Kevin's Weblog

We started Discardia a little early this season. I was out in the garage yesterday and unearthed the boxes containing all my notes from 7 years of college and grad school. Then I proceeded to throw all of it into the recycling bin. I started a little slow, since the first stuff I found was 3-ring binders that I had to open and remove paper from a chunk at time. But, I finished by taking the big box of spiral notebooks that has been sealed since I moved to California and simply upending it into the bin.

After all that, I went through the box of all my camping gear and separated out all the hard-core stuff that I don’t figure I’m going to need, even if we do start camping as a family at some point. That went up on Freecycle, to someone who claimed they had a couple young scouts who needed gear.

I’m also going to try to make another aggressive pass through my clothing. Recently I actually tried on all my dress shirts and found that only two of them still fit me. A similar situation holds for slacks, although some of those have potential for alteration. Either way, I want to set a goal of having no more clothing that doesn’t actually fit me any more at the end of this year.

Yesterday was the last day of Discardia, a “holiday” which I only learned of about halfway through. Interestingly, before I knew of it, I was actually doing a very good job of clearing junk out of my life. I took 30 books to the library, and sold about half a dozen physics texts on Amazon. After I learned about Discardia, I intended to keep it up for the remaining week or so, but somehow the energy petered away.

We’re in this strange state currently. Because of water damage last winter, they’re having to repaint our office and bedroom, which has necessitated packing a lot of stuff into boxes. Plus, we’re planning to move as soon as we find a new place we like, so there isn’t much incentive to unpack the boxes. This is somewhat useful in the way it teaches what we really can do without, but also a little frustrating because I know that there are some things I want to get rid of, but they are buried somewhere in all the boxes which I don’t have time to sort through now.

I’m loving the Amazon Marketplace. I have a bunch of books that I’ve been trying to sell for a while, periodically posting on local newsgroups, mailing lists, and bulletin board sites. Up to this point, I’ve only sold a handful, and only to people I know.

On Saturday, I started listing them on Amazon, and I’ve sold 3 of the 7 I put up already. The interface seems simpler than listing on eBay, and since I’m not trying to get every last cent out of selling them, that’s a big win. Also, no one has to worry about Paypal accounts or any of that. Amazon takes a credit card payment (and, to be fair, a big commission) and the money just shows up in my checking account.