Realising why we have so many books – and what we can do about it

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 September 2010 in decluttering | 2 comments

(Apologies if this is stating the bleedin’ obvious but it was a revelation to us! ;) )

Our rather nomadic friend Dan popped by our house on Saturday to meet the dog and the chickens and say a passing hello to us before he moves on again. Between various post-grad studies, jobs and that crazy little thing called love, Dan’s moved around a lot over the last few years and he revealed that ahead of/during his moves, he’s pared down his book collection considerably, from about 500 tomes to just 100. Since we’re book-y people (we met on an English Literature course) to get rid of that many is quite an achievement.

Even with my new anti-hoarding policy (of giving away a book for every two new-to-me books I buy), I still find it difficult to give books away – but it was only while talking to Dan that I realised why. Most of the time, I don’t have any particular attachment to the physical books but I have great affection for the stories contained within. And a considerable amount of the time, I have no desire to read the story again any time soon, I just don’t want to forget it exists — seeing the spine on my shelves reminds me of the story and often reminds me of the time of my life when I read it etc. The example we both used were Ben Elton’s early novels – the environmental ones, Gridlock, Stark and This Other Eden. Not exactly literary masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, not books I’ve read in the last decade and not books I see myself reading in the next five years or more – but I remember finding them interesting as a teenager and still think about some of the ideas regularly to this day. It was the first time I’d really consciously realised the current purpose of a considerable part of my book collection (and to a lesser extent, our media collection too).

Summer decluttering – the hidden (?) costs of hoarding

Posted by louisa on Friday 6 August 2010 in anti-consumerism | 3 comments

If spring is for cleaning, summer seems to be the time for decluttering: a number of unconnected bloggers I read have been having clearouts of late. I guess it makes some sort of sense: in the winter, you want things around you to make a cosy nest but in the summer, you want to pare it down, strip it back, carry the bare minimum with you. Tidy cupboards are the household equivalent of hotpants.

Like Damn The Broccoli and his good lady, John and I are many-hobbied hoarders. John’s lucky in that a lot of his hobbies take place on the neat containable space of his laptop but mine spill out everywhere. For example, on my desk, my work desk where I’m supposed to work not play, I currently have: five bags of sawdust for smoking food, some broad beans I’m saving for seed stock next year, ribbon, gaffer tape, felt (from making a rat costume for drama), patterns for said rat costume, my sewing box, a tshirt I dyed, Ramie top for spinning, cabbage seeds, two books, some drawing pens and a staple gun (lasted used for lining homemade wooden planter with plastic compost bags). I’m not kidding, look:

(The eagle-eyed will notice John’s desk is largely clear save for an ice pack (??), work things and a shiny silver kazoo.)

I like having a lot of different, varied hobbies – especially since nearly all of them are productive in some way, shape or form – but they do result in a lot of clutter. We also keep a lot of quote-unquote waste materials for reusing & upcycling – I’ve got box files upstairs filled with flattened drinks cans & reclaimed wire for crafting, glass jars are stacking up in the kitchen for jam season and (mostly due to John’s dad not us) there are a couple of stashes of salvaged building supplies around the garden – all very good from a green & frugal point of view but at the same time, it’s more stuff just hanging around.

Since moving house last autumn, we’re lucky to have, by and large, enough space to put things (we’re just too distracted to do it sometimes – hence my desk stash) but as we try to remind John’s dad when he carries concrete paving stones down the garden, hoarding things has a price.

Birthdays – how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 21 July 2010 in anti-consumerism | 2 comments

Yesterday was my birthday – the big 3-1.

In general, I dislike special days that have been hijacked to become days of mass consumption – I don’t celebrate Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s day, anniversaries or anything like that, but a few years ago, when I worked six days a week, every week, all year, I decided that I’d start celebrating my birthday again as an excuse to have a very rare day off work. I actively discourage cards & presents (cards & for-the-sake-of-it presents really annoy me!) but for the last couple of years, I’ve tried to spend my birthday doing fun stuff: a day off work to try something – a craft, a skill – I’ve not done before. Last year, it was cheesemaking; this year was supposed to be cold smoking but the supplies didn’t arrive and the weather was a bit too moist, so it was more cheesemaking but will be smoking stuff today (if the items arrive in the post or at the weekend – postponed birthday fun stuff).

John pretty much ignores his birthday but if his mum asks what he’d like for a present or if he’d like to go out for a meal, he asks her to cook one of his favourite meals instead. Big family meals out are compromise and too distracted/busy to actually talk to people – he’d prefer to spend the time more comfortably in their family home.

I know other frugal people who ask for gift vouchers etc for their birthday so they can buy what they want with it and/or spread the gift out by having little luxuries over a longer period.

As for giving, I much prefer to give presents throughout the year – when I see an item that I think the person will like, I get it for them then rather than hanging onto it. The one exception is my best friend Katherine – her birthday is special to her and because it’s right next to Christmas, often gets overlooked – so I always make a special effort to find presents for her and also make at least one item.

Do you celebrate your birthday? What do you do to downplay the almost ubiquitous consumerism? How do you handle gifts – do you like to give/receive them? Do you discourage for-the-sake-of-it gifts, and if so, how? What about other people’s birthdays, especially children – how do you handle those?