Thoreau Thursday 4: The Burden of Excess Possessions
Why and How I'm Going Semi-Minimalist
Early in my journey to live more deliberately, I’ve come to realize that about a third of my current possessions are worse than useless to me. In many ways, a person’s identity and values are manifested as the total collection of that person’s physical property… or, as George Carlin famously referred to it, a person’s “Stuff”:
A cluttered collection of “Stuff” represents AND subconciously reinforces a cluttered mind… psychologically, by extension, a cluttered identity. That’s a huge reason why Jordan Peterson famously advises people to “clean your room before you take on the world, bucko”
The concept of “opportunity cost” is among the most useful of the ridiculously few counterexamples that prove the academic field of economics hasn’t been entirely corrupted by the laughably ludicrous Keynesian school of thought. Investopedia defines it succinctly as “the potential forgone profit from a missed opportunity—the result of choosing one alternative and forgoing another.”
The opportunity cost of keeping superfluous distractions in my daily environment isn’t just a small potential gain… it’s actually a net negative if things remain as they are currently! All that excess clutter actively subtracts from the quality of my day-to-day life.
If you’re not consistently living deliberately, it’s easy to become possessed by your own excess possessions… that mental takeover creeps up on you over time. I’m making this post a bit longer than usual with the following bonus section because I’m taking back conscious command by organizing (in no particular order) my main interests and “Stuff” into categories:
General household necessities — kitchen utensils, toiletries, workout gear, and other miscellaneous tools. This is the category from which I have the least amount of clutter to remove
Clothes — a MUCH higher percentage of which is excess
Musical paraphenalia — very little to remove, with the priority just being to reorganize more conveniently for frequent use in my favorite hobby
Books — of which I have a metric fuckload. Organizing and scything excess for this category is gonna have to be its own separate project
Artwork and mementos — canvas prints, posters, and various other objects that are uplifting for my mood, mostly through beauty and/or nostalgia. I can definitely throw out some of this, but keeping most of the art is important for my soul and my faith in humanity
Computers — the vast majority of this stuff is essential for my work… other than some extra cables, but not much else
Misc. office “staples”
Old schoolwork and a bunch of other random old paperwork — a huge percentage of this should be recycled (shredded first for any that feature significant personal details, of course)
Containers — for physically compartmentalizing all this “Stuff”
Virtually anything else that I currently own but doesn’t fit one of those categories should probably be removed. I don’t have a TV or video games. Some of my old sports equipment could probably be sold on eBay or whatever for extra cash (with which to stack more sats), and most of the rest can be thrown out. It’s within my power to remove any of my own Stuff that distracts or gets in the way.
After beginning this process a couple days ago, I can already feel some of the weight being lifted off my shoulders… the “burden of possessions” that Thoreau mentioned no longer obscuring as much of the clarity from a more simplified vision to advance along my most ideal directions.