More shopping?

Just went out and picked up a few undershirts and things for work, so another +13 which brings me way up to +23. But it's ok because I finally went to goodwill today too, with 19 things from the kitchen, 22 things from the closet (mostly old t-shirts) and the two crappy set of plastic poker chips we never use, so a grand total of -43, woot! Along with the Nintendo DS I mailed off on Friday and the 2 chipped up cups that got tossed I'm way down at -23, my lowest yet.

Although at this point I think I've sent off most of the obvious stuff that I could get rid of, it's going to be a little harder to start finding things to sell/give away, but that's the point of this whole thing, to make me think about how much stuff we buy, and how much stuff we have that I could probably do without.

For Sale

I just posted the Nintendo DS and Scribblenauts (the last DS game I had) on Amazon - it's like ebay but without all the scammers. So hopefully those will sell for a few bucks.

Update: It's only been posted for a couple hours, and already the DS sold. Woot, this is way better then ebay.

Goodwill trip ASAP!

We got a new DSL modem from Verizon because it looked like ours was causing problems, but we've still got connection problems sometimes even with the new modem, so we've got an extra one lying around now. Eventually one will go away, but for now it's a +1.

Vanessa also gave me my b-day present, a set of espresso cups, which is a whopping +6, so I'm at +10. The good news is that we threw out a pair of our old crappy chipped up espresso cups, and I've been expanding the goodwill pile - there must be 20 things there now. I'm going to go through the house once more, and then ship out all this stuff and get back in to negative numbers.

It's just data

Its looking like this is going to be a consumerism heavy week for me. The new baking sheets and cooling racks finally arrived. Well technically they arrived last week, but it took a long time to get them from the post office. I have to say that dealing with the people working at the Somerville post office has been the worst customer serivce experience I've had in months, if not years.

But back to buying stuff, so that's 4 new pieces of baking equipment, which puts me over my limit, plus I'm buying Forza 3 today, and have a few things coming in the mail, so I would be way over. Except that after I unpacked the baking sheets I looked around the kitchen for stuff we didn't need any more, and made a pile of at least 10 things to bring to goodwill in like 5 minutes.

I'll have to cart all that stuff over this week sometime, but I'll be well under my limit, I'm sure there's some clothes I can bring at the same time.

As far as stuff I'm expecting this week, a lot of it is computer stuff, notably Window 7, and some new memory for the desktop. Since all that stuff is getting installed, I don't think it should count as seperate items from the computer itself (otherwise I'd have to open up the box and count all the hardware that's already been installed, and I'm defintiely not counting software).

Once I buy Forza 3, I'll be at +3, and I'll update that total once I make the goodwill trip. I'm also thinking about what I should count next, maybe things in the kitchen, but that might be a big task, so maybe I'll start somewhere easier, or at least prepare a game plan first.

It's the Christmas in October!

It's getting close to birthday time, and I've gotten a few gifts that I need to add:

An XKCD sweathshirt

A vegetarian cook book

and... a Blowtorch! a gift to myself :)

so, that puts me at -2 of my original total, but it's worth it to get these cool gifts.

That stuff doesn't addup anyways

I finished counting up the stuff on the bookshelves, and decided that some of the stuff I already counted probably shouldn't be in there, things like photos or mementos from holidays and vacations, so I cut them from the list. Here's the rest of the books:

The War of the Worlds

Frankenstein

To Kill a Mockingbird

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Consciousness Explained

Military Misfortunes

2001: A Space Odyssey

City Walks: NY

Zen and the Art of Poker

Labyrinths

The Catcher in the Rye

Hold em Excellence

More Hold em Excellence

The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold em

The Monopoly Companion

The Wisdom of Crowds

Fight Club

Snow Crash

Gig

The Odyssey

Spec Ops

Stephen Hawkins Universe

Irrational Exuberence

Must we Mean What We Say

Traffic

Brainstorms

Armchair Economist

Black Swan

Brainchildren

Black Holes and Baby Universes

About Time

The Undercover Economist

How Would you Move Mount Fuji

Collapse

Zodiac

The End of Food

Plus the furniture in the living room:

Couch

Love Seat

Ottoman

Bookshelves x4

Sofa Table

Coffee Table

3 Lamps

Office Chair

That's everything in the living room, except for plants, which I'll count up another day (there's a lot of them!)

Adding it all, and knocking off all of the art and things of sentimental value, we're at 176, and I'm at -5 of my original total (whatever that was, although we're slowly getting there.)

Recycling

I just packed up a whole pile of old CFA prep books and practice tests to go out for recycling, but Vanessa says that they shouldn't count towards my total because I was planning on getting rid of them anyways, which I think is fair.

Also, I ordered some new professional baking sheets and cooling racks, but when they show up I'm going to give our pile of old, little, baking sheets to goodwill, so that will probably be a net negative. I guess I'll have to go through the house and grab all the other stuff I've been saving up for goodwill at the same time.

Here's another 2 shelf's worth of stuff:

RISK

Monopoly

Yahtzee

Cribbage board

3 decks of cards

2 boxes of poker chips

Books:

Good to Great

Liar's Poker

Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail screenplay

The Get Fuzzy Experience

The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes

Italy 2009

Rome

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Kinds of Minds

Tipping Point

Red Queen

I also noticed that I haven't put down Moby Dick, which I just started reading (it's really good so far, no wonder everyone likes it - it's not just about some big whale).

New Total: 127

Wires don't count, right?

Gave away our ice cream maker, it was fun to try out a bunch of recipes, but we haven't used it in awhile, so it's off to a better home.

Also, ordered a little adapter cable to plug some computer speakers we have in to the TV, I don't think this counts because it's a $1 piece of cable.

So, one less thing, we're at -4 (although I have been doing a little online window shopping).

And here's another shelf worth of books:

Contact

Diamond Age

The Audacity of Hope

Freedom Evolves

The Watchmen

Little Zen Companion

Zen Speaks

Nine Stories

Stories of Vladimir Nabakov

Logic of Life

A long Way Gone

The Bad Guys Won

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Bel Canto

New total: 107 (and we're only about 1/2 way through the books...)