[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

Walls are covered with drawings, posters, pictures, flyers etc. The rest of the room is a mess made of records, music instruments, amp, clothes,stereo, cuts from papers, books, fanzines, boxes and more boxes filled with anything I can fill them with. A mess, that's how my room looks like.

I need to fill boxes with all this. Moving soon.

[schizophrenicroom]

my room came pre-furnished, then my friend's bedding and a few of her things, including this cool vintage absinthe poster print propped up on the dresser. i went on rasterbater and blew up a frame from la dolce vita, then a few assorted small (4x6-ish) paintings i picked up at thrift stores are framed on my dresser. then i took a box of letters to make banners with, so it says "whatever" over my bed.

[schizophrenicroom]

my living room is pre-furnished too, so it's basic wood furniture, but next to the tv are some old sonic youth fliers i found online and blew up/printed out. also a huge patriots banner when you come in, too.

[Keeping It Gimple]

im 26 and since 17 ive lived in 15 different places so no. i gave up on this kind of thing a long time ago.

i can barely even have possessions ffs. i have boxes of books in different countries that just become a liability to move around, it costs too much money.

so i am at an absolute minimum of stuff - and brokenhearted about selling all my books.

but thats reality in this rigged economy.

[schizophrenicroom]

same. my books are all down at my last place, and half my clothes. i'd love some new clothes but it's just not feasible right now. and i can't really ship stuff here. i have a new book collection and that's the extent of my possessions minus what clothes i have and some tchotchkes i refuse to leave at my parents' house.

[schizophrenicroom]

it really sucks. i wish i could just get on with school and finish and have a real job and have roots somewhere. start actually accumulating things.

[Keeping It Gimple]

i have these desires but another part of me wants to become a virtual nomad with the bare minimum of shit. i basically live like a survivalist and spend minimum cash on shit designed for maximum longevity. in fact you can get some good ideas from survivalists that apply to a non apocalypse situation.

i buy a years worth of toiletries and essentials and box them all and keep them stored. i do everything just to survive and even have a pack of stuff either bought or saved to buy that would enable me to survive a period of homelessness in the best condition.

things arent gonna get better and the economy is not gonna get better and automation is gonna take away at least half of currently existing jobs and they wont be magically replaced.

so i think the way im living which is adapting to reality and the future is the more sensible and accurate tbh.

i mean everyone around us is selling shit and its a game to move money around and we proles have already lost. but the advice you get is a load of horseshit about reusing things so you dont "need" to buy more, as if your body is immortal or some shit.

the way i do it allows me to save money and not waste it on trivial purchases or having to buy essentials when i run out and paying too much for them.

whose gonna be able to afford to own a home? at least in the uk - the mortgage system is designed to make you work to death/exhaustion to pay the bank to rent it and end up never owning it and then they get some other poor fucker in.

i mean i really dont want to sell all my books... but...

[Keeping It Gimple]

i would say when it comes to accumulating things - money is what you want to accumulate first and foremost, second are ESSENTIAL items and you want the best possible quality and longevity.

people think im crazy when i talk about this stuff and get enthusiastic about shoes i found that are like £25 and are extremely high quality and comfortable and can last at least 1 year of everyday use (karrimor).

and im like - what the fuck do you think your life is made up of? what the fuck do you think your body is? its a fucking object. you arent supernatural. the external universe is not beneath you.

[Keeping It Gimple]

i mean, i have a black plastic jacket that i got in like 09? for £15 and its still going and its great. i actually like it. i love my shit. and yet my friends are the ones who are totally and utterly self conscious to the point of rage about some hallucination of what is "cool" or "hipster" (in 2015 no less)- they are chasing or being chased by ghosts imo. and they will never attain whatever it is they think they want because its all subjective. they have no self possession.

[!@#$%!]

this is an interesting discussion but i'll only talk about one aspect of things:

used to spend summers cooped up at the library of congress where every book ever printed ends up somehow. it was beautiful. everything at my fingertips. i'd order a book, read it, send it back, get another. i even had a research shelf where you can keep a number of books without having to reorder. it was glorious. i wanted to live there forever.

my apartment(s) reflected that ambition. i was a major book buyer/hoarder.

the thing is, unless it's a really good book, or a reference, i rarely or never reread. maybe i'll want to reread something now that i read ages ago. but i won't reread what i read yesterday or last year. and yet the volumes accumulate.

all that my book collection amounted to was a status symbol, a badge of my dreams and ambitions, but it had very little use value. it just sat there, occupying space, demanding to be packed and carted and cared for. every. time.

since leaving grad school, and because i'm not a professor, i have dumped maybe 90% of what i used to have and i don't miss it/ have ever needed it. still the 10% left-- the only thing it's good for is for people to come into my house, take a look at the shelves, and say "those are nice books." then we have drinks, eat, and forget about them.

yes, those are nice books. as objects, they are heavy and they are pointless. even my precious dictionaries, for which i paid a mint on pre-internet days, have become irrelevant. they just sit there. i can google words in any language now.

you know what works better than a massive bookshelf? a good system of notes. i can take my notes everywehre with my favorite quotes and that extracts 99% of the reuse value of a heavy mass of paper and preserves it for posterity.

so, if you find a quote you love, or a book inspires a thought, write it the fuck down in a place where you can easily find it later. read and write your summaries like a goddamn researcher. keep the book without keeping the volume. like farenheit 451.

i loved reading ulysses, but every time i pick it up to restart it's uffffff... and i fall asleep. so all that it does for me to have it on the shelf is to say to visitors: "hey, look, he read that book with the man with the eyepatch."

it's very petty-bourgeois. like an old lady's ceramic figurines. a disgusting refinement.

knowledge + experience + tools are great. but so is mobility. and tchotchkes are lame, whatever form they take.

make your knowledge portable. tools you'll probably still have to carry, and that's enough weight.

[Keeping It Gimple]

i completely agree

virtualize everything.

eventually they will come out with an ebook with better visual quality than real ones

[SYRFox]

have been living with my girlfriend since last September. I used to live on my own in a small studio and she was in Berlin last year, so we had little furniture. as our flat is 2 rooms we bought some cheap furniture at IKEA. other than that, main thing in the living room is one big bookshelf (?) with our CD collection, and a desk with my synths/keyboards & DJ stuff. our books are in the bedroom, alongside her double bass + electric bass. we also have a bunch of posters on the walls, as well as a painting and a piece of art made from threads and paper. I feel good in there so it's all good really

[Rob Instigator]

all I ever keep are books and records....

books and music were my best friends since I was a kid. I can cull some of the filler but i can never be rid of my books and records totally. I'd rather get rid of clothes...

[EVOLghost]

My aprtment is pretty empty. Not much but the basic furniture. Except our room it is brilliantly decorated with the possible combination of clothes my girlfriend can wear when we go out.

[EVOLghost]

We have a huge 55" HDTV that we maybe used like 8 times in that past 4 months weve been here...