05.04.2016

0800

When it comes to choosing what to keep versus what you want to throw out, it’s a toss up between how you feel about the object and how will it serve you. I tend to approach the choice of keeping items based on function. I don’t have much of an emotional attachment to objects and for the items I am attached to, they’re usually small enough to fit into my photobox. For all of my paper items that are sentimental, I digitize them and keep a PDF or JPEG file of them in my external hard drive, as well as my clouds. For all of my other sentimental items that are larger, I select a handful to keep and I integrate them into my everyday life sceneries.

With living a zero waste life, I try to be aware of how much trash I’ll produce by donating items or simply tossing out trash. A lot of the times, when I donate items, I try to donate items in good shape so that it has a better chance of being purchased or picked up.

Recently, I had to make a decision about keeping my set of clear glass cups or keeping my mismatched mugs. Although my cups are a nice set, and none of them are chipped or cracked, nor have I lost one to gravity and clumsiness, I still wasn’t happy with owning so many beverage containers. I actually inherited these cups when one of my friends moved from California to Virginia to be back in her home state with her family.

I took all of my mugs and set them out on a table and then I compared them to my clear cups and honestly- the mugs had so much more character and history that the decision was easy. Although my mugs are of all different heights, thicknesses and diameters,  they can contain temperature better than my cups and have handles (always a plus when working with hot beverages). Each mug comes from a certain time period in my life and each evoke a fond memory. Although, I don’t want to own anymore mugs after I took a look at this set, unless I accidentally break one. This is the perfect amount of mugs for my collection and I’m glad to have it.

Owning mugs seems like such a minor issue, and it probably is. This post is written more for the sake of the moment when I decided that imperfection is perfect, at least for me it is. I’ve always been conditioned to own sets, sets of dishes, sets of cups, sets of books, sets of jewelry, etc. Even when I went into stores, items on display were displayed in sets with matching cups, dinner plates, bowls, gravy dispenser and so on. After I moved into my own studio I felt the need to have “perfect sets”. The clear glass cups that I traded out for my mugs were a perfect set too, yet I was not happy with them. Ironically, it was in my first apartment when I decided to live a zero waste life too, so perfection slowly went out the window.

Perfection doesn’t lead to happieness for me and I came to that realization when I donated the glass cups. However, I did wrap each individually and carefully and donated them to a local charity, so the next owner would receive a clean and carefully put together set.