From the Trenches: An Update on My War on Stuff
Though our divorce is final, Kris and I continue to see each other about once a week. We have lunch or dinner together, and sometimes we do chores around the house.
One big chore is approaching: We’re going to hold a joint garage sale to purge our lives of some of the Stuff that has accumulated over the years. A few other friends are going to join us (in the hope that we can attract more customers).
After lunch together last Sunday, Kris and I returned to the house for a “garden tour”. As always, her flower garden is flourishing; she put in her vegetable garden yesterday, and that’ll be flourishing soon too. While we were looking at the berries and bushes and tulips, our friend Amy Jo stopped by to unload Stuff for the garage sale.
Simply Clutter
“What’s that?” I asked Amy Jo, pointing at a ceramic pot she was unloading.
“It’s a pickle crock,” she said.
“It’s nice,” Kris said.
“Do you want it?” asked Amy Jo. “No, really. We don’t need to sell it. I’d rather see it go to somebody who would enjoy it. It used to belong to my grandmother. I mean, we like the idea of the pickle crock, but we don’t ever use it, so it’s simply clutter around the house.”
This “just clutter around the house” is what I call Stuff, the collection of odds and ends that build up over the years, the things that become not just a physical burden but a mental one too. Not all of us experience this, but most of us do. Some people loathe Stuff so much that they embrace lives of voluntary simplicity and live in tiny houses. Others are comforted by Stuff and have an unhealthy attachment to it; these people are hoarders. Most of us fall somewhere between the two extremes. And, every once in a while, we get the urge to have less stuff. That’s what garage sales are all about.
Paul and Amy Jo, for instance, are about to move to a smaller house. As they prepare to move, they’re discovering they have a lot of Stuff. “Paul’s sorting through things that have been in storage since we moved back to Portland eight years ago,” she told us last Sunday. “It’s amazing how much crap we’ve accumulated. Paul has four sanders, for instance. Who needs four sanders?”
Kris, too, is purging Stuff. “What are you selling?” I asked her.
“It’s just Stuff I don’t use,” she told me. “I had to rearrange the house to fill in the gaps when you left. I’m selling the things I don’t use anymore.”
I too have a pile of Stuff to sell. The workshop at the house is filled with my things, and it’s my hope it will be empty of my things (and ready for Kris to use productively) at the end of the month.
Do you remember my one-year wardrobe project? For a year, I monitored which clothes I wore and which I didn’t. At the end of the year, I purged everything I hadn’t worn. Well, in a way, that’s what I’ve unintentionally done since I moved into a smaller space. I left lots of things behind. Over the past few months, I’ve found myself driving to the house to pick something up now and then — but not often. It’s like my one-year wardrobe project, but for everything I own.
Missing Things
Still, as much as I hate Stuff, there are now times I find myself missing things. Twice recently I’ve made dinner for guests. And both times I discovered I was missing something I wanted or needed. A blender, for instance, or a strainer. Or I made mashed potatoes a couple of weeks ago, and discovered I didn’t have a ricer or masher. I had to get creative because the potatoes were boiling and weren’t going to wait for me to run to the store. I used my wooden spoon.
Meanwhile, I’m facing a dilemma of sorts. I’m proud that I’ve managed to fit most of my world into my apartment. That shows some restraint. (Some restraint — but not a lot.)
However — and you knew there was a however, right? — not everything fits in my apartment. In the months since I moved out of the house, I’ve been storing some stuff at my now-unused office space. All of my personal finance books live there, as do my boxes of comic books. The sad thing is: I haven’t missed either of these things.
Now, though, the lease on my office space is about to expire, and I’m not going to renew it. That brings up a question: What do I do with all the Stuff I’ve crammed into that tiny room? Do I sell it? Give it away? Something else?
Unfortunately, I think my solution is going to be to store the Stuff. For $25 per month, I can rent a storage space in my apartment building. It’s big enough to hold the boxes of comics for sure, and maybe the boxes of personal finance books, too. I don’t know.
The trouble with this is that it’s simply a stop-gap measure. I’m not actually solving the problem, which is that this Stuff is a burden on my brain. I need to get rid of it somehow. And that, my friends, is sure to lead to a future article about what it’s like to sell collectibles.
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There are 105 comments to "From the Trenches: An Update on My War on Stuff".
I’m not a hoarder, since I regularly purge my stuff, but I’ve found that the amount of stuff is still slowly growing. My biggest problem is getting rid of the stuff that used to mean a lot to me, but no longer does. For instance, I’m still hanging on to hobby supplies and tools for hobbies that I haven’t done in 20 years. Why? Because one day I’ll retire, and maybe that hobby will be appealing again. Although I have a feeling that by then I’ll want to do something entirely different.
Marsha, how much would it cost to replace the hobby supplies if you threw them out then wanted to take up the hobby again later? If it isn’t many hundreds or thousands of dollars, consider the money you *might* spend replacing them in the future as a “storage fee”, a small price to pay for more space and peace of mind in the meantime. Give them to someone who wants them now and you’re doing some good at the same time. If you do purge a lot, you’re bound to make a few mistakes along the way, but these are rarely catastrophic. And I find that simply taking a digital photo of a personal item is enough to preserve the memory of it.
The thing is, they would cost thousands to replace, although I couldn’t get nearly that much if I sold them. And storing them is currently not a problem because we have a large storage room in our basement that we don’t need for anything else. If they sat in the middle of my living room, I’d get rid of them. I think I would still enjoy the hobbies, but since becoming a mother 19 years ago, I haven’t had the time between working and caring for my family. We’ll see next year when my younger son goes to college.
We moved stuff for my husband’s hobby he never had time for. Retired two years, he now uses it all daily. My hobby- should have been tossed years ago and are now being unloaded.
Tough decisions.
As a quilter and artist, this is probably one area that I would NOT purge easily. This is especially true as I have moved more towards fixed income living. The money it would cost me to replace my quilting or card making supplies, say, is frightening.
Generally If I have the room, I dont throw out things that I believe I may use.
