Alvin Lai

Aren’t you tired of rummaging through drawers of stuff, finding things that you have no immediate need for but feel maybe would be useful sometime down the road?

I sure have.

From old physics textbooks that I might need to refer, perfectly cute looking empty containers that would make potentially nice containers for presents to downright ridiculous spare pen caps just in case I were to lose the one on my current pen (Yes, looking back it was plain silly).

Other than keeping things, there are other ways to get stuff like impulse bargain purchases to storing something you don’t use because it’s ‘too good’, like ‘good china’.

Finally, there is a logical reason to this seemingly absurd behavior.

One of my favourite essayists Paul Graham wrote about accumulating stuff and how it affects you and I today in several different ways:

1. Wastes time
2. Saps your energy
3. Costs you money
4. Chains you mentally

We overvalue stuff

Many things have gotten a lot cheaper, with advances in technology and mass production by the Chinese and Indian powerhouses. However our attitudes toward stuff have not adjusted correspondingly, thus we overvalue stuff.

Paul argues that this mentality affects the poor and I kinda concur.

When I first came to America on a budget with 13 other people, everyone had one mission – to get as much stuff free or at a garage sale bargain from Craigs List or from our seniors.

Fair enough, we saved a lot on the essentials like tables, mattresses, table lamps, and fans. However our garage soon filled up with stuff we got free which nobody really used, but thought would be useful in the near future. When our seniors had to vacate their apartments to return to Singapore, we saw all kinds of stuff being relocated to our almost full garage, for our batch to pass down to our juniors. Believe me, there were hardly any climbing space inside. When our juniors came to scavenge, I saw the same cycle happening :)

Having too much stuff around you is stressful

For the first time after getting rid of a whole lot of dreadful stuff in my room, I feel real peace and serenity in my own room to get stuff done … and blog!

Paul attempts to explain why:

I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.

Now I realise why my mom nags at me so much back in Singapore to get rid of stuff in my room – she finds it tiring and depressing with little room for people in a room full of stuff! My mom will be so pleased when I get back, finally she’ll be authorized to dump a whole lot of junk haha..

Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?

With all the fantastic bargain sites like Slick Deals, 1SaleADay, Woot within shipping reach here, it’s really tough resisting impulse buys. Likewise other retailers who have spent years figuring how to make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that “shopping” becomes entertainment, or shopping therapy, stress relief, as my dear friend Trina would say :)

A few helpful basic guidelines from Paul to rational purchases:

1. Would I use it constantly?
2. Is it JUST something nice?
3. Worse, a mere bargain?

Food Wastage

Check out this carton containing 6 pint baskets of strawberries Colin and I bought for a mere $8 by the road side on our journey to Los Angeles. It was so fresh with a lip smacking tinge of sweetness that we had strawberry for lunch, a dinner side and supper :)

Maybe not as relevant to stuff in general, but I’d like to include the topic of food due to the similarities of not wasting food to hoarding stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s an Chinese or Asian thing, but not coming from an extremely well-to-do family might have a part to play in this.

I stuff myself because I feel guilty wasting food.

Asian kids might recall their parents chiding them not to waste food with the African kids got no food guilt trip or reincarnation believing grandmas warning us about being reincarnated into a poor desperate starved person (or animal) due to sinful food wastage in the current life.

As a result, I grew up with the habit of cleaning my plate, often stuffing myself to discomfort because of this guilt.

It’s silly, but not without a logical explanation.

Kids my time have little pocket money, and we generally relied on our parents for food. Eating out felt comparatively expensive back then.

As my allowance increased with age and now finally earning my own keep, coupled with the food wastage guilt trip, this mentality has not quite adjusted yet.

To make things worse, American food portions are huge, often twice the size and cost almost twice as much as compared to Singapore dollars.

As a result I put on a whole lot of weight in the first few months I came to California. Now that I’ve kinda settled down, I’ve been jogging almost everyday (weather’s real good here!)

Wow!

It’s great having a peace of mind again and being able to blog effectively. The related thought on food wastage came to me spontaneously as I was finishing off the point about “Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?”, isn’t it amazing? Blogging about a topic and having relevant thoughts just appearing out of nowhere?

Superfabulous! :)