How much is too much?

[Camel]

I don't know if it's because it hit particularly close to home or what, but I found this article (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/22/cardboard-children-some-games/) by Robert Florence over at Rock Paper Shotgun to be rather poignant:

Every day, on Twitter, I see people talking about pre-ordering stuff. Or maybe they’re backing some new stuff on Kickstarter. Or maybe they picked something up on the way home from work. And it’s more shit. More crap that they already have a lot of. And then I like the look of it, and I buy it too. That’s how we all operate these days. We have too much stuff. Even those of us who don’t have much money have too much stuff these days. We get into debt to buy stuff we don’t need and barely even like. A few years back I was totally skint, struggling to pay bills, and I still bought Halo 2 on launch day, just to share in the experience of having a thing when it first comes out. And it was shit. And another final demand letter went in the post.

What the hell is wrong with us?

When it comes to board games, I have too many. At almost 35 years old, I have about 240 board games. Two hundred and forty. Each of those board games take, on average, about three hours to play. That’s seven hundred and twenty hours. It would take me thirty days of my life to play all of those games once, if I had some sort of magical android setting them up for me in a giant room with twenty tables. Thirty days of my life to scratch the surface of all of those games. There comes a point when you have to step back and ask yourself if you are some sort of decadent monster, or a total fucking idiot.

Last year I bought my first house, and the moving process always reminds me of just how easy it is to accumulate crap. Since then, I've been on a bit of a crusade to get rid of things I don't really use or need, but there's still a good bit of clutter left. Last year around the same time, I also got into the board game hobby, so my desire to rid of my life of stuff has clashed with my desire to play all of these awesome games I am discovering. Combine all of this with the fact that I have been somewhat obsessed with paying off my existing debt (student/auto loans, mortgage, etc) and it all adds up to one big pile of cognitive dissonance.

In the last few years my video game time has really been cut down, although like many of the rest of you I've been checking the Steam summer sale daily for good deals. I really have a hard time resisting good deals. I was, in fact, checking steam at the same time as reading the above article. I will probably get a game or two today since it is the last day of the sale, and I will probably not spend more than $10. Still, I have more games than I will EVER have time to play. I have more books than I will ever have time to read. At what point is enough enough?

I know there are others on this site that feel this way, as I have seen plenty of posts in the past referencing how some of us just don't really play video games any more, or are making efforts to de-clutter. Anyone else feel like they are at a point in their life where they just don't need anything else? Are you maybe like me, where you feel this way and are making a concerted effort to get rid of stuff, but you just keep getting new things anyways?

[Ink Asylum]

Moving two years ago clued me in to how much stuff I have, and planning to move in with my girlfriend in the next year spurred me to make a serious effort to cut down on the amount of stuff I have and buy.

I've done a great job so far, selling a lot of old books and games. I cut down the number of bookshelves I need from 3 to 1, and reduced a lot of the clutter in other parts of my life. Over the next month or two I'll be doing that even further, sorting through clothes and keeping only what I really need, then emptying out my closets and tossing a lot of stuff that I haven't touched since I moved in.

A lot of what makes us keep stuff around is nostalgia, so I'm going to share a tip related to that. If nostalgia is making you keep some little trinket, or large trinket, around to take up space and occasionally be looked at when you're sorting through the junk in your closets, try taking a picture of it before throwing it away. Do that with all sorts of stuff and keep the photos in a digital album you can look through when you want to feel nostalgic. The memories will still be there, but they'll be taking up much less space. :)

[Serapth]

I went through the same process, going for 2000 sqft to just over 800.

Going digital made a huge difference. Books, CDs and DVDs took up a massive amount of space.

Luckily my wife and I aren't extremely sentimental. So beyond a few GB of photos, mostly backed up externally, we are good.

Actually if a fire wiped out our homes it would honestly be no big deal as long as I had a laptop with me.

