400 Things: The Great Slog

For the past six years I have kept a storage unit full of ten years worth of stuff. Honestly, I don't fault myself for keeping the unit or taking so long to deal with it. I did need the time and distance from it. Also, it just seemed an impossible task. Where was I to take it all? 

Avoiding the challenge of dealing with the memories piled up in that little room hasn't been cheap and, more recently, the urge to just get rid of it all has become an obsession. I cannot move on in my happy lifestyle re-design with all this stuff dragging me into stagnation. 

I wished that my problem could be solved as it often is on a reality show where long tasks are presented in fast-forward. Two days of work can flash by in two minutes. Instead, it has been nearly ten months since I began to deal with the storage situation in earnest.

I started off with this mess. The bed was my biggest roadblock. I had to move it every time I tried to get into the unit and nearly killed myself each time. Thankfully, a good friend bought it. Now I was dealing with . . .

this situation, which was still a lot of stuff, a lot more than I felt capable of dealing with. Still, I finally wanted to be free of it more than any benefit I got by ignoring it. And the cost of the unit was killing me. It was significantly over $200.00 per month! I had no choice but to tackle it. This time, however, I did get help from a friend. It was a amazing experience. The two of us were able to get all of this stuff into . . . 

this space in just four hours. And I wasn't even sore afterward. I was in the middle of a juice feast, too, yet never felt too tired to continue.

It felt really good to see the old space empty. It gave me hope of a time when I would no longer have a storage space at all. Of course, the new (much cheaper) "in-between" unit now looked like . . .

This! Still, I felt as though I had achieved something truly significant, not the least of which was saving about $70.00 per month. I made that move in October of 2013.  It took until February of 2014 for me to have the cash to implement the next part of my plan.

Truly I wish that I could just load everything into a truck and take it to a dumpster but I can't. There are too many sensitive documents in that awful heap: I have to go through each and every box, at least glance at each and every document and then decide where everything goes: Shred, Trash, Donate, or Keep.







To keep the "keep" pile manageable, I decided to rent a much smaller unit into which I would place the things I chose to keep. I figured I could afford it since I had already paid for the larger unit and believed I would done sorting everything by the end of February.

This is the Keep Unit. The photograph does not do justice to how much smaller it is than the in-between unit. I saw immediately that I was in for a really tough battle keeping myself to just four hundred things. I might be at four hundred right there.

I got to sorting like a frenzied demon. Based on my pace and the size of the unit, I felt confident that I could finish in eight days total.

Every day I pulled out the boxes I had sorted through the day before in order to get to the un-sorted boxes.

My life took over the hallway. Thankfully, none of my neighbors came to access their units. That would have been a . . . challenge.

The friend who helped me to load in the good back in October is 6'5" tall.  He and his long arms stacked boxes and bags above his head. I am 5'1"at best. So a good friend of mine loaned me this nifty ladder (thank you Elaine and Dave!!!). I got to work bringing boxes down from on high.

I thought the point just behind
the black file storage units was half way.
That's actually half of half way. See the big brown
box on the floor behind the black storage units? Look
for it in the next picture . .  . 

Remember how I said that I figured it would take me eight days? Apparently my memory had significantly faded in the four months between October and February. I got to what I thought was the half way point, moved a bag at the top of the stack and discovered, to my horror, that I had actually only gotten through 1/4th of the unit!

That point behind the big brown box on the floor?
That is half way.

I am realistic enough to know when it is time to re-calibrate. Of course I had chosen the shortest month of the year in which to attempt my goal (and a non-leap year at that). So I have paid for another month with the in-between unit and I will be returning the small keep unit until I am done with this ginormous task. On the upside, my biceps are looking pretty good. 

400 Things in 28 Days from Scratch from Scratch

Ok - I'm back. I could have blogged the 28 days. Then school started and my focus went in that direction. And I made a more basic error.  While I did create a calendar for the month, it looks like this:

I never got the proper stickers! Took that little sticker in the March 1 box from a different project. It fell off. I tried using these as stickers.

They are left over from my moot court days. But they are too big and not very inspirational. Don't get me wrong - the month itself was not so bad. I stayed completely dairy and gluten free. But I ate restaurant food about four times rather than the twice I had challenged myself to do. And I didn't always observe the carb/veggie/protein ratios. It wasn't a disaster but it wasn't a triumph either.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal, Steamed Purple Cabbage, Scrambled Eggs.
We call this "Struggle Breakfast"

Steamed Purple Cabbage with Red Lentil Mash

Scrambled Eggs with Tomato;
Spinach and Mashed Sweet Potatoes 

Scrambled eggs with Corn Phutu; Steamed Purple Cabbage and Carrots
Finally got the ratios right

One lesson I have definitely learned is this: Losing weight really isn't about exercise. Exercise is about physiological health - muscle strength, cardiovascular performance, balance, agility, flexibility. Those kind of things. Weight loss is about nutrition. It is quite possible to lose weight and keep it off without ever breaking a sweat. I am not recommending that; exercise is essential. However (and I say nothing new here), one cannot hope to lose weight by exercising and eating junk.

