Stripped Down

I have always preferred live versions of songs over their studio produced counterparts, but lately the stripped down acoustic versions have really been drawing me in. Podcasts like NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts and KEXP's Live Performances podcast are loaded on my ipod to form the soundtrack for my drive to and from work. Something about the setting of these mini concerts really makes me happy. It's sort of like seeing your favorite artists as they were before they hit it big: just hanging out, playing music.

This got me thinking, are all things better stripped down? I've been packing up all my odd and ends and things around my apartment that aren't essential, and I realized... I have a lot of junk. I have drawers and piles of papers that I'm pretty sure I don't need. I keep way too much including old birthday cards, happy meal toys (yes, I still buy happy meals, albeit very rarely), old magazines, old school notebooks and papers, the list goes on. I just have a hard time throwing things away, it feels so wasteful. I know I'm probably never going to need my pay stub from last January, but it makes me nervous to throw it out. How do you pare down what gets put into drawers or filed away, and what to toss?

I have this problem with little knick-knacks and decorations too. I have a ton of candles, photo frames, and little momentos. Most have meaning to me, some I think are just plain pretty, and some I just haven't bothered to throw away (like the incense burner I purchased in college and haven't used for at least 3 years). I've done some purging of unnecessary things while packing but probably I'm going to have to do some more as I unpack as well.

I'm going to have to find a way to hit a happy medium so I don't end up with an apartment that looks like this

or this