too much stuff

52 Week Decluttering Challenge 2015

January 2, 2015 By Jeffrey Strain 3 Comments

When one thinks about getting their finances in order, the first thing that comes to mind usually isn’t decluttering their residence, but doing so can be one of the best financial decisions you can make this year. If getting more organized and getting rid of unwanted stuff also happens to be one of your New Year’s resolutions, all the better. That’s because there are a number of good financial reasons to declutter your residence.

Most of us have way too much stuff cluttering our apartment, condo or house. One of the most popular threads in the forums for the past few years is the decluttering thread, and the 2015 decluttering thread is already off too a strong start. If this is something that you would like to do this year, it’s a great place to visit to get some excellent ideas and to maintain motivation throughout the year.

A common reason people continue to keep things around when they haven’t been used in years is “just in case” they may need it someday. It’s a habit like any other habit, and once you have a habit, it’s hard to break. The best way to break a habit is to begin a routine to form a new one (that’s one of the hidden benefits of the 52 week money challenge). A good way to get into the habit of staying more organized is with the 52 week decluttering challenge.

One of the best parts of the 52 week decluttering challenge is the amount of stuff you can potentially purge from your house. If you complete the challenge, you will have 1,378 less items in your house than you did the year before (assuming you don’t add any more). While this may seem like a lot, you will likely be surprised at the amount of stuff you find hiding in closets and other storage spaces once you begin.

This is how the challenge works. There are 52 weeks in the year. Each week you must declutter one to fifty-two items from your house. However many items you remove that week, you cross that number off the bottom of the challenge sheet, then add the number to the current week of the year. The next week you need to declutter again, and cross off another number still available. You continue to do this the entire year until all the number have been crossed off and you have 1,378 less things in your house.

52 Week Declutter Challenge Printable Sheet (click on image to print)

If this is one of the things you have been wanting to do, or if you know someone who would greatly benefit from this challenge, I encourage you to give it a try. The challenge gives enough space so during busy weeks you need to only dispose of a few things, while the weeks you have more time you can purge a larger number. Even better, when 2016 arrives you may have a strong habit formed to keep you organized for the years to come.

(Photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee)

Reflections on a Purge

March 29, 2013 By Jennifer Derrick 2 Comments

This winter I have focused on purging my house of excess stuff. I’ve never thought of myself as having a lot of stuff (and compared to some I don’t), but a real dig in to the deepest recesses of my closet, attic, and drawers revealed some things I’d been holding on to that needed to go. As I purged, I learned it’s often not as much about the stuff as it is about reconciling who you were with who you are now.

The first week of the purge, I found some shirts from college in my closet. We don’t need to point out how long ago college was for me, but let’s just say it wasn’t yesterday. Worn and faded, those shirts were reminders of a different time. Some were from my sorority days and other were from spring breaks or football games. None of them were in good enough condition to be worn in public and, I asked myself, even if they were, would I (at my current age) want to be seen in a shirt with sorority letters on it, or advertising spring break foolishness? Um, no.

So the shirts got marked for the rag-bag (they are still god for cleaning up paint spills and cleaning off dip sticks). I decided to keep two favorites, to be used for painting and other messy chores. The others I was sad to see go but before I cut them into strips, I took a second and snapped some photos of them, just to have the memories. The shirts took up space; pictures don’t.

After settling the shirt issue, it was on to my tape collection. Holy cow, I had a lot of tapes. I hated to get rid of them but, again, they were taking up space that I needed for other things. I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d listened to them so by that reckoning, they must not be that important to me anymore.

Regardless, I took a weekend and went through every one of those tapes. What I realized was that, in most cases, I’d bought those tapes for one or two “good” songs and I really didn’t care about the rest. (This was in the days long before iTunes let you buy a single song.) So I made notes of which songs were the important ones and then downloaded those to my iPod. I gave the tapes to the thrift store. The digital files don’t take up the space in my home that the tapes did. I salvaged the important reminders from days gone by and let the rest of it go.

There were many other things like this that I found. Remnants of hobbies I found fun long ago but no longer enjoy. Collections of things that used to be important to me but for which now I can only muster a slight, “That’s kind of neat.” A few toys from childhood that have fond memories attached, but no practical use since I’ll never have kids to pass them on to. As much as this purge was about freeing up some space in my house, it was also about letting go of the person I used to be and making room for the person that I am now.