And frankly, as a retiree, one of the best things I did was having everything I needed (for home, hobby and recreation) before I retired
There are certain things worth storing, and supplies for a much-loved hobby (even if you are presently on hiatus from it) are in that category IMO. As long as there is actually space to store the stuff. The gear for most crafty hobbies doesn’t exactly go obsolete.
OTOH there are things probably NOT worth storing, like mountain climbing equipment when it’s been 15 years since the last excursion. See: my DH. Even if he wants to do another climb sometime in the future, I know perfectly well he’s going to want new gear for it!
Great! Now I don’t feel so bad about only using my sewing machine about once a year on average 🙂 I’ve been sewing since I was 12 (21 years now) and this has always been my pattern. I know if I got rid of it simply because I’m not churning out garments every month, it would be a loss for me, especially since I’m not in the position to make that kind of financial investment now.
Hi J.D. it is very cool that you are able to have an amicable divorce and still have dinner once-a-week.
That is actually quite amazing and I am delighted to hear about it.
I agree with you in that it is a burden to keep to many things and sometimes it is a mistake to get rid of too many things.
As you found when you were ready to cook, something you needed was no longer there for others, I have had a similar experience.
Sometimes it happens just a few days after I ‘get rid’ of something.
However, I like the idea of getting rid of things more than keeping them.
I abhor how many possessions pile up after a ten year period.
I recently had the opportunity to clean my place out from top to bottom and there were many, many things that I was able to part with.
I was quite happy about that. Shortly thereafter I realized that I could still use something that was thrown out.
It is a delicate balance. In the end, I do believe it is better to part with as many things as is reasonable or prudent to do.
As you mentioned, most of us live between the two extremes. I was surprised to find out how much stuff I had that was no longer relevant to my life and had not been for decades!
I’m trying to convince myself that replacing a few things is a small price to pay for gaining some space, and room for today’s interests.
However, I will keep what few family and career mementos I have, maybe write the story each holds.
Sorry, David, but divorce is never “cool”.
I don’t think David was implying that “divorce is cool”. He meant that its “cool” (great, swell, wonderful) that they are able to get along, communicate and spend time with each other.
Re: finance boks – maybe you could sell them online here and donate the proceeds. If youneed to refer to one down the road, perhaps you can get an ebook or get a copy online.
http://traderjoesreviewer.blogspot.com
Know what you do with those personal finance books? Sell them or, even better, give them away as giveaways on GRS! I’m not sure you need them anymore, I think you’ve gleaned their knowledge and become a debt-free, financially independent guy. So spread the wealth of info and do giveaways for them all!
Like textbooks, many of these books go out of date quickly. A general one on making decisions may always be useful, but much advice depends of that year’s tax and investment and deduction situation, maybe no longer relevant.
I like this idea. I may just hold some sort of giveaway. The problem is that I’m NOTORIOUSLY slow at sending things out (just ask any past contest winners). That said, this is a great way to get rid of personal finance books.
Can’t you find some “shipping elves” at GRS to take care of that for you?
I’m sure some broke students would be happy to help you 🙂
Another variation: sell the books to a used bookstore and use the proceeds to buy the ones you’d really miss having in eBook form.
Used bookstores do not buy dated personal finance books that they would be unable to resell.
I have a stuff related problem, and would like some advice. I’m a boomerang kid- I’ve moved 8 times since I was 17, and every other move seems to be back to my childhood bedroom at the mothership. Having lived there solidly since I was 8 years old, and then on and off again as a young adult, I have accumulated a lot of stuff. I want to clear out the room because I feel guilty about it- my parents don’t have a guest room at all in their house, so it would be good if they could have my old bedroom as a functioning guest room.
However… as much as I want to tell myself “get rid of that, you’ll never use it!”, it’s just not true. For example, I have a chest full of fabric scraps. Some of them have been in there 6 years. But now and again I’ll go to make something, and end up using a scrap I’ve owned for a long time. The same with yarn- yesterday I started knitting a pair of socks with yarn I’ve had for 4 years. Sewing patterns? For my last formal event my mum and I used a pattern I’d bought on Ebay when I was 15. My old Dell monitor? Hook it up to my laptop for a duel monitor system when I’m doing digital illustration. You get the picture.
As such I’m really reluctant to throw out things, because down the line I will probably eventually use them. There’s also a fair amount of stuff I’ve picked up on my travels- a numberplate from Hawaii and a communist officer’s hat, for example, and I really don’t want to get rid of those. Every time I visit I put together a bag of stuff to give to the charity shop, but my room is still full of stuff and as such not really suitable for a guest room. Suggestions?
My advice would be to be really realistic about how useful things really are. For example, the fabric scraps do sound useful. So you need a good solid system for organizing them, that limits the space they take up, and makes them accessible so that if you need a scrap, you can find it quickly. Otherwise you’ll end up buying more fabric to complete a project, because it’s quicker than digging some out. And when you’re finished with the project, you’ll add the scraps to the ever growing pile.
There might be other stuff that, although ‘useful’ might not be used by you. For example hobbies that you took up, that you didn’t enjoy very much. This is the stuff you should sell.
As for the stuff that you’ve collected on your travels – you need to decide how much it’s worth TO YOU. If you love it, then why aren’t you using it in some capacity? As a display item, for example. If you don’t love it enough to have it on display in your space, it might be time to get rid of it. Taking pictures of items that have sentimental value can be really helpful in letting go of things like this. Remember that the memory exists entirely seperate of the object. By getting rid of the memento, you are not getting rid of the experiences you had that it reminds you of.
I hope some of this helps.
I love the colorful, some fancy, yarns I obtained when I was knitting. Maybe I should give them to my church’s craft group before they rot and become useless.
I think the easiest thing to do is have a space goal (empty closet, empty shelf, all floor space empty, space under the bed – pick one to start with) and just take out all the stuff it takes to make that happen. Having a clear goal/limit will clarify your priorities.
But two of the things you mentioned should be easy. Electronics you aren’t using should go, the sooner the better – they become obsolete about as fast as bread gets stale. Or, alternatively, use them.
