Decluttering: More Things I’ve Learned

So I’ve noticed some interesting things in these weeks/months of silence…

I keep thinking of more things to declutter:

  • The junk drawer
  • My office junk drawer
  • My newish HTC Evo, which is now full of apps and cluttered screens
  • My sock drawer… again
  • My dress “collection”
  • The fridge and the front of the fridge
  • Tupperware
  • Social media usage (I actually de-friended over 300 people on Facebook recently)


I’ve even thought about going paperless, if possible.
As in scanning everything that doesn’t come digitally, including old photos and yearbook pages so I can toss the books themselves. Wild, huh?


The more I do it, the easier it gets.
I keep finding my tolerance for getting rid of things going up and up. In the first round of getting rid of things I felt like I was ripping a piece of my soul out, but more and more I find things I could do without. I’ve been through my tshirt collection 3 times now.


I’m realizing that if it’s not visible, I won’t use it.
I have a LOT of things. Or at least, I did before I began this journey, and I still have a lot of things even after multiple and ongoing purges. The socks in the bottom of my sock box… I never use them. The tshirts at the bottom of the pile, I never wear. If its a paper in a drawer, I won’t use it - it has to be on the wall and even then I’m lucky if I remember to look at it.

I figure the less I have, the more I can have visible, organized, available - easy for my brain to turn to when I need it.


Lastly, and sadly, I’ve realized that I’ve been saving up declutters.
As in, I’ve been avoiding actually doing the decluttering until a point when I have time to DOCUMENT said decluttering. That means that maintaining this blog - or at least, spending the brainpower thinking about maintaining this blog - is something I should probably declutter.

The idea of leaving a dead blog around is annoying - because even things I don’t use take up space in my brain and drive me nuts - but I think it would be sad to lose this information.

This will likely, however, be my last post in The Things We Own.

My priority is MUSIC, and I’m going to be leaning my main blog more towards that over time (obifferson.tumblr.com).

Thanks for reading!

Need to get rid of these… but how?
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Need to get rid of these… but how?

The Art of Removing Distractions to Create Focus

Getting rid of THINGS has really helped me create a clean and somewhat more minimalist environment (although not entirely minimalist). I’m creating little work stations that help me stay focused on the things I really want to do with my time. In these photos I’m showing off the humble “recording studio” in our living room and my computer desk, which is supposed to keep me on top of the Wacom to work on my digital illustration.

Getting there, getting there. Just waiting for the gigantic whiteboards!

Digital Video Discs… otherwise known as “DVDs”. DVDs take up a lot of space, seriously! I was pretty close to getting rid of everything, but I thought I’d take baby steps here, since I do occasionally pull one out to watch. In reality, we have Netflix. We don’t need most of these. Left pile: Get rid of it! Again, recycled instead of given to charity. Damnit. Middle pile: These all went into a big ol CD case. S-M-R-T. Stuff I’ll watch again like Snatch and Fight Club and more embarassing things I watch alone with wine like Down with Love and The Scarlett Letter (mmmmm Gary Oldman…..)….. Right pile: The holdouts. Box sets that would be a pain to get via Netflix and collectibleish stuff like Blur, Gorillaz and Jamiroquai live DVDs. Now we only have one shelf half-filled with DVDs. Jack got rid of most of his boxes of video games as well. Score!
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Digital Video Discs… otherwise known as “DVDs”.

DVDs take up a lot of space, seriously! I was pretty close to getting rid of everything, but I thought I’d take baby steps here, since I do occasionally pull one out to watch. In reality, we have Netflix. We don’t need most of these.

Left pile: Get rid of it! Again, recycled instead of given to charity. Damnit.

Middle pile: These all went into a big ol CD case. S-M-R-T. Stuff I’ll watch again like Snatch and Fight Club and more embarassing things I watch alone with wine like Down with Love and The Scarlett Letter (mmmmm Gary Oldman…..)…..

Right pile: The holdouts. Box sets that would be a pain to get via Netflix and collectibleish stuff like Blur, Gorillaz and Jamiroquai live DVDs.

Now we only have one shelf half-filled with DVDs. Jack got rid of most of his boxes of video games as well. Score!

Magazines and newspapers These aren’t the only piles… I have more to work on. But these are the ones I’ve kept around longest. The culprits? Bitch, ISR (International Socialist Review), Socialist Worker and Adbusters. I LOVE these publishers. They do good work, the articles are all amazing. But honestly I was keeping them around to show people how radical I am. Problem being that we never have anyone over so bugger that. Thinking of donating these to Coffee Strong, a radical soldier coffee shop in Tacoma, WA.
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Magazines and newspapers

These aren’t the only piles… I have more to work on. But these are the ones I’ve kept around longest. The culprits? Bitch, ISR (International Socialist Review), Socialist Worker and Adbusters. I LOVE these publishers. They do good work, the articles are all amazing. But honestly I was keeping them around to show people how radical I am. Problem being that we never have anyone over so bugger that.

Thinking of donating these to Coffee Strong, a radical soldier coffee shop in Tacoma, WA.

Compact Discs

I’ve been hording my CDs for awhile now. Perhaps every 6 months, I’ll take out my CD book and play a bunch of old stuff for funsies. It’s fun for about a half hour and then usually I feel upsettingly nostalgic.

So, I wrenched my little heart away from most of my CDs (all the important stuff - read: local, homemade, priceless - was stolen when I moved to Seattle anyway). I kept the local albums, every My Chemical Romance disc, all Damon Albarn-related works and a Phish Halloween box set of their Beatles gig.

These I kept all in original packaging. The other little spindle of CDs is old files and stuff to go through. I’ve found some amazing stuff in there so far - OLD OLD OLD poetry (high school), high school and college essays. Other people’s poetry (they were delighted to see it, despite all the suicide).

In any case, I’ve been an mp3 whore since Napster so everything I care about is on my hard drive now. Why keep all this stuff? Unfortunately I recycled most of it, not realizing that I could have given it to charity. Bew.

Clothing Wrap-Up Two garbage bags’ worth! Not bad. I have that much more free space in my closet and in my brain. It feels great.
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Clothing Wrap-Up

Two garbage bags’ worth! Not bad. I have that much more free space in my closet and in my brain. It feels great.

Bags to get rid of! I have a million bags. WHY?!
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Bags to get rid of! I have a million bags. WHY?!

Status Update: Still In Progress

Things are already a LOT cleaner, in and outside of my head. I’m creating workspaces to keep myself focused on the things I really want to do (and not on things I don’t). I’ve gotten rid of a few things by way of charity or recycling, but there’s still a gigantic bookshelf full of crap I have to sell, give away, donate or recycle.

I also have a lot of other things I want to get rid of. I just obliterated most of my tupperware collection, mismatching lids and bottoms all.

Slightly more expensive than average prints of two Yoshitaka Amano pieces. For those of you less nerdy, or different nerdy, Amano did much of the cover and character artwork for Final Fantasy for many years. His work is amazing, and I still love him. But I have to say, these days, I need less art. I have more than I can fit on my walls.
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Slightly more expensive than average prints of two Yoshitaka Amano pieces. For those of you less nerdy, or different nerdy, Amano did much of the cover and character artwork for Final Fantasy for many years. His work is amazing, and I still love him. But I have to say, these days, I need less art. I have more than I can fit on my walls.