Taking Stock Without Stocking Up

One of the things I could really relate with as I read The 100 Thing Challenge book (on my Kindle, of course!) was the chapter about how we often own many different items that serve similar purposes because none of the items is just right. As I was Inventorying & Packing Up my things because I was Downsizing from a Tiny House to a Tinier House, I got rid of several items that weren’t quite right, hoping to eventually replace them with things that were just right. I’ve done a bit of that replacing but I’ve also realized that some of the things weren’t actually necessary. It seems that sometimes promising myself that I can replace it lets me part with something that I really didn’t need.

After doing a New Years’ Re-Inventory I realized that I wanted to do some clothes shopping. But I also knew that I was 14 items over on My 200 Things Challenge. In addition, over the past month I was gifted a travel spice kit by my aunt the gourmet cook, two beautiful hand-painted tiny bowls from my 10 year old cousin, a hand-printed Old School Stationers letterpress calendar, and a flax seed pillow which is My New Favorite Thing. I also bought myself a pair of cozy slippers to deal with the fact that my floors are chilly when the temps drop below freezing, even after Weatherizing the Yurt. (REI had exactly one pair of the slippers I wanted - they just so happened to be my size and on clearance. My lucky day!)

So today I decided to do a little CPR (categorizing, purging, and reorganizing) on my stuff. Here’s what happened:

taking the not so big life digital

• I realized that I prefer having photos cycle through on my desktop to having photo frames sitting around the house, so I was able to part with a couple of my decorations.
• I checked the Kindle store to see if any of my books were available electronically. I decided to go for a digital version of The Not So Big Life since it’s mostly text and very few pictures. I’ll pass my copy along to some tiny house friends and they can pass it on from there. I decided not to digitize Sarah Suzanka’s Home by Design even though it is available in a digital format because I love the pictures!
• I noticed that I hadn’t worn my slacks very much this winter so I’ve decided to put them into purgatory. If I don’t feel like digging them back out I might not keep them!
• I put the white board that has been living on my fridge into purgatory, too, since I usually keep my grocery list in my phone. But I didn’t get rid of it since it’s nice to have a white board when sharing a house and I hope to share a home with someone beloved again someday.
• I purged my two sweatshirts since I rarely wear them. I ditched two pairs of shoes that were never quite right for me. I decided to replace a couple skirts and a sweater that didn’t suit me with something I liked better. (See The Minimalist’s New Clothes for more about my clothes shopping guidelines.)

I also took a critical look at some things I don’t use much. I suppose I could go down to one cutting board, but it’s nice to have two when cooking with a friend. I don’t use my travel mug often since I’m not a coffee drinker, but sometimes it’s awfully nice being able to bring hot tea or cocoa with me. I don’t use my yoga mat at home since I do yoga at the gym at the university and they supply mats there, but I’d like to have it for when I’m done with school in a few months. I don’t swim very often, but having a swimsuit and goggles still seems like a good idea. So after all this I got myself down to 197 Things. I decided that was good enough. I headed out to find The Minimalist’s New Clothes.

Getting All My Docs in a Row

As I explained in Strategizing Digitizing, my New Year's Resolution is to go paperless. After conducting my New Year's Re-Inventory yesterday and realizing that I'm over on My 200 Things Challenge I decided to get to work. I was a little horrified when I took inventory today and realized I had The Only Existing Copy of various electronic files stored in the following places:

• my laptop computer,
• my personal drive at school,
• two different USB keys,
• my back up hard drive,
• Google docs,
• Dropbox, and
• a small collection of CD-Rs.

I used to have documents on floppy disks and a zip drive, too, but I tossed those years ago when I couldn’t find a computer which still accepted them. It was definitely time to consolidate! It doesn't make sense for a minimalist to have this many Little Pieces of Important Paper.

I haven’t yet added the documents from my personal drive at school, but I started with the documents that were handy. I dumped everything from my USB keys, back-up hard drive, and CDs onto my laptop. This involved borrowing an external CD drive since my MacBook Air doesn’t have a CD drive. (Note to self: when your computer has evolved beyond a storage technology, it’s time to catch up with it!)

I’d used various organizing schemes over the years so it took a little while to get everything sorted into a new filing system, but eventually I got there. I was surprised by how much I could archive. I do still feel compelled to keep much of it, but it’s not relevant to my daily life, so I don’t need it available there at a glance in the left-hand sidebar. It’s now nicely organized within my Archive folder and I can still get to it quickly if necessary. The folders I do seem to use on a regular basis are these:

• Archives
• Journal
• Little Life
• Recipes
• Tiny Houses
• a folder for each of my classes (which I add to the archive at the end of the term)

I’m still Strategizing Digitizing. Scanners are notoriously unreliable. Working with them has often given me more headaches than it’s worth. A friend of mine has a scanner he loves and he offered to loan it to me. So I took it home and messed around with scanner drivers for a while, but I never could get it to work for me. I looked into buying the brand and model he swears by, but I’m not in a place to spend upwards of $300 on a scanner right now. I considered buying a used scanner off Craigslist, but I couldn’t find one that would scan both sides of the page and I don’t have the patience to feed pages through. I think it would take me a week to scan all my documents and if it’s that cumbersome I’ll quickly abandon the habit. Anyone out there have a digitizing strategy they’d recommend?

