Microblog Memes

Cardboardception!

Terrible way to get your fibre in… lol

It's not about what I need in the moment, It's about what will be useful in the future. I hoard stuff but I keep it to designated areas. If it gets to the point that it's breaching containment, then some things have to go to make room. Things like good cardboard I tend to use more often than I receive them, especially since I stopped using amazon as much as possible (and amazon stopped using boxes in a lot of cases even before that). So I hang onto it until I have so much that it exceeds the spot between my two desks that I keep it in. I also have a healthy supply of hardware, crafting supplies, cables, computer parts, and general electronics that comes in handy all the time. If I have something break I generally have whatever I need on hand to get back up and running again. At least as a temporary solution until I can get parts or whatever.

A bigger issue for me is stuff I'm sentimental about. I have a couple crates of toys from when I was a kid and things that came from my grandparents that I don't really want to get rid of but also don't know where to put them.

I've found the occasional box handy, but not many until it's time to move. We had a stash of something like a dozen folded flat and out of the way, then we got bankers boxes because they're not too expensive and they're a really nice size for some heavy things, and then we got some plastic rubbermaid containers because they work better for some lighter items.

The rubbermaid containers will actually be more of a pain to deal with since they don't fold flat, but at least they stack. So I figure we use the top-most container in the stack to store a spare blanket and clothing that we want to keep packed down most of the time, and that's pretty space-efficient. And then flatten the boxes and have that somewhere on a shelf or stacked next to something out of the way.

It's funny. I used to read lots of older books when I was growing up. A couple of centuries ago, it was considered wise to hang on to things like cord or string, just because they could be useful. Of course, back then, we had so much less stuff floating around. Now we have problems with hoarding stuff that might some day be useful. (And too much stuff in general!)

Distracted, but on the stories - I was remembering a parable (a story from a book geared towards schoolchildren) of two boys, one of whom opened a package tied up with string carelessly and threw away the string and paper wrapping; the other boy carefully untied the string, removed and folded the paper. The payoff was that the one who saved it made something useful out of it later, whereas the boy that wasted those things went without. Of course these days… while it is good to reduce, reuse, recycle, when it comes to hoarding, a lot of times it's more healthy to throw away than keep…

[ALERT]

MGSV