I can’t deny that I was sad to see those old things go because it not only meant the things were gone, it also meant letting go of that younger person I used to be. I let go of the girl who listened to tapes on her “boom box” every night until she fell asleep. The sorority girl without a care in the world is now in the rag-bag. The kid who played for hours with Fisher Price toys is now in the thrift store. The kid who read Goodnight Moon and Trixie Belden is awaiting the library’s annual book sale.

But the woman who loves board games is alive and well, as is the one who loves science fiction and fantasy novels. The woman who collects shells is still here and she still has her iPod filled with everything from classical to reggae. The marathon runner is well represented because now I can display my medals instead of having them crammed into boxes. The person I used to be is gone, but the person I am now has plenty of room in her house to showcase her interests. Old loves no longer crowd out new ones.

There’s something to be said for sentiment (which is why I took pictures of almost everything I discarded). But I learned that I don’t need the stuff to remember the person I used to be and the fun I used to have. The stuff only hampered me from enjoying the person I am now to the fullest. I hope I can do better at keeping my stuff more current as I go through life and I won’t have to do this on this scale again. But if I do, it will help to remember that life marches on and that old stuff only interferes with the new phases of life.

(Photo courtesy of mamamusings)

The Paradox of Stuff: Own Less, Use More

March 6, 2013 By Jennifer Derrick 7 Comments

Most of us tend to think that more is better, especially when it comes to our “stuff.” If two pairs of shoes is good, ten must be great. If a library of thirty DVD’s is good, a hundred must be better. If having fifteen board games provides a lot of entertainment, a library of fifty must provide even more entertainment. And on and on it goes, with many of us accumulating far more stuff than we can or will ever use. The funny thing is that our belief that more is always better works against us when it comes to stuff.

When you have too much stuff, much of it often languishes, unused, in the closets and cabinets. Why is this? Isn’t more better? Isn’t it better to have more choices? If we have more, won’t we use more? The answer is often no. Those who have less often get more use and utility out of their few items than do people who have multiples of things. There are a variety of reasons for this, but they all boil down to a simple truth: More is just more, not better. Here are some of the reasons why having more often means you actually use the items less often or not at all.

You can’t possibly use it all

You’re only one person or family. Can you really watch five hundred DVD’s? Can you really wear sixty pairs of shoes or carry fifty handbags? Can you ever play your way through five hundred board games? Can you ever use two hundred tubes of toothpaste? There is a limit to how much of anything you can realistically use before it goes bad, goes out of style, or you just don’t care anymore. There’s also a limit to how much time you have to watch, read, or play things. Anything beyond that realistic amount of stuff is just a waste.

You don’t know what you have

When you have too much, you often don’t use it all simply because you don’t know what you have. Unless you create a directory of some sort, it’s hard to keep up with massive amounts of clothes, shoes, media, games, and toys. When you say, “I’d like to watch a movie,” you can’t remember what you have or what might be on the bottom of the heap. When you think about putting together an outfit for a special occasion, good choices are ignored at the back of your closet because you can’t remember that they’re there. If you can’t keep track of what you own, how can you ever use it all?

You’re too overwhelmed with choices

Research shows that too many choices can be paralyzing. Rather than liberating us, too many choices can actually short-circuit our brains and lead us to simply make no choice at all. This happens with your stuff when you say, “I’d like to watch a movie,” go over to the DVD shelf and become so overwhelmed with everything that you own that you just say, “Forget it,” and watch whatever’s on TV. It happens with kids when they say, “I’m bored,” in a house full of toys. What they may really be saying is, “I’m overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.” It happens when you decide to go buy a new outfit rather than sorting through the thousands of possible combinations you already own. When you have fewer choices, it’s much easier to decide what to use or do and then go do it. There’s no hemming and hawing over the vast piles of choices.

When you have less, you don’t have these problems

You know what you have and where it is. You know you can use it all because you often do. When stuff is brought into your house, it’s often as a replacement for a worn out item, or it’s only added after careful consideration of its merits. The stuff you have is stuff you need or really want, not just stuff you thought was good because “more is always better.”

The trick is to know how much is really enough for you. When you start to reach the point where you feel overwhelmed with choices, or you can’t remember what you already have, you’re getting too much. When you find yourself coming across things you haven’t used in ages (or ever), you’re getting too much. These are warning signs that it’s time to stop accumulating stuff and maybe even start purging so you get down to a level where you are getting reasonable use out of your stuff.

Stuff that’s never used is a waste of money and space. It’s also mentally tiring because you might constantly berate yourself every time you see those items piled up but not getting used. Try living with less and you’ll likely discover that the stuff you keep gets used to its fullest. You’ll save money, feel better, and have more free space in your house.

