Cleaning up old mess sure brings up some thoughts

[teajay]

I'm at the parents home, finally cleaning up the mess I left there when I moved out. There was a room with two large closets filled with clothes and stuff, belonging to me and my brother. As I was digging through the stuff, and throwing away heaps of it, the thought of throwing my childhood away passed through my mind. I stumbled upon items I totally forgot about, and this made me experience a sudden streak of nostalgia. However, I set a clear goal: to throw away about 90% of all I ran across, mainly because I don't have much room to spare in my new home and I want to relieve my parents from the junk.

So then I figured that if a fire would destroy this room, I probably wouldn't even care much more than a single moment about the stuff gone forever. Sure, all my diaries from high school contain some sweet memories - but even more so does my head contain the better ones. So why even bother carrying all that old stuff around anyway? It's some sort of inheritance from earlier times, when it was actually a virtue to preserve everything you could find, because everything was scarce. Nowadays, we just have too much junk, and we can't find the way out of this "junkmaze". That's at least the way I've experienced it.

So, my goal is to keep on throwing away until I have only the most valuable stuff left. I guess a good parameter for useless stuff is this: if I don't think about it once a year, or do not use it once a 3 months, it's probably worth throwing away - unless my life would depend on it in a rare case of emergency. I plan on doing the same on my computer. Music not listened to for over a year - throw it away! Games not played - throw it away! Documents not needed anymore - throw it away! I do have a dilemma with photos and shit like that. Should I print the most important ones, throw the rest away? How often do I watch at these photos - do I need them all? Would my life be unhappy if I hadn't had these photos?

Another solution I came up with is this: paintings, photos and other items I found valuable, nailed to one wall, so I could watch at these every day. This wall is in the same room I left already more than a year ago, and now when I look at it, I see already a couple of items I could easily dispose of.

On the other hand, junk is coming in every day; I almost finished ripping a 168 cd box of jazz, and I have two full maps of texts and work done for my studies. The thing is that I probably am going to throw away some of the paperwork in it these maps - give it a month or four. The idea is that when you've gotten rid of all old stuff, newer stuff will gain easier access to you and your mind. So getting rid of junk doesn't have to be necessarily limited to the physical world. If you get rid of bad thoughts and memories, or quit spending time with them, you will probably have more time to get in touch with more positive experiences.

For me, getting rid of most of the stuff that concerns elma, meant going cold turkey, but also the entrance of much more time wellspent every day. This will sound arrogant to some of you, but I felt like elma was in a way limiting my scope of personal development. I kept on doing the same thing, every day, without getting true pleasure out of it. I figured that if I didn't see myself playing this in 10 years, I should stop playing the very right moment. For now, I feel visiting lauta at irregular times serves me some pleasure, but I find this feeling to be waning, too. This doesn't mean I think the scene is boring. I just don't fit it in anymore.

[Lousku]

...if a fire would destroy this room, I probably wouldn't even care much more than a single moment about the stuff gone forever.

...some sweet memories - but even more so does my head contain the better ones.

...if I don't think about it once a year, or do not use it once a 3 months, it's probably worth throwing away

YES!! I agree furiously. Very good principles when cleaning and throwing things away.

[Memphis]

I feel the same way about cleaning and giving away clothes to shelters. If I haven't worn it in the last 4 years, why do I keep it. Also I like checking lauta and playing ocassionally on eol but i can kind of see where your coming from teajay. When you own your own home and stuff you have other things you should be doing while your playing elma. At the end of the day though, everyone can use a bit of downtime and if this is what you spend your downtime doing then I think thats fine as long as it doesn't take over ur life.

[Grace]

. I just don't fit it in anymore.

You still fit into the scene here, just not the elma aspect.

[milagros]

I used to masturbate 6 times a day for the past 10 years. I kept on doing the same thing, every day, without getting true pleasure out of it. I figured that if I didn't see myself doing this in 10 years, I should stop doing the very right moment. For me, getting rid of most of the stuff that concerns masturbating, meant going cold turkey, but also the entrance of much more time wellspent every day. This will sound arrogant to some of you, but I felt like it was in a way limiting my scope of personal development. For now, I feel masturbating at irregular times serves me some pleasure, but I find this feeling to be waning, too. This doesn't mean I think masturbating is boring. I just don't fit it in anymore.

[teajay]

you look straight into my soul

[8-ball]

I used to masturbate 6 times a day for the past 10 years. I kept on doing the same thing, every day, without getting true pleasure out of it. I figured that if I didn't see myself doing this in 10 years, I should stop doing the very right moment. For me, getting rid of most of the stuff that concerns masturbating, meant going cold turkey, but also the entrance of much more time wellspent every day. This will sound arrogant to some of you, but I felt like it was in a way limiting my scope of personal development. For now, I feel masturbating at irregular times serves me some pleasure, but I find this feeling to be waning, too. This doesn't mean I think masturbating is boring. I just don't fit it in anymore.

[teajay]

I love quoting other people's jokes so that it looks like I actually made them

[Bismuth]

many wins on the last posts

[teajay]

Now I am also cleaning up new mess! Everything must go!

[teajay]

This looks like one of the best threads I ever started here, as it truly is an important topic to me lately, and I kinda forgot how I was already making a point of throwing things away back then, 2 years ago. These introspections make me think about how I used to do things and watch at things. The way in which I throw things away has intensified over this 2 year period, I guess. Since that time when I moved to another room in Utrecht, I moved another 4 times, and each and every time I went to the same ritual of looking through my stuff to find out what I could leave behind, throw away, donate to charities or sell, in order to make the actual moving less cumbersome. And it pays off, but I still find it hard to throw away all I have. In that sense I don't have the illusion that I can ever outgrow my materialistic habits fully.

But, since than, my garderobe has been hoyled to the mininum. The amount of books has been cut by about 75% and the amount of money I have has rose tremendously. I used to have an active debt, now I have a study loan/passive debt and savings for next summer/next year's education plan. I even got to a point where I don't fear of losing the minor jobs I have, since I can handle a bit less money in favor of more time for the many plans I keep coming up with and the newer job opportunities that keep piling up.

So yeah, I don't simply collect and consolidate, I collect, select, dispose and reselect, recollect and try to have as much baggage that's worthy caring without straining myself with worthless stuff. The mess is slowly turning into a well-organized chaos.

[Lousku]

Very cool, teajay.

I had to do the same process when moving out of my parents' place. Donated about half of my clothes, threw away tons of junk paper and stuff, ended up leaving one box of really old stuff at my parents' and took 2 boxes of stuff with me. The box I left I still need to go through since that apartment is soon going through major renovation and has to be emptied completely. I still have my drums and other playing things to stick somewhere... Wish I had a training room.