Asking the Right Questions...About Stuff
Saturday
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AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 18, 2006 — I really goofed off most of this cold, dank day. It was a day when you just wanted to curl up under a blanket with a book. Watch people on ice and snow competing in Olympic stuff.

Oh, we got out. We went to Central Market and the bookstore and the gym.

But I didn't do much that was useful.

But I spent some time pondering the old possession conundrum.

I've decided to try to inventory my stuff. Decide what it means to me, what it's worth and whether it's going to follow me in the next (downsized) stage of my life.

Oh, I've dabbled with the 'stuff' inventory

before. I even 'exposed' this online for a while.

But now I'm really serious. I'm going to decide what I'm going to ditch in the next three or four years. Really.

A lot of things you don't really have to worry about. Clothes and shoes and food items and office supplies and computer and electronic gear. You will eventually use up, wear out, replace those. Not that they aren't sometimes painful to get rid of. But still. You can. You will.

Things of decorative, collectible or sentimental value are another story. And books. Even though I can often convince myself that (a) no one in this house will ever read or refer to the book again; (b) the material in the book is all or partly incorrect or out-of-date; and (c) that the book or material in it is easily available online; even though I can say all that it is not so easy for me to let a book object go.

So I'm trying to establish this sentimental, collectible, decorative value and decide what, against all logic, will have to be store somewhere. Until I die and it loses its resonance and moves on.

shop window blast from the past

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