THE ENEMY, PART THREE: STUFF, STUFF, AND MORE STUFF

What can I say? When you buy a 3000 square foot place you just HAVE to buy a bunch of furniture. Not only do you buy run-of-the-mill stuff like a king-sized $4.5k hand-crafted wooden sleigh bed but you also take a couple of trips to antique shows so you can show the world that you can buy several expensive 400-year old Chinese pieces (for fucks sake, they actually refer to this stuff as “pieces”, not furniture). And, of course, you definitely need rice cookers, tea kettles, hampers, lamps, home office supplies, HD plasma TVs, etc…

If I could just go back in time and grab a hold of that me two years ago I would shake me firmly and scream: “What the hell are you doing!? Why do you even need all this stuff? Are you buying it because you need it or because society thinks you should own it? Do you have any idea how many natural resources were wasted just so that you, one single fucking person, can pretend to own the entire universe?

Simplicity Meets the Enemy
As they say, “everything must go!” The way to handle all this stuff is pretty simple: get rid of it by selling it, giving it away and/or giving it to friends. Going forward I will be cataloguing all the stuff I have, selling stuff on craigslist, and contacting people I trust to given them the heads up.

Timeline
It looks like the disposal process is going to have to be staggered. I can start on some of the craigslist stuff right away. However, I’ve been renting a room in the house to a friend and he will still need to have access to most of the furniture until the status of the townhouse is finalized. When the house is sold next year he will move out and I can get rid of the rest of the furniture. If all goes well, I could have all the furniture out of the house by July 2009.