Pack Rat or Minimalist?

[Pomai]

Are you the type to save everything you've acquired in life, leaving your home (and workspace if given the opportunity) cluttered from wall to wall, floor to roof? Nothing is thrown away, whether it's Aunt Peggy's old sewing machine, broken fishing poles, an empty plastic sour cream container or a roll of asbestos tape you used while you were an astronaut on the Apollo space program back in the 1960's.

Or do you have good storage management skills, knowing when and how to get rid of stuff. Your home (and/or office) is neat and organized, with just the bare essentials. When that storage shed out back begins to fill up, the signs go up around the neighborhood for your latest garage sale - or it's off to the local Salvation Army.

My mother is notorious for keeping just about EVERYTHING. Drives us nuts. She'll even wash and save that white styrofoam container from yesterday's plate lunch. Ack! Thankfully my aunt keeps her in check and tosses things in the rubbish when she's not looking. lol

As a condo dweller, I know all-to-well the importance of being a minimalist. It just can't be any other way with such a limited living space. I'm so lucky my girlfriend's a minimalist. She even tells ME what to throw away. The only thing I have to nag her on is her pile of SHOES. What's with you ladies and shoes? Why do you need so many? Imelda or what?

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!).

Use this thread also to discuss your methods of storage management. Plastic drawer storage bins? Used paper ream boxes from the office (modular!)? Storage facility? Garage sales? Give to charity?

Or just rant on the subject.

[blueyecicle]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

What's the matter with a bit of sloppiness. I don't mean tons of it but a bit.
I cannot ever seem to get my sewing room organized but it's not dirty. Just a bit messy. It's my quirkiness.

[1stwahine]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Guilty as CHARGED! I'm a Pack RAT!

I used to be meticulous. Used to be. Sadly, I am not today. I don't know when I started to become insanely messy. But I am. I try my best to clean and keep things tidy but I never get things done. My children come every once in awhile to general clean and throw away ukipila stuffs but then I "collect" unnecessary things again....even moa than before. It's HORRORS!

What I did to make things seem "normal" to the unsuspecting eye is to throw everything in my spare room.heheheh OMG!!! Nobody but me can enter the Room of Doom!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Auntie Lynn

[Bard]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

My wife and I both used to be pack rats. Then one day we started looking around at all the junk we'd acquired and thought... why do we have all this junk?! It's started going away since then.

The thought of (potentially) having to transport it all to Hawai`i has further spurred my efforts...

The fact that we somehow keep renting/buying smaller and smaller apartments and houses hasn't hurt anything either.

[AbsolutChaos]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Definitely a pack rat! Despite my best intentions, I think the pack rat gene runs in my family, so I don't know if I can escape it.

I go thru a familiar cycle: I store crap everywhere, then a couple of times a year I grow disgusted with myself and get rid of some stuff, but then my zeal to turn over a new leaf goes away, and the cycle continues.

[oceanpacific]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Pack rat to the max. It appears to be hereditary.

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 reflects my early life when we didn't have many creature comforts in life. I remember gifts being carefully opened and the "nicer" wrapping paper (foil-type) and ribbons "saved" for later re-use. Even today, I don't rip open presents like my kids do although I toss the wrapping.

As the stash increased, I "solved" it by re-modeling the house and increasing the living area by 150%. A lot of it could be considered "organized chaos."

My home has also served as storage for my siblings. My sister once stashed three beds (box springs, mattresses, bed frames) while her new home was under construction, then forgot about them and bought new beds. I made her give them away as her stuff was taking up valuable space meant for "my junque."

[blueyecicle]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Not a Pack rat at all! I would throw every everything if my husband wasn't picky about it. I don't hang on to anything.
I do have 2 boxes of fabric but I throw it away if I have it more than 6 months.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Pack rat, sharing a 1BR condo with another pack rat. I suffered collection-itis for far too long, but I think the disease is losing its grip.

After looking at a lot of places, before we bought the condo we had been renting, it hit me that this was all the space we were going to have for the next several years. If I wanted to still acquire (space-eaters like books, DVDs, CDs, instruments), I needed to purge.

Much of the past couple years, I've been getting rid of stuff. Not as fast as I think I should, but methodically. First to go was eight large boxes of books. Next was an entire file-cabinet full of assorted papers, clippings, articles, etc. Then, several years' worth of mostly-unread music (and music industry) magazines.

The AF, however, is late in coming to the same realization. She still hasn't purged much, but I can see her doing the preparatory sorting that leads to it. And we've reached the point where we can actually tell there's been progress. Having a small rebuild of a bedroom closet helped move things along.

