Selling the Simpsons

Before I went to Egypt I collected toys for nearly eight years. I started off collecting Star Wars toys, but soon collecting became an addiction and I was buying all kinds of action figures, from hockey players to The Simpson. In those eight years I amassed a collection so large that I began to feel cramped in my living space. When I ran out of space I stopped collecting toys, and that’s when I looked in my closets and thought, “Oh, no. What have I done?” It had taken years to buy all of those toys, and I began to realize that it would take years to get rid of them.

For a time I simply ignored this problem because it was simply too large to take on. I would just look in a closet and get overwhelmed. So, before I left for Egypt I came up with a plan. I decided I would quit my job two months before the big trip and use that time to try and get rid of a large chunk. I put nearly all of my Star Wars toys on eBay, and within two months, most of it sold. It was a large burden off my shoulders, but there was still a long way to go.

Now that I am home, I am going to whittle away at the stockpile once more. Tonight I took pictures of each item from my Simpsons collection (about 80 items total) and will begin the arduous process of selling them on eBay tomorrow.

It is very easy to get caught up in the big mess that is American commercialism. We Americans want whatever is newest, biggest, fastest, sleekest, and sexiest. We are continuously bombarded with advertisements that appeal to our very desires. Corporations are very good at parting us from our money and driving us to do it again and again. They go for the repeat buy, so they entice us to buy more and more.

I have learned a big lesson about myself from all of this. I have a newfound appreciation for living simply and buying as little as I can. Trying to live simply is still a difficult battle to fight. Everyday I have to struggle against years of conditioning in order to do it, but at the end of the day I know I can find peace without a bunch of stuff. Never again do I want to have a large collection of anything.