Those who are able and willing to, liquidate their stuff, as it costs more to store certain things than it does to own it.

The last purge I did was two months ago, entitled The Simplicity Challenge. I blogged all about it, as I was going through the process of letting go. It takes a lot of effort, even if you’re as un-materialistic as I am.

Speaking of stuff, after seeing the video you linked to called Possessed, I was in the throes of my Simplicity Challenge and got a little obsessed with reading about stuff. I wrote a three-part series on stuff: why we want it, keep it, and have such a hard time parting with it. I believe I quote you somewhere within the series. The three posts start out with part one, Why Do We Have So Much Stuff? http://www.antishay.com/?p=70

They originally rented out the unit primarily to store bulky items (workbench, tables, ceramic supplies) that they thought they might use once settled into Florida. However, they quickly cluttered up their new house with more ceramic studio stuff, home improvement stuff, etc., so maintained things in storage. In other words, they got settled without dealing with the stored stuff, so they basically shelled out money every month since then in order not to upset the reigning peace. All of my suggestions to downsize were met with protests such as: “We hope to get back into using kilns to fire ceramics” and “We plan on building a side addition to the house, so will need the tools” and “some of this stuff is worth a lot of money, so we can’t just get rid of it.”

Sigh.

Now that my mom has passed away, my dad knows that he needs to close out the unit, but it’s tough for him. He collects stuff in general–he still has every computer that he’s ever owned, and he thinks they’re all worth something and potentially useful–even the Compaq computer from 1987! All of these things represent a more youthful past for him, a time when his life was on the upswing; to get rid of these things is, in a way, for him, to accept the defeat of old age. I can sort of see his point: to get rid of the big workbench would be an admission that that stage of life has passed. But he knows he has to do it…. The trick is getting him to do it, or giving me permission to do it for him. It’s really tough. Pictures don’t suffice for holding memories; in this case, it’s Stuff–way too much of it.

Fortunately for me, I move every year and a half, so I’m forced to reevaluate my things on a regular basis.

I find that taking a picture really does help me let go of stuff. I don’t know why but it works.

Have you explored the possibility of donating those items with historical value to a museum or archive that specializes in your parents’ culture/era? That could be the perfect solution… You’d stop having to store and move the items, yet could fully respect the items provenance…

If it were a drywall wall with flat paint that I could putty over and throw a layer of paint on, fine–I’ve done that at all my previous apartments. But apparently, the money I save in rent I have to pay in headache and clutter as A majority of the things I have I DO try to use, but I can’t GET to them when the boxes are stacked two deep from the wall!

My fiance and I swore up and down we weren’t moving after a year though, and now he wants to stay here until we buy a house–don’t ask him to save any money for that idea though, he has cigarettes and booze to buy *eyeroll*… I figure if I’m stuck here, I’d like to be able to have access to my floor, AND the stuff I can’t get to.

As far as garage sales and donations go… useless, pointless, and unless you have antiques or collectibles, don’t make any money. I’ve done it twice before, I refuse to get paid $2 an hour for my time, and I haven’t wasted my money on such frivolities as antiques to have anything worth selling. Besides, I get all my taxes back every year because hey, I’m not rich! So donating isn’t lucrative. Having the space to use everything I have is lucrative though.

For example, boxes can be covered with paper or fabric to become attractive storage containers, so when we buy a bulk box of cereal, we feel compelled to keep the box. It sometimes gets to the point where we have all this trash sitting around the house waiting to be converted into something useful that we get sick of it finally end up chucking most of it. :rolleyes:

As for other stuff, as JD mentioned in this post, frugal living really does help cut down on acquisition of new junk. Sometimes I hate that I always feel guilty whenever I spend money/buy something, but there is an upside to it.

I think in my case the problem is packaging. Things could be stored more compactly if given some thought.

I hear exactly what you’re saying. In my own family, after my grandmother died my mom was the one tasked with clearing out a HUGE family home and store (store occupied most of the ground floor, family lived abovestairs) that had been in the family since 1903 and had housed multiple generations of family packrats (plus the remaining equipment/inventory of the store).

They hauled away tons of garbage and held yard sales every weekend for a whole summer, and mailed obscene amounts of stuff to the siblings and grandkids. My parents had both just retired so they basically moved to my grandmother’s town for about 6 months while cleaning out/repairing the house to sell it.

The silver lining to this cloud is it did finally start to loosen my parents’ own grip on their own horde of stuff. (Classic line: “We don’t want our daughter to go through this with our stuff.”

They’ve finally started to get why I’m constantly pruning my possessions. It used to really upset my mom when she’d discover I’d gotten rid of some knick-knack of mine that she’d liked. Now they are slowly, painfully starting to declutter themselves.

My sister and I ended up donating, giving away, and throwing away about 90% of the fascinating things our mother had spent so many years and so much money gathering. Only the most sentimentally important or materially valuable items came back to California with us, and we’re now trying to sell most of the latter. The experience of struggling to deal with all her Stuff was heartbreaking on top of her sudden and unexpected loss, and it made us both realize that just because we value something ourselves doesn’t mean our heirs will. We’ve both been purging our apartments since then.