[blueyecicle]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

My hubby is totally a pack rat and when we moved I MADE and I mean FORCED him to throw out this HUGE box of torn open electrical cords and cables and old wires and what not.....that was 2 years ago! 1/2 of them did not work and the cables made the TV fuzzy...And another box of 6 used broken VCRs and 2 CRacked TVs. Plus 2...yes 2!! 8 track players and 4 stereos! with wood on them still!!

So the other day I wanted to him to wire my kitchen with cable...

His response you ask?

"I would if you had not MADE me throw away my big box of cables"! So I aksed him why we could not go buy a new cable....
"Because I am NOT paying for new cabels when I had a box of perfectly good ones I could have stripped and re-wired when we moved!"

MEN! I went and bought new cable today.
This is my Pack Rat!

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

this is a contentious issue for my family during the holidays. My mother ~lives~ to give us 8-10 little mementos to commemorate whatever the current fascination is. I keep one, make sure she sees it displayed, then toss it all into the goodwill bin. Walk into her house, and beware of tripping over carpet gnomes.

We keep books and family pictures. I am a big believer in albums but dislike the poor utility of a scrapbook (all that space and volume and fun of putting it together, but in the end it holds <20 pictures, wtf??).

I learned to decrap my kitchen a few years ago, and now only have pots/pans/cookware that we actually use. One blender, one rice pot, and one microwave. No funky single-function appliances for us. Two sets of dishes: the melanine collection (all matching, thank you Longs for your sale all those years ago) and the good dishes™ (thank you Liberty House) which are also the dishes we use for microwaving. Having clean counter and tabletops does wonders for a peaceful mind! Everything has its place, and everthing gets put away.

My kids collect clothes, sports equipment and cds. My husband has his tool shed. And I am the gal who watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and thought "ooooooh, no clutter!"

[Hope]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Highly minimalistic! The older I get, the less I wish to be surrounded by "stuff". It gives me a headache to look at it all, so I've been getting rid of things in leaps and bounds. It's quite a "freeing" experience!

After losing three family members in the past three years, I came to a very serious realization, "stuff" means nothing. People are everything! 'Tis much more pleasing to experience things, rather than to "own" them. I don't want to be "responsible" for all dat "stuff" any more. If I want to see beauty, I'll go see it, and happily leave it where I saw it, carrying the memory with me.

[tutusue]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

I live in 400 sq. ft.!!! What more can I say!

When my dad passed a few years ago and my mom was moved to a nursing home, the family home in SoCal was sold. I was asked what contents I wanted. I had no room for anything but I really wanted the memories...the framed career photos in my dad's den, the scrapbooks, and what seems like thousands of loose family photos. It wasn't long before 5 big boxes arrived on my door step! Oh lordy! I eventually condensed everything down to 2 boxes. One I keep at home and one is in a storage locker. I sift thru the one at home as time permits. This task cannot be accomplished in a speedy manner. Each photo can take many minutes of remembering, laughing, crying and sorting. The career photos now hang in my office...the perfect place for them. I left pukas for more.

My laptop computer is probably my biggest aid in keeping stuff to a minimum. It's my file cabinet, address book, Calendar, sound system, music storage. And it's a bookshelf for recipes! The trunk of my car helps, too. That's where I keep my shoes so I'll have them handy whether I'm in Makaha or town!

I keep a storage locker in Kapolei. It's the 'spare room'!

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Can anyone with an off-site storage area truly deny their pack-rat-ness?

[Pomai]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

I live in 400 sq. ft.!!! What more can I say!

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

[tutusue]

Re: Pack Rat or Minimalist?

Can anyone with an off-site storage area truly deny their pack-rat-ness?

Actually, I can!!! Christmas decorations, the obligatory 10 years of boxes of tax stuff (both personal and business...each year the oldest ones get shredded), luggage, mainland clothes.

When I lived at the Plaza Hawaii Kai, I had a 2 bedroom condo and a storage locker in the basement. No need for an outside facility then. But, 400 sq. ft. is really, really small. In my situation the key is to not outgrow the storage locker!

I bet you 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.[...]

That's my goal! I've started to purge everything I possibly can. That will eventually include all the furniture. The Treasure Box thrift shop in Makaha and the Waianae library are my beneficiaries! There are some things that will never fit into such a small space but they need to be kept. Hence, the storage locker. But, for my living space, yah, the little grass shack shouldn't look disheveled. The tropical aesthetics need to prevail. I'm going to scale back on the kitchen, which is just one wall in the living room anyway, by eliminating the stove and replacing it with a 2 burner cooktop and a small convection/microwave oven. Evoking the feeling of a perpetual vacation is mandatory!