I helped a friend of mine move yesterday. Not only does she have too much stuff, but her new place has the narrowest stairwells I have ever seen. Try fitting a queen-sized mattress and box springs through that! Ack.
Anyway, I realized that I’m likely to move in another year or so, and I too have way too much stuff. It’ll be better if I start paring it down now than it would be if I waited, so I’m seeking your help. What’s the best way to reduce the total weight and volume of the stuff that I own?
You must be absolutely merciless. Start sorting your stuff into “definitely keeping no mattter what”, “maybe” and “must go” piles. Be honest. Try to only keep things you really do use or will really be using in the near future (six months is a decent timeframe). None of this “I might get this old toaster fixed one of these days,” stuff; the dead toaster GOES. Get rid of the “must go” stuff in some reasonably responsible way, Goodwill it or something, depending on what it is. Or sell it. Just get rid of it.
Give it a day, and go back to the “maybe” stuff. Again, sort mercilessly. Everything in it must go either to the “definitely keeping” or to a new “must go” pile.
Continue until all unwanted stuff is gone. Do it in pieces or by theme or some way that works for you. Clean out your closet one day, and your desk another, for example. If you make it too big a job you won’t ever finish.
looks at cluttered room Oh, I’m a fine one to talk…maybe I ought to take my own advice.
Move. 5 new cities in 5 years kept me at the bare minimum.
Of course, I’ve been in this apartment for a year and a half, I expect to be in a new place in a year, and the amount of stuff I’ve managed to accumulate is ridiculuous. I need to throw stuff out.
The fire idea is a good plan too.
Use the handy-dandy Dollar per Month™ possession sorting technique.
If it costs one dollar, ask yourself, “Did I use this in the last month?”
If it costs two dollars, ask yourself, “Did I use this in the last two months?”
If it costs three dollars, ask yourself, “Did I use this in the last three months?”
And so on. If the answer is no, scrap it! You tend to cut through the crap rather quickly. Unless the thing you intend to fix has a value of over one hundred dollars and was working less than six months ago, junk it! You must be absolutely ruthless about it. When you are done moving, your back will be shouting at you in gratitude.
The dollar usage/storage formula is very useful. You can add in a Zenlike “meaning of” element but that’s trickier for all it’s more useful.
There’s stuff–just THINGS–that accumulate: old clothes, pots and pans, gizmos that could be useful and cost money but probably won’t ever be needed again in your road through life. They still have potential usefulness but you realistically won’t use 'em again. They take more effort to store/tote than they’ll ever give back.
Somebody CAN use 'em, so donate/sell them cheaply and move on.
And then there are reminders; bits and pieces that summon up uniquely personal history. Again, be clear eyed. Things can be evocative but some memories are so internalized they don’t need corporeal cues. This is unique and variable. My guideline is, “does this summon up a memory that adds something useful to my life?” YMMV.
If you come up with a plan for getting rid of old junk, you may want to include a plan for not accumulating new junk. Otherwise, you’ll have a hard time keeping stuff you don’t really want or need to a minimum.
An office manager where I once worked noticed my pack rat tendencies, and taught me a useful strategy. He said I should take all the pile of crap that I didn’t think I was going to use for the next month, and put it in a box. And then if I never even opened the box for that month, everything in the box was useless and I didn’t need it EVER. This was mostly referring to business records, but I think you see where I’m going.
