A Place for My Stuff

On Boy Scout Anti-Procrastination Devices

I was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts for a combined total of about 10 years.  One particular arts and crafts project that was not uncommon to do, was making a "Round Tuit".  Basically, this is what you did:

1. Cut out a disc about 4" in diameter.  Use cardboard, wood, whatever.
2. Paint it and decorate it however you wanted
3. On one face of the disc, paint the word "TUIT", or "IT IT" (which is two "IT"s).
4. Finally, put a hole near one end of the disc and string some yarn or thin rope through it, so that you can hang it like a medallion.

You have now made a round "TUIT".

And what's the point of this knick-knack, you might ask?  Well normally when you have something to do, it's easy to procrastinate it by saying "I'll get around to it."  But now you DID in fact get a "round tuit", and thus you have no excuse for procrastination.

"A round two-it"?  GET IT?!?  Oh golly gee Howdy Doody, that one's a knee-slapper!

OK, OK, before you send me hate mail, let me explain.  My real point in bringing up this silly item is that "I'll get around to it" is a common excuse used for keeping clutter.  And boy, have I been guilty of this.  Fortunately I recognized this last year and was able to get rid of a lot of stuff.  And this time, I'll have to be mindful of my "round-to-it" rationalizations again.

So...did I make myself a "round tuit" disc?  Hell no.  I never ended up having to make one even when I was in Boy Scouts.  Do the things actually work?  Somehow I doubt it.

However, here is a mantra which so far HAS been effective for me:

"If there's something that I say I will 'get around to someday', and I've been saying that to myself for over 10 years, then chances are good that I'm simply NEVER going to get around to it."

Some examples:

• Rereading certain books.  Yes, I know many of you hold books in sacred regard.  I know many of you out there who practically live by the motto of "The one who dies owning the most books, wins!"  And yes, there's that feeling that getting rid of books makes us feel like we're burning the Library of Alexandria. 
  
  But sometimes you just have to face the facts.  I had to be honest with myself and ask: Am I EVER going to reread my high school copies of Old Man and the Sea or The Great Gatsby?  Honestly?  The answer is...NO! I love reading, but come on.  If I haven't done it by now, then I'd just as well get rid of these books.  I already have books stacked horizontally next to my bookcases because I've run out of room.  Hell, I don't think I could even get through The Great Gatsby if I was stuck on a desert island with it.
  
  And here's another fact to face: if I'm going away on a trip or some place where I'll want to bring a book, then I'll want to bring one of the 20 books I bought in the past month that I haven't read yet, not Catcher in the Rye.  Sorry, Salinger.
  
  So what to do used books?  Well you can try selling them, but it would probably take a long time, and you wouldn't get much money.  You can however donate them to certain places (thrift stores, used book stores, books-for-prisoners drives) and get a tax write-off.  So that's what I did.  Just get a receipt and save it in a safe place for next April.  (On a side note, I'll probably do a separate blog on tax write-offs.)  I also mailed a bunch of them, along with a few toys I had lying around, to a mother I know who has kids.  A book has much better use in the hands of a bright 8 year-old than it does collecting dust in a crate for 8 years.

 

• Old hardware. I had an Apple IIc, an Atari 2600, Atari 7800, a "pocket" computer from Tascam, an individual electronic TRON game, and a few other old pieces of electrical gaming systems and other computer hardware from the 80s.  I have some friends who are indeed collectors of this sort of thing.  Granted I'm certainly a collector of many things, but old computer hardware simply isn't one of them.  Yet, there was always that idea of "Wouldn't it be great to plug this in again?"  Well, I do love old computer games and writing little programs, but most of what I could do on any of these device I could now do on my current PC, thanks to software game ROMs and what not.  So I got rid of the Apple stuf for embarassingly cheap, eBayed the 7800 to some guy in Brazil, GAVE away the 2600 for free on Craigslist (after seeing 10 other Atari 2600 offers, I figured "The hell with it; somebody just take this damn thing off my hands"), etc.  I managed to sell more of the software in eBay (still having the original boxes certainly helped the value).