Craft stuff is another relatively easy one: I got rid of mine by finding a crafting club and giving them what they wanted, then donating the rest (to an old people’s home full of women who knit/crochet and couldn’t afford materials); should I ever need cloth scraps or yarn, the club I donated to will be happy to help me out, so I replaced a couple tubs of stuff with one piece of knowledge in my brain.
JD: SELL THOSE BOOKS! Or take other people’s suggestions and give them away. Books & comics are the easiest thing in the world to sell in large lots. What’s the future value of $25/mo over the next few years? It has to be enough money to re-buy anything you end up missing.
can you organize it and get most of it out of sight?
my parents used those big plastic tubs with lids when us kids moved out. they wrote our name on the tubs, and all our shit went in there.
it’s still very accessible, well labeled, and kept neat and clean, it’s just not out in the open, they’re all in the basement. my parents also have a nice guest room now.
maybe something similar? could you organize your stuff and shove it mostly in a closet, or buy a stand-alone faux-closet just so it looks a little nicer? target has great metal shelving you can buy to just stack those tubs up on. it doesn’t look totally fabulous but it’s better than a pile of junk all over the floor 🙂
(i also liked the tub method because i got to keep a lot of childhood toys without tossing them or having them in my or my parents way!)
another mom-ism is a tip on how to get rid of things like your fabric scrap collection, bits of yarn: pick out your favorite 3 (or 5, etc). put them in a box, save those, and get rid of the rest. that way you can still have your nicest scraps of fabric, without all the bulk of a whole collection. once you do that to a few collections of things, you should have freed up a lot of room (and still have some stuff!)
keep the travel momentos, but trash the clutter 🙂
or… let momma do it (!). on your next boomerang, give her license to “clean house”, har har. it was tough but i let my mom do that, she’s so much happier not having to look after stuff i didn’t even care about enough to remember (but of course if /I/ go through it, it’s OMG this was my favorite doll ever! and here’s her wardobe! and her accessories! and all her friends. I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU MY FRIENDS. SAVE. repeat.) out of sight, out of mind.
Thanks for the suggestions! I think the other problem I have is that I am not very settled right now- I moved into this place in January and I know I am going to be moving again in the new academic year- so things like the mementos or prints aren’t moving with me because it’s just extra stuff to move. I am very lucky to have a large room at my parent’s house, much bigger than the one I can afford in London.
The suggestion to go through stuff with my mum to stop the nostalgia hit clouding my judgement is a good one, although last time I did that she was the one who got all “oh no, you can’t get rid of him, he was your favourite!” with toys. Things are fairly organised; all the yarn is in a big plastic box, all the scraps are in sandwich bags sorted by colour in a huge chest at the end of my bed, mementos are or shelves, but there’s just boxes and bags everywhere. Stuff like my kitchen equipment, which I didn’t take with me when I moved because the place I moved into was kitted out. They’re good quality pots and pans, so it would be daft to get rid of them.
There’s quite a lot of loft space at my parents’ house. Maybe it’s time some of the stuff I know I need to keep hold of (e.g pans) went for a time out in the loft.
Some stuff definitely needs to hit the curb though. That Dell monitor can stay, but I think I’ve still got the tower for it under my desk. Hmm. First week of summer break (if I don’t have a job), I’m going to blitz that room.
“Out of sight, out of mind.” – Exactly! The last time I moved my mom helped, and she said as “payment” for her help she was going to bring a bunch of boxes of my childhood stuff because she didn’t want it in her house anymore (which I thought was fair). I have gone through a couple of the boxes, and the problem is that going through them brings up memories of items that you completely forgot that you had saved at all, so suddenly it is hard to let them go. However, I do tell myself that if I let the item go, chances are that within a few days I will completely forget about them all over again. So I keep the most precious items, put the others in a box for a few days. If I open the box and can’t remember what is below the first layer of stuff, it’s gone.
One suggestion with mementos is to take pictures and put the pictures in an album.
I just was at a flee market in my neighbor hood here in Munich. And it seems the only good thinks the people are really selling is old childrens stuff. I think must of the people just stick to their good stuff as long as possible and would rather put it somewhere in a box then selling it.
“The good stuff” has made the move online, eBay, amazon.com, craigslist, half.com, and others. This is where I’ve spent the last few months getting rid of a lot of clutter. We’ve now got a cycle that goes like this to maximize our income:
1) Online
2) Garage sale
3) Donations
It’s all about balance. Once we get to the point where we are worrying so much about decluttering, it’s probably best to back away and just live life.
None of us will ever get to that Ikea catalog look, where we are sitting in a stark white room on a beanbag chair with one speaker and a notebook.
Amen to that! You are exactly right! And honestly, does anyone want that look–looks very sterile and unlived in.
Nobody wants Wall O Tubs, though, either. Not to mention paying for storage spaces, or having a room in your house occupied by stuff instead of people – something that’s really common.
Sadly, some people love their stuff so much that not only do they have a Wall O Tubs, they use Space Saver bags as the “solution” to store more stuff.
I do hate moving, but it was a great way to keep stuff from piling up. Now that we’ve been settled in our house for 7 years, the stuff level has slowly crept back up.
I heard a great tip recently about the indecision of getting rid of particular object. If you could replace it within 20 minutes for less than $20 – out it goes! No need to keep something that could be re-obtained quickly and cheaply. And, my experience teaches me that 49 times out of 50, I don’t miss the item I’ve purged.
good tip! i will keep that in mind on my next cleaning! (should have been, i dont know, yesterday…)
I might alter the equation to 10 minutes and $100. There’s a teenager in my home. ’nuff said.
Just sell them (pf and comic books). Frame your favorite comics and hang hem in your place. Sell the rest. (highest value to dealer, the rest at yard sale). Done. Stop spending mental energy on stuff that isn’t meaningful to you now.
I’ve seen a comics display/storage solution that used the rectangular Plexiglas box frames. A whole series of a comic can fit in the frame and then the frame goes on the wall or shelf. Some of the cover art is really cool … if I were a comic collector I think I’d want at least the best out where I could see them. 🙂 And if I just didn’t love ’em enough to do that … I’d sell ’em!