[JayK47]

After cleaning up after my dad when he died, I'm pro toss. I hate keeping stuff around that won't get used. I tend to sell any console games that I have played and doubt I will play again. Thanks to Steam, with PC gaming, the only thing that gets cluttered in my hard drive. So I tend to collect cheap PC games. As for the article, I'm not one of those guys who has to play a game when it comes out just to be cool. I can always wait for reviews, a cheaper price or just pass on it altogether. I tend to resurrect old threads around here when I finally do get around to a game. Very few times do I play an old game and regret not getting it sooner. Most of the time I am happy I only paid $10 for it years later. There are just too many games to be buying them all for full price and playing them when they come out. It never used to be like that.

[Camel]

Books are a hard one for me. I will never never never EVER read all of the books I have. I read all the time, and I barely pay anything for most of the books I have, but it's so hard to get rid of them.

Along with plants, I think they are the best "decoration" for a house.

[menage]

I recently dumped 80% of my whole cd collection in the trash. It never get's played with all the digital stuff nowadays. And I'm aquiring more and more digitally.

I never got CE editions of games. Only one I'm getting is the nino no kuni one because of the Ghibli artwork, but I hate plastic useless crap in my house. It just feels immature to have a big hulking dragon next to some anime chara in my cupboard these days. It's pointless wannhaves which just collects a lot of dust.

But buying games is stil something I do a lot, cause I actually use them a lot as well. Even though I was happy with 4 games a year in the past and now it's more like 30 - 40 counting the small ones. I need to know what I'm working hard for, kinda rewarding to buy something you really like after a hard months work.

[Narradisall]

I'm rather minimalistic, so I don't have that problem at all.

But I find it interesting, that people will often comment when they come round my home, how empty it looks.

It's not empty at all really, but people seem to think if it's not cluttered wall to wall that you should be filling it with stuff.

[Serapth]

I'm rather minimalistic, so I don't have that problem at all.

But I find it interesting, that people will often comment when they come round my home, how empty it looks.

It's not empty at all really, but people seem to think if it's not cluttered wall to wall that you should be filling it with stuff.

If watching Location, Location Location taught me anything's,its that you Brits like your fucking clutter! :)

[Narradisall]

Oh agreed, everyone else I know is fucking terrible. I think my lack of clutter is down to both my parents having been pack rats. They horded everything "in case it came in handy".

I now have an aversion to clutter. When I'm done with something, be is TV's, furniture, books etc it tends to get recycled somehow, either by selling it on, or recycling it.

I have started hording books again, but that's mainly down to me not having gone digital. My one weakness is I love a book!

[Superman's Dead]

I think there's a difference between buying things to buy things and being passionate. Stuff like the Steam Sale does blur the line a little, but it's digital anyhow.

I have a ridiculous amount of CDs. But it's because I love music and want to support the people who make it, so I keep buying them. I think it's the same with games.

[Doogie2K]

Steam has definitely helped in that regard. I recently went through all my game CDs, chucked all the pirated ones, chucked the ones that were activated on Steam and thus useless to everyone, and sold the ones that I already had on Steam but could still sell or otherwise didn't care about. My PC game discs decreased by about 2/3. Now, while I'm still accumulating more than I can reasonably play, it's all digital, and in the best-case scenario, I have something to do when I retire. ;)

I also got rid of most of our old-school board games - the Milton Bradley/Parker Brothers type games. I kept my dad's old Risk set for sentimental reasons, and my Star Wars Monopoly set, because it's numbered and dated. In hindsight, I probably should've kept my '70s Game of Life, because apparently they're not super common, but it was beat to shit from a childhood of playing it solo, so I let it go. I also let go my Sorry! set, even though I'd played it for a laugh with some friends just a couple of years ago. But I figure most of those things can be replaced when I have kids, assuming I don't just skip that stage and go directly to kid-friendly modern board games.

