It’s been a busy week – one of selling my excess on Ebay and frantically going and back and forth to the post office. This is a direct result of purging the excess that was in the gaming room,and the attic. Despite this post being about decluttering games, I can assure you that it applies to anyone with any hobby that involves collectables. I recognise that there are minimalists out there who list gaming as one of the many time sinks alongside Netflix and social media, but I believe that as long as your hobby is intentional and brings true value to your life, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’ve always had a passion for gaming, so I had a grand library of games and figures permanently on display. Even though I thought I had already sold or donated the ones that no longer held value to me, I recently had another look around at my collection. Beautiful and organised, but still too much.
There were more games that I could never hope to play in a lifetime, and it wasn’t all adding value to my life like I had originally thought. You see, I’m not perfect, but the more stuff I purge on my journey, the easier I am able to see the things that don’t matter.
I came across games I hadn’t touched in years, games I had bought years ago for the sake of collecting, games I already owned digitally, and games that I owned improved versions of. There were also figurines that had long since been out-favourited, and a few shelves of CD’s I hadn’t opened in years. So, I went through the usual process of evaluating every object, and as I went along I started pulling things out and piling them against the wall where it eventually formed a mountain.Then I did something that my old self would have found abhorrent just a few short weeks ago – I put all of my treasured CD’s and their booklets into a CD binder, and threw all of the cases away; even the ones I’d had since I was a teenager. One might argue that there’s no point in keeping CD’s at all in an age where everything is digital: that’s down to you to decide. But I will say this: if one of the services ever went down or one of the companies decided to revoke licensing for any of the tracks, I still have access to my favourites on those discs. It also prevents me from repurchasing songs if I can’t find them on Spotify.
Going back to my mountainous sell pile; it was astonishing to think of the weight these items were adding to my life, both physically and metaphorically. All of them had been sitting on shelves collecting dust, or hibernating in storage boxes never to grace another surface again.
Through further minimising the gaming room, not only did I find myself not needing my CD tower anymore, I made a nice amount of cash out of the items which were worth a significant amount. Cash which I’m learning to be mindful about. While on the subject of money, I’d just like to remind you not to get caught in the trap of keeping things due to a made-up monetary value in your mind. Do your research, and if it’s not worth the effort to sell it, donate, instead. Let go of the guilt of spending money from years in the past and make a new start, today.
Since freeing up all that extra space I’ve been able to display things which do mean a lot to me, that I had no space for before. Things like my Sega Mastersystem II which has a lot of happy memories attached and makes me smile whenever I see it. After all, why should my treasures have been collecting cobwebs in the cold, dark attic, while superfluous things took the spotlight? There may come a day when I decide I no longer need half the stuff that I find valuable to me now. And that’s OK. Because when it comes to letting go I will be ready and,hopefully, so will you.
Minimalist Moments 