Other than the $25 a month, I don’t think your strategy is unsound.
We have a ‘stuff purgatory’ closet in which anything we are considering ejecting goes to live for a few weeks or months. Sometimes, occasionally, something makes it out of purgatory. Otherwise, it great to know its been sitting there for months and we’ve not missed it.
Purging is just like accumulating. It happens in fits and start. That’s ok.
I like your idea! I purged our house last fall knowing that we would be moving this year. I also knew that after 15 years of living in the same space it was going to be painful. I’ve done pretty good at keeping clutter to a minimum, probably because my Mom is a hoarder and it drives me nuts whenever I visit her. I can’t declutter her house so I compensate by attacking my own. We have an extra bedroom in our new home, so rather than buy bedroom furniture for a bedroom we don’t need, I am going to designate it as the staging room.
When I made the decision to marry my Brit husband and move to Cornwall, England where he lived, I had to figure out what to do with all of my stuff.
Due to the economy, I still own my house in Atlanta, but it now has absolutely nothing of mine in it. I can’t really describe to you how freeing that feeling is.
Once I told friends I was moving, they came calling asking if they could buy my furniture, car, and a million other things. It was difficult at first to let go of some stuff as I had accumulated some special pieces, but it wasn’t until I was standing in front of a wall of books trying to decide which books I was going to take and which books I needed to sell or give away that I thought about how moving and downsizing to 200 cubic feet of what mattered most was an expected gift of the journey.
Part of the gift was in the finality of choice and the other in learning how to let the rest of it go.
My possessions had always been important to me either for the connection they provided to people or to memories, and I realized then that I had to let go of stuff to make room for my new love and life in the UK to have an opportunity to flourish.
When I began a blog not long after moving, I immediately decided on Gifts of the Journey … thanks to an awareness that carried more meaning than the clutter of stuff I was surrounded by.
Good luck with your war on clutter.
agree with the chorus of “sell the comics!”… keep a few you like, and sell the rest!
i’ve been a light collector of things for years, but part of that is knowing when to sell (LOL i feel like i’m american pickers XD) i had some gorgeous signed prints & a poster by a famous comic book artist, 3 total, and my life had changed such that i needed extra rent money to move to the big city (first, last and security, as apartment dwellers know). i didn’t want to and i held on to my favorite, but i sold the other two at a hefty, hefty profit and used the money to really propel my life forward. i’ve been in the big city ever since 🙂
(and heaven help me if i ever have to move again, i’m not selling that last poster! :)) but as silly as it is, i’m thankful to that stuff for having gained so much value, and for giving an opportunity i wouldn’t have had otherwise, and i remember both the posters fondly.
your stuff can have a new life as cash flow to help ease yourself into your new life… that’s something pretty cool.
(and boy do i have the biggest respect for the artist who signed the posters! that basically allowed my art career to launch… what a way to pay it forward for the next generation.)
My friend’s late husband used to say that they were living in his stamp collection–the one he sold to make the down payment on their house. Now that she’s widowed, she will be able to sell that house at a very great profit, so her husband’s stamp collection is still taking care of her, even if he can’t.
HOW DO YOU SELL A STAMP COLLECTION??
a member of our family passed away and left a huge collection of stamps. some are in books which we’re keeping, but the boxes and boxes of loose stamps, do they even have any value? i wouldn’t even know where to begin, or if it’s worth it to… everyone hates to toss them, but no one’s really buying new stamp books to fill out either…
Auction houses for the stamp collection.
they could be worth thousands.
You need to contact someone like PAWN STARS who has people they can have that know the value go through them. some stamps are worth hundreds or thousands & some nothing.
I don’t know much about stamp collecting, but the American Philatelic Society, a non-profit organization of people who know about stamps, collect them, and gather information about them, can probably put you in touch with someone who can help value your collection. Many states also have philatelic societies. I don’t have phone numbers, but Google should provide you with someone to call.
thanks for the tips!
lol it was pawn stars that got me thinking about it 🙂
will check out auction places and stamp organizations.
About all I can muster is “Ugh. Stuff. Ugh.”
For me it’s a very different definition, though. The DVDs I may never rewatch, the hundreds of books I may never read, the dress clothes I haven’t worn in years (but I will! I swear!)… those are fine, don’t bother me one bit (except when I’m moving). But if someone, say, buys me a set of chocolates in a reusable tin, I get pissed.* I don’t want this! I don’t need this! And it’s not really recyclable. This is JUST STUPID STUFF.
I have a lot of, objectively, extra things that I have no problem with, that I value even. I’m just tired of everything coming with such a huge side of stuff.
*Boy, don’t I sound completely rational. Yikes.
Holy Cow! It’s been a while since I’ve read GRS. I’m sorry to hear the news JD!
When getting rid of stuff I just donate it. Sometimes it’s just easiest.
I’d love to see a post someday about how it feels to let go of something (like collecting comics) that no longer seems to interest you. I think this is a part of growing up and aging – our interests change. But hanging on to what “was” and what “might be” in the future based on your past can have a financial cost too.
So you are hanging on to comic books. My father is hanging on to a 68 corvette that doesn’t even run. I’m hanging on to a gym membership for a pool that I keep hoping I’ll start regularly swimming in. How do you let go of the emotional ties and let financial reality make some hard decisions for you??
I envy my husband, who seems to be able to make these decisions much more easily than me….
I have a friend who digitized all of his comics before he sold them. Best of both worlds!
Was just coming here to say this — I have several friends who have gone all or mostly digital with their comics. We didn’t even go digital; some of them we replaced with a collection and most we just sold off. I don’t think we miss any of them. We kept maybe a single box; mostly stuff we really do like to look at that’s either signed or not collected yet.
Books as well — is there any book you can’t check out from the library or buy again cheaply if you really need it?
To my great regret, there are many books that are not available in local libraries. When I look at the books I own, I often re-read them. The trouble with digital libraries is that one has to know exactly what one wants – no browsing discoveries – same problem with the loss of printed encyclopedias.