I can come up with more examples, but that's it for now.  Gotta go.

Practical Uses for a Ouija Board

Sometimes junk can be converted into something practical.  I had an old Ouija board that I either inherited or picked up at a flea market some time when I was kid.  I also had these black pillows on my couch that had always been in a crappy torn-open condition.  Rather throwing away all of the pillows and putting the Ouija board on eBay (where it would probably just sit there with 20 other identical "vintage" boards that nobody was bidding on), I decided to make a little lap desk out of it.  If you look closely at my web site's banner at the top of this page, you can see it in the photo near the top of the big "S".

To do this, I bought some Velcro strips at the local fabric franchise.  Some of these you have to sew on, while others have a peel-back sticker on the other side.  I sewed the pillow so that it was packed down and smaller, attached velcro to both it and the board, and just stuck the two pieces together.  I've found that Velcro is great even if you want an adhesive to be permanent.  Using things like thick stickers or glue can eventually wear out, but Velcro pretty much always stays.

About the Ouija board in general, here are my thoughts on them.

I never understood how the pronunciation of "WEE-gee" came from O-U-I-J-A.  When I was in 6th grade I took French briefly, and when discussing the French pronunciation of "Oui", I mentioned that it was like the word "Ouija".  The teacher explained that the name came from the French word for "Yes" (oui) and the German word for "Yes" (ja).  So it was a "yes-yes" board.  Though I still don't know why it was called that or why it phonetically went from "WEE - Yah" to "WEE - gee".  Oh well.

Often you'll see Ouija boards sold as "spirit boards" or "ghost boards".  That's because the name Ouija® is actually a registered trademark of the Parker Brothers corporation, as are Risk® and Clue®.  That alone ought to tell you something about the Ouija.  It's about as supernatural as those other board games.  I can't believe that there are full-grown adults in the 21st century who honestly believe that Ouija boards are dangerous or summon "demonic forces".

I can't say that all of my friends share my skeptical view.  Ever see the first season of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! where they covered Ouija boards?  Well those 3 Salem witches are all friends of mine (Shawn, the guy with the black hair and who had been one of my closest friends, has sadly since passed away).  If you have other views on Ouija boards, then by all means, go rant about them...on your own blog.

So how does it "work"?  When you put your hands on the planchette piece, after a few seconds it might feel like the piece is moving by itself.  The reality though is that you ARE physically pushing it, only without being aware of it.  This is known as the ideomotor effect.  It's going to be gibberish at first, but once you get some sort of answer, then your imaginations will latch on to it and fill out the missing details.  The "spirits" that you and other participants "talk" to are nothing more than products of your collective imagination.  If you want to prove this to yourself, try asking the "spirit" something that nobody touching the planchette knows, but somebody else in the room knows, like that person's social security number.  It's not going to work.

Is the Ouija board "dangerous"?  If you're already a little superstitious to begin with, and use it in an environment where the atmosphere is spooky and expectations are high (e.g., in candle light with a slumber party full of bored teenagers), then it's just a tool that caters to any already-existing superstitions.  Yet when you get right down to it, it's still just an alphabet with a bad reputation. But hey, at least now you can use it as a mini desk or tray when you're watching TV.

My Kitchen...If You Dare

On one side of my kitchen, you find the fridge, sink, stove, and all the cabinets.  On the other side, you find this:

Some highlights, starting clockwise from the top left:

