I have too much Stuff. Odds are, you do too. In fact, Americans own so much Stuff that they don’t have room to store it all. Our basements and attics are full. Our garages and workshops are overflowing. Our passion for Stuff has spawned a growing industry devoted to providing space for all of the crap we own. This afternoon on NPR, Marketplace featured a story about the recession-proof self-storage industry.
Reporter Andrew Phelps originally rented a unit for what he thought would be a few months. Three years later he returned to find “Star Wars figures, little umbrella thingies that go in cocktails, and more trophies and old baseballs and yearbooks. Oh my God — my Nintendo 64!” For three years, he’d been paying a monthly fee to keep Stuff that he never used.
“I wound up throwing away, like, 98 percent of this Stuff,” he says. “I don’t know why I kept it in the first place.” He’s not alone.
According to Steve Northam, the manager of a self-storage facility in southern California, most customers are just like Phelps. “I try to tell people that kind of stuff. You know what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna be writing checks on this Stuff. You’re gonna say I’m gonna be in there for six months or something like that and I’m going to see you five years later and you’re still handing me money. And you’ve paid more than three times what that Stuff’s worth and, in some cases, four or five times.”
I’ve never had a storage unit. Out of curiosity, I checked pricing at a facility near my home. Their smallest unit — 25 square feet — costs $56 a month! That’s almost unbelievable. $56 a month! $672 per year! Prices for larger spaces range up to $278 a month. Wow.
Don’t think I hold any sort of moral high ground, though. I, too, have lots of Stuff. I’ve just found ways to store it without a monthly fee. (Or maybe I’m paying even more — maybe I have a bigger mortgage to own a bigger house to store all my Stuff!)
Last summer when we returned from England and Ireland, I came to the realization that Stuff was ruling my life. For a couple months, I tried to purge the excess Stuff around me. I sold it on eBay. I gave it away on Craigslist. I hauled it to Goodwill. But I still have too much. I have one entire room currently devoted to Stuff I Want to Purge. The good news is that aside from personal finance books, I’m bringing less Stuff into the house. (That’s one benefit of frugality, I guess.) I feel like the tide of battle has turned.
Not everyone is winning the war on Stuff, however. It seems the self-storage industry is largely immune to recession. People are squirreling away things just as much as ever. Marketplace spoke to the regional manager for a storage company, who said:
A big part of our business in some places recently has been people that are storing temporarily while they stage their home to buy, while they’re between houses because they’ve just moved up. Now we’re kind of getting the other side of that where maybe they’re staging their stuff while they move down, or while they move out.
How many self-storage facilities can one find in Canada? The U.K.? Australia? Why do Americans feel compelled to horde so much Stuff? How can we overcome our need to always acquire more? And where do I go to buy into a share of the self-storage industry?
[Marketplace: Americans keep putting more in storage]
GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve your financial goals.Savings interest rates may be low, but that’s all the more reason to shop for the best rate.Find the highest savings interest rate from Ally Bank, Capital One 360, Everbank, and more.
This article is about News, Odds and Ends, Shopping
Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.
Discover is a paid advertiser of this site. Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES
I’ve thought about this quite a lot in the last several years as we got tired of moving our stuff from apartment to apartment to apartment to house. Comparing our clutter-free house with others, the difference seems to be that we don’t keep specialized material (tools, books, appliances, anything really) because we’re pretty sure we can get what we have to work, or we can rent or borrow from someone who has what we need. There’s a big difference between this more cooperative way of living and the solidly individualistic way of living that requires you to accumulate everything you need for your own uses.
It’s easier for me to contemplate not buying a tool and renting it when I need it than it is for my parents, who live in the country and have to make longer trips to rent or borrow.
But I guess this is another way of saying that cutting down on Stuff requires a mental shift where wants versus absolute needs are concerned.
loading....
A lot of people are storing stuff right now because they lost their homes to foreclosure and are currently living in small apartments.
Sure, they should have sold that stuff off, but the more valuable things are hard to sell due to the economy and you don’t want to lose them. Still, there’s always lots that can be thrown away, given away, or recycled. And you quickly reach a point where storage fees outstrip value.
loading....
I usually chuckle when I think america is a place we people park their mercedes and bmw in the driveway and keep their junk in the garage.
loading....
