Thinning the Herd
Decided to start tackling my wardrobe.
I've steadily added 100 pounds of product (less the weight of the suitcases) to Korea with every single trip here (all 5 of 'em)...and while many pounds have been in iron rations that have been (or will be) consumed (I still have a few cans of refried beans and just started in on a big, head-sized big, block of Asiago cheese as well as some odds and ends), much of those trips have contained "stuff."
Clothes have been a big one. I tend to wear/keep clothes way past their fashionable point and almost past their function-able point, and here in Korea I cling to them even longer since they are nigh irreplaceable (well, without a trip to Seoul) and I care even a less fuck about being fashionable here. I work at a top Asian engineering school. That bit of dork meat sets the bar pretty damn low.
My other excuse for hoarding is that I'm usually quite strapped for cash. Wearing a pair of thrift store slacks for 5 years helps keeps the travel coffer full. However, I don't really have that excuse anymore, and in fact, holding onto my clothes will cost me money in additional baggage fees. I know from my return trips home, where I'm always trying to thin my stacks of possessions back at my ancestral homestead, that things I decided I couldn't part with 6 months ago, quite readily get the axe upon my next purge.
So I wanted to start early-ish.
At first, I just pulled a lightly stained shirt, that I never really liked in the first place, but that has the advantage over many of my clothes of actually fitting my non-standard body halfway decently. Due to my thick neck and long arms, shirts that fit those dimensions usually leave enough room in the mid-section for me to smuggle dwarfs through customs. I also picked a pair of jeans with a hole in the crotch (barely noticeable...in fact, I'd go so far as to say unnoticeable unless I was wearing some extremely flamboyant undershorts, but I let them go nonetheless). So I had those two items and three pairs of socks that I hate on my spare couch (yes, I also have a spare couch that I'm going to need to get rid of). Not much of dent.
But then I pulled out a high quality Eddie Bower shirt--not only do I not care for it's maroon and white small checkered design, but its sleeves are a good inch too short--and tossed that on. That proved to be the lynchpin. I then decided that all (most) of my shirts with too short sleeves would go as well, and that added another 6 shirts to the pile, and then the truly voluminous shirts and those with any noticeable (quite noticeable at any rate) yellowing on the collar or pits, and one that wrinkles so obscenely bad that it'd have been toast long ago had it not been for the cheap domestic labor here were put on the block. Then I decided the pants with the missing waist clasp (they still have a button to hold them closed) and the weird puffed out hips weren't necessary and that the frayed cuffs of my nigh-white khakis made them expendable as well. So that's 11 long sleeve shirts and three pairs of pants to go to Korea's orphanages for the mutantly large.
And those three pairs of socks.
But boardgames...that'll be tough.
I've steadily added 100 pounds of product (less the weight of the suitcases) to Korea with every single trip here (all 5 of 'em)...and while many pounds have been in iron rations that have been (or will be) consumed (I still have a few cans of refried beans and just started in on a big, head-sized big, block of Asiago cheese as well as some odds and ends), much of those trips have contained "stuff."
Clothes have been a big one. I tend to wear/keep clothes way past their fashionable point and almost past their function-able point, and here in Korea I cling to them even longer since they are nigh irreplaceable (well, without a trip to Seoul) and I care even a less fuck about being fashionable here. I work at a top Asian engineering school. That bit of dork meat sets the bar pretty damn low.
My other excuse for hoarding is that I'm usually quite strapped for cash. Wearing a pair of thrift store slacks for 5 years helps keeps the travel coffer full. However, I don't really have that excuse anymore, and in fact, holding onto my clothes will cost me money in additional baggage fees. I know from my return trips home, where I'm always trying to thin my stacks of possessions back at my ancestral homestead, that things I decided I couldn't part with 6 months ago, quite readily get the axe upon my next purge.
So I wanted to start early-ish.
At first, I just pulled a lightly stained shirt, that I never really liked in the first place, but that has the advantage over many of my clothes of actually fitting my non-standard body halfway decently. Due to my thick neck and long arms, shirts that fit those dimensions usually leave enough room in the mid-section for me to smuggle dwarfs through customs. I also picked a pair of jeans with a hole in the crotch (barely noticeable...in fact, I'd go so far as to say unnoticeable unless I was wearing some extremely flamboyant undershorts, but I let them go nonetheless). So I had those two items and three pairs of socks that I hate on my spare couch (yes, I also have a spare couch that I'm going to need to get rid of). Not much of dent.
But then I pulled out a high quality Eddie Bower shirt--not only do I not care for it's maroon and white small checkered design, but its sleeves are a good inch too short--and tossed that on. That proved to be the lynchpin. I then decided that all (most) of my shirts with too short sleeves would go as well, and that added another 6 shirts to the pile, and then the truly voluminous shirts and those with any noticeable (quite noticeable at any rate) yellowing on the collar or pits, and one that wrinkles so obscenely bad that it'd have been toast long ago had it not been for the cheap domestic labor here were put on the block. Then I decided the pants with the missing waist clasp (they still have a button to hold them closed) and the weird puffed out hips weren't necessary and that the frayed cuffs of my nigh-white khakis made them expendable as well. So that's 11 long sleeve shirts and three pairs of pants to go to Korea's orphanages for the mutantly large.
And those three pairs of socks.
But boardgames...that'll be tough.