I’m still going well - the bin is almost full again.

Was a bit worried about the fact that it was not all that full this afternoon, but I found a whole bunch of computer magazines (and a whole heap of other mags) up here in the study, so it’s almost full. Next week I need to clear out the spare room downstairs. Then I’ll be struggling to fid thngs to throw away, and I can then move into organising what’s left.

Gave away a couple of drink bottles that had complementary freezer blocks last week. Much better to give things away than toss them, when you can.

I think we’re starting to get somewhere. The kitchen, the bedroom and the ensuite and the living area downstairs are all still spotless. Good.

Quoted from http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/08/13/malcolm-gladwell-on-the-power-of-marketing/:

In February I wrote about the insidious power of marketing. “We can try not to be swayed by advertising and marketing,” I said. “But no matter what we do, we are all affected by attempts to manipulate our subconscious. Even when we believe we are immune to manipulation, we are not.”

At that time, I e-mailed Malcolm Gladwell for permission to post an excerpt from his best-selling Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (published in 2005 by Little, Brown and Company). Gladwell granted permission, but I haven’t found time to post the excerpt until now. Note that I have added paragraph breaks, inserted photographs and hyperlinks, and bolded short passages in order to make this excerpt more readable in weblog format. Here is Malcolm Gladwell on the role our subconscious plays in buying decisions:

Then there’s the issue of what is called sensation transference. This is a concept coined by one of the great figures in twentieth-century marketing, a man called Louis Cheskin, who was born in Ukraine at the turn of the century and immigrated to the United States as a child. Cheskin was convinced that when people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, they transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself. To put it another way, Cheskin believed that most of us don’t make a distinction — on an unconscious level — between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined.

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Quoted from http://www.wisebread.com/have-style-not-a-lifestyle:

Have style, not a lifestyle

I briefly worked with a senior technical manager whose wife also worked for the same company, but at a different site. They’d bought a house about halfway in between, but they both had long commutes. When I mentioned that my wife didn’t have a regular job, he said, “I wish I could do that, but I need the second income to support my lifestyle.”

When I got home that evening I told my wife, “I’m sure glad I only have to support us and not a lifestyle too.”

When you get to the point that you start talking about your lifestyle as if it were an additional member of the household, you’re far, far gone.

Avoid having a lifestyle. But that does not mean not having style. In fact, having style is very important. Having style is how you resist the dreaded Diderot effect.

You can’t read very many articles on simple living without running into Diderot and his effect. Denis Diderot was a French writer who wrote a famous essay “Regrets for My Old Dressing Gown,” in which he describes how a handsome new dressing gown that he received as a gift was so nice his other furnishings no longer seemed to match it. He ended up buying all new–a leather chair to replace his straw one, a desk to replace his table, new pictures, new clock, new bureau.

The essay is famous not only among advocates of simple living, but also among advertisers who yearn to trigger the Diderot effect in every buyer. If they can but get you to buy one nice thing that makes everything else you own seem shabby, then they can get you, like Diderot, to upgrade everything.

The key to resisting the Diderot effect is to have style. Not just any old style, but a particular style. Something nicer than everything else you own isn’t in keeping with your style and that makes it easier to resist: It’s just not you.

If, despite your efforts, you do end up with one very nice thing, think of it as special and not a reason to upgrade your other stuff. After all, there’s nothing wrong with having a very nice thing.

It’s fascinating to watch how advertisers try to suck you in. They know the power of the Diderot effect, and the way it affects not only you, but all your neighbors as well. Not only you will want more nice stuff, but all your neighbors will need to upgrade their things as well, just to keep up.

You can thwart them, though, if you have style.

Quoted from http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/07/31/extreme-personal-finance-from-penthouse-to-rv/:

Extreme Personal Finance: From Penthouse to RV

He’s back! The ever-controversial Tynan offers today’s guest entry on downsizing from an expensive condo to a 21-foot RV.

On April 20th at 3am I was still awake. I stood on the balcony of my penthouse in downtown Austin and watched the traffic drive by. We were supposed to leave the next day, but I was too excited to sleep. I called my girlfriend.

“Are you ready to leave now?”

“Haha, sure,” she replied.

I stuffed myself and a bag of clothes into the small car I’d rented and picked her up. Twelve hours later we arrived in Albuquerque.

One day earlier I was idly browsing eBay, as I’m known to do. I had this fantasy that I would give up all of my stuff and move into a smaller place. This notion was born when I moved from a larger house into the condo and was made acutely aware by the moving process of just how much junk I had.

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