Heck, Mom and I have been going through all our old shit since we're looking to move to a smaller apartment, and we've found that even though we had tons and tons of DVDs, 80% of them we'd never watched and didn't really care to lose. We went from probably six or seven shelves of DVDs to one and a half, with the other half filled with Blu Rays. It really is absurd just how much shit you can accumulate these days without really trying. And the best part is, most of that stuff we were at least able to sell at a garage sale for $1 or $2 each.

[Dualonymous]

My house is massively cluttered. I have a habit of being moderatley involved in a lot of activities. I have a spare room set aside jut to hold my backpacking, rock climbing, hunting, boxing, competitive shooting, and general exercise stuff. my wife is an avid reader and we have three book cases in our house each is about 7 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide with 6 shelves, all three are full and we still hae about 8 boxes full of books. really wish she would let us trim that down and go digital but she can't stand reading digital material.

We will most likely be moving in spring 2013 and I am not looking forward to it at all.

[Spectre-7]

I hew to The Tick's advice on the matter.

"Always...always remember: Less is less. More is more. More is better, and twice as much is good too. Not enough is bad, and too much is never enough except when it's just about right."

[Serapth]

You played the game of Life, solo?

That is perhaps the most depressing thing I have ever heard!

[muddi900]

Is the author of the article angry that people are spending money on stuff that is of no economic consequence to him?

[OldJadedGamer]

You played the game of Life, solo?

That is perhaps the most depressing thing I have ever heard!

When I play LIFE the only time I ever win is when I choose not to go to college.

[Doogie2K]

You played the game of Life, solo?

That is perhaps the most depressing thing I have ever heard!

My friends weren't really into board games. They preferred toy cars and shit.

I actually played most of my board games solo. Even Monopoly: I just played both players until I got bored or called for supper.

[Gwinny]

I have a lot of trouble getting rid of books, too. Books are definitely my weakness.

I tend to do a clear-out once a year. I put all the books I just can't quite make myself part with on their own shelf. The next year, if I haven't gotten to them/referenced them/am totally over their subject matter, they go!

But in the meantime I've bought plenty more...

The rest of my life is pretty much clutter-free. Aside from the books, if I had to I could pack everything I own into a car and go in a couple of hours. There's freedom in that.

[Suave Peanut]

I've been facing a crisis like this recently. I reduced my CD and DVD collection by 90% and now I'm looking at maybe not keeping much the remaining 10%. I've also tallied my gaming collection at 271 titles (excluding current gen) and I'm planning to get rid of most of that, too. Next I'm planning to take a lot of my books and old records away to sell or, more likely, donate.

I just have a lot of stuff and I don't want to be that guy. I'm not that guy.

[LongStepMantis]

Since the Steam Summer Sale started, I've probably bought 15-20 games from Steam alone. I'd say 90% of them were games I already own on physical media. Is that excessive? It depends. For the price, I see it as buying backups I don't have to keep with me, and don't have to play "find the patches" every time I install a new game. Especially titles that are older, less popular, or from now defunct developers (no official site to retrieve them from) where even tracking down patches can be a chore.

I certainly wouldn't have done so if most of the titles weren't around 75% off.

[Blue]

I actually sold my game collection recently. Part of it was that it was getting fairly large though the second issue for me came when I found that I was spending the majority of my time gaming and doing little else. I have difficulty rationing my time and I'm a fairly tunnel-visioned person where I start doing something or thinking of doing something and that just takes over to a large extent. Knowing myself, the only way to break the habit was to get rid of it.

Since purging I've started writing my second book and gotten about 70 pages in, finished a script for a screenplay and we're in the planning stages of getting it underway. And I spend more time just out of the house, which is nice.

I still have things I'd like to hold onto, like my books, and that'll never change given the amount I read and I cannot use e-books. Just not the same.

[Ink Asylum]

Here's a BBC article about the psychology of hoarding and how to defeat it: (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120717-why-we-love-to-hoard/1)

Question: How do you make something instantly twice as expensive?
Answer: By thinking about giving it away.