I just had a garage sale this weekend, so this is a timely post indeed. I think it’s okay to hang on to the comic books for a bit longer, as a garage sale is not where you’re going to get the best prices. You could put out a few with a sign for interested collectors to contact you after the sale, but online sales will probably give you a better return.
Sell your other stuff and use part of that money to pay the rent. Make sure they are protected from damage while they are stored. See how you feel after purging the other stuff. If you feel euphoric, then ride the wave and get going on selling the comics. I have also had the experience of selling an item and wishing it back. Set aside a small amount of the garage sale proceeds so that you could re-purchase the same or similar item. Also another way to ease the brain is to take digital pictures before you get rid of things. Somehow, knowing that you sill “have” the item can make it easier to part with. Good luck!
I really wish there was a 1:1 trade option for books you own to convert to ebooks. My bookshelf has been picked over pretty well. I really only have books that I will read over and over again. I’ve embraced the kindle for pc, especially since I can check out library books. I’d love to get rid of all of my physical books, but only if I had ebooks to replace them. And I don’t want to go out and spend that money (even if I sell them, I know I’m only going to get ~$0.25 a book if they even want them).
Since I’ve moved 8 times in 8 years for various reasons (divorce in the early ’00s, relocating to Portland from the Bay Area, etc) I’ve became the queen of purging stuff. Thankfully I’m more stable now and have been in my apartment for a little over two years.
With that said, there are certain things that have always gone with me: small antique book collection, 80+ year old cast iron skillets, Le Creuset cookware, solid wood furniture including vintage, antique and teak pieces, etc. If its rare, have a somewhat high momentary value (meaning, I would never be able to replace it) and use it on a regular basis (I use the cookware almost daily) I’m keeping it.
What that said again, I would sell the PF books and the comic books. If you haven’t missed it yet and still don’t have any desire to keep them. When it comes to books, I’ve purged a couple hundred before relocating to here. The ones I kept I know I will read again or what I would consider classics.
(Curious about the yard sale…)
I had to purge my books and comics over the past five years, so here’s my tips:
1) Books – get rid of all books that can be replaced with an Amazon Kindle + library card. When you want to read the book again, buy it for the Kindle or check it out from the library.
2) Comics – purchase an iPad, then get rid of all comics that can be purchased digitally through one of the many comic store apps for iOS. When you want to read the comic again, purchase the digital copy as needed for the iPad.
Also purge books/comics that you don’t plan to read again, even if they are not available through the Kindle, iPad or library.
I was able to get rid of my ten short boxes of comics by selling them to a comic book dealer at the price he was willing to pay. I was also able to get rid of my books through a combination of Goodwill (for fiction books), Powell’s and Bookmooch.
What’s left right now are a collection of art books and a few rare graphic novels. I’m not through purging yet, but it’s a lot better than it was before.
Whoa! This column is called “Get Rich Slowly.” If you want to spring for an iPad and a bunch of e-books, fine. However, the idea is to get rid of your Stuff and save any money you make, not figure out how to spend it on a “smaller” version of what you’re dumping. IMO, that’s just trading one Thing for another Thing. I might call this Mind Clutter. Most of us have too much of that, too!
What a far way you will have come when/if you purge the comic books! Such a symbol of you moving onto new hobbies, better ways of spending money, and less collecting of stuff.
Boxing things is a great pre-step to purging. It’s amazing how often I don’t miss or even think about my stuff once it’s been boxed. We really need and use so little.
And regarding finance books, here’s how I got rid of a lot of my general books and resource-type books: ask yourself which books you’ll definitely open and read again. Be ruthless. And purge the rest. Most of your finance books probably won’t be revisited.
If you haven’t missed it, you don’t need or even want it. Get rid of it! I recently moved from NY to TN. I took a look at moving prices and decided I could always get more Stuff down here. I had 3 massive yard sales and gave the rest to family, friends, & charity. I limited what I brought to the things I absolutely needed or loved. I’m actually getting rid of some of the books I brought with me. Getting rid of stuff, unburdening yourself, is cathartic and freeing. You’ll only thank yourself after all is said and done.
I have been waging the same war on stuff for a while myself – I think that’s what drew me to GRS more than the financial advice was JD’s war on clutter (mental financial and actual physical). I also read a game changing book at the same time. Peter Walsh (of TLCs Clean Sweep), wrote the book – It’s all Too Much, it focuses much more on the phychological impact of why we keep Stuff. It helped me to work through a few of my issues and finally let go of The Snowman Sweater.
It’s a quick read and I highly recommend it.
I lost my enthusiasm for Peter Walsh when I saw him try (on Clean Sweep) to convince someone to toss out the cremated ashes of a beloved pet dog. It amounted to emotional torture for the sake of television ratings.
I enjoy watching Storage Wars, this is the show where people bid on abandoned storage containers. It is sometimes amazing to see what is in them and to think that someone paid to store what, to me, is junk. We live in a 20s home, in Florida, so small closets and no basement, as a result we hit the max on stuff storage pretty quick. I’ve got to purge my closet pretty often or it gets out of hand.
I have real problems with paperwork. With 4 homes, a primary and three investments, the paperwork is always piling up. I worked on getting organized last year, I was about 75% done when I stopped working on the project. I need to get back to it.
I don’t know how you are handling your paperwork, but I had an “Ah-hah…doh!” moment about paperwork this year. I bought a scanner a couple years ago for scanning photographs. I’m an amateur photographer. I didn’t really know what I needed (nor the right questions to ask) so the scanner is not useful for it’s original purpose, but I soon found it made up for it’s purchase price by allowing me to send documents back and forth when I needed, and allowed me to save copies of articles and pictures from books and magazines borrowed from friends. I’m also the type of person who reads and keeps all kinds of paperwork. I have the owners manual to anything I’ve ever bought that came with one. One day I was mildly obsessing over how the folder for my kitchen appliances was bulky and had a tendency to lose things because the manuals were all different shapes and thicknesses. I needed to file a a piece of chipboard with the warranty for my new dutch oven on it and I was aggravated because it was one more thing with an odd shape and bulk to go into the file and I suddenly thought, “Wait! I can scan this and store it on my computer.” I finally had a way to address something that had been bothering me. So now, instead of filing documents, I scan them. Mentally, I find that easier to deal with than the physical paper. I can also convert the PDF files to text since I own Acrobat Professional which makes finding the things I file easier because if all else fails I can let the computer search for the document for me.
