Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [94]
My friend, artist B.J. West, observed, “It really is amazing how thinning an artist you have *waaaay* too much of makes shuffle so much more pleasant.”
Optimize for music you truly like. I use iTunes ratings to mark things with two stars that might be destined for removal when they just ain't it and I can't think of the last time when I was in the mood when they would be right. The second time they disappoint, I set them down to one star; the third time, they hit the digital trash, and I remove them from iTunes and my hard drive. Periodically I compare my albums in iTunes with my physical CDs, which are stored in a closet, and get rid of anything that’s no longer represented on my computer.
“At some point in life, removing music from iTunes becomes as satisfying as adding music used to be,” said humorist James Lileks.
Fine-tune for satisfaction.
Now that you’ve cleared things out, bring in new good stuff! Find new films and music to stretch your brain. Go to festivals. Listen to local bands. Check out music-recommending services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Spotify. Ask your friends to bring something over for a movie night or make a mix of music they think you’ll like. Open yourself up to new opportunities and take advantage of the flexibility of the digital age.
Symptom #38: But I Spent a Lot on It!
Solution #38: Keeping and Not Using Does Not Generate Value
Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
—Aldous Huxley, author
Avoiding the guilt of bad buying decisions
Why do we allow ourselves to spend on transitory experiences, such as food and movies but then get ourselves in twist over spending on objects? We often wrestle with the insidious feeling that, if we get rid of this object, it will mean we wasted our money. When this happens, it causes us to behave as if somehow, by keeping the object around, we are improving our chances of compensation for the expense. We aren’t.
Think longer about purchases before making them. Recognize that you will make some bad decisions. As Discardian Janet Katz of Austin, Texas, put it, “Did you get your money's worth? If you are ditching a $5 paperback book, did you enjoy it $5 worth? If you did, then, like a loaf of bread you ate, you got your money's worth.”
It's not odd to support a restaurant by buying a meal you’re merely going to eat or to support a band by going to see a show that will be over in a couple hours, so why not support an author by buying a book you plan to read and then sell or give away?
Once you’ve gained what you needed to get or learn from something—including an emotion—it’s perfectly acceptable and often helpful to let it go.
Just because you’ve gotten what you needed out of something, it doesn’t mean that it can’t still do some good in the world. See if a charity will accept it. Computers, cellphones, eyeglasses, appliances, and cars are all costly things that can have a useful life beyond your time with them. A few minutes of online research can lead to relief from guilt and a less cluttered house!
Enjoy your good stuff
The flipside to this coin is the stuff you fail to enjoy because you spent so much on it but which you know would still bring you pleasure.
My friend, writer and mom Meg Hourihan, spoke poignantly of this dilemma: “I'd keep bottles of wine and treasure jars of jam for so long they'd be no good once I got around to using them. I decided life was too short and that it was important to use the good stuff. And now I do, mostly. I saved a beautiful birthday gift of 1989 Laurent-Perrier Champagne