Chuckin' Stuff

At first this may seem counterintuitive. How can a low-casher possibly afford to get rid of any of his/her meager capital holdings?

Easy. You don't have "capital holdings" or even "life's possessions." You have, ahem, "junk."

That's right. Junk. Crap piled up to the ceiling. Every flat surface in your apartment morphs into a table, slowly accumulating debris like the silt that builds up on river bottoms. In the future, scientists will drill deep into your piles of useless stuff and extract layered cores for study.

"Look!" they'll say, with excited eyes. "This layer of receipt-ite seems to have been laid down in late 2007 during a period of particularly intense take-out dining activity!"

You don't want that fate, do you? No. On top of that, stuff costs you money. Even after you've bought it, it takes up valuable space that you could be subletting or using for other low-cash activities. If you move, it sucks up your gas mileage and makes you take extra trips. What this means is that all your stuff had damn well better justify itself.

Recently I have been throwing things away. Before any greenies out there get upset, I don't mean everything went straight to the landfill. Things were recycled and donated; I just mean that they were removed from my life. I've got a stack of clothes going to Goodwill next week.

It's really wonderful. A lighter load. Breathing room.

So here's what you do. Start with paper. Pile up all your useless stuff in front of you and make three piles: definitely junk, definitely save, and "decide later." The toughest part of this is not just pushing everything into the middle pile. Go through it. Poem you wrote in high school? Unless you read it at your best friend's funeral, CHUCK IT! Stack of pay stubs from your days at Bubba O'Fratboy's Fake Irish American Pub Chain? Keep the last one so you know how much you sold your soul for, and shred the rest. CHUCK IT! Shred your soul while you're at it; it's weighing you down. Pics of you and your ex who's married now and treated you like secondhand chewing gum that you kept anyway because it was such a sweet short time and you still like to think about JUST CHUCK IT ALREADY!

When you're done, put the "don't know" pile aside, and go back to it a week later with the same triage-style operation. Three rounds of this should finish the papers. Now on to other things...

Clothes: You know that outfit you've been saving for a "special event"? YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL! And let's not even get started on that certain item that bears the "stain of shame"... CHUCK IT!

Books/Music/other 'art': This, I admit, is my weakness. I'm one of those old-fashioned goofballs who prefers to maintain his music collection in CDs - which don't even have to hipster appeal of vinyl - and I think of my books as a permanent lending library established for the benefit of my friends. But even here, cuts may be made. Are you really going to pull out that anthropology textbook one night and dazzle your friends by proving that matrilineal social organization is viable in the modern context? Will you really liven up a party with Bavarian Bruiser Records' compilation "Polka Punks Vol. 4?" Some of you may be nodding. YOU WON'T! CHUCK IT!

The clay sculpture of a frog your little cousin gave you for your birthday years ago? She was so young and cute to give it away as a present AND IS SEVENTEEN NOW CHUCK IT!

Broken-down crap and old parts of things: This doesn't even need to be explained. Are you grandpa? Thrift is great. But if you aren't REALLY going to reuse that stuff, get rid of it. Put it up for sale or rent or in the "just take it for the love of God" section of the classifieds. One man's trash is another man's treasure - the cycle of LCL life. They'll be happy, you'll be free.

Feels lighter already.