Rational Minimalist.

Don't miss the Book Sale.

You? Rational? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (gasps for breath) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... but I know what you mean. I'm down to minimalist (at least for me): 1 daily driver, 1 restored LBC, 1 rip snortin' race car, 1 Berzerkeley, 1 trailer. No plans to sell any of it, except maybe the Berzerkeley.

I'd love to get the Abomination back, but let's face facts: I don't need a second race car. I can guarantee you there's a lot of SCR and CCR folks who would just about kill themselves for it, though... we do sorta co own the LeMons Civic but there's probably 5-6 others with some piece of that. Remember, the VW snowflakes are not ours, they are on long term loan!

In reply to Curmudgeon:

Smart ass.

4 books are going in the mail today. It's not much, but it's a start.

Why is it I want to downsize and consolidate yet I'm looking at CraigsList more than ever lately?

In reply to Toyman01:

You and my ex- would get along well. She is a "tosser" - if something sits around and gathers too much dust, it's gone somehow or another. Me - I'm a "stuff" kinda guy, so we constantly butted heads over this.

I attribute it to how we were raised. She grew up in one house her entire life. A house her parents bought 10 years before she was born. Even the weekend house/farm they own was purchased two years prior. So for her, "home" was a place. What was inside was of less importance.

I, on the other hand, moved around a TON while growing up. We lived in about 10 different places, 3 different states and two countries before I was 10 (father in the Air Force). So for me, "home" is not a place. "Home" is where my stuff is, and as such, I have a tendency to become irrationally attached to my stuff. I have "stuff" that I carted around for literally 40 years. Stuff we brought back from Okinawa when I was 4 years old. It's not valuable by any stretch, but I still have trouble getting rid of it.

I can get rid of things and throw things away (the difference between me and clinical "hoarder"), but damn it's hard sometimes...

I will say one thing that has made me not buy or acquire something has been when I ask the question: where the hell am I going to put this? It doesn't always stop me, but I'd say it does at least half the time.

In reply to Ian F:

The problem is, I'm not a tosser. If there is the remotest chance, I might possibly, sometime in the near or distant future, maybe, think I could use something, it's on a shelf.

I have only lived in three houses in my entire life and two of them were/are mine, so I'm not sure if being transient is the cause of hording junk. I just like things.

My shop a few months ago.

This is the front garage a couple of months ago.

They aren't quite that bad right now, but they are close. So, I'm definitely not a tosser, until now. These are going to get pretty empty over the next several of months.

Junkyard_Dog wrote: Why is it I want to downsize and consolidate yet I'm looking at CraigsList more than ever lately?

I haven't been on Craigslist in almost a week. That goes for Ebay, Hoopty Search, and Amazon as well. The bookmarks have been deleted off my bookmark bar, otherwise I'd click on the just out of habit. I'm done buying stuff for a while.

Toyman01 wrote:

Junkyard_Dog wrote: Why is it I want to downsize and consolidate yet I'm looking at CraigsList more than ever lately?

I haven't been on Craigslist in almost a week. That goes for Ebay, Hoopty Search, and Amazon as well. The bookmarks have been deleted off my bookmark bar, otherwise I'd click on the just out of habit. I'm done buying stuff for a while.

Yes, but have you turned off the alerts?

Yep. Me, me, me. Airforce brat which meant two middle schools and four high schools. My "stuff" was home rather than a house.

Ian F wrote: In reply to Toyman01: I, on the other hand, moved around a TON while growing up. We lived in about 10 different places, 3 different states and two countries before I was 10 (father in the Air Force). So for me, "home" is not a place. "Home" is where my stuff is, and as such, I have a tendency to become irrationally attached to my stuff. I have "stuff" that I carted around for literally 40 years. Stuff we brought back from Okinawa when I was 4 years old. It's not valuable by any stretch, but I still have trouble getting rid of it. I can get rid of things and throw things away (the difference between me and clinical "hoarder"), but damn it's hard sometimes...

ProDarwin wrote:

Toyman01 wrote:

Junkyard_Dog wrote: Why is it I want to downsize and consolidate yet I'm looking at CraigsList more than ever lately?

I haven't been on Craigslist in almost a week. That goes for Ebay, Hoopty Search, and Amazon as well. The bookmarks have been deleted off my bookmark bar, otherwise I'd click on the just out of habit. I'm done buying stuff for a while.

Yes, but have you turned off the alerts?

Yep, all searches and alerts deleted. I'm serious, I'm done.

Since the NOHOME moniker refers to a life I had where all of my worldly belongings fit in the trunk of my Miata, you can see where I buy into the minimal stuff lifestyle.