• A mixed pile of utility bill receipts, bank statements, pay stubs, and credit card statements.  I have every single one of these saved, since...forever.
• A monitor box that contains some stuff I used to have at work and, well I'm not sure.  I'd have to check.
• Cream concert poster.  Did I buy that for my dad?  I can't remember.
• Not seen in photo: hanging baskets in front of the window, containing empty bottles of Captain Morgan Private Stock rum, pots and pans, a stuffed Kermit the Frog, a stuffed gingerbread man, and other oddities.
• Also not seen in the photo: Under the black table, there are a number of boxes and papers, including a few full boxes of dishware that a friend gave me about 6 years ago.
• That big black cube on the top right is a microwave.  My brother always asks if it's a bread maker.
• More papers and other oddities on the folding table, including some unidentified 3.5" floppy disks. 
• Neon orange envelope that came with a parking ticket I got in January, even though I already paid on-line for it.  Maybe I'm afraid that the day after I throw it out, the police will suddenly send me a summons and say I didn't pay it?
• A colorful carousel pencil sharpener (sharpen the pencil, and the carousel turns) sitting on top of an Iron Maiden "Number of the Beast" Thermos.  It's probably safe to say that I'm the only person on the planet whose kitchen table includes such a configuration.
• That book from that friend that I wanted to finish last October because it looked really helpful.
• Sewing machine that I bought last year, still sitting on the floor in the original shopping bag.
• Paper shredder.  Still unopened.  Oh the irony.
• A blender that I bought in 2002.  Still sitting in its original box, unopened.
• Several boxes of stuff I had to bring back from the office.
• Various issues of MAD magazine.  I have had a subscription going for 23 years.  Though I end up tossing recent issues onto a pile or other random places.
• Big blue bag of stuff that I moved out of my car.  There's still a box or two of stuff in the car of course.
• Bottom center: my big 2008 Halloween mask.
• Top left: paint on the floor from when I spray-painted by 2007 Halloween costume.  Laying down newspaper in the immediate area just didn't work.
• There's also an item under the table that's essentially paper and from June 2006, but it's so disgusting that if I told you what it was, you'd run away from me.

Though in the seven years I've been here, I don't think I have ever found a cockroach.  Maybe they're scared.  This is just one corner of one room.

The Collyer Brothers and Other Famous Hoarders

Man, the things you can find on Wikipedia!  Somebody recently showed me this link for an article on the Collyer brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers. Here's an excerpt.

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd Police Precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house. A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a very difficult time getting into the house at first. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. Eventually, an emergency squad of seven men had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman, William Barker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue and white bathrobe.

Firefighters even refer to an overly packed home as a "Collyer mansion"!

Then there's Edmund Trebus.  "Eccentric and tenacious hoarder whose loads of rubbish brought him television fame."

I may do another "installment" on these types of historical packrats when I find more really good examples.

eBay: A Double-Edged sword

One rationalization used for keeping so much stuff is of course the argument of valuability.  "What?  We can't just toss this in the trash.  This is a collector's item!  It must be worth a lot!"  It's true, you do have to sort through the stuff because it would be stupid to blindly throw away something that could be valuable.  And what could be better than getting money for dejunking your home?  This invariably leads to the question, "How much can I get for this on eBay?"

About a year ago I managed to get rid of a high volume of stuff on both eBay and Craigslist.  And now that I have the time, I'm going to be doing it again.  But here are some of the important thigns I learned last time:

• Most of the stuff I've saved that I thought would be valuable, was not.
• On the brighter side, some stuff that I thought might have been worthless, actually sold for a lot.
• Cassette tapes and VHS tapes were among the most difficult things to get rid of.  It doesn't matter how rare the recording is, or how insanely cheap you're giving them away for.  You mention either of these physical analog media, and people stare and laugh at you as if you showed up with an Edison wax cylinder.  For example, I have seen people pay literally hundreds of dollars for the debut CD from Badlands (a short-lived supergroup from the early 90s), yet nobody bids on the cassette version.  You would think that if people wanted the recording THAT badly, they'd buy the tape and just burn their own CD from the audio and put up with the potentially worse sound quality, but I guess not.
• Often you have to accept the fact that some things are only going to sell if you sell them for next to nothing, an embarrassing fraction of what you paid for them.  BUT, if your top goal is to get rid of volume in your home, not make money, then you should consider it a success.

And here's why I call eBay a double-edged sword:

• eBay is still one of the best places to sell stuff, because lots of people go there.
• The mere existence of eBay has lowered the value of many things.