Ha! This is one of the several reasons we bought a duplex and will be selling our single-family home. While the single-family home was well within our means, it seemed dumb to have so many rooms that were simply big closets for stuff we didn’t use or want to deal with.
We joined the storage renters, but just so that we had a place to store our camper in the winter, along with any other pieces of furniture we didn’t want to haul upstairs to our current apt (we plan to live in the lower in a few months). (No, really!) Anyway, the $750/year we paid this year is less than the $1000/mo premium we were paying on our single-family “treasure trove”.
At the moment, nothing is allowed to leave the single-family house unexamined — it gets sorted and either tossed, moved, or stored. We’ll see whether we can keep that up as we get closer to the point of getting the house on the market!
loading....
I have been paying $55.95 a month to rent a 500 square foot storage unit. I have justified it by saying that I needed to keep boxes for “when we moved” and items that I “needed” that I didn’t have room for in our apartment (we have very tiny closets). That said, I am tired of paying $671.40 a year over my rent just to keep some junk. When we finally do move in July, we will be getting rid of the storage unit and either purging or finding room for the stuff in our new apartment.
I don’t even want to think about the small pile of junk I still have at my mom’s house >_>. Fortunately, she has extra room and I justify a lot of it (old toys) by saying they will be given to my kids someday.
loading....
Currently, I am living in a one-bedroom, 400ish square foot apartment, with my fiance. He keeps trying to convince me to get rid of my “stuff.” I don’t see anything that I have as useless, and frankly, I use MOST of it on a fairly regular basis. The rest of it I would, if we had the room.
Do I have an 18-gallon tote and then some of fabric for sewing and altering clothes? Absolutely. But where do I put my sewing machine when we don’t even have room for a table (kitchen, or end-table for that matter). Do I have at least twice as many clothes as I wear on a regular basis? Well sure, but given my health problem my weight fluctuates frequently and at least I don’t purge and re-buy every time I gain or lose 20 lbs. I just reach for a different stack of jeans.
I have shelves to go on walls that I can’t hang because I don’t have a drill to go through cement or plaster walls. And I don’t want to be bothered with repairing those holes when we move, since it’s listed in our lease that adding more holes to the wall is eviction-worthy. So those take up space on other flat surfaces until we get a house.
Don’t even get me started on the books! He easily has three times as many books as me, and I LOVE books. He has twice as much “stuff” in books and comics and the like than I do in clothes, and they’re all sitting in boxes because he never actually uses them!
I contend that part of frugal living is planning ahead. I put forth effort and/or money for these items when they were needed, that I refuse to get rid of because I feel it’s wasteful to put forth that effort or money to have to get again once we can use them. I just wish I had someplace to put my dirty clothes that wasn’t in the middle of the floor tripping me every time I walk into my bedroom, and that I could DO something with all this wasted vertical space.
loading....
There are just as many self-storage places in Canada. They’ve been popping up like mushrooms for the past several years.
loading....
There are a lot of storage businesses in Canada too. They seem to have popped up everywhere in the last 7 years or so.
In fact, I just recently looked into one and the rent ranged from $75 a month for a 6×9 room to $135 for a 10×20.
loading....
When we moved, we got a storage unit ($30 a month), because we didn’t think we’d be in our small place very long. When it became apparent that we’d be here much longer than anticipated, we went through the storage unit and either found a way to put the stuff in the house or got rid of it. It’s so nice not having that monthly payment.
Currently, I’m going through my small house to get rid of even more stuff. I hate clutter.
loading....
I only have a one bedroom apartment, and I feel like I have too much stuff at time. I think I do a good job of weeding though, and I don’t buy a lot (can’t afford to). So one advantage to renting is that I don’t have the space for more stuff
loading....
Yep, I think tons of folks pay storage fees every month–with their mortgage. Why would you need a walk-in closet for just one person’s clothes? Why do you need a separate guest bedroom? Why do you even need a separate bedroom for each child? A media room?! As a nation we seem to think all these are necessities, when they’re really luxuries that many have found they can’t afford. So, then you move out, put everything in storage and keep on paying?
