Is It Worth Keeping All of These Stupid Boxes?
Overconsumption is included with American citizenship, so it's a fight.
One of my projects got stalled Tuesday, so while I was waiting on the reviewers to get back to me (turned out they never did and I could have been done much sooner), I started pushing the ball forward on the Basement Project (Angela and I have been finishing our basement for some time now.)
I wish I could say that I was being good and GTD and was working on tasks as I had time available, but the reality of it is that the guest/storage/music room had reached a tipping point. The cumulative effect of a) one of our demon cats scratching up the exposed, leant-against-the-wall-bed and b) the Rock Band box not having a home caused so much dissonance with me that I couldn't procrastinate and play the guitar.
I'll not talk much about the cat scratching the bed, except to comment that she has created yet another item that we cannot sale in our upcoming garage sale.(!#$%!) Really, the more depressing thing is the fact that the closet in the guest/storage/music room had reached its max capacity of empty boxes.
See, I have a thing about boxes. Ever since I noticed that computers that sold on Ebay with their boxes intact got 5%-10% more on their sale value, I've kept the boxes that the computers come in. But I've expanded it to any electronics that I might sale on Ebay, since those items get more with their original boxes. So that's about two-thirds of the stack.
The other third of the stack is boxes that I keep for hauling fragile electronics around during our not-so-impending move. Speakers, amps, microphones, etc. all do not fare well being tossed in the back of a Uhaul or a random box in the back of the car with cats sleeping on them.
I'm getting to the point of wondering whether this obsession with keeping boxes is worth it.
For starters, I have to keep them somewhere, which means that the extra storage room that Angela and I have worked so hard to create is just filled up with boxes.
Secondly, I have to move them around. I spent an hour or so messing with empty boxes, so, assuming that my time is worth $20 per hour, it cost me $20. I've had to mess with the boxes numerous times, so in reality I'm at least up to $60 of work on them. How much do new boxes cost, anyway?
Lastly, the fact that they're there is somewhat irritating. "Why you got all them boxes?" "Just cuz..."
What scares me is my dad is a junker and keeps everything, and with that in mind, we routinely go through our house to get rid of stuff, and we try to make an active effort not to acquire the stuff, but overconsumption is included with American citizenship, so it's a fight.
(Sidebar: When I say he keeps everything, I really mean it. He still has every vehicle that he's bought since 1960 because he's "fixin' ta" get them running. One time we went hunting and ran across some insulators off of some powerlines that the power company left on the ground; we went back to get the shopping cart that he had found and (painfully!) decided to leave behind and began loading up the insulators because they were expensive. Imagine a three-wheeled, creaky, rusted shopping cart full of friggin' outdated insulators being pushed through an Arkansas forest by a scrawny twelve-year-old and you get a brief glimpse of the extremity of my dad's junker neurosis.)
When all's said and done, I know these damned boxes will at most affect the sales price of those items by $200. And I know I'm going to lug and monkey around with them for the next 18 months. But I still just can't let them go.
Sigh.