Best idea ever! I have a 3-in-1 printer/scanner/copier which converts scanned items to PDF, JPG, etc. I have a ton of paperwork I need to get rid of and I can invest a couple of days scanning it. The only thing I would need is a separate storage drive…
PDF versions of manuals for many products can now be found online on the manufacturer’s website. I try to be as paperless as possible, and whenever I get a new product, I just download the PDF manual and toss the paper one.
I have a SERIOUS problem with PAPER. Over the last couple of years, I have managed to dump a lot of it, but it still seems to breed and multiply overnight! Thank goodness for my city’s comprehensive recycling. I get such a satisfying righteous feeling from being able to contribute to this program. I haven’t finished this project, not by a long shot. On my way from the mailbox into the house, I stop at the BIG recyling container and drop in anything I DO NOT WANT TO MAKE IT INTO THE HOUSE (where it would quickly accumulate into a what-the-heck-is-this pile). I haven’t printed anything in over a year. This is where being lazy helps — haven’t gotten around to connecting my printer/copier/scanner to my PC! If I can’t get documents in digital form, I’m pretty sure I don’t want them. Sigh. To think I used to print every e-mail! I still have files full of them, dating back more than 10 years. I have room for them, but they’re next on my PURGE list.
Ha! I know the what-the-heck-is-this pile all too well…
My biggest issue with the purge is that (and I’ve had this happen multiple times before) right after I get rid of something I haven’t had a use for in a long time, I need it.
So I always think about that when I debate whether or not to trash something or sell it. How soon after I get rid of it will I need it?
If it’s something that gets used once or never, no problem. But if it’s an item that has a specific use that can come in real handy, there’s no reason to get rid of it, because “you never know”.
It’s not a “war on stuff”. It’s your “amicable divorce from stuff,” in which you try and satisfy all parties. If it was a “war on stuff”, you’d hire a dumpster to be delivered to your house, throw everything into it, and have it hauled away.
That’s what I’d do. I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m unusual, but I have very little attachment to stuff. It’s easy for me to throw things away, even if they used to be useful or interesting to me. If they’ve stopped being useful, I can throw them in the trash with no apprehension. Apparently this is *really, really hard* for a lot of people, hence the internet phenomenon with helping people to get rid of things.
I am not “anti-stuff” like many participants in this internet phenomenon seem to be. I like some things, I keep stuff that I find useful or fun. I have a whole shed full of tools and supplies for building surfboards (there’s more than “100 things” just in that shed), But I have no attachment to much of it. There are a few exceptions, like the first surfboard I built myself, but things like old magazines (or comic books, if I read comic books) would just go in the trash or recycling. Same things with previous model cell phones “But they still work fine!” you might say, but who cares? I’ll never use it again, nobody wants to buy them because they’ll never use them again. I might as well recycle them. Many other things are similar. They’re just things. Use them while they’re useful and then move on.
J.D., thanks for this wonderful post!
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with purging in steps, and if you need to take a few months or a year to put some stuff in storage and re-evaluate your relationship to it, there’s nothing wrong with that.
My husband and I did that a few years ago, and it showed us how much stuff we were carrying around that we really didn’t need. Sure there were a few things we ended up going back to the storage units for, but a lot of it was extraneous stuff that we were keeping just because we hadn’t taken the time to really examine our lives.
And yes, we got rid of most of it, even though we moved to a larger space (from our apartment to our first house).
A neighborhood near mine had their annual garage sale this weekend, and my husband and I wandered around for an hour or so. We went last year also, and I was really struck by the fact that most of the houses that were selling things had done so the previous year. Houses that had cheap junk last year had it again this year, as did houses with higher value things. So I wondered, do people just buy more every year to replace what the have sold the previous year, or are they still working on a backlog of things from the previous year, or maybe is it a combination of the two?
I sold some things at my neighborhood sale last fall that we didn’t need any more in our new house, but it wasn’t much and I wouldn’t do it again because the bother and time vastly exceeded the monetary return. And it would be years before I accumulated enough garage sale stuff to sell again anyway. (For the record, I bought a stationary sander, and my husband bought a few video games at the sale this weekend.)
I buy books, but almost always these are books that I’ve read first and decided that they are worth rereading. I actually reread them; however I rarely buy fiction, so maybe that makes a difference. The majority of my reading material comes from the library, but I still have several bookcases of keepers.
I buy camping, canoeing, cycling, and hiking gear, as old things wear out or better stuff comes along, but we usually pass along old but still functional stuff to undergrads with an interest in the outdoors, since they often don’t have money to buy much gear. Stuff that doesn’t work anymore just gets tossed.
We buy things to fix up the house, but these either become part of the house or are tools that we use later for other projects.
My husband buys video games (mainly at yard sales and flea markets), but he either sells them or gives them away when he’s finished with a game.
We buy clothes as we need them, but then the old clothes get turned into rags if they are at the end of their life or given away if we didn’t end up wearing them like we expected to.
So I’m curious, for everyone who feels they aren’t in control of their accumulation of stuff: what kinds of things do you buy? And is the problem in the buying (buy too many?), the storage (no place to put things so the house becomes cluttered), the type of item (things that get ‘used up’or are ‘one use’), or in the lack of a system for passing things on when you are done with them? Or do you buy things that you expect to use and then it turns out you don’t?
It seems to me that the above are all different problems, and so advice to ‘just give it away if you don’t use it’ may be simplistic at best and totally irrelevant at worst.
And for JD: things with sentimental value (like your comics) take time to reach the point when you are mentally done using them. Even if you are physically done with an item (already read it, for example) there’s a mental component to owning stuff too. So I wouldn’t force it. You’ll know when you’re ready to get rid them when you look at those boxes and think “those are worth at least $50, and I would like the $50”. Until then, they may be providing a mental service that you aren’t really aware of.
