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Comment by Genego | Hacker News Reader

The last time I moved into a new apartment, I arrived with nothing but a suitcase and a backpack; a mattress ordered from Amazon, with some blankets arrived that same day. Over the course of a year, every piece of furniture arrived by post and was unpacked in my living room (which was a lot). Four years later I moved, with nothing but a backpack and a suitcase again. Most of my belongings were packed into a shipping container and donated to family in Africa. Seeing pictures of their apartment is uncanny, it feels like my apartments 'soul' lives on.

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This makes me think of the idea of losing one's phone or laptop and not worrying because the hardware was super cheap, and your data is completely safe and transferable.

But for the idea to transfer over to personal belongings, there would have to be some sort of scanning of each personal item in one's home, to the point that AI and 3D printing could print off a perfect copy.

Let's imagine a good friend dies and all you have to remember him is a handmade gift he gave you on your last b-day. Your home catches fire but you can print off a perfect copy. Do you care? And how much do you care?

This is the approach taken in Star Trek it seems. Very few personal possessions in general. Anything you want can be replicated for free. Obviously on the starships, personal furniture isn't encouraged though.

Crewmen's quarters seem to have a lot of personal art objects.

And how much did you care to receive it in the first place if such things are easily manufacturable/replicable anyway?

> Do you care? And how much do you care?

Probably enough that I wouldn't actually make a copy. A perfect copy still isn't the original item.

With that said, the overwhelming majority of belongings don't actually have that kind of sentimental importance. Generally somebody's going to like, say, their favorite chair because it's that model of chair, not because it's that specific chair, and it's only going to have special importance if it's otherwise impossible to replace (thereby permanently losing out on the favored qualities of the favorite chair).

I have a habit of taking a picture of something sentimental before getting rid of it. It's not that I wish to print it back out again, more that if I ever feel go need to scratch the itch down memory lane I'll have something to look at. Seems like a good compromise vs toting around an ever increasing pile of precious garbage. Since I've been playing with a VR headset, I've been sort of wishing there was a way of easily take a 3d scan or volumetric photo so I can revisit a place or item when I want to.

Been moving 5 times in the last 5 years and this is what happened every time (mind you most of the time I was moving continent). This last time I just moved apartment in SF but still sold everything to be able to travel in between. Packed the car with everything we could and threw what we didn’t manage to sell.

I gotta say, it’s getting tiring to buy furniture (especially with the IKEA shortage) but the upside is that you get to get rid of a lot of the things you didn’t really need every time you move.

Also in SF, for some reasons, second hand is really expensive so you can sell stuff for the same price or even more sometimes.

Is there a service you used to do that? If so, could you please share?

I am thinking of moving out in about a year and I would love to donate my belongings to someone in less-developed world instead of donating it to places like Goodwill (and I'm afraid that they'll send most of my donation to landfill)

How much did shipping to Africa cost?

Not entirely sure, since the shipping part was not organized by me. I did give relatives about 1000$ to cover any necessary expenses, which would have been 1/10~ the cost of stuff being shipped. In the end that worked out well, but it took about 7 months from packing to shipping for everything to arrive at their front door. Half of the time waiting was spend, wrapped in a warehouse prior to it being packed into a container.

International shipping can be really, really cheap (not currently, but historically) if a) you aren't in a hurry and b) nothing is particularly temperature or climate sensitive.

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