Got Clutter?

Day 354

I have been doing some thinking. Yeah, that is what happens when I am feeling sick, I sit around and think about stuff. Lately I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed, a feeling that my life is too cluttered.

And then I look around my home and I know why.

Behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion. [D&C 132:8]

Now this is not a shot at Kristy or the way we live our life. This is a shot at me. I have way too much stuff and I hold on to things for very stupid reasons. I believe that my house should be a house of order, I know that when my house is clean, I feel good and I feel like I am in order. The more stuff I have cluttering where I live, the more cluttered my brain feels.

I watch Hoarders and it makes me feel better about my mess. Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for these people; I am not making fun of them. I am just thankful that my hoarding problem is not this severe. This is NOT a picture of our home.

And then I came across this blog: Do you hoard your underwear? I have to admit that I am like this. I hoard things. I hoard things that I don't even need. At first glance at reading this article I thought this was not me. But then I look around and I see this behavior in many ways. Take comic books for instance. I buy and read comics but then I will sell them so I can get a nice paperback or hardcover. But then the hardcover stays on the shelf UNREAD! They are just so nice, I don't want to ruin them! So why the snot did I buy them? I still want to read them right?

So I have been thinking...

It is time for me to make a change and last night I made a huge change. No, I am not selling off all my comic books. But I am getting rid of stuff that I have not read/used/listened too in years. I have been paring down my comic book collection for the last few years and I am proud to say that I have sold close to 2,500 books. I sell them to this online comic store and I get double the credit. So I do get comics in return but I am getting comics that I really want. So instead of having all this comic clutter, I have a collection of comics that I absolutely love.

Last night, I bit the bullet and I am moving into the digital age.

The last physical CD I purchased was Queen + Paul Rodgers The Cosmos Rocks which came out about two years ago. Every CD I have purchased since as been online through iTunes or some other online music service. Most of my CDs that I have now are in my iTunes library on my computer. I rarely grab a CD and listen to it. All my music is digital. So I have decided to get rid of my CDs. I have the music already, I just don't need the physical CDs anymore.

My main "worry" is that I won't have a copy of my music. Everything will be on my computer and what if that crashes? I make regular backups on an external hard drive which includes all my music files. And not only that, since I am so worried anal, I am going through my entire music library and converting everything to mp3s and then burning them to a couple of DVDs. So I will have another set of backups. Only this time, my physical backups will only take a few DVDs instead of the large stack of CDs I have now.

Now some CDs I will not sell, at least not at the moment. I will keep my Queen collection as well as others. I like to look at the CD pamphlet and I like to read the lyrics too. But I am only keeping a small percentage, merely a handful of what I had. The rest of them I have already sold online.

Not only am I getting rid of stuff I don't need, I am also making a tidy profit too. Sure, I paid much more for the music than what I am making back but if I don't use them anymore what's the purpose? The $150 I am making is worth it. I can find many, many things comics that I can spend that money on and I bet I will not even miss the CDs I have sold back.

Why would I? I don't listen to them now anyway.

So I am dejunking. And I am uncluttering the place where I spend the most time in. And already I can feel my brain work. It is hard work and I still have lots to do and it can be difficult to let things go but it will be well worth the effort I put in. Besides, I don't want to move and have to take this crap with me.