Expect Less

Selling off my old computer gear has gone better than I expected - I’ve had inquiries on nearly everything and a few pieces are already gone, with more going out the door tonight.

Packing has been really easy so far, and my last purge before the move, which consist mostly of clothes, is going to be great. I’m going to put a ton of stuff in garbage bags and get it to Goodwill. Beyond that all that’s really left that troubles me are the movies, and I’m thinking that a large lot of them on CraigsList might move pretty quickly at a reasonable price. We shall see.

But yes, I’m feeling good about this. A little extra cash is nice to have, especially for things that I don’t use that other people can appreciate.

Once the move is complete I have a few more things I’m planning to write up that are helping me keep my life simple, including some techniques I use when shopping online, keeping my wallet streamlined, and moving things to my computer so I don’t have to keep them on the shelf.

I move in two weeks, and so yesterday I started packing up some boxes. I threw things out as I went, and left books and moves that I’d like to sell sitting on the shelves. I’ll take pictures and put things on Craigslist and Half for the rest of them.

I’m also thinking about going through my boxes of cables one more time and putting the bulk of it online. I have an old computer monitor, game controllers, and more cables than a person could possibly need in there. A friend of mine, Aaron, is coming by to take some of it off of my hands, and the rest are being posted online as well. I’m hoping to make a few bucks and lighten my load at the same time with this final push.

The next two weeks also hold that lovely ballet of trying to eat as much of my food as possible, without having to do much more shopping. I think I’ll have to do one more grocery order, but it should be minimal. Or, maybe I will just start experimenting in the kitchen and see what I can create. I’m extremely excited to move, and also to be reducing the amount of material goods that I bring with me in the move. I’ve probably only parted with a small percentage of all the things I have, but it already feels great and I think that before the big day I can make an even more significant dent in what I have to bring with me.

I always try to put anything I buy on Amazon in to PriceProtectr, just in case the price goes down. I recently purchased some new headphones after my old ones broke, and I also bought a home theater system for surround sound movies (because while I am trying to cut back on things I don’t use much, I’m not opposed to having things that will be extensively used, and I know this will).

PriceProtectr is fantastic, and today when I went to add the items I bought last week I noticed that the price has already gone down. I’m going to be getting nearly $40 back from Amazon this week because of price changes. It’s a great way to stay on top  these things, and it requires very little effort. One thing that I would love to see (and would try to write if there was an API) would be a way to forward an email to their service and have it extract the order, dates, and prices and automatically set up the reminders for you. That would be so stupid simple, I’d just set up a rule on my email to foward any orders from supported retailers through to them.

Maintaing my Google Reader has stopped being a chore and returned to being enjoyable. It’s been a few months since I posted anything on this, but I’ve maintained my trend of reading fewer and fewer feeds and fewer items. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything at all.

This whole process also helped me realize something about myself - I used to love (and still do, but I care about it less now)  being the first person to know about something. I enjoyed sharing some new bit of information and feeling like I was that much more informed. As I said, I still enjoy it, but it matters a lot less to me now. I don’t have to be first.

I have gotten a bit lax in my self-imposed diet rule of checking my feeds and mail less frequently,  but I’m still doing better than I was before this all began. Still, I could do better. Maybe I should start keeping a tally of how many times I check, and share that here.

Do you have trouble limiting how much you read your email and check your feed reader? How do you keep yourself in check?

Last week, I sold my car. I am not buying a new one in the foreseeable future either. It’s a strange feeling, and it was scary in the days leading up to the transaction, but I’m glad it’s happened and I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.I put the car on CraigsList, several times actually. There were a few lookers, but nothing took for a few months. I was started to think I’d never sell it, while I was making payments of nearly $500 for the car and insurance every month for something that sat in my garage day after day. I checked the mileage right before I sold it; I’d driven just over 2,000 miles from July to January. That included 4 trips from Minneapolis to Eau Claire to see friends; a round trip of 200 miles.

And so now I’m using public transportation exclusively, unless someone gives me a ride somewhere. In March my friend Adam is coming in to town, and we’re going to build up a single speed bike for me. I have a great mountain bike, but it’s too much for daily commuting to work, and I want something I can easily maintain on my own. I also want something that could be lost without being a huge financial burden to replace.

Right now I live outside Minneapolis, but right on the train line. In two weeks I’m moving near downtown, in to the Loring Park neighborhood. It’ll be about 3 to 4 miles by bike to get to work, and there are several bus lines within a few blocks that’ll take me there as well. I’m also signing up for HourCar for those days when I need to get somewhere quickly or outside the area I can comfortably bike or travel by bus.

I’m excited and a little bit scared by all this. There have already been a few things I might have done if I’d had access to a car, but I can’t say definitively that I would have gone. I took the bus home from St. Paul on Saturday, and it wasn’t bad at all - having a book, my Nintendo DS, and my iPod Touch handy certainly makes the trip an easy one. It may take more time to travel, but if I plan ahead, I get a lot more use out of my time.

