Lost

I know I've mentioned it several times, but never in a really good format, so hopefully this will rectify that.  When I get rid of, or lose, or otherwise no longer possess an item which I have already uncatalogued, then I label it "lost." I've already done this with a few things, most notably object 165 which was the first thing I blogged and then got rid of.

But after I removed so many pairs of earrings from my life I felt rather liberated, and so I went through the rest of my jewelry box and got rid of anything that I didn't know why I was keeping and/or was never going to wear again.

This included several hand-made jewelry objects, one I made from beads my older sister got me for Christmas one year, another the bracelet that matched one of the earrings mentioned in object 165--the earrings from my cousin.  But those were things I hadn't cataloged yet.

I also went through the necklaces that I'd already mentioned and got rid of a few of those.  In general I felt strongly that now the objects were remembered on this blog, their picture was taken, and their story told; so why the hell was I keeping them?

Thus those objects are now "lost" to me.

The word 'lost' was an odd one to come to.  See, I wanted a way to mark that I'd gotten rid of a thing, but "thrown out" or "gave away" and all the other such options were too restrictive, and I didn't want to make the distinction between something I'd tossed, and something I'd sold, because any way that you looked at it, those object were still lost to me.

Granted, there's still a bit of confusion wherein people might think that I've actually lost the objects in question, so I've also added a "lost" field to the object summaries, wherein I explain where it went and when.

I don't want readers to think that this means I'm starting to remove all things from my life.  I still love my stuff, and I'm getting more every day (uh...oops), and I'm not advocating that you go and throw out all your beloved possessions.

Instead I'm taking a page from that article about Veridian Design (sort of) and trying to rid myself of the things that I don't need or want, the things that are too cheap, the stuff I don't use and the things that I have doubles of, that sort of stuff.  Next time you clean out your drawers, ask yourself, how many staplers do I really need? and go from there.

Giving and Getting

I forgot to get my stuff together for a proper article-based post today, and I have a date that starts...actually, he was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago, so hopefully soon, which means I don't have any time right now to putter around the internet looking for other things to blog about.

But luckily for me I've got a rantish topic all ready.

Old People's Stuff

For this week I found a rather interesting article.  It's When Possessions Lead to Paralysis by Paula Span. The article is about an in-progress study about the effects of things on old people--specifically their ability to move.  Not whether they can walk through their house (although some hoarders probably have problems with that), but rather about their ability to move into a smaller home, or assisted living, which is something that many old people have to do eventually.

Rethinking What You Own

For this week's blog post, we're going to look at a more interesting article than last week.  It's actually an article talking about another article, but when I looked at the other (as linked from the first) it was long, boring, and not quite about the same topic, so after skimming for a bit, I decided my time would be better spent sorting my bead collection.

Anyway, this article is Viridian Design and Rethinking Our Relationship with 'Stuff' by Marc Gunther.

Owning Too Much

I've never tried blogging about a non-me topic before, so I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. I suppose I could look it up on eHow, but somehow I don't think I'd be much better informed after doing that.  If you see me doing something wrong, let me know and I'll see what I can do to improve.

To find a topic for today's article, I typed "owning too much" into google and nabbed the second article that showed up. One might think I'd go with the first one, but that was a post on a different blog, whereas the second was an actual news article.  In fact, it's a BBC news article called "Misery Creep" by Brendan O'Neill.

Blog Post

Mostly this is a blog dedicated to cataloging my stuff, but I thought I might supplement that with an occasional blog about other people blogging (or reporting) about stuff.

I've just started looking into this today, and it looks like there's a lot out there about owning more and about owning less, so this should be fun.

But before I really begin to pour into discussing articles--something I'm new to and will have to study before I can really even begin--I suppose I might go on about a brief history of why I own so much stuff.

I blame my grandparents. And the American Dream.

There. That was pretty short, wasn't it?