(Photo courtesy of garryknight)

10 Alternatives To Paying For A Storage Unit

October 25, 2012 By Danielle Warchol 5 Comments

Does it ever seem like you have too much stuff and no room to store it? When that happens, buying or renting a storage unit might seem like your only option. However, paying for a storage unit can be expensive and is often a waste of money. It might also be a waste of money considering there are plenty of other alternatives for storing your items.

Utilize Your Current Space

Before paying for a storage unit, consider the available space in your house or apartment. Can you fit something on top of a cabinet? What about under a bed or table? Try and find free space where you can store your things. You’d be surprised by how many available spaces you probably have in your home.

Apartment Storage Areas

If you rent an apartment, have you checked to see if it comes with a storage space? You’d be surprised by how many renters don’t realize that a storage area is part of their rental agreement. Sometimes this is a basement, sometimes an attic, and sometimes the landlord has a shed or storage unit where you can temporarily store your things. It’s a good idea to go over your lease or talk with your landlord to see whether or not storage is available to you.

Store with a Friend

Why not ask if your friend can hold onto a couple of boxes for you? If you’re in the process of moving or renovating, storing items with a friend might be cheaper than paying for a storage unit. Of course, they need to have the space available and you need to make sure that you’re not giving them an overwhelming amount of boxes or items to hold.

Temporarily Lending Items

The blog Apartment Therapy suggests that instead of paying for a storage unit, you could temporarily lend items to a friend. Have a large wardrobe that doesn’t fit into your apartment, but that you don’t want to get rid of or store? Have a friend hold onto it and use it until you need it. Or see if a friend wants that painting that can’t fit onto the walls in your new apartment. Maybe a family member temporarily needs a couch and since you happen to be renovating your home, you need a temporary place to store it. Lending it out will get it off your hands for awhile and prevent you from spending money on a storage unit!

Give Away

Sometimes we hold onto items we think we’ll want later down the road, but we never end up using them. How many pieces of clothing, furniture, or appliances do you have tucked away somewhere? How long have they been sitting there? Or maybe you bought a new couch, but decide to hold onto the old one “just in case”. A lot of times, we’re just holding onto items for no good reason. In these cases, a lot of people will just end up putting items into storage and they’ll sit there for years. Instead of going down this route, consider giving away to a friend or family member who needs it.

Buy or Build a Shed

If you own your own house, why not build your own storage unit? As long as you have enough room, it’s going to be cheaper to build your own shed than it would be to rent a storage unit. Plus, you won’t have to worry about dealing with a storage company, saving you a lot of time, money, and aggravation. If you pay $50 a month for a storage unit, that’s $600 a year. Consider how much you’d pay for five or ten years compared to how much it would cost to own your own storage unit or shed in your backyard.

Build an Attic

Again, if you own your own home, have you thought about building an attic? Additional space might help you store your items. Sure, it might cost more upfront to remodel the house to make room for an extension, but if you’re planning on staying for awhile, it’s a sound investment. It’ll end up being significantly cheaper than renting a storage unit for a long period of time.

Purge

Have you been holding onto a bag of old clothes for years thinking that one day you might wear them again? What about that box of old textbooks that are ten years out of date? Maybe you have a couple of dish sets that are still in their original packing five years after you bought them. Before pushing all of these items into storage, go through them and get rid of what you don’t need. There’s no need to pay money to store items you don’t even want.

Sell Items

As a couple other points in this article mentioned, the best thing to do before buying a storage unit is to take an inventory of items you have to decide whether it’s really worth it to put them in storage. You might find that you have way too many items and can end up selling them, saving you the money of paying for storage.

Consider Prices of Stored Items

Before you consider buying a storage unit, take stock of the value of your items. Are you paying more for a long term storage unit than your furniture is worth? If it’s cheaper to sell your old items and buy new ones to replace them, then avoid buying the storage unit.

(Photo courtesy of Meathead Movers)

Getting My Stuff Back in Balance

January 5, 2009 By Jennifer Derrick 4 Comments

Generally, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I tend to decide to do things throughout the year and then just get on with them. New Year’s resolutions come with to much pressure and they’ve always seemed forced to me. So I tend to avoid them. But this year is different. I have one New Year’s resolution and it has to do with my finances and my stuff. This year, I resolve to use up, complete, or otherwise deal with the stuff that I have bought/acquired but not yet used.

