drupagliassotti @ December 12, 2008 # 2 Comments
I don’t decorate much for Christmas. The two Christmas celebrations I attend — Christmas Eve & Day with my sister and nephew, and a second January Christmas with the whole family — are all at other people’s houses, which means I’m not decorating for anybody but myself. And I don’t like clutter. Nevertheless, it’s about [...]
drupagliassotti @ September 7, 2008 # No Comment Yet
How much of what you own is kept because you like the idea of owning it? And why do you feel that way? J.D., over at Get Rich Slowly, has been posting a series of articles describing his reactions to cleaning up his mother’s house for her during and after her serious illness — a [...]
drupagliassotti @ August 20, 2008 # 2 Comments
Professors keep paper — way too much paper. After ten years of accumulation, this summer I began purging my files of articles I’d saved but no longer used. In doing so, I ran across an article I’d kept called “The Ineluctable Mysteries of Possessions.” The article disputes the assumption that the relationship between people and [...]
drupagliassotti @ July 31, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Wildfires, earthquakes, and floods are sometimes said to be Southern California’s three seasons. But over the last few years we’ve ignored earthquakes, our collective attention taken up by a series of large-scale wildfires and the inevitable flooding and hillside collapses that occur once winter’s rain hits all the burnt-out areas. However, earlier this week we [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 6, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Yesterday, The Simple Dollar ran an article on “Taking a Deeper Look at Wants Versus Needs,” discussing how mistaking a “want” for a “need” can lead to serious financial trouble. Trent noted that he needs food, shelter, clothing, and health for himself and his family, and the means to provide the former. Some of the [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 2, 2008 # No Comment Yet
For the last 10 years I have been simplifying my life. A traumatic event started it off, as it does so often — in my case, divorce. But even though I had been shedding possessions since the divorce, it was another trauma — my mother’s sudden and unexpected death last August — that really made [...]
drupagliassotti @ April 26, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Stressed about life? Feel like you don’t have enough time on your hands? Maybe you’re a victim of emotional abuse — from your television. What is emotional abuse? Its manifestations include ignoring, rejecting, isolating, exploiting, verbally assaulting, and terrorizing its victim. Emotional abusers make their victims believe they are deficient in some way, leading to [...]
drupagliassotti @ March 29, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I don’t own a television. I watch DVDs. If there’s a TV show I want to see, I wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can watch it commercial-free and avoid those annoying cliffhanger pauses from week to week. I didn’t quit cold turkey. I eased into it. I’ve always been [...]
drupagliassotti @ March 9, 2008 # One Comment
I’m clutterphobic. There isn’t nearly as much written about clutterphobes as there is about clutterers, but it may be just as problematic in its own way. Does anyone else start to get twitchy about owning too many drinking glasses? (“I live alone — what do I need six drinking glasses for? I never have more [...]