Books, Knowledge, and Me (KJ)

KJ — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:44:38 +0000

We have a ton of books. This morning a book dealer came buy and bought about a half of them and all of our children’s books. I think he gave us a fair price, but I still feel violated. I had a lot of books on different software programs and various internet programming languages. I’ll be honest, I bought most of them, put them on the shelf and hadn’t looked at them since. But now I feel like I’ve lost something. I think I have been gauging my knowledge not by what I actually know, but by the books I keep on my shelf. I feel like this whole RVing thing is really forcing me to get down to the essence of myself, if that makes any sense.

For so long I have dreamed of having a library in my house, but like everything else, what’s the point of having a bunch of books if I’m not going to read them. Seeing the various titles really made me feel like I need to recommit to learning this new stuff. However, I felt the exact same way when I put those books on the shelf a year ago when we moved into our apartment.

I need to learn that I am not my books. More importantly I need to learn that I buy a lot of stuff that I never use. The result is that we save less and one day our family will feel the effect of the lost savings. Technically, we felt it when we were trying to come up with the money to purchase the RV.

Is there anything that defines you that you would have to give up if you moved into an RV?

Ikea — My Achilles Heel (KJ)

KJ — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:41:10 +0000

“An Achilles’ heel is a fatal weakness in spite of overall strength, actually or potentially leading to downfall.” ~Wikipedia.

Tonight we went to Ikea to look for RV supplies – bad idea. I had forgotten how much that store makes me drool over furniture. Every time we go there, without fail, we spend at least $200. Considering that we go there nearly every other week that’s a huge expense. You know you have a problem if you have to have a category called “Ikea” in your monthly budget.

As soon as we got there Widget and Midget asked to go to their play area. We signed them in and were told that we only had 30-minutes instead of the usual hour because they were closing early. CM and I had to be fast and focused, but before I knew it we were trying out new couches and trying to get measurements of entertainment centers. Again, we were considering ditching the RV idea and just refurnishing our place with this awesome new furniture!

Eventually we got our act together and headed over to the kitchen section. They have really great storage systems for tiny kitchens, but what they also have is AWESOME kitchens! Again, I was swept away and started looking at the different cabinet options. That’s even more ridiculous than looking at couches because I can’t switch out the cabinets in my apartment!

The buzzing pager from the play area telling us it was time to pick up the kids snapped us back into reality. Feeling ashamed (because we had totally lost sight of our goal), weak (because we’re always so quick to ditch the RV idea), and sad (because we REALLY REALLY liked that entertainment center) we walked out of Ikea empty handed. Something we hadn’t done in the last 4 years.

2 Adults 2 Kids » financial

Books, Knowledge, and Me (KJ)

Ikea — My Achilles Heel (KJ)