Pack Rat or Minimalist?

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

I remember I bought a book on how to de-clutter your house a while ago. I think it's in one of the boxes in the 2nd-to-the-bottom stack in the closet. I could get it out, but I'd have to remove about a dozen bankers boxes of books to get to it.

What was the question?

[tikiyaki]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Ever wish you could just purge everything and turn your 400 sq. ft. space into that clean and simple tropical hotel room you see in all the tv and magazine ads? Live life more like a hotel guest than a permanent resident that eventuallly collects way too much stuff for that space.

My renovation project forced me to bite the bullet and purge our 700 sq. ft. condo. Now our place is back to looking more like an elegant, clean and simple hotel room than aunty Momi and her 5 kids' house. lol

Po Po...great thread !

Being a Mid Century Modern design geek, I LOVE minimalism, the Japanese have it wired....the problem, I just can't achieve it. Stuff, piles up, I don't put it away. I get lazy. One thing I learned from other Mid Century Modern design geeks who have model looking homes is, designate one room for the clutter, and keep the rest of the house looking clean and minimal.

I struggle with this clutter thing. Having a recording studio is especially tough to keep minimal...wires, microphones, guitars, CD's etc.... I envy people who can do it.

I would really love to part with alot of my stuff, but it's so hard to do.
For instance...CD's....I started putting them onto a hard drive, in hopes of selling them....still haven't done it all yet....

I really want to purge to the point of almost nothing, but, I LIKE my 6 guitars....they all get different sounds...what's a guy to do ?

My desk is a mess right now ... thanx for reminding me what a slob I am

[Serenity]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Guilty as CHARGED! I'm a Pack RAT!
Auntie Lynn

Me too. I have been married to my hubby for so long, that I still have him, & have not thrown him away, yet. LOL.

[Got2HaVKaYaNoW]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Not to say pack rats are necessarily slobs. You can be an ORGANIZED pack rat, with boxes piled in well-labeled modular stacks. Or you could be a sloppy minimalist (pretty tough to do), with that screwdriver you used to fix the garbage disposer last week still sitting next to the microwave (put it away!).

Or just rant on the subject.

I call myself the organized mess specialist.

alohaz,

KaYa T.

[EastCoastTropics]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Great thread!!

Highly minimalistic! The older I get, the less I wish to be surrounded by "stuff".

Same here!! Even with a brand new leather sectional sofa and a bathroom with a custom shower, jacuzzi tub and imported sink fixtures, my in laws home is sooooo cluttered! Every time I go there I feel claustrophobic!

I've always had very good storage management skills! Living in a small home I've learned to organize and throw out what I don't need without any guilt....I'm always donating to the Salvation Army and have put many of my attic items up on eBay.

When we decided to put our small home on the market, one of the things that our Realtor told us was to get rid of all our clutter so that potential buyers can visualize their belongings in our space. Realtor went around our home and pointed out every piece of furniture that should be removed. So we rented a Pod from pods.com and stored our stuffs. One day we're sitting in the livingroom watching the tele and I turned to DH and said that I really like having no clutter. We agreed then that when we bought our new home that we would go for the uncluttered look. We're in our new home now....since June and although our basement is packed, it's organized and everything is in plastic bins. This helps for the "living" space to be free of clutter! Since we've moved I've been reading a few books on Feng Shui and really like that concept. I try to incorporate Feng Shui into my home.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Clutter (and I'll bet my clutter is worse then anyone else's )

I would really love to part with alot of my stuff, but it's so hard to do. For instance...CD's....I started putting them onto a hard drive, in hopes of selling them....still haven't done it all yet....

Procrastination and clutter go hand in hand. You (and I) have got the clutter because we're both procrastinators. Both problems have to be addressed together.

[tikiyaki]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Clutter (and I'll bet my clutter is worse then anyone else's )




Procrastination and clutter go hand in hand. You (and I) have got the clutter because we're both procrastinators. Both problems have to be addressed together.

Yes, you are correct. Also, I get overwhelmed by things....when there is a big pile of stuff, it freaks me out, and I get really intimidated by it. The key is getting the discipline to nip it at the bud...like Pomai says, use a screwdriver, put it away when you're done...this is a big thing for me.

That being said...my clutter issues aren't that bad....here's a pic of my living room....



It looks like this most of the time...pretty minimal, but my office and studio are messier. So I keep the clutter at bay pretty well, in many areas of the house.

[tutusue]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

[...]Also, I get overwhelmed by things....when there is a big pile of stuff, it freaks me out, and I get really intimidated by it. [...]

