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Second time I moved countries, I realised I had too many useless items. And I was pretty minimal already. I decided I'd try to buy very few things. Stuff that i

by nextos 10y ago

Second time I moved countries, I realised I had too many useless items. And I was pretty minimal already. I decided I'd try to buy very few things. Stuff that is good and that I really need. At the end of the day, Pareto principle plays in my favour. We usually spend most of the time doing a tiny fraction of things. I buy items for those, optimising them ruthlessly. I get rid of everything else. I've ended up with a closed list of less than 60 belongings. Stuff is really good, and the total cost is only a fraction of what a regular apartment contains.

tedmiston 10y ago
I travel lots and have been paring down with each trip to try to achieve the minimal set of things for my life. It'd be great to see a post to learn more about your experience.
devonkim 10y ago
I've been trying to do this for a number of years because I move roughly every year and have been keeping notes of items I use and don't use similar to a cache hierarchy. Upon inspection of my outer layers, I've come to realize that many experiences and crafts are very "stuff-oriented" like working with power tools or supporting a beloved pet or child. Furthermore, evicting cache so often only to need the data again is extremely expensive. The cost must be compared, just like in a computer, of time to possibly regenerate it or if your collective life experience dataset can live without it. I say this as someone that just lost a pet of 10+ years struggling to find a specific photo that I didn't realize would be of so much emotional value until later. Like stuff, data we painstakingly generate that isn't manageable is data that is lost, and when it comes to management, consistency is more important than purity or even validity. But really, it's surprising how some of the smallest, seemingly insignificant of things we have can become something grossly important. This is fundamentally part of how hoarding happens I know, but with modern tools it's amazing how much we can collect and manage without occupying physical space in our daily lives and achieve a balance of remberance and daily function.

by nextos 10y ago

tedmiston 10y ago

I travel lots and have been paring down with each trip to try to achieve the minimal set of things for my life. It'd be great to see a post to learn more about your experience.

devonkim 10y ago

I've been trying to do this for a number of years because I move roughly every year and have been keeping notes of items I use and don't use similar to a cache hierarchy. Upon inspection of my outer layers, I've come to realize that many experiences and crafts are very "stuff-oriented" like working with power tools or supporting a beloved pet or child. Furthermore, evicting cache so often only to need the data again is extremely expensive. The cost must be compared, just like in a computer, of time to possibly regenerate it or if your collective life experience dataset can live without it. I say this as someone that just lost a pet of 10+ years struggling to find a specific photo that I didn't realize would be of so much emotional value until later. Like stuff, data we painstakingly generate that isn't manageable is data that is lost, and when it comes to management, consistency is more important than purity or even validity. But really, it's surprising how some of the smallest, seemingly insignificant of things we have can become something grossly important. This is fundamentally part of how hoarding happens I know, but with modern tools it's amazing how much we can collect and manage without occupying physical space in our daily lives and achieve a balance of remberance and daily function.