No amount of exercise can compete with what you eat. I worked out once for ten minutes during January. That's it. Aside from the work of lifting boxes, I really have done no exercise since then and yet I have maintained my weight and still lost inches. What's that about boxes, you might ask?

Remember the 400 things project? I heard Dee Williams, a bright light in the Tiny House Movement, mention that she was inspired to simply her life following some time she spent in Guatemala. She sold her big house, built a tiny house (84 square feet), and reduced her possessions to about 300 things. I was intrigued and I wondered whether I could do something similar.

I have a storage unit full of a lifetime of junk and memories. I have things in for about six years. For many reasons (and I forgive myself for all of them) I have not been able to touch that storage unit . . . until now. The time has come for me to clean out the closet.

In September I moved from the large storage unit . . .

 to a smaller one.

The Much Smaller Unit

I started working on the storage unit around February 10th. The goal was to sort everything into shred, trash, donate and keep piles. I rented a much smaller unit for my keep items.

It just kept on going!

I looked into my medium-sized storage unit and thought, eh. Two weeks. I can do this in two weeks. And I set to work. When I thought myself half way done, I patted myself on the back, took a short break, and then moved a stack of boxes to discover, to my horror, that the unit was actually twice as deep as I had remembered it. I was in serious trouble.








My new plan is to finish by the end of March. I cannot afford to rent two units, so I am returning the smaller unit until I am done with the primary unit.


So, March is the month of the 400 Things in 28 days from Scratch from Scratch, proving that you can always start again.

Happy Lifestyle Purge: The Prequal

(Be sure to scroll down to my video at the end)

I spent the first three weeks of August visiting with my family in California. That visit was the first in a long time when I can remember actually, truly, genuinely relaxing. During the first week I woke up every morning and took a leisurely stroll down the stairs to find my parents in the kitchen preparing a scrumptious, nutritious, meat free, gluten free and dairy free breakfast.

Dad makes his famous nutty blueberry muffins

After breakfast, we took a nap.  Then we woke up and mom prepared a sumptuous lunch bursting with flavor, color, and nutrition.

Tofu in fresh tomato sauce with sauteed green beans, steamed black rice with lentils and a sweet squash mash

Creamed pumpkin and asparagus with black rice and lentils and soy mutton

My sister had her husband gave their two daughters puppies for their birthdays.  I had the profound pleasure of babysitting them. They usually came over after lunch. I did consider dognapping them.

Caramel and Bambi

I also got to visit with friends whom I had not seen in about twenty years. Amazingly, we seemed to pick up right where we had left off.

Early on Monday morning of the second week my dad woke me up to join him for a hike. This is a tradition between us; we always go hiking together when we are in California. We went hiking several times that week and I lost another five pounds. Here is a video I made of us hiking a couple of years ago. Altitude is an issue (I live at sea level and our California hometown is 1,160 feet above sea level). Also, I'm in much better shape now.

With nothing to do but sleep, eat nutritious food, drink plenty of water, exercise, visit with friends and pet puppies, I truly rested for the first time in ages.  

Now I had the mental space to spend lots of time thinking about how I wanted to organize the next steps of my Intentional Happiness Lifestyle design process. Paring down to 400 things is my most immediate and truly daunting goal. For months I have been mulling over how to begin.

I have a large storage room full of stuff to get rid of. That task hangs like a millstone around my neck. Happily, I found help and inspiration. I have become obsessed with Alejandra Costello's home organizing videos. Here is my favorite. It has revolutionized the way I organize my clothes. I shouldn't admit this but I watch this video whenever I feel stressed out or overwhelmed. Alejandra has this cheerful and calming manner about her that helps me relax.

I had been watching Alejandra's videos for a couple of months and all the tips I had picked up from her over that time suddenly came together; I knew what I needed to do! While I couldn't complete the storage job right away, I could take care of my room.

Oh, my room. My deep and shameful secret. Nothing felt more depressing than coming home each day to that disaster. I literally had to clear a path from my bed to the closet and on my bed I kept a space clear for me to sleep on. Otherwise I was totally surrounded by a mess. I would watch the television show Hoarders just to scare myself, imagining a pathetic future in which I would make the news after the firefighters had to dig me out.

It isn't a hoarding problem as much as it is a messy problem. My breakthrough came when I realized that the main issue was my desk and a storage bench I had placed in front of it. I had intended to use the bench as a seat that doubled as storage. Unfortunately, it was too low so actually sitting at the desk was truly uncomfortable. Additionally, the desk had no drawers and since I couldn't reach it very well (because the bench was in the way), I tended to just throw stuff on top if it. And so it piled up.

It is a pile up no more. Watch this video to see the improvement. I'm not quit finished. In a video about organizing closets Alejandra mentions how she switched from hanging her jeans to putting them in drawers and demonstrates how much more room that gave her (tons). So I still have to get drawers and those under the bed containers for the vacuum bags I store my off-season clothes in.  Still, there is much progress and I am very happy. Enjoy!

