Gadgets

In an effort to be more frugal, I have started trying to make better use of the things I have, rather than always trying to find ways to buy more “stuff”. I have amassed quite a collection of electronic gadgets. At any given time I am carrying around:

• Blackberry – this is for work
• ipod – the first one with video capabilities
• Palm TX
• PSP
• Laptop – either my personal or the one I need for work
• Sony Ericsson W580i mobile phone – this is my personal mobile and I have actually stopped carrying it around so much using instead the blackberry.
• Blue tooth ear piece
• Chargers for most of the above

That’s  a lot of stuff! I was just reading about Trent’s messenger bag at The Simple Dollar and realized that I could follow his lead and really slim down what I carry around most of the time.

While I am trying to find ways to make use of the things I already have, I’d like to at the same time find ways to consolidate the things I am carrying around.  I have considered loading music on my PSP and then I could drop the iPod, but the PSP is a little bulky to carry everywhere.  I could also get a microSD card and use the blackberry for music, but I am trying to avoid buying anything if I can.  My Palm TX came with a wireless keyboard, which I am going to play around with and see if I could use those two items together instead of always carrying a notebook computer.  Then I could write on the go if I wanted to, the Palm has wifi so I can surf at a hotspot for email and such.  And the Palm multimedia functionality is pretty decent, so I could always use that for music/podcasts/movies.  I’d most likely end up needing another SD card or two as I only have a 1 gb right now.  That would mean I could travel with the Blackberry, the Palm and the folding keyboard.

Of course the other side of all this is if I can slim down what I need then I can maybe find some things that I can sell, this will both raise some extra cash for me and it will cut down on my clutter.  I am as my mom has always said a packrat, I keep everything that ever comes into my possesion.  All because I am worred that at some point I may need it.  Most of the stuff I don’t ever use but it sits in a box somewhere because I cannot bring myself to get rid of it.  I have several boxes that I have not even looked in since we moved into our house just over a year ago.  I have gone through 2 boxes so far.  I need to get working on the rest, I figure if I haven’t even looked at something in over a year, then I shouldn’t need to keep it.  I will have to decide if I can sell these things, give them away or if I need to dispose of them.  It’s a big project and one that I have been putting off for a long time, but I am going to try and get one or two boxes done every week.  I forsee a large yard sale in my future!