This will be the last Simplify 2011 post ever. Reason A is that 2011 is almost over, but more importantly, Reason B is that at the start of the year I set a goal for myself to get down to my minimalist self, shedding all the possessions I no longer cared about and getting rid of extraneous papers and stuff.
Today is my 40th birthday and I’m officially wrapping up this year-long project. Like most projects I start, finishing it came down to the eleventh hour. The last stage of the project was the file cabinet and there was just more stuff of mine in there I remembered. It took quite a while longer than I planned to sort through. During free time in the last couple weeks I’ve been cleaning out files and cleaning out papers that I’ve kept forever and scanning some of the things I only want to remember in a .pdf or .gif kind of way.
I also made some donations to Goodwill this week. I gave away a 300+ card Ozzie Smith baseball card collection along with some other assorted Ozzie memorabilia. I thought about trying the sell the collection on eBay but decided I didn’t care enough about the items and didn’t want to devote the time it would take to sell them. I also donated a collection of about 50 Brett Favre football cards. I’ve been a Green Bay Packers fan for over 20 years and was a huge Favre fan until he pissed me off by leaving Green Bay. It didn’t make me mad that he left the Packers and went to the Jets but when he left the Jets to play for Green Bay’s hated rivals, the Minnesota Vikings, I lost pretty much all respect for the guy. That town in Wisconsin LOVED him and I feel like he just gave them the middle finger. Anyway, to get back on topic, just like the Ozzie Smith stuff I just didn’t care enough to try to sell them. Also, I gave Goodwill about a dozen autographs from various baseball players, football players, astronauts and politicians. All is not lost though, some good will come from these donations. These cards and autographs will make their way to a division of Goodwill that sells items on eBay.
I also cleaned out some of my old Boy Scout memorabilia from my youth…I’m a Scout leader now but haven’t been an actual Boy Scout for over 20 years. It was time to clean some of that stuff out. I had a ton of patches from various camps and events that I attended as a kid. Scanners are awesome. Using my scanner means I’m still able to keep a memory evoking image of the patch instead of the actual patch. I spent quite a few hours scanning stuff the last couple days because I really wanted my meet my birthday goal. I’m now donating a whole shoebox full of stuff to the local Scouting museum. There are patches, pins, neckerchiefs, postage stamps and other memorabilia. They’ll use what they can and hopefully find homes for the rest of the stuff.
I also donated to Goodwill:
- An antique camera
- An antique thermometer
- VW Bus owners manual (for a 1974 Camper that my dad had several years ago)
- 21 books
- 11 DVDs
- 22 CDs
And that’s that! There are a couple things left to finish up but 99.5 % of the job is all done and I’m down to simply owning the things I want, that are important to me and add value to my life. My next fun project will be to make a list of all the stuff I still have. But, that’s just for fun, I want to see what I own in black and white.
Have a fantastic and simple Christmas everyone!
I enjoyed this post. I’ve been on the fence with regard to deciding what to do with my collection of 1980s-’90s baseball cards, and you’ve helped me realize that Goodwill is probably the best option. Happy Birthday!
Hey Charlie, thanks for the comment. Sometime last year I had boxes and boxes of sports cards. Then I went through the painstaking process of weeding down. I pulled out all the cards that were worth a little bit of money and then donated about 10,000 common cards to Goodwill. That left me with what I thought were money cards plus the Ozzie Smith and Favre cards. As it turned out I sold the money cards with some Matchbox and Hot Wheels and autographs to a guy I met at my garage sale. I didn’t make much money on them. Then I was going to try to sell the Smith and Favre cards but, well, you saw how well that went.
It’s not easy to detach from the items that you spent so much money and time on. I would recommend something akin to what I did. If it all seems really imposing, start pulling out what you think are valuable, then get rid of the rest. With those remaining cards you will either do something with them or they too will sit around until you get sick of them and then you just make another trip to Goodwill.
Baby steps. Good luck.
Hi Craig, thanks so much for the helpful reply. My collection is relatively small (maybe a thousand-ish cards or so, give or take a few hundred), and I don’t think there’s too much of any significant value, so it shouldn’t be real tough to make a break with them. It’s also not like they’re taking up huge amounts of space or anything… it’s more the principle of wanting to get rid of old stuff that I have little to no attachment with anymore. I like your idea of keeping some and getting rid of the rest. I have a handful of ’77 Topps from when I first started saving cards as a kid, so I’ll probably keep those and a few other misc. rookie cards, and happily Goodwill the rest. Thanks again and hope you had a great b-day!
That list of stuff you still own could come in handy for insurance purposes, too. You might want to make an off-site back-up copy in case of emergency.
That’s a good idea Linda, I’ll put a copy in my Evernote account. Thanks for the comment
Happy Birthday Craig!
And congratulations for reaching your goal. Getting rid of all this useless stuff is really time consuming.
Scanning is a great idea. I take photos from my kids drawings instead of keeping them. Looking forward to your list. I made lists from our traveling stuff, so next time I can start minimal.
Thanks Carola
You’re right, it really is time consuming to get rid of stuff. I spent a lot of time scanning items that I didn’t really need to scan just because it was easier for me to get rid of the paper item knowing there was a digital copy of it somewhere. Later on -in a few months- I’ll revisit those scans and maybe make some decisions and delete some.
I’ll have to get started on my list sometime in January. It’s not a priority
I’ll get to it when I get to it.
I make lists of traveling stuff too…to the extent that on my last camping trip with the Scouts I was in my tent at 11pm making adjustments to my winter camping gear list. It’s better to do it when you are in the moment then it’s not something you have to doubt yourself about when you are in your comfy living room
Thanks for leaving a comment!
Dang! I just discovered this blog and your’e quitting! Sigh. But when a project ends, it ends… I hope you will leave this up for a bit so I can read all the entries!
I’m not quitting the blog, this was simply the last post for that series. I had designated 2011 as the year I do all the hard work in getting rid of my stuff / junk. I wanted it all done before I turned 40. So now that that’s done I’ll continue to blog about stuff, just not me getting rid of stuff.
Thanks for stopping by!
Well, awesome! You write really well about a lot of things (I’ve been up til the wee hours reading, so I know!) Sometimes my own blog wanders a bit and that’s OK- we get to write what we want! Anyway, got ya bookmarked as a blog I like to read…so, I’ll just wait and see what happens next! (Example: while I’ve been reading away, you posted a new post: Happy New Year!) And back at you and yours