Before renting storage space or getting a bigger home it’d be a great exercise to figure out at what month will you have paid in fees the value of the things you’re storing. Then you could know whether it’s “worth” it or not.
Great post; thought provoking as usual!
loading....
It’s an unintended side effect of the mixed education we got from our grandparents and our government…
Our grandparents, the generation that dealt with the Great Depression, taught us to not throw away perfectly good things. If you have something, you hold on to it in case you need it.
Our goverment taught us that we have to spend to be good Americans. I call this the Reagan legacy…Ronald Reagan taught Americans through his words and his actions that it’s okay to run a deficit. And we got that. To a tee.
There’s also the fact that we are subjected to a more deceptive, cleverer, more effective marketing inducstry than ever before, pointing out to us needs we never realized we had, because corporations are supposed to make money, regardless the consequences of the actions they take to do so.
loading....
My wife used to manage a Public Storage facility. I’ve heard a lot of stories about people going into collections and having their entire space auctioned off to help cover the leftover bill that isn’t going to get paid.
A lot of these spaces had just a few things and mostly junk. We often joked about people paying hundreds of dollars to store one old chair in a 20′x20′ storage space. The funny thing is that sometimes that was the case!
Large to small companies were the bulk of clientele at the branch my wife worked at. Its cheaper than maintaining and staffing a warehouse and really worked out for a few start-up companies. Otherwise, personally, I really don’t see the need for the extra cost to store stuff. Thats why we spent extra time looking for a place to live that offered a lot of storage room. We know that if we fill it all up, its time to go through it all and start thinning it down.
loading....
We have a storage unit, and it is full of my husbands Stuff… stuff he had when he lived at home with his parents. We are currently renting an apartment, so there is no room for his tools and other Stuff like that. I hate that we have the storage unit though… can’t wait until we have a house w/ a garage where he can keep this stuff. Luckily, he recently negotiated our monthly fee down to $39, but it’s still money I wish I could use elsewhere!
loading....
Yes we have many many storage rental companies in Vancouver BC. In the burbs, as well as a few downtown.
I am thinking about what is in my storage locker downstairs. I am guilty of keeping the original box of electronics items I have purchased – in case I need them when I move. I still have the box for my TV in my living room and the other TV as well. I think I will get rid of these empty boxes and free up about half of my storage space. What do I keep in there? Diaries, tax receipts from years past (both in 2×2 moving boxes), seasonal sports gear. The one item that I am storing there that I am not using is a set of fireplace tools. I am hoping that my next home will have a wood burning fireplace and I will use these tools again. In the meantime these remain in the basement.
loading....
We pay $70/mo for our storage unit. One person with a 3bdrm apt full of Stuff and one person coming from a 2bdrm apt. full of Stuff moving into another 2bdrm apt, means there’s not enough room for our Stuff. While some of it could certainly be gotten rid of, some of it is Stuff that would otherwise go in the attic of a house – childhood things, books, camping gear, etc. – that we don’t need to get rid of, but have nowhere else to put it. So, we pay for storage. When we can afford a house, the garage and attic will become our storage unit, and we can quit paying someone else to hold it.
loading....
Also see Paul Graham’s (excellent!) essay on Stuff (http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html).
Interesting that this blog post and that essay start out with the same sentence. Great minds think alike!
A friend and I have been discussing buying some rather expensive sound recording gear to start a side business. The cost doesn’t bother me so much as the idea of having the extra stuff. While the side business will make some money, there’s also the opportunity cost of spending time developing this business as opposed to being completely focused on my main goals.
loading....
Great post and so true.
I used to be a pathological box hoarder. Old computer boxes, stereo equipment boxes, moving boxes, etc. I guess I figured if I ever needed to move or ship the product it would be handy to have the original box available.
When I moved a few years ago to a loft apartment with almost no extra storage space I ended up renting a cheap self-storage space to store my boxes. I was probably spending nearly $500 a year mostly to store empty boxes and I kept this space for nearly 3 years.
I was saved by a friend who upon hearing my storage folly, laid out a cost breakdown of having all my “boxed” stuff professionally packed by a moving company and it was less than the annual fee of my storage space. They even helped my get everything out of the space, break it down, and help it along into the recycle dumpster. Now, that’s a friend.
loading....
