I confess that I have a terrible obsession. I like to keep things.
I look around in my room. I have a lot of comic books. I have a lot of story books. Lots of IT related books too. And then there are a few discs, harddisks, etc.
I have a thirst for data, and keeping them. I look at my cupboard, and see various bills from even way back 2006. It somehow seemed so hard to just dispose of them.
All this will change soon, I hope.
First off, I have stopped purchases of comic books totally. Finally outgrown them.
Next, I stopped purchases of new story books. The books I bought used to have high ROI (Returns on Investments), in that I re-read them over and over again back then. But nowadays, I realized that there are just too many content in the world out there to let me afford to re-read them.
Same for IT books. Most of them did not have me returning to them for references. Many of them are one-off reads. Hardly worth the purchases.
And so I began visiting the National Library recently. Gotta make full use of the government facilities ;) I make reservations for books to have them deliver to a nearby library, and pick them up, for a minimal fee of SGD 1.55. That's cheap compared to the 20+ I might have to pay if I am to purchase the book. And if the book is worthwhile after the read, I could put it in my wish list of to purchase. But it must first pass the 'high re-read' value, which not a lot of books do nowadays ('Reason for God', 'SOA in Practice', and '4 hour workweek' would fall under this category).
Most fantasy books would not have a re-read value, as much as I like the story.
So with this stroke (of utilizing the library), I save on both money, and space. Though sometimes I do have to wait for months to borrow a book, as there are 700+ other people waiting in queue like me...
And as for digital data.. I recently realized that I have data from back in 2001 or so. Some of them are chat logs, saved files, documents, etc. Most of which however, are residing on my backup/archive harddisk. I have yet to touch them for ages. Which goes to say that they are highly likely no longer needed. After all, out of sight, out of mind! If you no longer remember they exist, what makes you think you would need them anymore?
Next on the list, bills, letters, from older years. I would think it's safe to assume that anything older than one year is safe to shred. Though I'm still holding my reservations on this. I thought of keeping them as digital copies too. Scan them in, and throw the original away. Oh well..
Discs. This is an interesting aspect. For music CDs, I definitely like them to be digital on my computer. But I'm pretty sure that the local legal laws does not view that as legal... As for VCD and DVD, well... I don't really watch them after the initial viewing most of the time. Maybe I could get away with rentals instead. Or digitalize them. But again, legal aspects are tricky on that. (Funny how we *think* it's legal to pass original discs around and not for digital copies. Maybe even for original discs we are bound and not allowed to share them too?)
After thinking through and reviewing all that I have on hold, I realized that I really do not need most if not all of them! Quite a waste of money in fact, and I took so long to realize that!
So now, I have totally stop purchases of new things. And I am slowly reducing the clutter in my room and freeing up space by figuring out how to get rid of the current things. Hopefully I can end up with a minimalistic room eventually. And having much more savings on hand.
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