I am at peace again.

I know that people like to share their growing stable of ukes here, and I enjoy reading about it. Though I am coming from the other direction, I want to share my excitement as well. I had two ukuleles. One resided at my home in PR, the other in Iowa. I had a uke waiting for me in both places. Life was so simple that way. But then last summer I won a Waterman in a give-a-way. That caused me no end of frustration. To start with, I didn't know what to do with the Waterman and I was always trying to figure out where it fit into my life. And it didn't. But I would walk by it every day and think, "why do I even have this thing." So then I tried to give it to the neighbor girl last summer, but she didn't play it and her dad made her give it back. But I didn't feel like selling it. I mean it came to me free and I appreciate that, besides, how much can you even get for a used Waterman? So just yesterday, out of the blue, my sister-in-law said that she would like to learn to play the ukulele. I gave her the Waterman, and a beginner's book. Got rid of two things. I hope that she gets far enough along that I can dump a few more books on her. That would be icing on the cake. Adios Waterman. I wish them both the best.

What a brilliant solution to your problem. :shaka:

A skill I need to master this summer: getting rid of things.

A perfect solution!
I can completely relate to this. I have 3 ukes, but ideally I just want one low g and one reentrant, the problem is I can't bear to part with the "spare". The one I play the least is a vintage Martin and they're like gold dust here in the UK, I know that if I sell it I'm likely to regret it further down the line, so mainly it just sits in its case. Having a ukulele I can't entirely justify keeping really bothers me, probably much more than it should.

Love it. Perfect how that worked out!
I need to downsize my collection too.

This gives me an opportunity to say, anybody who's considering giving away a uke, think about doing that to a children's hospital music therapy program. The Ukulele Kids club started by Corey Bergman in Florida, has been doing this and it's gone nation wide. My group, The CC Strummers in Culver City, CA has donated to the UKC and they have arranged for us to present the ukuleles to the UCLA/Mattel Children's wing music therapy program, which will happen very soon.

I'm still at seven, and I still have no idea how to downsize to two or three, let alone one. I'll say, though, the used Black Bear koa soprano I bought very recently seems to have put me under its spell. Not been playing/practicing on my other ukes since it arrived a week ago. Something about it is just really awesome. Kind of waiting to see if the newness effect wears off, but so far I remain smitten. Still don't know if I prefer soprano or concert scale, but I do like this particular instrument.

I'm glad you found a good home for the Waterman! I like the idea of having a really robust ukulele like this (I keep the BB soprano on a stand, a new experiment to see if that leads to more spontaneous practicing, but I am wondering if that is good for it), but I can relate to the desire to only keep stuff around that is being used and has its place in one's life. I'm just not as good at getting to the same point.

A great solution. I guess another solution might have been as your traveling uke between Iowa and PR.

Sanfe said:

A skill I need to master this summer: getting rid of things.

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igorthebarbarian said:

Love it. Perfect how that worked out!
I need to downsize my collection too.

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Yes, me too, and if I cant figure that out myself, I'm going to look into getting another 6-8 pairs of arms attached, or cloning myself, and then redefine the concept of 'one man band'. LOL.

Believe me when I say that I have only recently been that way. In the past I have collected tons of stuff related to a lifetime of hobbies and endeavors. I have a bedroom that has been converted to an art studio full of art and photography equipment, a basement full of hunting, fishing, and camping gear, and a three car garage full of other stuff. But I promised myself, and my wife, that when I took up the ukulele that I was not going to fill another room with ukuleles and ukulele stuff. I mean, we are running out of rooms. So it scares me when I have too much laying around. But over the last couple of years I have been good at trimming down all the stuff that I have from those previous forays, and that is good too. I haven't quit doing any of those other things, I'm just finding out that I can do them just fine with a lot less. But I'm keeping ukulele playing under control from the start. Before it gets out of hand. Getting rid of the Waterman was more of a moral victory than anything else. It showed me that I'm capable of turning my life around. That is why I'm excited.

And before anyone takes any umbrage to this all, I understand collecting things, and if I were collecting things it would be different. I'm not a collector, I'm an accumulator.

Rllink said:

I'm not a collector, I'm an accumulator.

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Love that distinction. It perfectly applies to myself, too (surprise!), though I never had the luxury of having entire rooms that I could turn into hobby-specific zones.

Rlink I'm so proud of you! Part of my prosperity program is to give lots of things away. I gave away my 1st uke because I never bonded with it. I have one I barely play now, it's my experimentation uke now. It been modified a little, and will probably get some more stuff done to it.
We have way too many things in our home, I keep hauling them in and out. I just got the dining room table cleaned off after many months of clutter. An old desktop computer crashed so I took it off the desk and put my dining room table junk on the desk, and threw away a whole bunch of junk and old mail! It felt good. (Now my makeup isn't piled on the table, the desk is now my makeup table, so maybe the computer dying was a blessing in disguise.) I find that the more junk I accumulate, the more uncomfortable I become too.
There surely is no lack of stuff in the universe. Including ukuleles!

I understand this. The most ukes I've had and played is 3, and that was too many for me. I like the idea of having options, whether different tunings, sizes, woods, etc. But practically speaking that doesn't work for me. I'm back to my one uke now (and one acoustic guitar) and couldn't be happier! It's not the ukes themselves, or really even the number of instruments. It's that I no longer have the feeling of too many and that I don't play them enough and so, can't justify having them. In other words, it's all in my head, but my head feels much better now!

YMMV and variety is the spice of life, we're not all the same, nor should we be.