I’m not a big collector of stuff, but I do buy some things and, rarely, it backs up on me. Books are a big weakness for me, as are movies (since we ditched the cable these form my library of entertainment). I also have a collection of blank notebooks that I’ve bought at after school sales. I use these for ideas, notes and project planning because I work better writing things down than doing it on the computer. Don’t even mention the collection of pencils, pens, and notepads (all of them freebies that I picked up at trade shows and fairs) that is making my top desk drawer bulge. I have a ton of VHS tapes taking up space that I keep intending to convert to DVD. I have a couple of craft projects that have been pushed to the back burner, half finished. And we have a few board games, video games, and puzzles that were gifts to us that we still haven’t had a chance to play with. I don’t even know if they’re fun.

Normally, stuff doesn’t back up on me like this. I buy things and then I use them, or I’m very conscientious about completing one project before beginning another. I’m normally very focused on how I acquire and use stuff. I pick up freebies at a show and use them before the next show. I use up all the notebooks I buy at the back to school sales before the next back to school season. I read magazines before the next issue comes in. And so on. I’m also a relentless purger of stuff. When I’m no longer using or receiving value from something, I clean it out and donate it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, or I sell it to a secondhand store. So I usually only have the things I’m actively using or working on in my space. My stuff rarely exceeds my ability to use it up in a timely manner. Its a nice balance and it keeps my house from getting cluttered and me from wasting money on stuff I can’t use or already have.

However, 2008 was a weird year. I had a lot going on and every time I thought I might get to sit down and read or work on a project, I got interrupted by some happening. Usually I have some interruptions in my life (as do we all), but this year it was non-stop. Some interruptions were good, some were bad, and some were just nuisances, but all of them conspired against me. Of course I was stupid, too. I didn’t realize just how much time was getting away from me. So I kept bringing more stuff in, so used to having everything in balance that I didn’t notice the pencils piling up, the extra sets of notebooks, the books piling up on the nightstand, or the unwatched movies collecting dust on the shelf. I sort of assumed it was under control, like always, until suddenly it wasn’t.

My neat balance of stuff vs. my ability to use it tipped in the direction of the stuff. As a result, I have stuff around here that needs to be dealt with. I need to read the books I have, watch the movies, finish the crafts, use up the notebooks, pens and pencils, and convert those tapes to DVD. There are other things that need to be dealt with, as well. But this is where I need to start. And I need to do it before I bring one more thing into this house. I have to get my stuff back in balance with the time I have to dedicate to it. Otherwise, the stuff is likely to bury me within a few years. It’s already made getting to certain things much more difficult. Certain drawers and cabinets are blocked by the stuff, making it difficult to get to the stuff lower down. I hate it because I never live like this. However, as out of control as it feels to me, I suspect that my stuff problem is still on a very minor scale compared to some people’s stuff problems. I can still walk through the house and there are areas that are as they should be. My stuff overload is limited to a few key things. I know people who have a much worse stuff problem.

So I have a goal for this year. Now that I am fully aware of this problem, I am going to get my stuff back in balance with my ability to use it up. That means that I will buy nothing new, except for perishable stuff and stuff that I need, until the current stuff has been dealt with. No more books or movies until these are read, watched, and older ones either kept, sold or donated. No more games until I know whether the ones I have are fun or not. No more picking up pencils and pens at shows until I’ve used up the ones I have. No more notebooks bought at the back to school sales unless I am out by September. No more stuff comes in until I have achieved my balance. This goal also means purging some stuff, as well. I need to go through some of my older stuff and decide what to give away and sell. I also need to complete the projects I have hanging around before I start anything else. Fortunately, this goal wasn’t hampered by Christmas. We always have a very small Christmas so there wasn’t even more stuff coming in that I will have to deal with. That’s the small blessing.

I have set a goal of using, tossing, donating, or otherwise eliminating one thing per day. It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant, at least one thing goes away every day until I get where I need to be. Yesterday I used up a free sample of shampoo and conditioner. It felt good to toss those empty packets. I also sent a bunch of the pens, pencils, and notepads with my husband to his office. They will be used much quicker there than I could ever go through them. I donated two packs of notebooks to the local school supply drive. I know they’ll go to good use. And I converted two of my videos (home videos) to DVD and tossed the VHS cassettes, freeing up a small space on my shelf. I’m currently sorting through my books to decide which are out of date and can be donated. I’m on my way, but I have a long way to go.