In my current reality, in our master bathroom, there is a vanity with six drawers. ONE of those is for my stuff, the other 5 are required for whatever potions lotions and spells are required to sustain feminine beauty.

Every few months I have to eject the stuff that starts to sneak into my space!

In the garage, I can be heartless. A 20 year collection of MGB parts went from priceless to scrap-metal the day that I parked the MGB hobby. The room was needed for the Molvo. Did the MG parts have value? Maybe, but not to me anymore, so out they go.

By the way, the 5S stuff kinda creeps me out, never met a race of people so hellbent on becoming non-thinking machines as the Japanese. And then try to reconcile that with how they behave out of the workplace.

One thing I've noticed is that many of my friends store their stuff at their parents houses. They've got less junk than me, but when they need spot to wrench on a car, or borrow dad's welder, or whatever, they can just hope over to pop's garage and wrench.

I don't have that luxury, my father died years ago and with his death so vanished his shop, tools, etc. My mom and step-father gave up garages years ago instead preferring a simpler life in a condo.

My tools are confined to two tool boxes for cars, one box for bikes, one tote for power tools. Now I've just gotta keep it that way.

In reply to PHeller:

Good luck with that. I've got 3 rolling tool boxes of hand tools alone. Plus shelved of power and air tools. Probably why, when my son and friends have wrenching to do it happens at my house.

The tools will be staying.

I must admit, its a great feeling to get rid of tons of crap... but there's always going to be something you wish you hadn't gotten rid of.

I have sold/discarded a lot of really cool (now) classic video games & systems over the years.
I've sold at least 1 car I wish I still had to this day, which I have been trying to replace for a good year or two now.

I'm not quite to this state, but well on my way and need to turn it around. In the middle of a "free sale" of car junk to my car club members that I will likely never use, or could get back if I needed to someday.

After that it's on to purge all my childhood and adolescent junk that I have no idea why I kept after my parents packed it up and made me take it...and all my college books and notes, why do I still have those? And my wifes? And her teaching supplies from 10years ago? The list is never ending!!

In reply to Toyman01:

For me, if there's the remotest chance, I might possibly, sometime in the near or distant future, maybe, think I could use something...it's somewhere, and the chance of actually finding if/when I need it is < 0.0000000001%.

In reply to petegossett:

And naturally, if you toss whatever it is...you need it in the very near future!

My wife doesn't read the forum, but she somehow caught the bug this weekend and is aggressively pitching the detritus of 15 years. She's doing all of this while I work on other things. I just need to move heavy boxes, confirm that I don't need anything in the box, and then I'm free go go back to my Grosh stuff. This is the most mentally stressless clean I've ever experienced.

petegossett wrote: In reply to Toyman01: For me, if there's the remotest chance, I might possibly, sometime in the near or distant future, maybe, think I could use something...it's somewhere, and the chance of actually finding if/when I need it is < 0.0000000001%.

I do a fair job of putting things where I can find them. My shop is full of labeled boxes that actually contain what they say they do. It's the $10 item I bought last week that I can't find. Or worse, the handful of bolts I bought yesterday.

There is no doubt, I will be regretting many things in the next year. I'm still getting rid it. At this point, I'd rather have buy it again, than store it for another 10 years.

In reply to Toyman01:

Everybody is different.

My ex's father is a pack rat as well. He has a barn full of stuff he's collected over 50 years. Some aspects of her personality are a definite back lash against that.

How she has not gone insane with her house torn apart for the last 3+ years is no small miracle.

I need to buy a grease gun to grease two fittings on my motorcycle.

Why do I need to buy a grease gun? I've thrown out at least 3 of them while moving. Each time I throw out a grease gun, I say, "I'll never own anything with zerks again, why do I need this?"

After I move, I wind up buying a new "something" that has zerks on it.

In reply to EvanR:

A family member was throwing out a grease gun because they didn't own anything with zerks on it, so I took it.

Unfortunately I've yet to figure out how to load the grease so it comes out correctly. This one seems like you have to disassemble it, then manually stuff the grease into the chamber(rather than just load the tube/cartridge), but there's not much resistance, nor grease flowing out.

Good thing I don't own anything with zerks either!

petegossett wrote: In reply to EvanR: A family member was throwing out a grease gun because they didn't own anything with zerks on it, so I took it. Unfortunately I've yet to figure out how to load the grease so it comes out correctly. This one seems like you have to disassemble it, then manually stuff the grease into the chamber(rather than just load the tube/cartridge), but there's not much resistance, nor grease flowing out. Good thing I don't own anything with zerks either!

Some of the older grease guns need to be primed to get the air out of the pump.