Strategizing Digitizing

My New Year’s resolution is to go digital so I’m getting ready for it. I tend to be one of those uber organized people who keeps important paperwork all categorized and in one place. On (approximately) a monthly basis I sort new paperwork I’ve acquired, file the important documents, and recycle everything that’s not compostable and then shred and compost everything I can. I began acquiring important paperwork as a teenager, so for the past fifteen years, every time I’ve moved, I’ve hauled around a Tupperware tote of paperwork. Over time I replaced it with larger and larger totes. Eventually I added a second one. I’m now the not-so-proud owner of three large totes of paperwork. As this post from Life Edited explains, even for us minimalists, it’s hard to downsize those Little Pieces of Important Paper. They might actually be… important!

But they don’t need to take up so much physical and mental space. I can certainly imagine how nice it would be to be paper-free. Wouldn’t it be convenient to have any document I need available just by doing a quick keyword search on my computer? Wouldn’t it be a relief to not have Little Pieces of Important Paper taking up physical space, time, and attention?

I hate that these totes are 3 of my 200 things. So I’ve made the decision to go all-digital. This will involve three big steps:

1)   First I’ll organize all the documents that are already in a digital format.

2)   Next I’ll begin digitizing any new documents that I acquire. I’ll get in the habit of scanning anything that’s important and shredding anything that’s not, so that they don’t pile up.

3)   Then I’ll scan my totes of paper documents so that I can eliminate Little Pieces of Important Paper from my life entirely.

Eventually, I’ll also scan old journals, too, so that I’m no longer lugging around that giant tub of paper and ink. This, I realize is a larger project and one that will involve some emotional energy as well as time. Speaking of which, I’ve set aside some time this week to tackle the first step by organizing my electronic files. You might call it Getting All My Docs in a Row.

A Year of Little Living

Somehow it's already been nearly a year since I moved into a 121 square foot tiny house on wheels and wrote my first blog post: The Tiny House Adventure Begins. And what a year it's been!

This afternoon I was a virtual guest speaker for the Tiny House Design-Build Class at Yestermorrow and this evening I had a great conversation with my friend Derin about building tiny houses. Both of these got me thinking about how many amazing tiny opportunities I've had over the past year.

Through my internship with Orange Splot I coordinated the Pedalpalooza Accessory Dwellings and Tiny House Bike Tours and wrote several guest posts for AccessoryDwellings.org. Eli also connected me with the Space Efficient Housing Working Group and we've helped to plan the upcoming Build Small, Live Large Summit. I'll be presenting a session about tiny houses with Dee Williams of PAD Tiny Houses and Derin Williams of UrbaNest Northwest.

Speaking of Dee Williams, she helped me connect with other tiny housers in the area and our contacts spiderwebbed out from there. In the process I have met lots of great folks who are building, designing, living in, or dreaming about tiny houses. We've now had several potlucks and created the Portland Tiny Houses Facebook group and the Tiny House Network Google group. I've profiled A Tiny House Truck, A Tiny Natural House, and Advanced Fort Construction. We've chatted about the joys and challenges of the Little Life and helped each other with designing, building, troubleshooting, tiny house moves, and sharing resources and infromation. Dee also invited Brittany Yunker and I to participate in the Portland Tumbleweed Tiny House Workshop in June. I am extremely grateful to both Brittany and Dee for helping me to make these connections with other amazing tiny housers.

Over spring break I had the chance to help a friend built the shell of her Tiny Barn and I apprenticed with Orange Splot for My Summer Dream Job: Tiny House Design Building. In July we got Brittany's Tiny House On the Road again and I lived in an ADU which I dubbed My Summer Garden Cottage. I spent my days Going Whole Hog on the Tiny House, working on Tiny House Insulation, Roofing, and Interior Walls. The tiny house was featured on the Build it Green (BIG) Tour in September. I was able to use these design-building experiences as my practicum project for my Certificate in Sustainable Design and Building at Yestermorrow Design Build School in Vermont.

I've been interviewed by journalism students for OR Magazine, by newspapers like the Portland Tribune, by a Canadian TV station, and by Vermont Public Radio. I'm also scheduled to do an interview with my friend John for  Portlandia's The Real Portland. Meanwhile, I've considered a plethora of tiny house issues such as Tiny Home Improvement, Shrinky-Dink Porches, Top 10 Reasons to Pick An Envi Heater, Creative Tiny House Storage Solutions, why Tiny Houses Turn Their Backs on the Street, and Tiny House Insurance (or lack thereof).

Now I'm Downsizing from a Tiny House to a Tinier House and, inspired by the 100 Thing Challenge, I'm currently Inventorying & Packing Up so that I can embark upon My Things Challenge. For the next school year I'll be living in a 113 square foot yurt in inner Portland, so the tiny adventures will continue. Thanks for following along everyone. Here's to another great year of the Little Life!

Inventorying & Packing Up

Since I knew I’d be moving twice this summer I figured the first move would give me a chance to do an inventory and the time in a new space would help me to evaluate what I really use. I’m now turning my attention to my second move, which means re-inventorying and beginning to pack up the things I won’t use in the next couple weeks. Since I’m Downsizing from a Tiny House to a Tinier House, I’ve got some tangible limits on what I’ll be able to bring with me. Here goes downsizing again! When I started My Things Challenge I initially planned to keep two separate lists of 100 things: personal items and household items. The guy named Dave who started the 100 Thing Challengeonly counted personal possessions among his 100 things. He counted his clothes, his car, his books, and his favorite pen, but he didn’t count any of the household items he shared with his partner and children. So, following in his footsteps, I was planning to keep a list of household items and separate list of personal possessions. (See my other rules at My Things Challenge: Who’s Counting Anyway?) But since I’m the only person in my household, I decided this week when I started inventorying that I’ll keep just one list. I’m curious to see what number I’ll pick, what my allowance will be. I've got a hunch I'll be picking a number higher than 100.

One hundred twenty-three things… and counting! (To find out what number I ended up with, click here.)