The things you own

So I'm gonna start this off with something positive, it's about an experience I had about 5 years ago. I had a lot of videos on my computer. I recorded a ton of stuff from TV to my computer for many years, and I found and downloaded nostalgic shows from when I was a kid. Something like 3000 gigabytes of stuff, all things that I'd watch or rewatch some day. Then one day I bought something that would make it easier to watch. Basically a mini computer that let me stream my videos anything any time. I just had to erase a small USB stick to install everything on this mini-PC. And I accidentally erased and overwrote the harddisk with all my recorded/downloaded movies and tv series instead.
I felt numb, I gathered all this stuff over years, I still had to watch a ton of it and I had good memories of others that made me wanna rewatch those. It upset me for a while and I took a break from working on this new device. A couple of days later I started working on trying to recover these files, which wasn't going great and a bit of a pain in the ass, so I did something unexpected. I pressed cancel and gave up.
 
And it felt strangely relieving actually to be rid of all that stuff. These days I do miss a few things I recorded that I'll probably never see again, but I'm ok with just having it in my memory. After I realized I lost all these things I felt very free. Like I can do with my free time whatever I want now, every plan I had to watch things is gone and I can make new plans instead. I can be ok with not having enough time to watch all these things because I have an excuse not to watch them now, they're gone! I never realized it but it just seems like this had become a chore.
 
After that revelation I've been trying to live my life the way I felt back then. I don't make too many plans because then I'll just get upset if I can't find the time for them. I don't have to finish every tv series or movie to the end, I can just stop if I'm not enjoying it so much. I don't have to re-live memories and try to get the same feeling as I did the first time, I can just be happy with the memory and focus on making new ones. I've donated all my read books to the library cause there are many new books I want to read, and it is stressful to decide between whether I should read an old book again or start a new one. That's another thing I learned, having too many options is stressful. I focus so much on trying to figure out the best way to spend my time that I end up losing a ton of time on that. If I only have a few, but enjoyable few, things I can do then the choice is much easier.
 
So as a result I now want to live a very minimal life. Having many things just stresses me out. Keeping old things doesn't give me good memories, it just makes me wish for more time to re-enjoy them (which will never be as good as the first time anyway). I try to remember things through pictures and small writings and then I don't need to keep physical objects. "I have nothing to do" used to drive me crazy as a kid, but these days it's a very relaxing thought. Not because I want to do nothing, but because it means I am free to do anything. I am no longer a slave of objects that demand to be used or consumed by me. I finally realized what people mean with "The things you own own you".
 
There is just one unfortunate consequence of that, something that should be a good thing but has been ruined. People trying to gift me things for my birthday and for Christmas. I often ask for some coffeebeans and tea, but this seems too cheap for many people and they want to throw in something extra. So over the past years they have, for me, slowly built up another collection of movies and books that I have to read again (and a shelf full of different teas). It feels kinda rude not to use the things I get as gifts, but I try to keep in mind that I must choose to read the books, they don't have to decide what I do with my own free time.
Still, it is not much of a problem to have more things than I want to, I don't wanna complain about that.