No, not “2009 ResolutionS per day.” That’d just be silly. Although I do engage in goal setting, I just think that since I’ve not made any “New Year’s Resolutions” in some time, perhaps a little taking stock and goal setting of the “New Year’s resolutions” type might be in order. So, herewith my first “New Year’s Resolution” of 2009.
It occurred to me that stuff temds to multiply to fill whatever space is available, and not just in the “nature abhors a vaccuum” kind of way. For example, I had a new 400GB hard drive about six or so months ago. It’s now about half full. Of what? Just–mostly–stuff. Heck, I regularly scissor out and toss several gigs of stuff, and yet still stuff proliferates.
Take my desk. Please. *heh* I try to clean it off every now and then. The last time was about a month ago. But does that help? Nope. It’s crammed, piled high, stuffed with stuff.
Storage shed. Garage. Store rooms. Stuffed with stuff.
A goal for 2009? For every new piece of stuff brought into twc central, TWO pieces of stuff must go–preferably of like stuff. I’m not talking about increasing twc central’s use of the landfill, necessarily (although it may come to that from time to time). Most of the stuff we are plagued with is useful stuff, but might well find a more useful home elsewhere.
So. Yard sales. Donations. Want ads. Friends, neighbors and relatives: all potential new homes for stuff over the course of 2009. For example, how many CD/Radio/cassette tape “boom boxes” do we really need? The kids have stopped using them. I no longer use them (as I once did for ed purposes–amazing the usefulness of those lil items). Sure, some no longer have full functionality, but…
And then there’s my closet. How many boxes of “five-to-seven ‘gold stripe'” silk ties do I need, anyway?
And my techie hoard. Yes, I can and do use all the teeny lil bits and pieces I’ve stripped off of innumerable discarded computers, but how many of those old cases (still left after discarding more than a dozen computers last summer) and power supplies and CDROM drives and etc., do I really need to hang on to? How many can be made into perfectly serviceable hardware firewalls to give away? Well, it pretty much depends on how many spare 100mbit network cards I find I still have and how many people might find they really need a hardware firewall.
And the sheet music, books, magazines, manuscripts, records (both paper and LP), tapes, tools, materials of all kinds that is gathered in both organized and topsy-turvy, ramshackle disorganization–all still in need of digging into, even after the major cleanup of the BIG store room last summer.
Tons (possibly literally tons) of stuff that has simply bred and multiplied in the dank, dark storage places where it’s been consigned must go.
And the same goes for my digital stuff. Boxes and boxes of old floppies, CDRs, old hard drives: sorted, cleaned, recatalogued and either re-stored (this time with a digital library catalog and perhaps even bar coding) and that which is to be discarded either run through a degausser (for the floppies and other magnetic media) or shredded (for the CDRs) or melted (NOT burned). Some of the old hard drives, suitably and securely erased, could well find new homes in file servers, but this stuff must either be used or it must go.
So, that’s “Resolution Number One”–no more wildly proliferating stuff. LESS.