I sew, and for years I held onto several boxes of fabric that I got from my Granny when we cleaned out her house. I used some of it shortly after getting it, and the rest sat in boxes. I would go through it periodically, thinking I should ‘be good’ and get rid of it, but couldn’t quite make myself do it. A few years ago, I needed some space for newer fabric, and wanted to use the nice boxes I had Granny’s fabric in. Suddenly it made no sense to keep Granny’s fabric that I wasn’t using, and off to the thrift store it went. So I wouldn’t worry too much about the things you’re not sure of their correct disposition now. Their time will come.
I’m not a big collector of stuff, but I do have one answer for you. I have some things that I have kept for many years and multiple moves without using (and sometimes without looking at). I know that in reality I am not going to use these things again. Nor do I have any children who I can kid myself into thinking I’m saving them for. My problem is that I paid a lot of money for them when I purchased them and didn’t get my money’s worth out of them before I lost interest in them. Until I can forgive myself for “wasting” that money, I’m stuck with keeping those items.
Re: The folks who always seem to have stuff to sell at yearly garage sales.
It could be they’re working off a backlog of stuff, like in a shed or neglected corner of their home.
Or perhaps they have kids – once the youngest has outgrown certain toys and clothes, then you have some stuff to get rid of!
It could also be that they are selling their parents’ stuff, or a friend is co-opting their garage for the annual sale (as this is an annual event, they likely get quite a bit of foot traffic than if they all had garage sales at different dates).
And yeah, maybe they’re like my parents and feel they need to replace things with more things (don’t even get me started…)
It’s not the buying, it’s the receiving. First there’s birthdays and Christmas, with the flood of crap from all sides that can’t be stemmed despite our pleas.
Then there are the sharers, downsizers and deaths – my grandma’s yarn stash and photos (and furniture), grandpa’s photo albums (and furniture), mom’s good china, auntie’s crystal glasses (which were actually my great-grandmother’s). A book series my mom read to me when I was little, in hardback. Friends who go to Costco and bring us half a flat of canned chickpeas. Friends who mail us books and magazines we might like.
THEN there are the things stored for other people – my little brother lives on another continent and visits once a year, so we have a couple boxes of stuff he uses when he’s here.
And then, finally, are the things we actually bought or made – clothes my son’s outgrown (just got rid of 3 paper bags full, since the season changed), books we might not reread, Halloween costumes, hobbies we lost time for when we had a kid (some I’ve purged, some I still have hopes for). Floor mats from the car that died (just got rid of those this weekend, they were hiding in the garage.)
I do have some gemstones, some antique postcards, and of course correspondence over the years I’ve kept. It can all be packed up in a pretty small area. I even recently went through a purge where I got rid of college and grad school text books that I was sentimentally attached to (yet out of date). But my husband cannot let go. He has a couple of bookshelves downstairs full of books, and at least 5 more upstairs, full of everything from comics, records, books, magazines, random stuff. He has about a room worth of paintings from college that are going to dust, granparents clothes that doesn’t even fit him, who knows. In that same area, everything stored for myself and both kids is maybe a quarter of that space. He has gone to donate books, and come back with MORE books (because they were going to throw them out). I wish I understood.
If you don’t want the books in your apartment it is unlikely that you will EVER want them in your living space again. If that is the case it is not worth the extra charge to store them.
Our family of four lives in a 900 sq ft apartment. We have a storage bin in our building but use it only for out-of-season clothing or equipment (beach chair and coolers, sleds). These items rotate into our living space depending on the season and are both necessary and used regularly.
Your storage represents more of a delayed decision. I would probably use it to store the books and comics while selling them (assuming they are worth more than the accumulated storage costs). On the other hand, keeping them in your apartment might encourage you to unload them even sooner.
If the price for indecision (and maybe a little procrastination) is $25/month that doesn’t sound too bad. Extrapolate that out like you would a FV calculation on a cable bill for 10 years and that’s ~ $3,000. 😉 Maybe add in 2 hours a month of thinking about it, feeling guilty and dreading it at another $50/hour.
Hmm. I’d just want to get it over with. Maybe call up an INTJ friend like Tyler and let him go to town on your stuff.
I read something about how Craigslist can be considered everyone’s storage unit, since the money you make from selling your stuff is equal to the money it costs when you want it later.
My first ten years out of college, I moved 8 times, which helps A LOT – handling the same crap from box to shelf to box on a regular basis is a big motivator for purging. But now it’s been ten years with one move and I am definitely seeing the random crap rear its head. But I haven’t had to deal with it, either. For example I could get rid of 90% of my cookbooks now that I use so many food blogs for my recipe ideas.. but they’re not hurting anything, so they stay on my shelf gathering dust.
Perhaps you can give yourself a calendar commitment to start dealing with your stored items – six months? A year? No major international travel until you make a decision on that front? I dunno. $25/month is a cheap price to pay for procrastination enabling!
You know, you don’t HAVE to get rid of it all in one go. Set it up in baby steps – get rid of the comic books you don’t really like this month, and then next month do the same for the PF books. Every month, tackle comics or PF books until you have it whittled down to what you can comfortably keep in your apartment.
I think that’s the hardest part with purging – people think it’s “all or nothing,” and that’ll make anyone think twice before they throw away Stuff they don’t need any more.
The wardrobe tips certainly worked for. We used to rent a house. Last year we decided it was time to buy our own. While packing to move in to the new house, I classified my clothes (something like: trash, usable-giveaway, might-use, daily & work). The most interesting thing is those “might-use” clothes have never been unpacked in one year – meaning, I have lots of clothing that I don’t even really need!
JD – Don’t rent a storage locker unless your stay in the apartment is going to be short lived and you will soon move to a larger place. Most people rent storage spaces and just pay and pay. I’ve know several people who had lockers for long periods (14 years in one case). Once they dealt with The Stuff they threw it all/most of it away. It just puts off dealing with Stuff without solving the problem.
After 5 years (much less 14) the PF books won’t be worth much. Comic books might be worth something unless they get ruined while there.