Don’t store your stuff because “the kids might want it someday.” Your heirs don’t need that guilt trip as, in the midst of mourning your death, they attempt to reconcile their own taste and values with all the excess Stuff you’ve left them. Leave them good memories. The object that made me cry the hardest when I found it was the battered old copy of Alice in Wonderland my mom had read to me when I was a child. Small, valueless, but worth more to me than all the other Stuff she’d so assiduously bought and stored over the years.

“I suppose I don’t really ‘need’ the stuff I’m storing, but the alternative would be to go to job interviews in jeans and sandals, go through winter with no warm clothes or blankets, have to beg colleagues to lend me books (most of which aren’t available in the library) ”

If that’s indeed your situation then you clearly do need the stuff you’re storing. I think there’s a difference between your situation though and the vast majority of _long term storage renters_ who’ve acquired the spaces and then just keep filling them or never get around to sorting/purging them or otherwise dealing with them.

My dad is an example of the latter – he has 3 storage lockers filled with stuff from his downsized house. To be fair, he is making progress clearing the spaces out and he’s fighting with a degenerative condition so he has “good” days and “bad” days. He’s had the lockers about 5 or 6 years and the vast majority of stuff in there has neither financial nor sentimental value. It’s just Stuff that’s accumulated over the years. I’ve helped him clear out what I could – especially packaged food he doesn’t want any more. It’s really overwhelming though. Even for someone in their prime.

Seeing how much stress and anxiety my parents’ Stuff has added to their lives has really motivated me to declutter and be careful about what I bring into my apartment. It’s been a long journey – over 5 years – but I’m nearly there.

I also found this “De-cluttering Self-Questionaire” article by Holly of Spending Wisely to be immensely helpful and inspirational:

http://www.spendingwisely.com/?p=19

See, I usually didn’t sell my textbooks back to the school bookstore. Partially because I didn’t buy them at the bookstore because of their insane prices. I usually keep them, thinking that I “might need them someday.” But after selling one back that I was sure I’d never need (and finding out that they don’t actually care if you bought it there or not), I went home and picked out a few more to sell back.

I’ll still end up keeping some textbooks–several they won’t take back, and I will probably legitimately need to refer to my Chemistry textbooks again. But I’m glad I was able to turn a few books that would just sit on my shelf into cash.

I don’t actually have a need for a rented separate storage space. I manage just fine with my 850 sq ft apartment and the little storage shed off my patio (where I keep those empty moving boxes and my christmas stuff).

As far as keeping the memories — actually my most prized possessions of all are three big albums/scrapbooks that I’ve been putting together. One for my mother’s family/geneology, one for my father’s family/geneology, and one that is a scrapbook for all the most important stuff of my own life. These and a handful of framed photographs contain almost all the physical remnants of the memories that I need. The rest is mostly in small pieces of artwork.

With the onset of digital picture frames, it’s all the easier to digitize and display in a tight space mementoes of loved ones.

P.S. – I don’t think it’s lame to ask for money instead of a wedding gift. It’s honest — and it would be a great way to help fund the wedding or the honeymoon. I’ve also had friends ask for no gift or a donation to a favorite organization instead of cash.

We did this when we had to move twice in two years because of a big reno. The only problem is that we didn’t purge anything BEFORE the move so when we finally got around to going through the various boxes – 90% of it was just junk – which we had stored/moved several times

Mike

When I get an invite and there’s a gift registry account # to some store I get annoyed and just give them a card with $20/40/etc in it, if I give anything at all.

Is asking for money instead of gifts lame? I think I’d be saving them the hassle of what to shop for: nothing!

There should be a standardized Statute of Limitations on Gifted Crap. Like, how long am I supposed to keep an ugly snowglobe that was a bridesmaid gift? One year? Five? Forever? It’s time to draw a collective line in the sand.

i have to say we probably get more use out of our storage unit than most- he goes to visit twice a week to pick something up or put something back. and we shopped around and found one for $55/mo which i don’t like but is the cheapest available.

speaking of automotive hobbyists (as mentioned above) that’s what most of our storage is. most of the space is taken up now by a set of professional mechanic’s tools which cost us a year’s income. they will go back into use in about a year, and in the meantime they earn their keep in side jobs or minor repairs to our own vehicles, but we can’t haul that 500+ lb monster up the stairs to our second floor apartment. it was all we could do to load it on the truck!

i finally convinced him to ditch parts from our old car- they weren’t selling on ebay or craigslist. this freed up a lot of space. in the remaining space, we still have box after box of books he can’t part with, our holiday decor, a dishwasher i’m trying hard to sell, and things like that. he is down to about 4 plastic storage containers of personal effects that i prefer to call junk

every time he goes to visit his grandparents, they send him home with more stuff. and stuff from the grandparents can never leave us, because he’s so emotionally attached to them. it’s that stuff-emotion tie that people keep mentioning that i cannot get him to sever.

i hope to teach our future children that stuff is not the same as memories or happiness.