Over the last few months, I've become quite enamored with the concept of downsizing my life. This has taken on a vast number of different areas for me, some major topics of which I'll cover in greater detail below. But the overall reasoning for this move is to try to counter the "consumerism cures all ills" line of reasoning that we've been sold over the last century or so.

Having just recently read the book behind The Story of Stuff (available from Amazon.Com), I have become seriously disenchanted with state of my own consumerism/finances/health/etc. To those ends, I've went through a massive "cleaning" process where I've looked over the 11,000 pounds of books/magazines/movies/CD's that I have and have pruned a large portion of them out of the collection. These I have put up for sale, hoping to both recoup some of the money spent on them, as well as trying to downsize the remainder.

So far as venues go for downsizing/offloading stuff, here's what I've found locally:

• Half.Com is basically an online used book store, in pricing/concept. This is the primary method that I've found.
• Garage Sales can be had relatively easily where I live. However, you have to get a (free) permit from city hall. You also have to run an advertisement, or do some big signs to people there.
• The Ardmore Beautification Council also lists a number of place to just plain recycle/offload stuff. This will probably be where I finish things off.