Yesterday, I spent the early part of the day running errands before work.  Most of them were driving the Infiniti sleigh, full of donations, to all of the required destinations for drop-off.  I started at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, dropping off my old back door, extra slate tiles and a bag of hardware.  I went inside to look for a new front door.  The style I want, the size and that fact it needs to be used is making it difficult to find one.  Yesterday I found 3, and 2 of which I liked, but I decided not to purchase one.  I don’t need it and I’ve spent a lot of money on my house lately.

Next stop was the purple thrift store in McKinney, benefiting the Samaritan Inn.  I dropped off a few bags of my stuff, a box of stuff from work and two bags from my friends.  Of course I had to go inside, but I did it with my new minimalist trajectory.  Here’s what I didn’t buy.  2 blue ceramic bowls.  I thought about buying them because we don’t use paper plates or plastic utensils, even when entertaining, so I tend to keep more of these in the house.  I have all solid colored mis-matched dishes.  I chose not to buy them, as I really don’t entertain that much and I didn’t need them.  Just saved $2.  The other thing I didn’t buy was a metal orange tray for $3.  My kids like to occasionally use a tray to eat upstairs, which I allow about 2 times a year.  We have a plastic red tray, and I didn’t need the orange tray.  No need for 2 of anything like that.  I probably don’t even need to keep the red tray.  I didn’t need anything in there, so I left without buying anything.  Time for my next stop.

I decided to go to Half Price Books since I had a pile of books I didn’t need.  I’ve sold books to them in the past and I swore I would never do it again.  For the number of books, the value of them as used books and the condition, I always felt financially raped when I left there after selling books.  I thought this time I’ll go in, sell my stuff and be prepared for any amount of money I might get.  I gave them 8 classic novels, 4 current magazines, 1 current novel, 3 cookbooks and other miscellaneous books.  23 pieces in all.

All of these are used, my best estimate is $40.00 out of pocket.  Since it was a weekend, Half Price was busy so I had to wait a little while for them to process my stuff.  That was no problem, as I wanted to look around a little bit.  I was hoping to find some books on hoarding or materialism, but to no avail.  I looked on the ‘housekeeping / organization’ shelf first. 

If you’re a hoarder or very materialistic, this is the shelf for you.  It has many books on organizing all of your stuff, cleaning your stuff and maintaining your stuff.  Off to the next section, oddly labeled ‘wealth / poverty’ although I didn’t see any wealth books that didn’t have an underlying poverty message.

I figured I wouldn’t find what I wanted on this shelf, but it was near the psychology and addiction books.  I found nothing in this whole section on the subjects I was looking for.  I found a book I thought about buying called Nickeled and Dimed, about the working poor.  I thought to myself if I get enough money from my sale to buy this, then I’ll get it.  They called my name.  My sell receipt is ready.  They offered me $4.00 for my 23 books.  Seriously?  The one I wanted to buy was $6.48.  I really thought I was prepared for this, but I was aggravated once again by the low amount offered for my stuff.  I accepted the buy offer, grabbed my receipt and headed for the register to get my $4.00.  Ironically, the melancholy classical music playing just over my head was that of sadness and despair.  I grabbed my $4.00 cash and left, again, empty-handed.

My last stop was to Best Buy to bring my old computer and some other electronics, including a computer from work.  This was supposed to be quick and easy.  I ran into a friend on the way in and, of course, he was wondering why on earth I would be at Best Buy or any retail store.  I explained, then went in.  I brought everything to the customer service desk.  All was good until they asked if the computers had hard drives in them.  Mine didn’t, but the work one did.  They said they couldn’t take it.  I asked if they had some tools and I would just take it out, no problem, right?  They said they had no tools, but the Geek Squad would.  So off to the squad to borrow some tools.  They quickly informed me that they have tools, but they can’t allow me to use them for insurance reasons.  Then they offered to remove the hard drives for me… for a nominal fee.  Really?  I decided to take the computer and leave.  As I was walking out the door, I looked at the security guy and said, “I’m stealing this computer.  You should take it from me right away.”  He looked, cracked a partial smile, obviously not amused with my attempt to leave the computer there.  Good thing I’m not a thief, as I could have swapped it out with a new one.  Oh well, a little more exercise today is alright.

My attempt at minimalism was an easy thing to do in these scenarios, but will it always be that easy?  I doubt it.  I’ve seen the benefits of minimalism, and when I feel like shopping or buying more stuff, I’ll watch an episode of Hoarders and get over it.  My errands are not only done, but done without creating more errands.  I didn’t come home with new things to dust, new laundry to wash or new projects to do.  Yes, minimalism is good.