My mom used to always tell me, “things don’t make you happy.” I’m almost 50-years-old and guess what? Mom was right.
I heard about this minimalist snowball thing somewhere recently and thought I’d give it a whirl. I’d guess that this concept would be better suited for someone who wants to get rid of a lot of things. The concept is simple. On day 1, get rid of 1 thing. On day 2 get rid of 2 things. On day 3 get rid of 3 things, and so on. I’d imagine that when I get into the double digits is when things’ll get tough. For now I’m just going to concentrate on just trying to get rid of something every day during the month of June.
DAY 1 – June 1
I’ve had these stencils in the garage for years and they just get in the way whenever I’m digging around for whatever it is that I’m looking for in the garage. I bought these stencils 10+ years ago when I made a deal with Maly. She really wanted a pet turtle, complete with an aquarium and all of the accoutrements that come with a pet turtle. I told her if she created the money to buy the things needed for a turtle, then she could have a turtle. We decided on a lemonade stand. I helped her with a marketing spin. Somewhere locally there were a lot of tornados that caused a lot of damage. I told Maly that we’d do a lemonade stand and anything she made beyond what she needed for a turtle aquarium, we’d donate to the American Red Cross for Texas tornado relief efforts. She wound up getting her turtle, aquarium, and I think I donated $400 to the American Red Cross.
And we made a pretty neat lemonade stand and called it Tornados and Turtles.
DAY 2 – June 2
Today I moved my cell phone number from AT&T to US Mobile. I always knew the day would come, and now here I am. I have 4 people in my family who all have iPhones and an AT&T bill that’s pretty much $300 per month. And looking at my AT&T bill just leaves me shaking my head between service fees, convenience fees, just because fees, and whatever balance I owe on any number of phones that I guess I’m leasing. I started paying attention to the “budget” wireless carriers (Mint, Cricket, Visible, US Mobile, etc.) commercials and started doing my own research. They all use the big companies’ (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) networks at a fraction of the price. After a little research I settled on US Mobile and I moved my number to them today.
According to my math we’ll be saving $170 per month once I’m satisfied with the service on my phone and get the girls’ phones ported over.
DAY 8
Well, I already missed the train for the downhill snowball. Or something. I missed jumping into the snowball. I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to happen. That would mean that today I’d need to get rid of 8 things. I think I’ve gotten rid of some stuff this week — I just can’t remember what it was. And I know it wasn’t many things. Anyway, I guess the whole point of this being a minimalist snowball month is so I’ll conciously get rid of stuff. Like today I remembered that I’m supposed to be getting rid of stuff. It was a facepalm moment.
Today I got rid of the DVD player that’s been sitting on the dresser in the window nook of our bedroom for more years than I can remember. And there was a little kiddie compound bow that I picked up for Mara when we took up archery five years ago. I took them both to Goodwill. It was hard getting rid of the bow. It reminded me of spending a lot of time with Mara; out back or in the front yard, just shooting arrows. And that was during COVID, so we had a lot of isolated family time. I can’t remember, but I’ll bet that DVD player spun a lot of kids movies and TV shows. I think that was a the DVD player we had in our bedroom, which rarely got used. I think we had a DVD player in the living room, or maybe it was a gaming console.
They served their purpose. Now hopefully someone else will be able to use them, and maybe make memories.
DAY 19
Haven’t done much snowballing at all, but I got rid of these hokey beard products. As a bearded man who has used beard products, I can tell you that those products (that I’ve used) are placebo. Doesn’t make the beard smoother, softer, fuller, or cleaner. These were taking up space in my bathroom vanity, and taking up space in my head. Less inventory equals less mental inventory.