Opts Out/Opts In (The Movie): Chapter One

Update Update Update! Here is what has happened with the camper so far.  This update is in the form of a little movie.  I'm thinking to do more of these little movies. It means fewer entries each month but I'm thinking that these are more fun than just text.  It's an experiment!  Enjoy.

Dumpster Diving

My version of Happy Lifestyle Design asks three questions: How do I shelter myself, How do I give and receive value, and how do I care for my embodied soul? This post is about the last question.

I thought very carefully about how to phrase my question. What I eat and where I get it from matter . . . and there is more. Industrialized societies that are heavily influenced by European cultures tend to separate the mind, body and soul. I have decided not to. What I eat and where I get it from, how much I sleep, what sort of exercise I do, the relationships I have, balancing all of these contributes to happiness for me. And so I ask myself, how do I care my embodied soul?

I happened to talk to a friend of mine about van dwelling and the philosophies behind avoiding consumerism. He directed me to the NYC Freegan Meetup Group. The group meets twice a month to present Freeganism 101 and to give Dumpster Diving tours. I joined the group for a presentation and tour on Monday, April 15, 2013 (yes, tax day, how ironic). Before we left on the tour, several members of the group gave us some background about Freeganism and what dumpster diving is all about. I managed to keep it together but inside I was screaming, "Glory hallelujah!" I had found my people.

We hit the streets at about 9:30pm. Timing is important because the dump trucks arrive by around 11pm to pick up what the supermarkets throw out. We visited four locations. Le Pain Quotidian gets my highest praise. Someone there had gathered the best of the bread that was being thrown out into double-lined clear plastic trash bags then thoughtfully placed those bags in clear sight on top of the rest of the rubbish. In all of the locations, most of the food was still in its packaging and was, perhaps, one or two days past the sell by date. By the time I decided I had to go home, my bags were overflowing and I felt overwhelmed by it all. There was SO MUCH! I can eat really well and avoid consumerism!

Watch this short video to get a better sense of what Dumpster Diving and Freeganism are all about.

UPDATE: Youtube has pulled my video for reasons that I cannot fathom. This is really unfortunate. I hope to figure out why and get the video back up.

Why am I doing this Part II (aka The Prey that Got Away)

I have written a blog post about intentional happiness lifestyle design.  That post presents one aspect of why I am making the lifestyle changes that I am. This post presents another aspect of my decision.

Do you remember The Social Contract? Jean-Jacque Rousseau? The treatise on the relationship between the people and the government? Rousseau focused on the sources of political authority which he credited to "the people" rather than to a monarch who ruled by so-called divine right. His work revolutionized politics in Europe and significantly influenced the American Revolution.

There is another sort of social contract that threads the fabric of every society. It is an economic contract. In the context of capitalist industrialized societies, that relationship mainly lays between corporations and people. Basically, the corporations (i.e. the shareholders) own the means of production (sound familiar?) and the workers produce the products. The corporations sell the products and (here is the social contract part) distribute the profits between themselves and the workers. The corporations have a vested interest in the welfare of the workers, the workers have a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations. That's how it is supposed to work.

Then there are the banks. The banks make it possible for the corporations and the people to conduct business: Purchase and sell assets, finance large investments, store their money, and so forth.

There are rules and regulations that govern the transactions within this economic contract. They are intended to curb excess, prevent abuse, and prosecute it when it does happen.

The United States enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during the Clinton Administration. This got certain people thinking, hey, there is no limit, let's milk this thing for all it is worth. So they got rid of the rules, went hog wild, and then, eventually, as should be expected, it all came crashing down.

My issue is this: in the aftermath, the corporations and the banks (well, the people who run them, really) have made no effort to uphold their end of the economic bargain. It is much worse than that. They have coerced ordinary citizens (via the government) to pay to fix the mess that they made. Below I have posted an excellent video made by the political economist (excellent combo) and Brown University professor, Mark Blyth that explains this all quite nicely. (By the way, I find his accent super sexy.)

In the beginning I totally accepted the financial crisis hype, believing that allowing the banks to fail would lead to unbridled disaster. I believed that the bank bailout was unavoidable and prudent. Perhaps it was. However, the aftermath is unconscionable and I find myself growing more unwilling to participate in this nonsense.

So, I ask myself, what can I do to make big banks and multi-national corporations irrelevant to my life?

For me the answer lays in arranging my life in a way that has as little to do with mass consumption as possible. So, in addition to changing my life for the sake of living in the now and maximizing my happiness, I am also minimizing the stranglehold that consumerism has had on my life.

Imagine being free from worrying about money and the constant, grinding, soul obliterating obsession with the means of obtaining it and, rather, having one's needs met via direct exchange with other human beings. Imagine a life where what the "too big to fail" banks do has minimal impact because money is not the central mode of exchange.

Again, I am not doing this because I don't believe in industry and the economies of scale. I am doing this because our banks and corporations have not only betrayed and abandoned us to the wolves, they have become the wolves and they are feeding on us. Many argue that they always have. Fine. Whatever the case, I choose to be the prey that got away.