I heard about someone who boxed up a bunch of stuff they didn’t want to get rid of yet and wrote a date on the box. If they didn’t go into the box to get something out after 6 months (a year, you choose) they would throw the box out without looking at anything inside.
I have inadvertantly done that since moving out of my parents on my own. Unfortunately a couple years ago when I went to clean out their shed, I realized that I had re-purchased most of things I had been storing there. This completely defeated the whole purpose of saving them.
My struggle is trying to balance keeping things and throwing out things that I don’t want to buy again later.
I went through a purge last week and got rid of 1/3 of my clothes. Still didnt make a dent.
A little off topic – but a fork works well to mash potatoes (or anything else)…
It’s really difficult to let go of old treasures and memories but after it is over my space feels so much more open and energetic. And I still have the memories.
When my parents’ neighbors downsized from their large family home to a smaller apartment, they hired someone to box up their entire basement and take it away to be donated or tossed, without even looking at it. Their feeling was that if they’d left it in the basement that long they probably wouldn’t miss it, but if they tried to clean it out themselves they’d start getting sentimental and end up keeping things they didn’t really want or need.
After helping parents move recently, I can say that I now see tremendous value in purging stuff on a regular basis. Otherwise, things can get out hand before you know it. The stuff may win the war in that case 🙂
Also, I wonder how many people end up keeping a storage locker longer than they truly intended. A stopgap measure turns in to a long-term financial expense in no time.
While I’m naturally someone who likes to save things, I’m coming around to the reality that it’s often best to purge away!
Oh my! My spouse suffers from this same “I can’t get rid of it – I might need it/miss it someday”. Please! Give it away. Someone out there probably really needs it. Clear your space/head/karma and learn to live in the present. You’ll always have your memories. Lose the stuff that is clogging up your life. And actually help someone who could really use what is only taking up space and/or making you cling to a past you now only have in your memories.
I am pretty good with clothes, I use the change of seasons as a chance to purge. Books are another matter entirely, I am uncharacteristically materialistic about them, and as an English graduate I somehow see my library as testament to my studies. I think the fact that I have a terrible memory also makes me more clingy!
Have just started to go through them though and get rid of the texts I didn’t like or haven’t read which just sit around making me feel guilty!
About to move into a small house and think it’s a good reason to go through our flat room by room and figure out what is genuinely useful.
What do people do with their college diplomas? I don’t have a workspace where I would like to display it, I don’t want it on the wall in my house, and I obviously can’t just “take a photo of it” and scan it. Ideas?
Just put it in a drawer. There are some things that defy classification, and a diploma is one of them.
Ours are in the file cabinet, with copies of our birth certificates and some other documentation.
I took my diploma to work and hung it over my desk
My B.A. diploma is stashed in a photo album somewhere. My M.A. diploma is still rolled up in the cardboard tube it was mailed in 17 years ago. Good gracious has it really been that long.
There’s a lot to be said for the long term value of organizing things, even if it comes at a cost. Making an investment in a storage space, or storage supplies (such as bags, totes, cedar chips and mothballs) for things you will eventually sell means that you can help preserve the value, and also hopefully be able to find things quickly if a buyer comes up on the fly.
I have been working on moving items from my folks’ house to my house to sell at trade shows and being able to organize the items at a small cost (plastic containers and baggies) has meant I’ve been able to more quickly bring items when a buyer inquires, vs having to paw through bags and boxes in two different locations… and the gas costs.
“The difference between trash and stuff is that I know where my stuff is.”
As someone who had a horrible moth infestation, I feel justified in saying this…
Please don’t use mothballs. They smell awful. They are horribly toxic. The smell almost never comes out. They were a huge mistake. I ended up pitching some things that got saved!
I know what you mean about discovering, to your horror, that, e.g., the cashmere sweater you bought last year has tiny holes from some insect feeding on it. Ack!
Instead of stinky, toxic mothballs, I have used bay leaves for many years. Just scatter them on shelves. Even better, find a bay tree (and a willing owner of said tree) and cut small branches. I also use them in my spice cabinet. Not only do they deter moths, bugs don’t like them, either.
I am a believer of living simply, saying that I see my closet has 4 sets of saving razor, gifted and bought. Point is we rarely keep count of stuff we have excess of. We only count our needs.
JD, I can relate because I am also going through a major Stuff purge. The local volunteer fire department hosts a community garage sale every June as a fundraiser — participants in the sale give the fire dept. 10% in exchange for space and all the advertising. I save Stuff I’m ready to part with but that might have enough value to be worth selling all year, I have been setting up my little table of Stuff at the sale for several years now. But THIS year I’m really doing a scour. Just HAVE to prune, there’s no need to have so many clothes I don’t wear, so many extra dishes, vases, tchotchkes, and holy cow, we can’t even TALK about books. So I’m trying to review my Stuff VERY critically. In order to keep it, it has to be something I really do need, use or wear, that I absolutely love, or it has truly significant sentimental and/or historical meaning that makes me want to pass it down to my grandchildren (if I had any). So my booth at the fire station sale this year will be jam packed with great deals!
Best of luck to you on this project. I recently discovered an amazing book from 2001 called LET GO OF CLUTTER by Harriet Schlecter “The Miracle Worker.” Yes, that’s what it says on the cover–which, I might add, is fairly dorky. A self-described nerd, I was still prepared to mock her. Instead, I worship her. 8 powerful chapters review how to:
– eliminate clutter and the stress connected to it
– purge papers, prevent piles, clear out closets
– shed sentimental stuff without regret (this made me think of you)
– manage mental clutter.
Reading this book kickstarted a huge purging/sorting/cleaning project in our household, which had been backburnered for years. Highly recommended.
We moved across town 11 months ago to downsize over a 1000 square feet. Purged a lot of stuff. Then, less than 2 weeks ago, we moved a 1000 miles and downsized another 500 feet. When you’re paying by the pound to make a move of this magnitude, it’s pretty easy to decide what to keep!
J.D., if you want help with the selling-collectibles article let me know; we had talked at one point about doing an eBay-selling article, but it never happened. Drop me a line if you wish; use my yahoo.com email address with the user ID “bellowsburst.”