Anton Szandor LaVey wrote a great essay called "Sleepers, Orphans, and Scarcity" that wound up in the posthumous compilation Satan Speaks!.  Yes, that same Anton LaVey who wrote The Satanic Bible some 40 years ago and also established the Church of Satan also wrote some great stuff on a variety of other topics including, well, STUFF.  Another similar essay from the same book was "Acquisition".  Both essays (and the whole book for that matter) are well worth reading.  But here's a quote from "Sleepers, Orphans, and Scarcity":

"Everyone saved National Geographic magzines, with Life a close second.  It has been said that the earth has been thrown a few degrees off its axis due to the weight of all the National Geographics that people saved. ... As might be expected, an old Look magazine is scarer and more valuable than Life.  The same goes for the Life imitators: Pic, Click, Vue, Parade, Peek, etc.  The reason: the imitators were not considered worth saving."

In other words, a lot of things marked as "collector's edition" or "limited edition" or similar do not in fact go up much in value.  Why?  Because lots of people buy them and stow them away, making sure they're in good condition.  Thus, they're not so rare!  Jane Doe might want $200 for her JFK memorial issue of Life magazine, but then somebody else digs out his own copy and offers to sell it for $100, while a third person digs out their copy and is willing to sell it to you for $50, and so on.

As if this weren't bad enough, the mere existence and popularity of eBay (and to a much lesser extent, other auction sites) have driven the value down even more.  Back in the early to mid 90s, people were paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for Star Wars figures, G.I. Joe vehicles, or vintage comic books (again, even if some of the imitators were worth more due to being much more scarce).  But now you can go to eBay and find dozens of original 1977 Darth Vader figures getting zero bids.  I tried selling a whole collection of miscellaneous Star Wars stuff I had saved, placing several ads in eBay and Craigslist.  No takers.  And I wasn't even asking $20 for it all. 

Likewise, I thought all of those rare Ozzy and Metallica singles and related doo-dads I had been saving would be bringing in the cash.  I certainly got some sales, but not for much.  I should have just sold it all back in the 90s for hundreds of dollars, when I could.

Surprisingly though, here's some stuff that DID sell well:

• Rock t-shirts.  Yes, ratty old faded rock band shirts from the 80s. Which brings another selling lesson to mind: some items might not sell on their own, but do sell when you package them with something else.  For example, when I would sell a t-shirt, I'd also throw in cassette tapes or flair buttons/pins from the same band.  More often than not, it worked!
• Legos.  I had tons of Lego sets when I was a kid, and for some reason my dad always saved the original boxes.  I made a point at saving the original instructions, so that I could build the original piece again if I decided to use the bricks to build my own thing.  I have to admit, these were hard for me to give up, because I have never met an engineer who didn't grow up playing with Legos and I felt they were a "part" of me in that sense.  It's hard to give something up from childhood when it gives you a warm smile and fond memories.  But was it worth keeping three enormous boxes stacked up in my living room?  Quite simply, no.  So I sold 99% of it, and made a killing.

What will this second round of eBay selling bring me?  We'll see.

Some answers, before you ask.

I'm sure there are going to be some questions that might come up with you readers.  Allow me to answer them.

1) Hey, you only have a one-bedroom apartment!  I have a huge house and 20 acres of land!  There's no WAY you could have significant problems. So what are you complaining about?

It's true I don't have to really worry about a full attic, a full basement, garages, yards, cabanas, and other places for one's stuff that only come with having a house.  But this isn't about me vs. you.  This is about me vs. my own clutter.  A cluttered home is a cluttered home.

2) Hey, you're only a bachelor!  I have to keep track of OTHER people's stuff in my home.  So what are you complaining about?

See above.  The same principle applies here too.  (Oh, and for you soccer moms and super dads who think that you're somehow more advanced or learned than me because you have offspring, or think that I don't have my own share of important projects and jobs to work on just because I'm not a parent, well...kindly go jump off a cliff.)

3) Why don't you just move to a bigger place?

I could do that, and believe me I've been looking into bigger places.  But there are two problems here.  First of all, if I was going to move, then it would make sense anyway to go through the stuff I have and try to minimize what I take with me.  Obviously hauling more stuff would take more money, time, or energy on my part.  But there's a second problem here too: I know that if I were to wake up in a bigger place tomorrow, I'd just end up filling it to the max just the same.  So before I move, I'd like to nip this problem in the bud as best as I can.