This might sound like a nonsensical riddle, but if you've ever felt overly possessive about your regular parking space, your pen, or your Star Wars box sets, then you're experiencing some elements behind the psychology of ownership. Our brains tell us that we value something merely because it is a thing we have.

This riddle actually describes a phenomenon called the Endowment Effect. The parking space, the pen and the DVDs are probably the same as many others, but they're special to you. Special because in some way they are yours.

[Camel]

Since the Steam Summer Sale started, I've probably bought 15-20 games from Steam alone. I'd say 90% of them were games I already own on physical media. Is that excessive? It depends. For the price, I see it as buying backups I don't have to keep with me, and don't have to play "find the patches" every time I install a new game. Especially titles that are older, less popular, or from now defunct developers (no official site to retrieve them from) where even tracking down patches can be a chore.

I certainly wouldn't have done so if most of the titles weren't around 75% off.
I agree with your points, but when it comes to the question, "Is that excessive," I think the real question is, "Am I ever going to play these 15-20 games?"

For me, I know the answer is no, so why the hell do I keep buying them?! That initial thrill of getting something new doesn't last long enough to justify buying all these games for $2.50! Thank god these games are digital, or else I would be kind of embarrassed with myself.

The rest of my life is pretty much clutter-free. Aside from the books, if I had to I could pack everything I own into a car and go in a couple of hours. There's freedom in that.
One of the hardest parts of "growing up" for me has been realizing that I can't really do this anymore. I didn't even want to own a DOG for a long time for fear it would hold me down to one place. Now I am married, own a house, and have three dogs. I own furniture! Part of me will always miss the college student borderline poverty stage of my life, but I think I'm slowly coming to terms with the concept that settling down equals stability in a lot of regards.

[Camel]

Here's a BBC article about the psychology of hoarding and how to defeat it: (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120717-why-we-love-to-hoard/1)
I love this. I love the idea of saying "If I didn't own it, how much effort would I put in to acquire this thing?" while trying to clean up.

I'm going to do this today and see what happens. My wife is probably going to kill me.

[TheKeck]

Enough is too much.

-Popeye

[resikel]

I love this. I love the idea of saying "If I didn't own it, how much effort would I put in to acquire this thing?" while trying to clean up.

I'm going to do this today and see what happens. My wife is probably going to kill me.

Are you getting rid of your wife?

[Camel]

Are you getting rid of your wife?
HAHAHA! Awesome. Never!

I tend to drive my wife nuts with all my ranting about paying off debt and de-cluttering our house. I get zeroed in on one problem and won't shut up about it until it's fixed. If I tell her "Let's go into the basement and throw stuff out!" it will probably be in the middle of doing something else, and she will probably punch me.

[torrefaction]

I'm WAY guilty of this, as has been brought up by people that aren't even me in the Steam sale thread. I own almost every game in the goddamn Steam library. I've recently made a commitment to myself to game less and spend more time on a more intrinsically productive hobby. I'm officially dedicating myself to working on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

But you know what I still did? Kept buying fucking games during the Steam sale. I think a lot of it is what Supe's said. I have a huge passion and love for gaming. I want to support things I like. I just think I need to look at my wallet closer and if buying electronic components and microcontrollers ain't cheap.

[RandoM51]

Tyler Durden said it better.

[evilgoodwin]

I try not to hoard, yet I like over at my bookshelf and see that the books on it are stacked vertically so everything fits...

Not to mention the stack of Xbox 1 games I'll never ever ever ever play again probably.

It's sometimes hard to let go.

But at least I'm better than my parents. Huge house, full of junk. Dad has easily 30 junker cars that he uses for parts that sit in the pasture (probably becoming a snake farm). Mom has a sewing room full of fabric. She doesn't sew. Not in 20 years, she doesn't sew. Must have at least a square acre of the shit, though. And after Grandma passed, she took all of the things in her house and put it in theirs, so now there are boxes of old clothes NOBODY is wearing. Why? Because she wants to have a garage sale. She wants to get money for them. Because they have value to her. I don't get it, but that's because they don't have value to me.