I haven’t been on top of things with this site, but I have been reducing. I cut back for a while and wasn’t as vigilant about cleaning house and emptying boxes.I’m moving next month to a new place in Minneapolis. A slightly smaller place, as far as storage space goes. And so I have been systematically digging through boxes and closets, looking under the sink and in the bags.

I’ve thrown out a ton of stuff, mostly knick-knacks and old  stuff that I once convinced myself I’d want one day. But now I look at it and I have no emotional response, so I throw it out.It’s hard to get rid of things, especially things that you think might mean something to you some day.

I’ve managed to save some things, but there are other things that I just don’t care about, and I’m being honest with myself. Yes, some day it might be cool to see some art that I drew in my college art class. But I’m not artist, I took the one class. And the fact of the matter is that I didn’t try that hard on what I made, and I didn’t care about it all that much when I did it. Why would I care 20 or 40 years from now? I won’t.

I’ve also been working on getting rid of things when I want to get something new. I decided I wanted an Xbox 360 so I could play games against my friends online, and to play Assassin’s Creed. I though about installing Windows on my MacBook, but I didn’t even know if it’d be capable of doing everything I wanted. So I sold my Wii and all of my games, and I used that money to fund the Xbox purchase, which I got a good deal on through Craigslist.

Today I watched my Windows PCs go out the door today as well, leaving me with just my laptop. I also sold my PSP to a friend because I wasn’t using it.I donated a bag of clothes to Goodwill today, and I’m thinking I might do that once more before I move. I’ve got a stack of books to either sell online or bring to a used book store, if they’ll have them. Maybe I should just donate them too.

It feels really good to know that I don’t have a bunch of things taking up space any more, a bunch of things I don’t need. It makes me feel mentally strong to recognize that I don’t need some of these things, that I won’t use some of these things. Living life wondering “what if” and thinking that I just might use that some day, so I should hold on to it has become a hindrance that makes moving, organizing, and using my space well more trouble that it’s worth.

Twenty nine days ago I removed two thirds of my RSS feeds, and have since removed even more. Tomorrow, the graph on trends page of Google Reader is going to be drastically different, because there will no more days with over 500 items read.

I’ll still have my large post-backpacking day, but the shift from a few weeks ago is obvious. I’m spending much less time reading RSS feeds, and less time checking my mail. I’m repeating myself from what I’ve said in several other posts, but I expect this to be one of the last posts on the subject.

This weekend I’m emptying my car, cleaning it, taking pictures, and putting it up on Craigslist. I’m donating a couple bags of clothes to Goodwill. And I am beginning work on a new project that was conceived a while ago, but started to come together last weekend while talking with my dad.

Oh - I have also sold about 25% of my DVDs now. I have a feeling a large chunk of them may be going to a used movie dealer for less money, but at least they’ll be gone.

I got home last night from 4 nights of camping and backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail on the north shore of Lake Superior. This week I have some cleaning up and throwing out to do to that will keep me on track for unloading things, and next weekend I’m heading to Seattle.

I’ve removed more items from my RSS feeds, now down to 93 feeds, some of which haven’t been updated in nearly a year (but which keep a tab on personal sites and so will remain in the reader).

We left Thursday after work to head up to our campsite, spent 4 days hiking about 36 miles through several state parks, from Cascade River south to Temperance River. After getting home and feeling no urgent desire to check my email or RSS (what a wonderful feeling) I did laundry, took a shower, and made dinner. Then I settled in an uploaded my photos before checking email and RSS. I had fewer items to check after 4 days away than I used to check in the course of a normal weekday. Granted, it was a holiday weekend here in the states, but the ease of checking everything out was incredible.

I still struggle with limiting my email checking, but I’m getting better. The most important next step is going to be keeping occupied during the day, whether it’s with projects, work, or other activities. I use email and RSS and Facebook and LinkedIn and Flickr to fill and pass my time, when there are other things I’d much rather be doing, but I feel like I need to be ‘working’.

Goals for the coming week include delivery of DVDs to my dad, selling a few more DVDs, reformatting my computers and preparing to sell them, throwing out or giving away unnecessary electronics gear, and donating used clothes. I’m doing some rough work on getting new projects under way, but the minimization process is a higher priority right now.

Another major step has begun in that I’ve completely disconnected my Windows desktop and pulled it out, plus another wishful thinking computer that I hadn’t touched in months. They now sit at my kitchen table with another keyboard and mouse, ready to be formatted and put on the Craigslist selling block. I removed the secondary hard drive from the PC and ordered an external enclosure so that I could keep the content I had been accessing available.

It’s somewhat disturbing to go through all my boxes and realize that I have, sitting idly by, the necessary equipment to put together 2 or 3 computers. It’s more disturbing to realize I could do this, but have absolutely no need to do so. This is the opposite of a safe guard, it’s just an addiction to wishful thinking that I might start doing something that’s never held an interest for me.

I’ve actually sold a few DVDs now, moving beyond just having offers.

I’m packing up a bag with several things my parents are taking from me, that I’ll carry along when I go to see them next weekend. A major portion of my DVDs will disappear then.

The DVDs I’m selling are listed through my Backpack account, which I plan to discuss further soon.