I had a pretty tough week, a thief broke into my place last Monday, luckily my room has a lock, he couldn’t get much then escaped. It’s quite scary that a stranger sneaked into the house when I was sleeping. For the record, this is the first time I got stolen.

I thought it would be a very bad idea to stay in this property any longer since the recent murder case and bomb threat (rumor) happened in my neighborhood, this is another sign to urge me leave this suburb . After numerous communications with rental agent, they agreed I could move out ASAP. I did ask them to renew my lease before, and they told me new lease had been posted, but until then I still haven’t seen anything, but when came to moving out, they started to talk about 21 days notice, I don’t like the people who have double standard.

Looking for new place, moving, cleaning etc.. plus I have to work (btw, we released moodle for iPhone 1.0.2 last Friday), I even feel exhausted when typing these words, I am really upset at the moment, I asked myself what makes me unhappy?

No, it’s not the agent, not even the thief, it’s all about the stuff I own. I spent more than two days to move them, I am sure there will be more days wasted on placing them in the right place until I move again. I realized I didn’t need most of them. That’s stupid, I bought all those to entertain me, now I became a slave of them, I maintain them, protect them and upgrade them, afraid of losing them, but they don’t give me happiness, only burdens. That reminds me that every time I think of making changes to my life, the first thing jumps into my mind is: how would I deal with my stuff?? I am jailed.

Here comes to the point to ease the stress from consumerist, time to practice MINIMALIST, what I will do from today:

1. Sell or donate ALL my furnitures except a chair and workstation
2. Get rid of paper-based books, it’s the era of ebook! With iPad and kindle, I can get nearly all information I possibly need, for the books aren’t available in digital format, they might be not good enough to be digitalized
3. Sell my Xbox 360 console, TV and games (I cannot believe I bought a TV just for gaming)
4. Sell spare PCs, laptops and computer accessories, A macbook certainly can serve my needs
5. Donate my clothes, I got way too many
6. STOP using unlimited ADSL broadband, unlimited broadband leads to abusing, I spent whole lot of time on downloading movies & TVs I will never watch, surfing on the web without actually doing anything useful. I will sign up a mobile broadband plan which only allowing me to do essential tasks only.
7. Addition to previous point, be careful with contract, it’s easy to sign, but difficult to terminate! To save $20, I signed a 18 month contract with TPG for ADSL instead of 6 month, I terminated 7 month earlier, that incurred $200 termination fee! That’s the worst $20 I saved. To terminate a connection might cost TPG $0, but… anyway, deal is deal. NO more contract if possible, use pay as you go plan instead.

That’s it for now, I will write follow up post regarding minimalist practice. I want my life simplified, dynamic, not binding with the bulk of crap I had.