I’m in the Toronto area and there are plenty of self storage units, they are popping up like weeds in suburban areas.
loading....
Great post. I would just add two things: more Stuff = more wasting of the earth’s limited resources, and, research shows that more Stuff does NOT make people any happier. Happiness comes from non-Stuff . . . more at my blog Diamond-Cut Life http://alison97215.wordpress.com
best,
Alison in Portland, Oregon
loading....
My wife and I bought into the “American Dream” when we bought our first house. Lots of space to fill it up with unneeded things. Very quickly we realised there was too much space that was not being properly used (It was a 2,200 sq ft house). We decided to move about 2 1/2 yrs ago into a condo half the size. We dumped a lot of stuff since I refuse to pay for storage and my wife believes that if you haven’t used it for a year you do not need it. At the beginning I thought I was going to miss those things. Today I cannot tell you what it was that we discarded. I just don’t remember. We never missed it. The new place being smaller prevents us from buying new junk since we don’t have much space to put it.
By the way I’m not paying taxes, cooling/heating, nor furnishing rooms that are filled with junk as I did in my first house.
“Free your mind, and the rest will follow”.
loading....
Over the last 2 years, I paid $1560 to store my stuff. I realized I didn’t own this stuff, this stuff owned me.
loading....
By the way, many GRS readers have pointed me to The Story of Stuff. I intend to watch and write about this soon…
loading....
JD-great post. Loved it as usual.
What most people don’t see is the cost all the “stuff” has on their lives. This goes beyond the storage unit ($672/year per JD). Look at the larger house. You now pay a larger mortgage. It cost more in utilities. Your property taxes and insurance goes up. You pay more for every item and fixture in the house so that it fits the decor. It is now too large to easily maintain so you pay others to help: lawn service, maid, etc…
This doesn’t even start to look at the emotional cost. Clutter wears at you and stresses you out. The larger bills are stressful, and you work longer hours to pay them. You pay so much for an item that you feel guilty giving it away, so it sits unused year after year. Then the neighbor buys the newer/bigger/flashier model and your toy actually makes you feel inferior!
Also, as long as your life is cluttered with things from the past you can’t move on to better things. As corny as it sounds, “stuff” holds you back.
We weren’t always perfect. We paid an extra $500 when we left the military and moved to our first civilian job. What was the overage for? Books I ended up donating to the local library. Canning jars we ended up selling but never used. Old rusty tools my father in law picked up at a yard sale because they were such a deal. Never used by us. My motorcycle from before our marriage that was inoperable. You get the picture.
We now regularly purge our house of clutter. We go through the house and our closets and clear it out. Cloths that are worn or no longer fit-donate. Read that fiction book (I keep my business and computer books as reference)-donate. All the old toys my kids don’t use-give to friends.
Not only do we get our space back-physical and emotional-we also find ourselves thinking before we buy. Will I be giving this to Goodwill in a year? Will I really use it?
Don’t get me wrong, I still buy stuff, just stuff I will enjoy. Something that will contribute to my life.
loading....
@Brigitte – 99% of leases have that line about holes in the walls… our lease says nails and paint and tape too! When I pointed that line out to the building manager, he didn’t believe me that it was in the lease! I would talk to your building manager and see what he/she says…
loading....
I’ve used storage spaces a lot in my life. When I was single I was VERY broke and moved a lot – sometimes from an entire apartment to renting a room in a house, to sleeping on my boss’ basement floor for a few months. It was pretty dire. And since the places I lived kept getting smaller and smaller, the need for storage space to hold my living room furniture, off-season clothing and general belongings increased.
My family used storage a couple years ago when we moved from our house in NoNJ into an short-term rental apartment in SC. We knew it would be temporary until we bought a house. Three months later we closed on the house and took everything out of storage. I think storage places can provide a great service, but I do agree that for MOST people it’s probably a waste of money.
loading....
I’m scared to death of acquiring too much stuff. I hate stuff. I used to not, I used to love stuff, epecially free stuff, but now I look at something as an item that will loose it’s enjoyment factor, and then become a thing that I feel I need to keep.
