Relative Sanity

Why do I have so much stuff?

I’m 30, and I find minimalism in most things very calming. I like tidy desks, obsess over tidy discs, find peace in ordered minds and making invisible the repetitive.

I even subscribe to Minimal Mac, and used to read Zen Habits religiously.

And yet, my house is full of crap. Full of it. Everywhere I look, my house has stuff in it that I don’t use, don’t need, and actually, when I think about it, don’t even want.

I like the idea of a bookcase full of books, but really, what’s the point? I don’t use books as reference any more, and the ones that I do use that way are all duplicated as PDFs in the cloud.

Similarly, I have a load of DVDs. How many do I really want immediate access to? More to the point, how many can I realistically watch at any one time?

When all you have is a hammer…

I’m a web developer, which is to say I’m a software engineer of sorts, which is to say that I take information retrieval problems, and couch them in interfaces that are, hopefully, a joy to use.

What I have here is a retrieval problem. My house, if you like, is like a server. It stores my stuff, and I can retrieve it whenever I like. Right now, my server is full of crap. It needs cleared out. Moreover, the interface to most of my crap is even worse than the crap it’s hiding. The vast, vast majority of my stuff exists piled, randomly, in boxes and cupboards.

In terms of any sort of information architecture, my house is the equivalent of a bad Infocom-knockoff adventure game. Do I know where that power brick for my old router is? Sure, it’s in the box in the cupboard in the hall, under three other boxes and behind the stepladder. The box itself contains maybe fifty power bricks, miles of Cat 5 string, and, if I’m honest, probably not the brick I’m after. That might be in the other box of cables in the airing cupboard in our spare room.

At this point, I’m seriously tempted to go to Maplin and just pick up a new one. But I don’t want to. I know I’ve got that power brick in here somewhere.

If everything’s special, nothing is

Why did I keep that power brick? I kept it because I hate throwing stuff out. I’m convinced I can reuse and recycle stuff, because that seems moral.

And it is, but “reuse” is an interesting term. Reusing is great, but do I have to reuse it for it to count? And look what’s happened: I have no concrete idea where that power brick is. Why? Because while I want to reuse, I have no infrastructure for managing it.

I’m kidding myself on that this is efficient.

Back to web servers: I’m sitting on a single, old, small, creaky server, and trying to run YouTube from it.

More boxes!

So, how does this problem get solved? First attempt is to organise and box the stuff all up. Hey, it worked for Google, right? More boxes!

So I get more boxes. But still, I have no plan. There’s still no interface for finding any of this junk. Do I really want to start indexing up which of 20 possible boxes my copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is in?

I’m not in the business of building a stuff network. I mean, I could do it, but what’s the point?

When in doubt, buy it in

There already is a stuff retrieval network that works perfectly. I can get anything I want pretty fast, it has a search engine, a wonderful delivery network, and is reasonably priced for what I’d use it for. I’m talking, of course, about Amazon.

I can search for what I want, and it’s in my hands in 24 hours. Why am I storing all my DVDs? Let Amazon’s warehouses store them, then I can just pay the £5 “retrieval” fee when I want to watch a movie. It takes a little bit of planning, yes, but when you’re a dad, everything takes a little bit of planning, so I can live with that.

Where I really want to watch a movie or listen to music right now, I’ve got spotify and iTunes. Everything else? Amazon’s probably got me covered.

Bu-WHU?

“But wait!”, you say, “you said you wanted to get rid of stuff! How does this help?”

Cool your boots, man: this is only half of the solution. The other half? Gumtree or, if you prefer, eBay. Once I’m done with that DVD? I sell it. In effect, I’m just putting it “back” into storage, and what’s better is I get paid to do it!

Let’s get concrete again:

• I buy a DVD from Amazon for £10
• I watch it, enjoy it, and put it on Gumtree for a week at £8 (along with a batch of others to sweeten the deal, say)
• If I sell it, I’ve spent £2 “renting” the DVD. If I want to watch it again, wash rinse repeat, except this time, I maybe get it second hand for £5.

So far, I’m out £7 on a £10 DVD. And if I flog it again for £2 (say to a second hand store, again with a batch of them), I’m only out £5.

At that point, the question is “Why even buy? Why not just rent?”. Now we’re getting somewhere.

There’s a whole network of storage systems for my stuff: Libraries, LoveFilm, City Car Club. Hell, why do I own a DSLR? I should rent one when I need it. Same with lenses.

For the stuff I can’t rent? Say that powerbrick? Why the hell am I keeping it? Why isn’t it being recycled?

So what’s the next step?

Right now, everything I own is for sale. I’m probably going to lob a page up here of stuff I actually want to shift, but seriously, I don’t actually own anything any more. It’s all yours: I’m just storing it for you.

If you want to know the retrieval fee, just ask me.