4) Why do you even need a blog about this?  Just throw stuff away.

If it were as simple as "just throw stuff away", I wouldn't have this problem to begin with.  This is an issue that's a little more complex than that.  If you don't have the same problems I do, more power to ya!  But this blog is about me and my stuff, not you.

5) Maybe you're too materialistic.

I am indeed materialistic, but that's not the problem.  And if you have pseudo-Buddhism and other spiritual self-righteousness to preach, just save your breath.  There is nothing inherently wrong with being materialistic, and trust me when I say there is absolutely nothing anybody can say that will change my mind about that.  However, there IS a physical limit to all things.  My accumulation of stuff has reached a point where I now can't get to enjoy my material things as much as I would like.  It's a quest to get rid of some of that 80% of my stuff that I only use less than 5% of the time.

6) Why can't I post comments, like on other people's blogs?

I've shut off commenting for now.  In my experience, blog comments often become mini message boards for other people's fighting and ranting.  I disable comments on most of my YouTube-uploaded clips for the same reason.

7) How can I contact you?

Hopefully the email address bill[at]aplaceformystuff dot org should be active by next week.  In the meantime, those of you who already know me also know some way to contact me. [**UPDATE** -- The email address is now working! You can find a link on the left.]

8) Why did you write out the email address in words like that?

Because I don't want to give spambots one extra free meal.

Past Clutter Accomplishes

As I might have mentioned somewhere, one of my inspirations in decluttering my place has been Don Aslett's book Clutter's Last Stand.  Aside from the obvious Christian bias and completely unnecessary Biblical inserts, it's actually full of practical and effective advice. I recently picked up a second book of his, For Packrats Only.  I'm going to be quoting these books every now and then in this blog.  But here's one of my favorites from the first book:

"If you're unwilling to USE something ... if you hardly ever LOOK at it, if it doesn't delight your soul or stir memories every time you look at it, if it's just rotting out in the shed -- do it (and yourself) justice by getting rid of it."

So why do packrats like me have so much stuff?  Mainly because we don't throw too much stuff away.  OK, so why not?  Mainly because we think of good excuses to keep everything.  Aslett's books gets into the details of popular reasons.  One of my biggest excuses seems to have always been "Well I can still use that someday."  Ever since I was a kid, I've had an odd sense of sentimentality over otherwise mundane things.  I have some ideas of where this attitude came from, but I'll save that for another blog.

Though I'm embarrassed to say that this month marks at least 5 years since I got the book.  I know this because at some point I decided to keep a written clutter diary to document my "progress".  I did honestly manage to make a dent in the mess, but in the words of Alice Cooper, "We still got a long way to go."

Having said that, I'm digging up my journal now and have found some notes on a few oddities I threw away.

