{"id":1106,"date":"2012-01-02T12:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-02T12:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2012-01-18T13:55:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T13:55:30","slug":"stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1106","title":{"rendered":"Stuff, excess of"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found this essay about stuff by Paul Graham<\/a> last year. It struck a chord at the time because we were packing to move from a bigger home to a smaller one. We gave away a lot of stuff but still brought a fair amount of it to the new place. There is now a room full of still packed stuff because it can’t be unpacked until the loft has been insulated and prepared as a storage space. So I have to wonder, if we haven’t touched all that stuff for 13 months, do we really need it? Do I even remember what it all is?<\/p>\n

I dislike clutter. Whether PG’s theory about parsing is right or wrong I don’t know but I do know that, in my own home at least, I’m far more relaxed in a clean, tidy room than a dirty, cluttered one. So I’ve gone paper free with as many of my bills as possible and I’ve gone digital as far as possible. I download books to and use the Kindle app<\/a> to read them on the iphone. I haven’t bought any CDs for quite a while, instead preferring to use Spotify<\/a>. I realise that you can’t find everything on there but I find about 90% of what I want to listen to and that’s a good enough trade off for me. For films I use Sky Movies<\/a>. In the rare case that I find a film that I’ll want to watch over and over again I will consider buying the disc but it’s more likely that I’ll just watch it again on Sky.<\/p>\n

Christmas and birthdays are the worst times for accumulating things I don’t need. Specifically for these occasions I have a wish list on Amazon<\/a> but sadly Kindle editions of books aren’t available as gifts yet. (Mind you, I do like ‘real’ books. I don’t class them as useless stuff, after all, they are useful when I need to save the iphone’s battery and, unlike digital editions, I can lend them to people. Anyway some books, such as cookery books, have to have a decent physical form to be of any use.) I don’t mind if people go ‘off list’ to buy me a gift provided that it’s something they’ve thought about. I have one dear friend who likes to introduce me to new books and it’s rather lovely. But on the whole I’d rather not have presents because I have everything I need and want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found this essay about stuff by Paul Graham last year. It struck a chord at the time because we were packing to move from a bigger home to a smaller one. We gave away a lot of stuff but still brought a fair amount of it to the new place. There is now a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-chickens","category-film","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1295,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}