[1]skip to main content [2] [logo] • [3]Archives • [4]Works • [5]About • [6]More... Junk Contemplations 10 May 2025 The coffee table is spilled with Playmobil figures, a dirty towel, a simple wooden dollhouse, an undressed doll, and a purple teddy bear wearing diapers the wrong side up sitting in an empty plastic ice cream container. To my left of the couch, a dolphin plush is chilling next to a pile of assorted picture books. To my right, an elephant plush wearing a scarf is catching some z’s. All of these things hurt my eyes, even though this has more or less been the state of stuff in our home for the past two years. I just can’t get used to it, something keeps on urging me to clean up, and I indeed have the feeling that that is exactly what I do all day long every single day—without much success. I make my way through the house to the new home office downstairs while kicking aside a few more randomly placed toys—both the toddler’s as well as the dog’s. After emptying and moving the IKEA BILLY bookcases, I had another cleanup cramp and threw a random array of mediocre books in a couple of bags to donate to the thrift store nearby. The shelves were roomy for exactly one week. After that, we had to consolidate another bookshelf, more children’s books leaked into the home office, and the cramp returned. It is itching badly. Yet it did not stop me from ordering more books. A month ago, I couldn’t open the drawer beneath the TV stand that stores my Nintendo Switch games. Oh hi cramp, how are you? Not good? No? Let’s do this together then! Only thirty minutes later, I had sold nine of them on Vinted, a European online second hand marketplace. But there be dragons! The last time I did something rash like that to a video game collection dear and near to my heart, I heavily regretted the action afterwards. You know, that GameCube Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for €10 that’s now worth €150 kind of regret. Back in the home office, a naked wall urged me to drive off to IKEA and get one of those five by five KALLAX storage shelves. Somehow, it seemed like a good idea. I could move my board games from the hallway to make space for more junk for the kids and I had more room to buy more stuff for myself! Yay! Wait a minute, more stuff ultimately means more cleanup itches resulting in sudden outbursts of throwaway-rage. It looks like all I do is pester myself by wanting and getting more junk which all contribute to a restless instead of a calm mind. Why do I do this? I used to think that I was pretty immune to the whole “fear of missing out” hype. It turns out that I’m not. I hate the philosophy of Limited Run Games, yet my last order probably won’t be my last (hello Gex Trilogy). I don’t like BoardGameGeek’s The Hotness list, constantly teasing you to go off and buy new games instead of properly learning to understand the mechanics of the ones you already have, yet somehow I’m easily convinced by friends influenced by the very same list to bring home new stuff anyway. The junk that hurts my eyes is not just the junk of the kids. It’s also my own. That is coming from a man who read and deeply respects Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye, Things; is a regular listener of The Minimalists; and frequently picks a fight with his wife about how disorderly she dares to chuck her clothes into the wardrobe. Somehow, somewhere, the sense of it all seems to have gotten lost. In my defence: The Minimalist guys and Fumio Sasaki don’t have kids. Marie Kondo didn’t have any and now that she does, she’s dialling back on the cleanup magic. See what I did there? I tried to hide my own urge to collect junk by placing someone else’s junk front and centre. Oops. I tried to optimize the new home office space by jamming in as much as I could. But two old computers next to the modern workstation in front of a window felt too messy to comfortably be and work in so I am temporarily forced to tear down and store the Windows 98 Athlon and Windows XP Core2Duo setup. Not even a KVM switch would have saved the day here. Yet a new problem arose: since we have neither basement nor attic, we don’t even have the space to properly store stuff like this. And no way in hell am I going to let go of these machines. While attempting to make room in the wardrobe (simply because that’s the largest closet we have), I found an old 12" CRT tube and more old computer junk stuffed in there “just in case”. I guess these can go… Yes, that last sentence was typed with a sense of reluctance. All these junk contemplations do not help in calming the spirit. If anything, that spirit is triggered and working overtime right now. More junk needs to be moved across the house because of a renovation and more runs to IKEA need to be made because of an upcoming family expansion. Yup, we made it worse. Perhaps I need to kill off the music CD collection, even though that one is quite modest. That smaller case could be replaced by another BILLY extension. And it’s been years since I last touched that Evercade, who even has that many handheld gaming devices anyway? On to the get-rid-of list it goes. But wait, are you sure? Are you sure? [7]Are you sure? Meanwhile, those empty KALLAX holes beckon: now that I do have the space to store more board games, perhaps it’s time to re-read that wanted list… [8]braindump [9]stuff [10]collecting You Might Also Like... • [11]The Challenge Of Buying Games At Physical Stores 06 Jun 2024 • [12]Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media 25 Sep 2023 • [13]Is Collecting Physical Games Worth It (Part III) 29 Oct 2022 • [14]Double-dipping and Market Prices 05 Jul 2021 • [15]Flea Market Season 22 Jun 2021 Bio and Support [avatar2024] I'm [16]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their brain (and bread) too. If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [17] PayPal or [18]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [19]Mastodon or email. Thanks! JavaScript is disabled. I use it to obfuscate my e-mail, keeping spambots at bay. 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