Before my father passed away, I went to visit him and saw the state of his relatively small house. There was stuff everywhere, stuff I had no idea why he was keeping or what (if anything) he was planning to do with it. It made me realize just how deep the packrat genes run in my family. And that's just my dad's side. It's just as bad on my mom's side.
I'm determined not to be like that. Even though I fully expect my kids will wonder what crack I was smoking when they go through my accumulated possessions after I pass away, hopefully there will be less possessions to go through.
And thus, why I think I am on a drive to simplify. Not just my possessions, but what things I do and how. I want less obstacles between me and what I want to do. I don't want to have to continually troubleshoot everything. I want everything to just work and stay out of my way.
It's one of the reasons I've decided to move my personal blog(s) over to Posterous--it's got a drop dead simple interface that mostly gets out of your way. It does lots of cool things without you having to think about it. It even imported my older "personal" blogs without a lot of effort.
I'm also looking a lot at what I am doing and the value it brings me. Twitter and Facebook are services that bring me value without huge amounts of effort. I also have work-related reasons for using these services. Blogging is a huge effort that had stopped paying off as much, so I cut way back.
Evaluating what I am doing is a bit more difficult. There are a number of concerns I must balance, and the calculus is not easy.