When my home or office is cluttered it makes my brain cluttered. Seriously!

That being said...my clutter issues aren't that bad....here's a pic of my living room....[...]

Great chair. Where's the iPod dock located?

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

That being said...my clutter issues aren't that bad....here's a pic of my living room....

Looks minimalist to me. Any less and the place would look vacant.

[tikiyaki]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

When my home or office is cluttered it makes my brain cluttered. Seriously!

Great chair. Where's the iPod dock located?

Yes, brain, emotions, life, it ALL feels cluttered....Messy place = messy life.

No iPod dock. I STILL have never hooked up the speakers to it yet. Even after reuphostering the chair and replacing the old speakers with my newer ones from my car. I'm moving, so, I'm committing myself to hooking them up in the new place.

Looks minimalist to me. Any less and the place would look vacant.

Thanx, near vacancy is what I was striving for

Almost everything in my house looks like that, but you know, places like bedrooms and offices just fight it all the time. I guess I'm not that much of a pack rat, but I have my moments.

[mel]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

My treasures include: over a thousand video tapes (VHS, Hi-8, mini-DV) - even after a program, movie, UH game, etc. has been transferred to DVD, the original is filed away as a future back-up; cassette tapes also filed away after contents have been re-created on CD-R; UH sports game programs (got most of the Fabulous Five home programs); UH media guides (football, basketball, volleyball, baseball); concert programs; vinyl records (45 rpm, EPs, LPs, 78 rpm); 8-track tapes; musical instruments (guitars, amplifiers); computer peripherals (monitors, printers), books/magazines (Playboy from the '70s and '80s); audio components (amps, receivers, speakers, cassette tape decks, graphic equalizers, turntables, VCRs, CD players/recorders).

It's very hard for me not to be a pack rat, though I continually try to shed stuff that I don't use. However because I love music and movies so much, I keep on buying more CDs and DVDs and add to the collection of vinyl, cassette, old VHS and Beta tapes that I already have. Many of the albums that I now have on CD, I also have on either tape or record album. Surely in the years I have gotten rid of some of my vinyl including a lot of 45 rpm singles. But I still have plenty in my apartment as well as back at my folks place on the Big Island. I mean I never moved everything I own out of my parents' house... and I've been out of there for what... more than 25 years I think.

The fact that home made CD RW and DVD discs probably all suffer from "CD Rot" (meaning that the data don't last forever), I constantly find myself creating a backup for the backups now. I want stuff like my photographs and MP3 music to last forever, especially those AAC tracks that I buy from the iTunes music store. I find myself constantly backing those up to more CDs or now even another external hard drive (I have 5 external drives and will probably get more). My digital photos are important to me that I need to back them up in case the hard drive they are on fails.

I am slowly trying to get rid of the surplus Macintosh computers that I was collecting at one time. Anyone interested in acquiring a free Macintosh Plus, Mac SE or Power Computing Mac clone in working condition??? All work just fine and I can throw in a bunch peripheral hardware and software discs in with them.

On several occasions I have sadly taken other Macs to the recycling places, most recently at the UH when they had a computer and electronics recycling day in late October.

I have all kinds of other junk that I need to get rid of too.

[i-hungry]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

I'm tempted to ask for a mac hand-me-down. But that would only worsen my pack rat habits.

[mel]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Well I have 3 old Macs up for grabs at this thread:

http://www.hawaiithreads.com/showthread.php?p=120397

Give in to your pack rat urges.

[Serenity]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Yes, you are correct. Also, I get overwhelmed by things....when there is a big pile of stuff, it freaks me out, and I get really intimidated by it. The key is getting the discipline to nip it at the bud...like Pomai says, use a screwdriver, put it away when you're done...this is a big thing for me.

That being said...my clutter issues aren't that bad....here's a pic of my living room....



It looks like this most of the time...pretty minimal, but my office and studio are messier. So I keep the clutter at bay pretty well, in many areas of the house.

Dang!!. I would like to have that for my living room!!.

Ever think about giving it up? j/k lol.

Any way, It's a really nice living room. Good job in keeping it clean.

[adrian]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

You can say I'm a pack rat. I have mostly all of the product packaging that came with my first self-built computer three years ago - along with other things. The only bad thing about it, is that I can't organize to save my life! Yeah, I can do it on a small area, but I usually just throw mostly everything else in any space I don't use everyday. If I use it atleast once a week (or within the last month) then its still either on the floor, on a once clean table, or crammed into what available space I see fit to put to grab at a later date.

The only thing minimalist in my room, is my computer desktops.