Decluttering

[cjsmith]

I went to a trade show yesterday.

Yeah, that line isn't expected right after a title like "Decluttering", is it? :-) You geeks know exactly what I mean.

I went to the Embedded Systems Conference yesterday on a free exhibits-only pass. What this usually means is I pick up flyers from everyone who has a cool demo, grab chocolate from anyone who's giving it away, and take any free samples of anything I can get my hands on. A usual trade show haul contains at least one shopping bag or waist pack or backpack, which is handy to carry all the keychains, candy, bottle openers, blinky toys, little mechanical cars, coasters, logo-printed pens, T-shirts, puzzles, hats, catalogs, data books, stuffed animals, and chocolate bars. To this day my ice skates (which I cannot wear because they never did fit me) are stored and carried in a yellow vinyl bag with the Sun logo on it, obtained at SIGGRAPH in Las Vegas. Great: a bag that's considered useful only in that it contains a thoroughly useless item!

One of the big changes I can see myself making, on my quest toward a more organized and less baggage-laden life, isn't about getting rid of things but instead not acquiring them in the first place.

This year I did NOT take a big chocolate bar from Green Hills. I did NOT pick up a cute stuffed owl. I didn't take an umbrella or a cloth bag or a stuffed monkey. (Granted, I didn't find the monkeys. A coworker told me about them later.) I didn't acquire a single bottle opener, though many were offered, and I actually put back the cloth bag I had lifted briefly from its rack. I didn't take the "20% off all books today at the show" deal because they were books I didn't need. I did take too many flyers, but the durable goods are limited to a Coke can cozy and a nifty soft-feeling leather coaster. Well, okay, and Perforce is mailing me a T-shirt. At least I wear T-shirts.

Progress.

Comments

[layer.livejournal.com]

i'm impressed. i have such a hard time not picking up those things (especially the monkeys).

the best route for me has been to avoid them altogether.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This monkey was cute enough I might have considered picking him up, so it's probably good I didn't find him. :-)

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

congrats! that's a pretty big accomplisment. we get tons o'crap sent to us at my job, and i'm finally learning to resist the crap. just because it's sitting there doesn't mean i'm obligated to take it.

but you passed up a giant chocolate bar? i'm not sure i'm strong enough to do that.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, it was milk chocolate, loaded with sugar, a thing I'm trying to avoid. If it had been dark chocolate I might have snarfed it. It even had a cute label (ingredients: 32MB RAM...) ...okay, good thing I didn't take it, 'cause I'd have been tempted to save the dang label!

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

ah, that makes sense. i'm a dark chocolate grrl too, and find i really don't enjoy milk chocolate that much anymore. and i'd totally save the label, too.

i keep wanting to try dietary changes similar to what you're doing, but i'm in this crazy "negative spoons/survival" mode that doesn't allow for anything other than the bare minimum to get by. does avoiding sugar seem to be helping?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't honestly know whether it's helping. I'm the world's worst scientist -- I tried everything at once. I don't know what effects each thing has.

Heck, I don't know what effects the whole pile has together. I look back at how I felt when I ran a half mile, and I'm definitely better than I was then, but I also haven't run a half mile recently. Would I have recovered from that the same way if I weren't trying all this crap? I don't know.

Of course, avoiding sugar is probably a very healthy decision for me ANYway, since diabetes runs wild in my family. So I'll still try to eat less sugar.

I hear you about survival mode. Sometimes just getting through the day is crazymaking. If you have a tiny bit of energy, sometimes you can use that to do a tiny healthy-choice thing, and maybe it'll pay off in terms of more energy later... but it feels sort of like trying to buy a bank CD with a few pennies, doesn't it? Yowza can it ever be slow to start.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

Me neither - long time no hear from you :)

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

You should have seen me after the Securities Industry show in NYC. I dragged back a ton of freebies. All of which I shared with coworkers. I think I kept one stuffed whale and a backpack.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Good backpacks are definitely worth keeping! One of my best says Digital Signal Conference all over it.

You'd probably be amused at the way we all compared notes on the bus ride back to work. Almost everyone with stuffed animals was a dad, and one guy had stood in line for the monkeys THREE TIMES because he has three children! :-)

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

How did you end up with a pair of ice skates that "never really fit anyway?"

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds pretty wacky doesn't it? They were custom work and unreturnable. Stupid fool that I was...! I've never had anything custom-made for me again. There's no recourse if it doesn't fit.

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

I have a floor length dress I had altered to fit me perfectly so I didn't need a bra. This was about 9 years ago.......nuff said?

[kateyule.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, CJ! That's a serious achievement. I'm also trying to declutter (yeah, as if this is new) -- shovelling faster and more efficiently, but also -- as you did here -- grappling to turn down the flow of incoming crap in the first place.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I find that if I shovel faster AND block the incoming tide, I can almost keep up. :-) Maybe I'll get the hang of it in another decade or so!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

PS: friended you. Something tells me I'd already done that, but when I looked, you weren't there. I honestly don't know if I have more senior moments than LJ does...

[portia.livejournal.com]

Excellent job! I always picked up tons of stuff during Comdex... and then it sat there and gathered dust until I got around to throwing everything away a year later.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You throw it AWAY? *angel choir singing*

I am not good at that part.

[portia.livejournal.com]

Well... just the flyers and brochures that I never read. And maybe the crappy useless software. I still keep the mouse pads, pens, stuffed animals, etc. :o)

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Hey, I want the owl!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I briefly thought of that. He wasn't as well-done as most of the ones in your collection, and he had a logo on his T-shirt. Let's go to a zoo and get you a good owl.