I think we are all obsessed with money to the point that if we buy something, even if we don’t need it, we keep it around (sometimes plugged in using electricity) because we feel obligated to our wallets to do so. However, when you get rid of it all and begin to live a frugal lifestyle, you learn that all of that stuff becomes just stuff that consumes your life.
My wife and I have a room in our house that is boxes we never unpacked from when we moved in almost a year ago. I don’t even remember what it all is, and I’m tempted to just wipe it all out in our next move.
loading....
Hey J.D.,
I’m totally with you on this one. It’s unbelievable how much we all like to horde ‘stuff’. I myself was guilty of hording, but after a few moves, I had to ditch a lot of it out of necessity!
One quick tip is to have a garage sale! Why not turn your excess stuff into a money maker, instead of keeping it around as a money loser!
Great blog.
loading....
We stored things ten years ago after getting married and not having enough room for mine, hers and ours! After about 6 months it occurred to us that we had visited the storage unit exactly once, and I couldn’t even remember what we were looking for. Obviously, this was a ridiculous fee to pay for being overly sentimental. My wife and I both eliminated about 75% of the stuff over the ensuing weeks by giving it away, having a yard sale or two, etc, and we ended the storage unit contract.
loading....
This almost makes me want to go into the self-storage business! We are pretty good about not accumulating stuff… but I can see it happening more now that we have kids.
loading....
You should check out my article, the cost of junk
I think you might get a kick out of this one. It deals with the idea that even some of the stuff that’s still being used is junk that costs us.
loading....
Just one story of why someone would rent one:
We rented a storage space about a year ago, and it was one of the hardest decisions we have made, but I stick to it.
We live in two bedroom, 1000 sq. ft condo in the middle of a large city. We actually have large and numerous closets and we purge frequently (got back over $1000 in tax deductions for in kind donations last year alone), but we have an infant and are doing a nanny-share where another child comes to our house to share our nanny every day, so we need to have multiple kid’s chairs and a pack and play up most of the time.
And, we inherited a beautiful heirloom buffet that can’t possibly fit with the baby. And, we have heavily invested in camping equipment that we use at least twice a year and provides us with opportunities for other inexpensive travel (to balance more expensive travel that we do). In the next few years, we plan to move – I hope I am wrong in this, but the schools are just not good here.
So, we had three choices: 1) Sell the buffet, which we both love, and get rid of all baby stuff as our baby is done with it despite our plan to have another in the next couple years; 2) Somehow keep the buffet (there was a way, but it wasn’t good) and buy a non-weatherproofed 5 X 5 storage unit in our building for $3,000; or 3) Rent a storage unit for $119 a month and keep the buffet, other extraneous items, and all baby clothes and toys are are done with and maintain some semblence of the clutter-free lifestyle to which we are accustomed.
We chose option 3. I hate paying the money (although we have it), but I didn’t see another good option. We visit the storage unit to store more baby equipment approximately every 3 months (and we probably should go more frequently).
loading....
A while ago I saw a show on TV dealing with people who have a hard time letting things go. Things were so out of hand that they barely had any living space, and some where getting evicted from their homes. Even with the possibility of loosing their place of recidence, they couldn’t get rid of all of their stuff(I call it junk).
We are bombarded by our media with the important of obtaining objects. We have been raised since childhood with this mentality that no wonder we can’t let go.
What happened to less is more.
loading....
I agree it is crazy!
I did rent a storage area once when I was a college student and going home for the summer. My parents lived in another state and I was flying home so taking it with me was not an option. I also considered getting one for baby stuff that my #1 son was growing out of since I knew we wanted more kids. We ended up moving to a bigger apartment (since we knew we wanted more than one kit) and our storage issues were solved.
My brother-in-law’s parents have storage sheds and they are making a bundle.
loading....
“Why do Americans feel compelled to horde so much Stuff? How can we overcome our need to always acquire more?”
First, this is a great post. Something that gets missed when discussing the true meaning of wealth is to sort out the individual’s internal have or have-not conflict. I drove a old Toyota Camry for over 12 years! For me, I valued its use more than the social status that erodes each year. If I were to lease or buy a new vehicle every 4-5 years simply to keep up with the other guy, then apparently I value cars for something other than its use. Another accessory in dressing up for the part. In this society, we react — for instance, the impulse buy — and move on. What we leave behind? The stuff in storage. Believe me, I was a storage rental troll for a couple years…money that could’ve served a greater purpose. This spring I begin the household purge: donate or discard (preferably recycle).
