If you've been following my blog, I've got drawers of clothes. Believe it or not, I have close to 3 times more clothes than my wife. I don't buy most of my clothes. Usually, I get them as gifts and I don't throw away clothes so I have loads of them. Especially t-shirts. I buy the army t-shirts for home wear. It's "free" and comfortable. The thing about home wear is that I almost never need to throw it away. Even if it has holes, I can still wear them at home. And I have loads of army t-shirts and singlets. Then I also have loads of t-shirts for going out as well. And when those have holes, they just get downgraded to the "home wear" section.
Long story short, I have a lot of t-shirts, and a lot of t-shirts with holes, cos... they are still wearable. But they have holes. So I went through them all and picked out all those with holes. As long as they are relatively unsightly, I'm planning to use them as rags or just dump them. Even after removing those, I still have a lot of clothes. Not to mention, I even got free t-shirts over the weekend. They were new, so those are even better than those that I had in my drawer.
I've come to a conclusion that I'll almost never run out of clothes. Cos, people give me as gifts, (I'm trying to get them to stop), and I hardly throw them out. But I'm starting to realize, I might as well dispose them cos I can get free and better stuff anyway.
I'm not going to dispose of the clothes that are still fine. Just those which are damaged.
This got me thinking... I have a lot of stuff... and I bought big cupboards to store them in. It's pretty dumb. Many of the clothes, I haven't used in 5-7 years. Not cos I don't fit into it. I just have too many. And usually, I think we just use the clothes at the top of the drawer anyway.
Next, we'll likely move on to my wife's bags over the weekend. She said there's a bunch in a box which are lightly damaged and she doesn't use them anymore, but she doesn't want to throw them out cos they are still in 95% condition. But I think it's time for us to think of what to do with them cos it's just taking up space.
Not to mention, we got a couple of free bags over the weekend in NEW condition.
(When I say new, it means, I could give it away as a Christmas gift and no one would know I got it for free.)
There isn't very much left for me to dispose. Most of my stuff are packed nicely and I don't buy stuff so besides an insane amount of clothes, I don't have much to clear off.
I do have a lot of bone china plates and bowls and an excess number of forks and spoons... but I'm not going to be clearing those off...
I think we are pretty rare cos we actually have empty drawers in the house. Cos we don't have stuff to put in. So I do wonder how some folks buy enough stuff to fill up all the drawers and even start laying them out exposed.
I do think there's a bit of contradiction between minimalist and freegan, cos I do realize that if I declutter, I may not have stuff which I might need later... (obviously I don't clear off everything), but if I become MORE freegan, then I need to stock up stuff, cos I don't know when I'll be able to get it again next. That being said, I always believe in the middle ground, so I still stock up stuff, and when there's good free stuff... hey why not right. Then I get the free stuff and dump some of my older stuff and it becomes an on going cycle.
As of current, I'm a bit in-between... cos for the past 2 years that we've been staying on our own, most of our spending is on travel, expensive food experiences, basic food, transport, gifts (obligatory gifts), wife's office clothes/shoes.
And the stuff I can get for free is probably only basic food and gifts.
Oh and if readers are wondering why I've been going on about freeganism for the past few weeks.
The reason is a few... firstly, it's a new way of thinking for me. My whole life, I thought I needed to spend money to buy stuff. Now I find out I can get stuff for free, so it's a steep learning curve to overcome my old mentality and form new ideas on how to effectively use this new mentality.
I believe that to use it well, I need to learn it well, so I want to get myself well immersed into this community and idea. Cos now, when I look at things, the thing that goes through my mind is "HOW" might I be able to get this for free. Instead of... "Should I buy this?"
It's really a paradigm shift.
Secondly, I was talking to a freegan guy who asked me about my blog, and when he heard that I was recommending credit cards with rebates 3% or 10% or whatever... he laughed at me.
Once again, another paradigm shift. What I felt was good is really worth less than I thought.
I say "worth less" not "worthless", cos I built my financial spending around hitting minimum spend on UOB One card, etc... But this guy is laughing at me cos he gets stuff for free. It really was a slap in the face and a wake up call.
He recognizes that some spending is necessary, like telco bills, electricity and water, transportation, etc. But he looks at the world with the mentality of FREE. So unless it's impossible to get for free, he would prefer NOT to pay for it.
Now, mind you... all these guys live very good lives. Very much similar to the people in the frugal community. They eat well, have good enough clothes, have a home to stay in. But instead of building their operations on credit card spending and rebates and how much they earn, they drop their spending to near 0 and build a network and operations on how to get free stuff instead. And they get LOADS of free stuff. And it's not junk. Most of the stuff, they just give it to the poor, the food, they consume or give it away as well.
(So don't think they are like those cardboard aunties or homeless people who have to beg for food or eat scraps or don't take regular baths.)
Anyway, I'm going out now to stake out the supermarket around my area to see their daily routine and how they run their operations so that I might know when would be a good time to get more free stuff.
Hope to update readers with more fun stuff soon.
Have a good day.
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