Non-attachment

Buddhism has this great part to it called “Detachment” or non-attachment. The extremely paraphrased idea is that we can lead holier lives by detaching ourselves from worldly things. The idea being that is we are not attached to something it’s loss does not cause us the pain and such that we would have if we were attached to it. By not having pain at it’s loss, we are less likely to engage in behavior that would hurt us and others.

When cleaning out my bathroom and back bedroom over the break, I, as always, had the thought… “Good lord, I have too much crap…” So, I cleaned, and didn’t throw out too much, though I chose a few things that headed out to the dumpster, or have been placed in a pile to be donated.  I kept thinking I should go through this and throw things away. I would hear this second voice in my head saying, “Well yeah, but later. If we stop to cull we will never get it clean.”

In true Ember fashion, I thought about it quite a bit, then promptly forgot. Until I did my weekly check of Lifehacker. Lifehacker is a great little Gawker Blog that talks about all kinds of tips and tricks to streamline your life. Due to the New Year, they were running articles on organization. One of the articles was a re-post from a minimalist who writes a blog that details how she lives a minimalist life. She had a list of 100 everyday things she doesn’t own. I thought, oh this will be interesting!

Turns out, not so much. She doesn’t own a couch, but instead sits on the floor. She doesn’t own a desk or computer chair, rather she sits on the floor and uses her coffee table as a desk. No kitchen table or chairs, they just use the coffee table. No tv, they use their laptops. No bookshelf, dvds, etc, they use their laptops. The further this went on the more I was like, “Well yes, that’s all very nice for you that your entire life can be packed into a car, but I am not in college anymore.” I like having my favorite books in physical media. I love snuggling down on my couch and watching a good movie. I like sitting around my kitchen table eating or playing board games.

But it got me thinking. What can I logically change to digital? What can I logically get rid of? One of the items MissMinimal listed was she didn’t have a stereo, so no need for that or cds. I have probably 100 or so cds. I generally rip them onto my computer, then toss them on the shelf. Occasionally a few sit in my car, but I always prefer to have the car copy be a burned one. So why keep cds? Why buy physical copies?

Well, my normal reasoning is that if my computer dies, I want to *not* lose my music. The thing is, I have a *ton* of music on my portable harddrive that isn’t on cds. So what I really need to do is do proper backups of my harddrive and portable harddrive and just nix the cds all together.

That’s gonna be hard for me. I like having things. I like having a physical item. But I need to do this. I can’t just keep collecting stuff forever. There are things that are great for hanging onto, but there is a great deal of stuff I need to cut out of my life.

The more I thought about it, the more I noticed a thing or two I wouldn’t mind not having anymore. I mean, do I really need that ceramic thing I painted back in college? Do I really need those 200 or so vhs tapes that I haven’t watched in 4+ years? I mean yeah, I still have a working vcr too. I should probably get rid of that too. I have a PS2 (one of the fat ones) that only works about half of the time. It is unreliable enough that we got a PS2 slim to replace it.

While I don’t agree with MissMinimalist, I DO agree with another poster who suggested the 1 In 2 Out method. The idea is that for every 1 thing you bring into the house, you take 2 out. At first, it’s really easy. As time goes on though, it gets hard. And you eventually reach a point where you stop buying new things that aren’t vitally important because you don’t want to have to take 2 things out!

Here’s to less unimportant stuff. I will try to remember to update back with what I do get rid of.

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