In about five minutes, I will fill three medium-sized cardboard boxes with LP vinyl recordings that I am through owning and caretaking. They have sat and sat in our basement, and reading the article and the great comments above on this website have given me that extra little nudge to shed a few more items. I think it is an art form to take your possessions and ownership apart gradually, with great thought establishing in your own mind that you are okay with letting go and being free of these things. I call it "Dismantling the Ark." When you do a blitz to nothingness, you leave yourself "out there," which clearly appeals to some people, but I am 67 and a little more deliberate on redesigning what I own and who I am. Where I am in full agreement is that having too much is a nuisance and unnecessary. On a subliminal level, you are caretaking all that stuff and I think this may explain to some extent that feeling of release you get when you finally let go of a load of your unused and dormant things. When you see, as I have, that the sky does not fall on top of your head when you do, it is a kind of incentive to keep getting freer and clearer of all the extras that are just clutter, or "stuck energy." Stuff that I use I keep. But if it's going on year number ten of sitting in our attic or basement looking dangerouos like being in storage, it is time to declutter and push the broom around the new empty space. I think what happens here is that at some point the empty space is more appealing to you than boxes of stuff stacked in it that you never use. Anyway, these are my thoughts as I get prepared to trim my records a bit this morning. Simplifying that configuration of what you own, to my mind, is better done slowly and very deliberately so you don't later backslide and wail a lament to the lost-possessions gods (lol). Submitted by Chris Grasse in South Portland, Maine, U.S.A. on 9 November 2010.
In about five minutes, I will fill three medium-sized cardboard boxes with LP vinyl recordings that I am through owning and caretaking. They have sat and sat in our basement, and reading the article and the great comments above on this website have given me that extra little nudge to shed a few more items. I think it is an art form to take your possessions and ownership apart gradually, with great thought establishing in your own mind that you are okay with letting go and being free of these things. I call it "Dismantling the Ark." When you do a blitz to nothingness, you leave yourself "out there," which clearly appeals to some people, but I am 67 and a little more deliberate on redesigning what I own and who I am. Where I am in full agreement is that having too much is a nuisance and unnecessary. On a subliminal level, you are caretaking all that stuff and I think this may explain to some extent that feeling of release you get when you finally let go of a load of your unused and dormant things. When you see, as I have, that the sky does not fall on top of your head when you do, it is a kind of incentive to keep getting freer and clearer of all the extras that are just clutter, or "stuck energy." Stuff that I use I keep. But if it's going on year number ten of sitting in our attic or basement looking dangerouos like being in storage, it is time to declutter and push the broom around the new empty space. I think what happens here is that at some point the empty space is more appealing to you than boxes of stuff stacked in it that you never use. Anyway, these are my thoughts as I get prepared to trim my records a bit this morning. Simplifying that configuration of what you own, to my mind, is better done slowly and very deliberately so you don't later backslide and wail a lament to the lost-possessions gods (lol). Submitted by Chris Grasse in South Portland, Maine, U.S.A. on 9 November 2010.