Jun 08 2007
Divesting
You start out the process of divesting of your worldly goods with the best of intentions, you surely do.
During the long, slow, horrid months of boat shopping, Jason and I strategized about what to get rid of, what mattered to us, what had to stay on land, what was safe to bring aboard with us. We talked about weight restrictions, moisture issues, storage locations.
We carefully, methodically, thoughtfully, divided up our worldly goods into four piles: on the boat, in storage, sell/give away, and trash.
Sounds really basic, doesn’t it?
Heh. You try it.
The lines get very, very murky, very very fast. We had a lot of books, which other than a box or two of absolutely keepsakes and treasures, we decided we were going to sell on amazon.com. Easy, right? Nope. Upload info, determine selling price, then sit back and deal with the insanity of both the post office and the general public, neither of whom are particularly sympathetic to your logistical considerations. Stuff that won’t sell on amazon (like the books that some discount reseller has posted a gazillion of at $0.01 apiece, the pirates) gets uploaded to paperbackswap.com, which should be more reasonable, since there’s no money involved, right?
Wrong. Some people have nothing better to do with their lives than get borderline psychotic about the “quality” of books they’re requesting of their own free will and being sent for free. One guy sent out a full-page diatribe about his expectations of swapped book quality. I refused to send him the book, half for being a twit, and half because I was terrified that sometime in the past someone might have sneezed on it, and then, since he was clearly examining the books with a microscope, he’d have access to a DNA sample, and then we’d find out we’d been cloned, then there’d be lawyers involved….
But I digress. And that happens a lot too, on this journey. You sit down to clean out a file box, and end up traipsing down memory lane, totally wasting the half hour you’d set aside for a pathetically simple task. You promise to give it a shot again the next day, and that day finds you attempting to get the recalcitrant scanner to work, since digitizing this stuff makes sense, right? But then the scanner won’t cooperate, and you discover you’ve got some arcane subprocess going on that’s blocking it, and you spend three hours troubleshooting your connection and hacking your registry to shut down the offending process.
Before I actually got started, back in the day where we were still planning the Great Divestiture, it was easy to think of it like the process of shedding one’s worldly goods to become a monk. People would say “Oh, I could never live on a boat, I could never get rid of my stuff!”, and you think to yourself, as one boat family I know said, “no no, I’m being liberated by it”. There’s something really freeing about getting rid of things. But about three months into the process, you find yourself stepping back, horrified, at the sheer amount of crap you’ve accumulated.
I sat down to post ads for all our assorted electronics on craigslist. We have four cd players in this house. One’s mine, one’s Jason’s from before we met, one’s his brother’s, and one, his grandpa gave us when he did this divesting thing before he hopped into his RV and roared back over the mountains to Mississippi. Four. CD players. In one house.
No wonder people in third world countries hate us.
So anyway, there I go, posting to craigslist, because surely, someone wants this stuff, right??? Nope. We got one or two bites, from people looking to pay $20 for something even a pawn shop would have given us $50 for. So here we are, after a lot of work and attention and writing down of serial numbers and dutifully agreeing that I was honestly posting non-stolen goods, tah-dah, I still have all this electroni clogging up my garage.
So after three months of high ideals and grand plans, I’ve had it. I am done posting, selling, negotiating, shipping, and dropping off. I’ve given everything I can to charity; the guy at the Salvation Army drop-off pretends to be closed, now, when he sees us pulling up. And yeah, I’ve even had it with freecycle.
Screw it. We’re getting a dumpster.
Welcome to my world. At a certain point, you need to just chuck it all. It’s why I don’t even bother with donating most times. Too much expense in terms of time. I feel bad for contributing to landfill, but at a certain point?
Fuck it.
Remember all the crap I left behind when I fled Florida. Best thing I ever did. It made me realize how useless most of the crap we “need” is. Ever since then, I only keep stuff I “want” and more than once since then I’ve had a dumpster delivered to the Ranchito and cleaned house in a brutal and ugly fashion.
It’s very liberating. I’m thinking about creating a religion called All Hail the Dumpster.
Ciao,
Bubba
As I explained, my friend, your Stuff breeds. In order to get ahead of your stuff, you have to be brutal. One of my happiest discoveries is that my marina doesn’t notice as long as I only drop one box or bag off every time I walk from the car to the boat.
I’m with you! Get a dumpster! (okay, maybe at the very least give it to Goodwill if that’s the least you can do and it eases your conscience about contributing to a landfilll)….but do it quick and do it all at once, not in spurts…don’t drag it out…)
Divesting….Yeah, we’ve done it….the dividing up the worldly goods to sort thru and see what really matters….some call it *simplify*….*downsize*….get back some of what was spent on *stuff*….
Sometimes life hits you in strange ways when you suddenly wake up…no, when you get slapped in the face with the reality of what’s really, really important.
Life was grand where we came from….and over time we accumulated more and more *stuff* …..for no other reason but because we could…..Ah, *The American Dream* ????
Then a family tragedy hits and you’re instantly faced with the question of what’s really important in life…….sometimes the obvious doesn’t come so quickly…..is it all this *stuff*?…all this stuff that you worked so hard to obtain….to clean….to pay for…again and again…to store….to move….. maybe at the time it seemed so important, but now?? …….what does all this stuff do for you when you’re faced with really important questions in your life…….nothing. All that *stuff* can’t make a situation better, can’t help…..and truthfully, none of it even matters any more….nothing, matters…..and certainly not the stuff…..
Yeah, we’ve done exactly what you’ve done…..We’ve posted to Craigslist and other sites to sell our stuff….oh, the hours it takes to do so!!! Argh! ….and then sell for a price that is less than acceptable….what positive and productive things could we have done with the time that it took us to keep posting all this stuff just to gain a buck or two???
And then, some things that I thought I couldn’t begin to part with have been boxed up for a year….two….more?……(now I’m wondering if I should open those boxes or just toss them because I really don’t miss whatever might be hidden there)….or continue to be a slave to the stuff because ‘I feel badly’ and I hope to recoup some of the money spent. I agree with Bubba….how useless most of the crap we *need* is….and Toast….your stuff breeds….how come it seems to grow with time????
Forget it……just throw it in the dumpster…..or deliver it all to Goodwill if that’ll make you feel better…..it’s not worth it.
Free yourself! Free your family!
It’s VERY liberating…S-I-M-P-L-F-Y….it feels really, really good!
Think about what’s really necessary, really important, and let go of all the notions of having all of this stuff…..wow! it feels good!
(We’re also hoping to someday soon make our way to living on a boat with our two home-schooled teens, so thanks for sharing your experience. I’ve added more of my stuff to dumpster world and it feels really good.)