Space is a commodity
Now just to make it clear, by space I don’t mean the vast dark place where men in white suits used to float about pretending they had been to the moon. I mean that tiny cramped area in your room where you are trying to fit in some more crap.
The older you get and the longer you live in the same place, inevitably, the more crap you accumulate. It’s hard to even see it until it’s pointed out, maybe by someone else, or a change or event that makes it more obvious.
The event may be as mundane as buying one extra thing and finding you have nowhere left to put it. It’s said that most people have a coating of “undigested fecal matter” that slowly builds up inside the intestines over time. John Wayne is often used as an example because he is said to have died with 40lbs of it onboard. That is one of the reasons people do fasts, to try and clear out all this old shit that has collected inside them.
Maybe a lot of the stuff we accumulate outside of our bodies is similar. And although it smells a lot better, it too is hard to clear out. We can’t just do a three day “stuff” fast and then spray it out all around the toilet bowl. We are very, very attached to it. Getting new stuff is so cool, we get all excited anticipating what we are getting next.
Surfing about on Ali Express, we find really awesome bargains with free freight all the way to New Zealand and hit buy now with a buzz of excitement. Two weeks later when our latest box from China arrives, it’s exciting to open it up and check out the new purchase.
Making a space for the new arrival on the other hand, is not such a good buzz. Maybe we now really need to get rid of something else. Even if it’s something we haven’t used in five years and its resale value is so low that we can’t even be arsed listing it on Trade Me because it’s not going to fetch over $10, it’s still hard.
No matter how useless our crap is, we still perceive it as more valuable than space. If space was worth say $2.95 for each little square, we could order some online from China and get a buzz doing it. But space is something we don’t value at all, until all of ours is all full of crap.
Living in a house and accumulating stuff is a bit like a blockchain I guess – everything accumulates and remains permanently. Or at least, it remains until the person who inherits your stuff when you cark it, comes over and says “look at all this crap” and calls for one of those Salvation Army vans to come and take it all away for charity.
Today I’m going to have a clear out because we could do with some more space, and to make the whole process easier, I’m going to attribute a dollar value to each bit of space I clear. And it might as well be high, say $1000 for a space the size of a small shoebox. I hope to create many thousands of dollars worth of space this morning. And then, feeling rich, I can go onto Ali Express and find some really cool new stuff to buy!
Or maybe I’ll just buy some more crap
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My real name is Ian Gregson, aka wheels007. I’m a professional sifter from Wellington New Zealand. My interests include photography, conspiracies , web design, writing, nutrition, art, design, philosophy, technology, anarchy, health, computers, humour (humor), gratuitous arse shots, and anything that makes my eyes bulge while I make squeaking sounds (except torture).
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Heinlein called it cubic, space, that is. this too is a balance of space and the things that take up space, that we need to live. in America there is a campaign to classify ownership of property as mental illness, hoarding.
minimalism, decluttering, hoarding, and decreasing your footprint (carbon or otherwise), all of this is to condition us to accept less in the way of property rights.
there is, of course, a need for space in which to live. there is a use for removal of clutter, too much of which has been shown to increase stress. minimalism is a peaceful aesthetic.
all of this leads to the need for thoughtful balance.
Yes I must admit to being a bit of a hoarder, but balance is certainly desirable!
These days I aim to do my hoarding digitally which is pretty good for space, so I have 10,000 eBooks, and 1500 albums. Although we do have more than a dozen computers and 30+ hard drives :) so there may be a flaw in my plan.
This raspberry pi is the smallest one.
i agree about the increase in keeping digital information. i have about ten terabytes of my digital collections. i couldn't afford a place large enough to keep all of that in the form of actual books, but i could carry my library away in just an oversized suitcase.
the majority of my property is actual tools that i use to make life happen. from hammers and screwdrivers to pots and pans, the amount of things we use to make life happen can be unwieldy, but unless we desire to be monastic hermits living in one room cells, the balance must be reached.
i've been watching the raspberry pi's get smaller, and cheaper. soon the controllers will have lost all control. the amount of knowledge that is within the average person's reach is unfathomable. if we can only get the tools of understanding distributed widely enough, liberty will be ours, and scarcity will be a thing of the past, then we may be free of this drive to acquire and store.
And then a hardcore fully tagged Sally wagon pulled up over the road and I thought they were coming for my hoardings. But the neighbours were having a clear out, so all good.