Mary laid out some criteria recently, but if you’d seen me cleaning out my basement today, you might have serious doubts about me.
All Slaters are hoarders. There’s never been a spare bit that we didn’t think could be used some day, and tucked it safely away in a crate somewhere. When I moved to Singapore in 1997, I started out with two (full) suitcases. Yesterday, if you’d taken all my rubbish, you could have a filled up at 40ft, 2300 cubic-foot cargo container (maybe more).
We’re moving to our new house in March. It’s reasonably large, but it lacks the 2000-square foot warehouse floor underneath the main house, my current place enjoys. Ling and I agreed things needed to be culled.
I went down sheepishly at 4pm and started picking at my crates of computer rubbish. I started separating the obviously really antique crap (DSL modems from three generations ago, dead cooling fans, P3 CPUs etc). The amazing thing is that some momentum took hold of me, and suddenly instead of pulling crap out of crates to get rid of, I might only pull something or nothing out to save and the rest was consigned to the bin.
What become more frightening was I next moved onto the book sections. I probably have four hundred or five hundred books kept in crates. I’ve kept them for a long time, read almost all of them, and liked a majority of them. I started by throwing out the crap I didn’t like (select PKD titles, for example) but then I remembered a quote I read from Cory Doctorow who said he gets rid of the books he read. If on the (rare) chance he needs it again, he can always buy it for pennies from Amazon. This lit me off, and I threw out whole containers of books. Dozens of travel guides, Dozens of war books, Dozens of old fictions, etc. The only authors I systematically kept where Haruki Murakami, Edward Abbey, and Edward Gorey.
Before I knew it, I had a massive, massive pile of shit culled. There should be more to go, but I was shocked by myself, as if I was Wolverine, newly discovering the steel talons that come out of my hands or something. Perhaps there is hope to actually shrink NetSlaterVolume by the time we get to 41 Springleaf. (at which point the swelling most certainly begins anew).
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You seem to be deliberately omitting your ebay treasures at 4777 ifrom your NSV.
It’s interesting.
I have a lot of trouble throwing books away, like they were old friends or something.
When I was growing up, books were a symbol of wealth. It was important to me that I owned them. I think Pa was the same way, except with him it was food.
He wanted his house stocked with food all the time. I’m guessing it was the effect that the Greate Depression had on him.
Yeah what the hell. I have my own full basement and am proud of it. If you need it I got it. Trouble now is it is over capacity with old scientific instruments that dont work. I have been fixing them as quick as I can but they just keep coming. The FedEx guy is now our personal friend.
Keep that stuff, especially the old computer parts.
hahahahahahahahahhaahhahah
If you need it, Dave may have it, but can he find it?
Dear Mike, I had a field day pitching stuff when we were getting ready to move. Then we moved……..And after a few months I said to myself, “Why did I pay to have this stuff moved? I don’t need it! ” And I went on another pitching spree. I am proud of you and inspired. Now how do I get Wig to agree to pitch the 3 computers stored on the third floor? lol
[...] been discussing the Slater hoarding gene a while back. So now, which one of us is going to invite Martin Hampton to his house for Possessed [...]
There is something to be said for the hoarder gene
Last night, i was cleaned up my bench, and i found this little orange bit of plastic
“What the hell is that?”
Suddenly it hit me, that it was a replacement for the missing plastic piece that goes on the timer, that turns on the light on our front lawn.
Where it came from? I don’t know.
Why I would have bothered to save it? I don’t know.
But it sure did come in handy, and it didn’t cost me anything extra.