The good news is that I expect this year to be much quieter than last. Although the unexpected might crop up, I should have more time available to deal with my stuff. The other good news is that my expenses should go way down in the coming months as I work to deal with my stuff. This will also teach me a lesson to be even more conscientious about stuff and how much of it I have at any one time. When I look at the stuff I sigh and think how much easier this all would have been if I had realized sooner that my stuff was getting away from me. It’s a valuable lesson and one that I hope never to repeat.

The Zen of Giving Away Your Stuff

September 30, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 13 Comments

>Here’s something marketers don’t want you to know: Stuff cannot and will not ever make you happy. In fact, stuff can make your life more complicated and miserable than you can possibly imagine.

I learned this lesson a really hard way. I nearly lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.

I say nearly because we didn’t know what happened to our house and everything in it until more than one month after the storm hit and broke the levees in New Orleans. We didn’t know if we’d lost everything in a flood or if our house was even standing.

To our surprise, my husband and I mourned very few of our possessions during that time. The flat-screen TV? Nope, not a thought about it. The fancy stand mixer in the kitchen I thought I couldn’t live without? Nope. Didn’t care about that either.

All we wanted were our photo albums, the quilt my mother-in-law made out of my wedding dress, the bird feeder my late grandfather had made for us, and Squeaky, the semi-ferile yard cat who flat-out refused to get in the carrier when it was time to evacuate.

Realizing we didn’t care about all the other stuff we owned was profound. It wasn’t what we expected. And it caused us to seriously rethink our relationship with stuff.

We had never spent a lot of money shopping. Big-ticket items were few and far between, but I admit that I used to fill the void left by my crappy job with knick knacks and furniture. My husband would buy lots of books and CDs. All those little purchases added up to a lot of stuff over time.

Then, in a time of disaster, to realize we didn’t care about the little things that we bought to make us happy was profound. Especially because it turned out that none of our stuff was ruined, and we had to lug it all from our house in New Orleans to our new house in the Midwest. It’s no fun to lug hundreds of heavy moving boxes full of stuff you no longer care about onto and off of a moving truck.

That moment we knew we had to change, and our realizations about stuff turned into action.

We began to simply get rid of our stuff. For free. Yes, some of it has sold on eBay and Amazon, but most of it has gone to families who needed or wanted it more than us through our local freecycling group. We’ve given away a full-size bed, lamps, clothes, garden tools, and computers, just to start. We’ve also donated myriad items to the local Salvation Army. We’ve given things to friends who truly appreciated them more more than we did.

Our goal is to get to the point that we only have what we truly need, plus a few objects that give us a significant amount of joy, rather than dusty boxes and shelves filled to the brim with a lot of things that we thought would make us happy, but that have since lost their luster.

We still have a lot of boxes of stuff to give away, but with every item that goes out the door, we feel more free, like a great burden has been lifted off of us.

Giving away your possessions changes your relationship with material goods. When it’s gone, you realize that you don’t miss it. This has a cascading effect. It’s good for the spirit and good for the pocketbook.

You no longer want that must-have whatsit, because you can see that you don’t really need it. Or, that you won’t be interested after a month or two. You also become aware of the stories you tell yourself in order to rationalize a purchase, or to rationalize keeping something that is no longer useful to you. We are very tricky, telling ourselves we need things we never or rarely use.

Having fewer possessions shows you how much upkeep owning lots of things requires, from space to store it, to money to pay the Visa bill you ran up buying it, to maintenance and insurance costs on big stuff like extra cars or boats. When a box of stuff leaves my house, I am relieved because I no longer have to find a place for it, dust it, and I am no longer responsible for its well being.

You can live more comfortably in a smaller space when you have less stuff. And smaller spaces come with lower bills.

It’s also much more relaxing to live in a house filled with few objects you really enjoy than with a lot of things you only kind-of like. Physical de-cluttering leads to mental de-cluttering.

You start to truly understand that once you get to a certain level of comfort economically and physically, owning more doesn’t appreciably improve your happiness in the long or short-term. In fact, once you have shelter and some basics, you can live a comfortable and happy life without all the extra stuff. I didn’t fully understand this until I thought I had lost everything.

Stuff for the sake of owning stuff is worthless. It saps your energy and your pocketbook.

Why give it away? It feels good to share what you have with others. And if you are serious about unloading years worth of purchases, it’s a lot faster and easier to give it away than it is to sell it.

This is how we’ve made peace with our stuff, and made a lot more room for Squeaky, who has had a serious change of heart when it comes time to get in the cat carrier.