• Box of Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes, plus instant Lipton rice packs, both unused for at least a year.  I am a bachelor and I have no roommates.  I eat out most of the time, so the kitchen is one place where you'll find a number of oddities.  Not just food, but covering half of the floor are my bank statements and utility receipts from the past 7 years (and that's ANOTHER whole blog entry).  But did these things have an expiration date?  I don't know, but since the thing has been sitting next to my sink for over a year and I haven't finished eating them by now, the hell with it.  Into the trash you go.
• Ring Pop.  Every year I see my parents for Xmas, and I still get a stocking of cheap candy and what not.  I take it back with me thinking I'll get around to eating it.  I have to finally face the facts: some of this, I'll just never get around to eating.  And the longer it's been just hanging around my apartment, the more this comes true.  I have a hard time throwing away what looks like a perfectly good bunch of sweets, but it's something you just have to do sometimes.  Once you do it though, you don't miss it or have any regrets.  Into the trash you go.
• Broken dish scrub brush.  Boy, this think made cleaning drinking glasses and dishes so easy.  Just slide it in and out.  Then a week later it broke.  So there it sat on the edge of my sink for a year.  Hey, maybe I can reattach the sponge some how.  Hey, maybe I can use the ripped sponge as a third dish washing sponge.  Hey, maybe I should just throw the whole damn thing out.  Into the trash you go.
• Phoenix newspapers.  The Phoenix is a local free newspaper.  It's so liberal, it makes the New York Times look like the Christian Monitor.  Still, they do a good job at covering the local entertainment scene here around Boston.  An article catches my eye, so I take one home.  Maybe I end up reading the article, maybe I don't.  But there it sits.  If I can't even remember why I kept something in the first place, then why am I holding on to it?  Into the trash you go.
• Cocktail umbrella.  Why?!?  Why do I have this tacky thing?!?  I don't like piña coladas nor getting caught in the rain.  Into the trash you go.
• Fortune cookie fortunes, coupons for brands I don't buy, unused bank deposit slips, paper bags, and the plastic bag my bedsheets came in.  Hmm.  If these were gone tomorrow, would I say "Damn, I wish I kept that."?  No.  Into the trash you go.
• Packing paper, large used padded envelopes.  I know why I had these.  "Oh, I can use these for mailing something to somebody else someday."  What?  Who?  When?  Into the trash you go.
• Large plastic bags.  Yes, those little shopping bags have 1,001 uses.  But when you already have 1,001 of them in your closet to the point where you can't open the door without getting rained on by plastic bags...I think it's safe to get rid of some.  Yes, even those extra-large department store bags.  Come to think of it, you CAN use them right away to make a trash bag for the rest of the stuff.  Into the bag the trash goes.
• Swiss Army watch box.  Ooh, look at this box that my wristwatch came in!  It's so well-constructed and velvety and beautiful.  It's probably worth more than a cheap digital watch you can buy at a convenience store.  Surely something like this must have some special use.  Surely I just can't throw this right into the trash.  Actually, I surely can.  Aufwiedersehen!

Some stuff I FOUND from cleaning that day:

• Paper rolls for coins.  I actually do use these.
• Receipts for my bass guitars.  Hmm, interesting.  File these babies away.
• My birth certificate.  So THAT'S who I am!
• AC/DC Live - special double-CD edition.  Rock on!

Oh yeah, and about the name.

For those who haven't guessed by now, the title "A Place for My Stuff" was taken from the George Carlin album and routine of the same title.  I've been a life-long, die-hard George Carlin fan.  I'm happy that I got to see him perform live so many times over the years, and that he left such a wealth of material behind.  I own the entire Carlin catalog and I'd have to say that "A Place For My Stuff" still remains my all-time favorite album of his, if not my favorite comedy album, period.

Like many stand-up routines, "Stuff" was something that changed over the years.  You can find a number of differences between the album version, the one on Carlin on Campus, the version in his book Brain Droppings, etc.  Here's a version he did for one of HBO's annual Comic Relief specials.

By the way, there have been lots of stupid emails being forwarded around with jokes or rants falsely attributed to George Carlin.  Before you blindly pass them on, check first to see if they really were from Carlin.  If it's not an excerpt from any of his books, albums, or HBO performances, then chances are he never said it.

And...we're live!

After having some technical difficulties trying to get the right domain name and get it mapped here, I'm happy to say that APlaceForMyStuff.ORG is finally working as expected.  So that's why I haven't really started to put up entries yet.  I might tweak the looks and what not as time goes on.

I'm going to try my best to keep this updated with new entries at least a few times a week.  Speaking as an avid internet user for over 15 years, I know how much a pain it can be to maintain a site, but likewise I know how easy it is to lose interest in a site that isn't updated much.

Welcome

Hello, my name is Bill, and I'm a pack rat.

Seriously, I own so much stuff that...well gee, any really witty line that I could put here would be an understatement. And I wouldn't have any room anyway.

I've created this blog to document my combat against clutter.  There will be photos, video, related anecdotes, philosophical ramblings, and plenty of strange examples of items that will have me asking "Why the @#%&!! haven't I gotten rid of this yet?!?"  The books Clutter's Last Stand and For Packrats Only by Don Aslett have been very inspirational in this quest.

I may additionally end up using this blog for other general blogging stuff like travel, the other projects I work on, etc.