[torrefaction]

Tyler Durden said it better.

The Truth. It has been spoken.

For the heretics in the crowd who don't get the reference...

The things you own end up owning you.

[Panthera]

There is one argument to be had for owning more games than you're likely to ever play.

Choice.

When you sit down and decide to play something, you can take advantage of your selection to choose exactly the sort of game you want to play. You should be able to spend tens of hours on something you enjoy, feeling guiltless about the other games you own but haven't played, and other times jump between games, sampling them like a wine tasting. The size of your collection can improve the quality of your leisure time.

There are downsides, of course. If you're collecting physical media, that's a burden that's easy to accumulate. Steam is far better for this. I've got an entire bookcase of CD's, mostly from the 90's, that I touch maybe once a year thanks to Steam, GoG and various abandonware sites. I'm starting to think about getting rid of it completely, backing up what I care about. I've got huge racks of console games and I barely play console games anymore. Those should go, but the desire to hold onto things is huge.

There can be a psychological burden too. People feel like their unplayed games are a weight, like they owe them to be played. Even though they're a sunk cost and you've no obligation to get your money from them, that's a hard thing to let go of for some people.

[muddi900]

Tyler Durden said it better.

In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

[Doogie2K]

There is one argument to be had for owning more games than you're likely to ever play.

Choice.

When you sit down and decide to play something, you can take advantage of your selection to choose exactly the sort of game you want to play. You should be able to spend tens of hours on something you enjoy, feeling guiltless about the other games you own but haven't played, and other times jump between games, sampling them like a wine tasting. The size of your collection can improve the quality of your leisure time.

There are downsides, of course. If you're collecting physical media, that's a burden that's easy to accumulate. Steam is far better for this. I've got an entire bookcase of CD's, mostly from the 90's, that I touch maybe once a year thanks to Steam, GoG and various abandonware sites. I'm starting to think about getting rid of it completely, backing up what I care about. I've got huge racks of console games and I barely play console games anymore. Those should go, but the desire to hold onto things is huge.

There can be a psychological burden too. People feel like their unplayed games are a weight, like they owe them to be played. Even though they're a sunk cost and you've no obligation to get your money from them, that's a hard thing to let go of for some people.

I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I tried backing up some of the discs that I hadn't repurchased on Steam before selling them; stupid early-2000s copy protection foiled me every time. I wonder, do they still bother with that, or does always-online type DRM pretty well obviate that?

[Panthera]

I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I tried backing up some of the discs that I hadn't repurchased on Steam before selling them; stupid early-2000s copy protection foiled me every time. I wonder, do they still bother with that, or does always-online type DRM pretty well obviate that?

Actually, it's pretty easy to back up ISOs - getting those backups to run is nearly always going to require a crack, though. That's the biggest benefit of software piracy. Your shit is always going to work, no matter how much you try to stop your users from copying it.

For older software, an up to date Daemon Tools alone does the trick.

[Ghostbear]

This whole thing just sounds like silly hand wringing. I have what I have, guilt is not a factor in owning.

[Camel]

This whole thing just sounds like silly hand wringing. I have what I have, guilt is not a factor in owning.
I went to a Catholic church for 20 years of my life. There is guilt in EVERY aspect of my life!

Some people just don't like the feeling of having too much stuff. That can cause some conflicts when getting new stuff is so much fun!

[boratika]

Having been living out of a suit case for a bit over a year now, (or at least knowing I have to pack everything into a suitcase at short notice and leave whatever doesn't fit behind,) I feel like I've gotten a bit of perspective on what I need versus what I have.

My possessions for this period boils down to:

-clothes (about a week to ten days worth)
-personal grooming (basic toiletries, clippers, razor. Could probably go without the last.)
-Towel
-Laptop
-Phone
-3DS (+3 physical media games, quite a few downloaded games)
-A book or two (once finished they get donated and replaced)

And, you know, some documents and like a wallet. But, assuming I have somewhere to sleep and shower, that apparently is all I need.

