gift giving anti-meme
There's a meme going around whose intent is to encourage crafty gift-giving. I have plenty of things already, mostly think that is also true of most of my friends, and am trying to make there be fewer things in the world, not more. Part of making there be fewer things is to make it so that the things there are are more appropriately distributed. To that end, I'm making an effort to put some of the things that have landed in my life back in the thing-stream. Sometimes that's looking at some object and realizing that it would make some particular friend of mine happy, or would be useful for a nonprofit. Sometimes it's selling something cheaply (so far, at a yard sale or by consigning it to someone that's going to the MIT swapfest, but I'm planning to dive into Craigslist as well). I had an excess of window envelopes a couple of months ago and played inverse-steal-stuff-from-work with them. I give things to Goodwill or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I know people who have "free stuff" piles in their houses, or who post giveaway items to their livejournals.

I'm posting here mostly to encourage myself to keep doing this, but also in hopes of fostering a larger gift-economy and promote simplification for its environmental impact. Maybe someone reading this can turn it into a meme and get it out there; this post is not quite that.