I learn more about the subject. It could be that I don’t want to just ride a horse, but to spend enough time with one to bond with him; or that upon writing a poem I feel I must recite it to someone else before the experience is wholly satisfying. I suppose I could say that there is only one criterion, which is that I should feel fulfilled upon completing the task. So today is day zero. I have until June 3rd, 2012 to do these 101 things.