I've got some things in storage back home, but when I go back, I'll be going through, and possibly losing much of it. Of course there's things I won't discard - I'm unlikely to throw away the sculptures I've made for example - but I'll surely cut it down.

The thing I'm mostly like to spend significant money on next is a decent laptop. It stands out as an important possession. And the one I have isn't amazing and it would be nice to have something that can handle more of my steam library.

Going digital is great... at least for some things. If everything was like steam, I'd go completely digital. But as long as I can only download something once, I just don't see it as an option. I've bout three albums via DD, through three different services, and each time, the download has failed either partially or entirely, while it is marked as downloaded and I can never download it again. Then support doesn't answer my emails and I have to just pirate the thing I paid for. Fool me four or more times, shame on me. Aside from that, any physical backup I make is just as vulnerable as the original, and cloud backup is cost prohibitive right now.

I used to buy music on CDs when I still had a stable home. If I needed to back it up myself, well, the CD sitting on the shelf is pretty much that.

I probably won't buy anymore physical 3DS games, with full games coming to DD. Hopefully they don't mess this up, and things are actually available and not way more expensive than the physical version. I'll probably also invest in a Kindle at some point.

I do wish Steam offered a better way of sorting things. All I want to do is make four categories: Frontlog, Backlog, Sentimental favourites, done and dusted. I feel that's fairly self explanatory and would cover everything. Maybe one for "maybe play again - not sure".

I own some furniture, but someone else is getting use out of it at the moment.

Books seem like an easy one to declutter your life of. I've taken to using libraries for what I can. The rest I get off abebooks. There's some books I want to hold on to, or to aquire, when I have shelves again. A few favourites for when someone asks me to recommend a book, and I can just grab a copy of The Big U or Game of Thrones or what ever to lend them. (They can be replaced for next to nothing if they don't come back.) There's also a few I'd like to have pick up and start reading a random page if the urge strikes (Anything by Douglas Adams, Calvin and Hobbes, ... ) I recommend this approach. Sure, don't get rid of anything unique. If it has a personalised message from the author or your parents notes on it from when they were in high school, yeah hold on to that, but if it's a paperback not near the top of your to-read list, you don't really have a good reason to own that.

Bloody shit balls, that post turned into an essay fast. And I didn't even address every point I had intended.

TL;DR: I wish steam had a better method of sorting your library.

[Scull]

I've slowly been going minimalist with my physical goods, and converting everything I want to keep to a digital format. Every CD and DVD I had is digital. Most of my books have been replaced with a digital copy, I got rid of all of my comic books, I'm slowly getting rid of my vinyl and books. Most of my gaming is on the PC, and that has gone largely to steam. I've got a DSTwo SuperCard to play all of my DS and GBA games without needing physical copies there. Next up, hacking the Wii and storing all my games on a hard drive. I wish there were an easy way to do the same for the PS3 and 360.

Aside from the media I consume, I simply don't collect other junk. I have some knick knacks that are stuck in a box, and I can dump them at any time. If I had to dump everything that mattered to me in a suitcase, I could almost do it. I'd just need to replace the desktop with a gaming worthy laptop and I'd be set.

Unfortunately, no one else in my house is on board with the minimalist lifestyle, so there is still plenty of clutter, but not much of it is mine.

[torrefaction]

I've been all digital forever with the exception of a few console games. I've been using music subscription services since about 2002. I've been using only movies on demand for about 3 or 4 years. Its fantastic. I've been debating selling the my old console game collection too. I don't even keep the case to begin with. I have very few things that don't have an active purpose. I have no hesitation in throwing stuff away. I actually find it freeing most of the time.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk 2

[Doogie2K]

You know how much is too much?

All the Goddamned breakfast sausages I ate today after our belated Stampede breakfast. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.