It’s back to the basics on needs vs wants, dreams and reality. GSR promotes good stewardship of limited resources — living well and within our means. To break the cycle takes courage to act against the materialism that pervades our society. Let’s revisit the value of a dollar and ask ourselves before we make that gotta-have-it purchase: should I convert this to treasure or trash?
loading....
I think the problem will get worse. The baby-boomers are already, i think, finding themselves in a double bind of “inheriting” the stuff of their parents as those folks downsize or go to assisted living centers etc and give their children stuff, and also having to keep the stuff of their children, who go off to college or first jobs/apartments but expect that all of their stuff will remain at mom & dad’s.
There’s a lot of emotional baggage around such accumulations, and so it is hard not to just try to find a storage space rather than actually throw away or otherwise dispose of it. Not to mention the “Antiques Roadshow”-induced fear that whatever item you decide to get rid of will be “worth a lot of money someday….”
And, time — it takes more time to get rid of something than to acquire it in most cases.
loading....
I posted a thread about this in the forum section. I have considered getting a storage unit if I relocate to my hometown. I’d plan on living with my mother, paying her a minimal amount towards rent, and storing in a unit, throwing the rest of what I’d normally spend on rent/utilities/internet into emergecy funding and house/fund.
loading....
This seems like a good place to mention my cousin, Laurie. She and her family would make good money by purchasing the contents of abandoned storage units at auction. They’d then sort through the crap to find the good stuff, which they’d resell at market prices.
The crazy thing was that there were tons of abandoned storage units, units for which the people just stopped paying.
I’d like to write a full post on this subject someday, but I don’t see Laurie very often…
loading....
Elisabeth wrote: And, time — it takes more time to get rid of something than to acquire it in most cases.
Oooh. Great observation. I’d never considered that before, but it’s very true. Unless you’re just going to throw something out, there’s a lot of time in recouping what something is “worth”.
loading....
If you think mini-storage units are getting out of hand, I recommend Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. It is a near-future science fiction dystopia of sorts, but storage units have a playfully ironic place in the story.
loading....
A few years ago when I was in college my father and I were looking for something in my grandmother’s house. I don’t remember what we were looking for but it was something of mine. I remember going through my grandmother’s basement, attic and closets and thinking…”Where is all her crap?” So I asked my Dad and he laughed.
His response was this. “Haven’t you ever wondered why your grandparents were so well off to just have been a teacher and a part-time office clerk? Your grandparents were teens during the depression. They knew lean times and that you don’t need a lot of stuff. They never bought stuff and now they live well cause they never spent money on junk.”
Dad could have left off the part about all that junk costing money and just said they grew up in the depression. But he wanted to drive home the point about how crap costs us money.
On a similar point, I live in the city. And one way I keep living costs low is to have a small home on a small piece of property. I dont’ have much storage at all – little attic and a one car garage that I like to keep my car in instead of stuff. I think buying monthly storage would be cheaper for me than buying more house when you factor in taxes. But like you said – if I have to store it I don’t really need it – might as well get rid of it.
loading....
On her blog yesterday, paidtwice mentioned the same feeling I have when it comes to stuff. “It’s still functional.” As long as something might be useful in the future, I feel very bad about throwing it out.
Maybe I want my money’s worth. Or I might just be worried that I’ll need it.
That said, I’m getting better about it. One mental picture I’ve been using was moving my grandmother’s stuff. She has children’s mysteries from the 1930s which she won’t throw away because someone might want to read them (they’d fall apart if read, however). Car books for ’70s cars. Newspapers. Fortunately, she’s not one of those people who has virtually no space left to walk in their house, yet. And my aunts try to keep it that way.
loading....
As for the cause, I’d tend to point towards our marketing industry. It’s amazing how much stuff we “need” now. I can compare our daughter with some friends’ kids. My daughter doesn’t tend to want a whole lot in the way of toys. She can go through a toy store and exclaim that something is cool or not cool, but it really doesn’t line up with the current marketing pushes. My friends just recently got cable. Their kids now whine a little more going through toy stores than they used to and are less content with what they have.
