Monday, May 28, 2018

Digital versus Physical

One of the things I have too much of is books, CDs, DVDs and printed music. They take up so much space in my house! Last night, we went over to a friend’s house, and he asked before we went over if we had bought or rented the movie Black Panther that we watched the night before. We bought it. Digitally. And it got me thinking when the last time I bought a physical movie was. I can’t remember. Between streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and purchasing movies digitally on Amazon Prime, We don’t buy physical movies anymore.

The same thing goes for music. I can’t remember the last time I bought a physical CD. I stream all of my music through Amazon Prime. I’ve uploaded most of what I had already purchased to their site as well, so that I have access all in one place. I’ve been moving that way more with books, as well as sheet music.

Yes, moving from physical to digital can be scary. And can be a lot of work. But to me, it’s worth it, because I have many stacks of books now accessible on my Ipad. It’s far more practical. I can plug my phone in when I’m in my car and play whatever music I’m in the mood for. I don’t have to mess with CDs or where to store them when I’m not using them or whatever the case is.

Yes, it is nice to have the physical things, because you can mark them up, if they’re books. I do still have some CDs, and the reason is because they’re autographed. But, you can make notes with the Amazon Kindle app, if you choose to go that route. Is it exactly the same? No, but it works just as well. And you can digitally check out books from your local library and access them via your device.

To me, the pros far outweigh the cons to go digital. My hope is that by the end of summer, I’ll have everything completely digital, and will have much more space in my house! It is definitely something for you to consider as you continue to go through and sort through all of those physical things and wonder if having all of it is worth it!

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

What do you have too much of?

Interesting question to ponder, isn’t it? For my daughters, it’s probably Barbie stuff or stuffed animals. For me, it’s probably sheet music. For my wife, I’d say it’s shoes....but she’d disagree! :-) The reality is that we all have too much of something. Sure, we can justify and explain why, but if you really ask yourself the hard question of “do I NEED it”, the answer is probably no.

Growing up, I used to have too many baseball cards. I collected them from when I was about 5 until I was a sophomore in college. I then decided to throw them out. Just threw them out. Didn’t miss them at all. Then, it was CDs. I sold some and gave the rest away to cull my collection down to ones that truly have meaning for me. As for the sheet music, I have gone through some and pared down, but I definitely need to spend time over the summer going through my music and purging some more.

So how do you determine whether you have too much of something? Ask yourself if you need it. Pack it up and put it in the garage for a month and see if you can do without it. Or just go cold turkey and get rid of it. Or, better yet, choose a few of the things that have value to you and get rid of the rest. Then you have a manageable collection of things that has meaning to you. With my CDs, I kept the ones that I had autographed and ones by friends and bands that I really liked. And do you know how much I have listened to CDs? Maybe about 10 hours in total over the past year. So, it’s time to cull again. Why? Because I have everything digitally. And that’s the other thing. It’s always an ongoing process.

Growing up, I loved my grandparents’ nutcracker collection. So, when I got out on my own, I bought a couple of nutcrackers and had them out at Christmas. Of course, more and more and more were purchased for me. It got to over 25 nutcrackers. I decided to get rid of some and get down to 9. And that’s manageable. Now they’re out all the time, not just a massive pile of them at Christmas. Was it hard to get rid of them? Not really. I thought it would be, but it really wasn’t.

So, ask yourself those tough questions. Pack up a few of those things and see if you miss them. Or comment with what you’ve done with the things you’ve had too much of.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Ikea

Yes, I’m writing a blog post about Ikea. Why? Well, we went as a family last Saturday and it was quite fun. Yes, we bought stuff. I know that violates the “rules” some may have of minimalism, but see my last post about the “rules”. Here’s the deal. After exploring the possibility of purchasing our own house (we rent), enough doors were closed where it looks like making another year in our rental house will work. But, we have to be better organized and make the space work. So that’s our summer project.

A big part of that summer project is getting rid of stuff. There’s just too much that we have and do not need. But for my youngest daughter, her room was a disaster. Primarily because we had a dresser that was far too big and not enough efficient storage space. So, that was our primary purchases at Ikea. A new dresser, a bookshelf and a storage unit.

But one of the things that amazed me in looking at Ikea was the creative uses of space. Sure, you could spend a ton of money there and get stuff and not really be better off for it. And really, it doesn’t matter what store you go to, that would be the case. Ikea’s design, though, is definitely to make efficient uses of space.

Will we purchase more stuff at Ikea? Probably. Depending on how our purge and organization process goes. We have a few things that would better benefit us when it comes to organization, whether that is something to put on the wall to keep us better organized when it comes to paper, or storage for things, or whatever the case is. As we go through the process, we’ll figure out. We’re starting with the girls’ bedrooms, then moving out from there.  It’s a process that will be a lot of work, but is necessary and will be beneficial for us in the long run.

How do you best store digital things part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about how to best store your digital documents. You can find that here . Today, the focus is going to be on pictures. Gon...