Downsize

For the past 5 years I have grew the habit of accumulating electronics just because “why not?”. I don’t know when it started, but I understand what started it and I think I can feel how that impacted my life. And now I want, and have to, make a conscious effort to move on the opposite direction.

I live on a 72 m2 apartment, and I was at a point that I had in my place the following items that I consider to be contrary to how I want to live:

• 4x 3D Printers
• 2x 65″ LCD TVs
• 2x Computers
• 3x Nintendo Switch
• 10x Nintendo GameBoy
• 3x Nintendo 3DS
• 3x PlayStation Portable
• 1x PlayStation 5
• 1x Xbox One ( broken )
• 2x Xbox Controllers
• 4x PlayStation 5 Controllers
• 1x 8BitDo Ultimate Controller
• 2x 8BitDo Classic controllers
• 2x PlayStation 4 controllers
• 4x Nintendo Switch Joy-con
• 2x SteamDeck
• 1x Gaming PC
• 1x Server PC
• 2x Raspberry Pi
• 1x BigTree Tech Pi
• 1x Anbernic RG CubeXX
• 1x Anbernic RG351M
• 3x Miyoo Mini Plus
• 1x Miyoo Mini

Besides the fact that I was running out of storage, that’s a very long list of electronics, mostly videogames, that I don’t have the time to use or manage. There’s no problem with keeping them, they don’t take a LOT of space, but I just don’t use it, and I haven’t thought deeply when I got them, I just did.

I really wish that I could enjoy all of this to the best extent, but there’s no such time, and I can’t focus on so many different things for a period of time. So I decided to get rid of some, by selling or gifting.

Every time I sell or gift something that I don’t use, I feel a great relief – “I don’t have to deal with this anymore” – It really feels good, and I’ve never looked back thinking I could’ve kept it for longer. Most likely I’ve already kept it for much longer than I should have.

Impacts on my life

Every time I look at something that I got, that has been waiting for me to use for months, it gives me a bad feeling that I can’t properly describe but it feels like I’m debt with myself. For every new toy I get, this feeling eventually catches me. This has been silently hurting me.

There’s also the undeniable financial impact, these things are not cheap, maybe this habit has been really compromising my finances and I just haven’t paid a lot of attention to this, or put it in this perspective. But I understand that if I have a constant stream of acquisitions that I’m not using or enjoying, I have a financial liability.

Moving forward

I just pointed the electronics, because I believe this is the closest thing that people could relate to, but it doesn’t stop there. Having an expensive car and living on the most expensive neighborhood in the city, also contribute to the constant questioning of “Why do I want this?“. I can understand why things cost what they cost, but I struggle to understand why I do want this.

After months of reflecting about this, I have set the goal of living a more sustainable life more and more. I have started selling the things I don’t use, and has already been relieving, I have re-scheduled my routine so that I have more free time, I have been using more of the things that I want to keep, and reducing the stream of acquisitions.

I want to focus on enjoying the main things that matter most to me, and get rid of the rest. Not for the financial worry, but to find the time to live and enjoy life. All of this things that I’ve accumulated over time, consumed time more than anything else, time spent on looking for good prices, time spent on managing it around the house, time spent on thinking how I would even use it, in many many ways this have consumed my time, and put me farther away from enjoying life.

Focus on living and enjoying life.