We’re not immune to it as adults, but I know I’ve purposely limited my media usage to avoid a lot of advertising targeted at getting me to be less satisfied with my life. Add in the fact that our house doesn’t have a garage (it was converted to a living space) and the attic isn’t convenient to access, and you have a house that’s just not convenient to start accumulating stuff. We actually helped a friend clean out their storage unit so they could stop paying the monthly cost by buying their piano (which we had kind of wanted anyway).
loading....
We’ve used temporary storage in the past, for the purpose intended when we were trying to move and to make our home look bigger via less furniture and such. I agree wholeheartedly with the statement that it’s easier to acquire the stuff than it can be to get rid of it. Why would I want to pay to have the trash guys come and get rid of two perfectly good box springs?
I will say freecycle is both a blessing and curse, depending on your ability to keep from acquiring new stuff you don’t need. It makes it very easy to get rid of stuff to folks who you hope will be able to make good use of it.
I am trying to develop a habit of roving through the basement and moving things to the trash that really are of no further worth anymore. But it’s so hard to let go of the “I might just need that” mentallity.
loading....
Yep…saving things one never uses is tantamount to hoarding, and deprives others from enjoying things they might really need. One can’t be open to new items, experiences, learning opportunities if the closets of our homes, minds, and hearts are cluttered with stuff we don’t need.
It is incredibly freeing to pass good usable items on. I am an avid Freecycle.org fan and use it to declutter my life.
loading....
I love this article. Reminds me of an article I read about the effects of clutter on a person’s decision making process.
Personally, I think the reason people hold on to stuff (myself included) is the fear that by throwing something out, that you’re screwing your future self, because he/she may need that thing and will be helpless without it if I throw it out now.
I’ve kind of taken the stance that future me is just going to have to fend for himself, because present-me can’t stand keeping all of future-me’s stuff for him.
loading....
I am reminded of the short documentary “Possessed”. I think I originally saw this link in a post or comment here, or it could have been somewhere else.
Hording stuff is absolutely horrifying when taken to an extreme: http://www.vimeo.com/603058
We are in the process of selling some of our stuff. I think we netted somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 so far over the past week, and that is nothing to spit at.
We are having a yard sale two weeks from now and whatever is in the yard at the close of ‘business’ that day will get loaded up and taken directly to goodwill for the tax write-off.
loading....
Apparently here in the UK more and more city dwellers are using storage facilities too – if we Americans think our apartments are small, British ones are smaller!
We’re transplanting from the UK back to the US next month and I’m seeing it as an opportunity to get rid of all kinds of junk. I wish we had better ways to sell it (the UK doesn’t do garage sales and car boot sales require…a car!) but a lot of it will be donated to charity and I think that’s okay too.
Hoping we’re more sensible after we’ve moved about accumulating!
loading....
I own a two family house which is rented. I kept back the garage and fifteen (15!) years ago rented it for storage to a friend. At first it was $70./month, then $75., now $85./month. The man stores a used washer & dryer, used houehold goods and kitchen ware, hand tools, defunct car parts from a car which was long ago sold, detrius from a divorce. I’ve spoken to him about having a yard sale and selling the things, and how the amount paid for storage is several times the value of the items stored. I’ve talked about how he could at a later date replace all this stuff cheaply with newer things by going to yard and garage sales over a weekend. NONE OF IT MAKES A DENT IN HIS DETERMINATION TO HANG ON TO THIS STUFF! Every month I deposit his check, and use it towards the property taxes. If you rent out a property, NEVER THROW IN THE GARAGE, RENT IT TO A NON TENANT WITH A SEPARATE CONTRACT, SO WHEN THE TENANT LEAVES, YOU STILL HAVE INCOME FROM THE PROPERTY. Spread tyhe eggs into different baskets. Also, this way, YOU GET MORE RENT THAN IF YOU RENTED THE UNIT AND GAVE THE GARAGE.
loading....
The hoarding of Stuff really is unbelievable. We’ve got all the contents of my old apartment stored in our garage right now. I can’t wait until our sale in two weeks to get rid of it! I can’t remember one thing that I’ve sold or given away that I want back, but I have plenty of regrets about things that I’ve bought!
loading....