When I was cleaning up the blog recently, I made my way back to my old Minimalism Game posts. The idea was simple: for a month, get rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two, etc. I cleaned out a lot of junk.
In the intervening years I’ve discovered one or two things I should have kept, but I haven’t missed over 500 items which I removed from the house.
I’ve also discovered I am not cut out to be a minimalist. There is a happy point for me somewhere between minimalism and too much stuff. I haven’t found it yet.
I have found that I am trending toward ‘too much’ again, so I’ve decided to run the MinsGame for the month of April while we are staying home.
As I am starting late, I should have disposed of 10 things by today, Day 4. Leaving today are:
- Three ratty watch bands.
- Three broken watches.
- A foam egg.
- A registration holder from my insurance company.
- A suction cup antenna I never used for a scanner I no longer have.
- A commemorative patch from a camping trip 18 years ago.
A note on the watches: last year I went on a collecting spree on eBay. All of my purchases were $15-ish risks. Approximately half of them work. I’ve tinkered with the others. These are low value failures. They are not worth sending for repair, and they are not sentimental.
Disposal is slightly difficult in these trying times. Trash goes to the curb, while thrift-appropriate items will gather in a box in the garage until I can donate them somewhere.
26 days to go.
Notes from Mosquito Hill 