Scraping the barrel of downsizing

It's been four years since I started downsizing and I'm still going.

First, I started on my books. I had amassed a few thousand books since childhood, through university and into my working life. Most of the books were sold through Amazon. I now find myself with just a few hundred books that I keep for sentimental reasons, that are still of use, or cannot yet be sold or Freecycled.

Next, I sold off childhood toys and games on eBay. Subbuteo football and rugby, Scalextric, a train set, board games, toy soldiers that I had painted as a boy. All very collectible and worth a tidy sum.

Then I sold off vintage electronics and computing items also on eBay. A ZX Spectrum with printer. I even sold an old ZX81 game on a cassette for £5. Old computing magazines were sold too.

Finally, I sold off my CD collection and with some of the proceeds copied all the music to a hard drive so I can still listen to it.

Things that were of low value I sold in car boot sales. In all, I raised about £5000. It is amazing what you can find in your house and how much we no longer need or use and maybe shouldn't have bought in the first place.

Now, I am truly scraping the barrel. Stripping items for copper and aluminium content. With copper at over £4 per kilo and aluminium at about £1 per kilo there is value in junk that nobody will buy whole but will buy broken down. Such is the collapse of the west and the rise of the east. Bit by bit the western closing down sale continues.

An old CRT television is rich in electronic components and copper wire. I have filled my electronic component box with thousands of capacitors, resistors and diodes for future projects. I have amassed many kilos of copper wire and aluminium heat sinks, which I shall take to a local dealer.

And that is about all I can do. I still have much more than the average dweller on this planet. I have a large amount of power and hand tools with which to fashion items I might need, be they made of wood, metal or contain electronics.

I still have computers, three to be precise. One computer, I bought and two that I picked up on Freecycle. I have a digital SLR camera, a video camera. No mobile phone though, I sold it too. I just never use the things. I find it odd seeing people walking around with one stuck to their hands, gazing at it every 5 minutes.

I have a car, a tent, camping and cooking equipment. An electric razor, an electric hair clipper that must have saved me over £100 in visits to the barber since I bought it. A solar panel that I made to charge a marine battery and a pair of invertors to power my gadgets. Two old lawnmower engines to act as generators that I picked up. One, as you'll know, that I have renovated and the other sits, awaiting a similar fate.

I downsized my bank accounts into gold and silver so my bullion has taken a bit of a beating in recent weeks but I am a long-term holder of bullion so I will be buying some more when things calm down. More so, as I expect our increasingly bankrupt governments to start printing money. So much so, that bullion will have to go up in price to cover all this worthless paper.

As winter approaches, I shall take my downsized self to warmer climes and see what life has to offer.