Wesley Quach

The Great Purge

I’m becoming more aggressive in my minimalism binge. Forewarning, This post is partially a rant. 

I donated a box of used books to the local library earlier today. The majority of them I’ve read, a few have been sitting on my bookshelf. Every time I’d look at a book I haven’t read, I would tell myself “I’ll get to that eventually” then feel mildly depressed that I spent $6.99 or whatever it was for that particular book when it ends up just sitting on my shelf for a year. What other things could I have purchased for $6.99? I don’t want to think about the other things I could of bought, or rather, I could have been $6.99 less in debt.

I went to Goodwill earlier and dropped off a garbage bag of old clothes. I recycled my old cell phone, disposed of properly at the local Best Buy. 

It’s true that we don’t consume the things we own, the things we own consume us. I’m staring at this bamboo coaster on my desk. They came in a set of four. I only need one. What do I do with the other 3? I’ll put them in the living room…

… the living room of my parent’s 4,000 sq. ft. house which has four people living in it and five bathrooms. I’m not proud of the fact that every member of my family can be taking a shit at the same time. 

There’s a chess set on my dresser. If anyone wants it, let me know. Every time I walk by it I think about the $45 I spent on it. I think about when the last time I played chess was, and feel bad that my chess skills are probably getting rusty and that the set is collecting dust. 

There’s some awards on my dresser. Some ribbons from Toastmasters for Best Speaker and things like that. I just threw them out. I have one Toastmasters trophy from a speech contest, I’ll keep that, for now. There’s some medals from half-marathons I’ve ran. Those will stay. 

There’s more than a year’s subscription of Entrepreneur and Fast Company magazines on my almost empty bookshelf (since I donated most of my books). I feel guilty that I haven’t been able to keep up with them. I wonder if I lost out on any relevant knowledge along the way. I’m tossing them in the recycling. 

To be continued.