I’m in the same position as jsgoddess. I’ve been feeling the need to downsize and shred lately. Aside from photos and a few mementos, it could all go and I’d be happy not to have to dispose of it.
I have been also feeling the need to down size. A serious majority of my crap is books … if google does the thing where they scan every book in existance for paid download I could just have most of them as electronic books. I would still have about 1000 real books, my collection of unusual and signed books …
I actually have a wish list of belongings, and when money allows replacing my crappy stuff with what I actually want we do it. I know that it is probably very silly to want a specific model of sofa that costs almost $10 000 … but it matches an antique chair by the same company that my grandfather had made for himself … said chair is still in pristine condition and when Mom passes, she has already put it in her will that it is MINE!MINE!MINE!
When I ultimately get finished, I will have 1 master bedroom, 1 guest bedroom, 1 office, 1 livingroom, 1 dining room and 1 kitchen of stuff … which includes 2 pieces of artwork per room [excluding kitchen and bathroom] and the wardrobes of mrAru and myself. It will be movable in a 20 foot moving van with the addition of 2 people to pack the packed items into the van, and 2 people to help unpack and move it into the new house.
I definitely am not a fan of “stuff.” In fact, I quite often think to myself about how I would not be sad at all if my house blew up as I was driving away - as long as me and my dog are safe (she’s always with me in the car), I could care less about any of my possessions.
I get jealous of people I know who have stuff that could show up on Antiques roadshow. And I get mad at my friends that complain about being broke but have storage lockers full of stuff that could go on eBay. I can’t bring myself to posses this extra crap any more than they can bring themselves to get rid of it.
I also find that the people I know with excess stuff are people who aren’t usually financially stable. They keep all their “stuff” for fear that they can’t get more, even though accumulating “want” stuff keeps them from being able to get “need” stuff. I remember when I was a kid and we were poor, we had a lot more stuff. Mom had a little collection of bells (nothing meaningful or expensive). When dad got a new career and we became less poor, the house got a lot emptier and the collection of bells went away.
I find myself to be quite financially stable and quite in the mindset of “it’s all replaceable.” I think I also came to be this stable by avoiding giving in to temptation and accumulating stuff. It’s sort of an interesting thing to think about.
This is very true for me.
When I got married, our combined income was $18,000 a year, and his medical expenses were nearly that. I hoarded.
Now I just think, “Well, if I end up needing that, I’ll buy one.” And off the “that” goes to Goodwill or in the trash if it’s garbage.
I want: a place to sleep, some form of climate control, a computer, an internet connection, and a car. In terms of money, I want enough to pay comfortably for all of the above, and an entertainment budget sufficient to eat out a few times a week, go on a weekend road trip/family visit once every few months, and take a week’s vacation once a year.
With my studio-with-loft apartment ($400/mo, up this year from the $350 it’s been for the past six), paid-off car, and a mid-range professional salary, I’m pretty close. My next step, which is in the works to occur this fall, should put me there quite solidly.
The only pie-in-the-sky material luxury that I hope to have someday is an acoustically-enhanced soundproof room that I can use for music – producing, recording, and simply listening – at whatever volume I deem appropriate. Having nowhere that people can make some noise once in a while without other people getting pissy about it is just butt-stupid. Sometimes, you have to let it out, whatever “it” may be.
Beyond that, there are a few items of sentimental value that I wouldn’t like to lose, but everything else is replaceable if I cared enough to do so, which in all likelihood I wouldn’t.
I have way too much stuff. And a hard time getting rid of it. 
I’m nowhere near “hoarder” status, but still. I could get rid of 1/3 of what I own and be the better for it.
This is me. But I am probably a bit closer to hoarder status. I am thinking I could easily get rid of 1/2 of my “stuff” and never miss it. I don’t mean furniture or household items. I just mean clothes, papers, knick knacks, and lots of rarely or never used things I have acquired in the last 44 years.
I am desperately trying to pare down. Who know having a five year old later in life would cause our already cluttered house to be bursting at the seems?!
I swore he wouldn’t have a ton of toys, like so many kids I know. But he does. And, since we have no basement, attic, or garage, and very little storage, it is all over the place.
I’m definitely in the packrat club. Fortunately, most of the things I like to collect don’t take up a whole lot of room, so while I may have a lot of books and DVDs and video games, they’re easily stored without taking up a whole lot of space (especially CDs, since I usually rip the songs and stow the discs–I don’t need them handy).
It’s the random crap that gets to be a problem. We may have a three-bedroom apartment to ourselves, but there’s still only so much space for wedding gifts and souvenirs and photo albums and stuffed animals and cosplays and…well, you get the idea. Even though I don’t really need any of it, I do want it. Do I need a Tachikoma plush toy? Hell no. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to rip it out of my cold dead hands to get it away from me.
I spent a lot of years with a complete (and childish) disdain for having more stuff than could be hauled around with you in a car so now I like my stuff and have become attached to it. It’s weird though - I’m doing this boring project of taking pictures of everything we own and putting a value to it for insurance documentation and I’m realizing how little of it I would miss or replace if we lost it all. Without question the biggest loss would be all of the cabinetry and hand made furniture that my partner has made over the years. I can’t even imagine what it would cost to replace it all if we bought similar pieces. I’d want to replace all of my stained glass with replacements that were as close as possible and we’d need all of our basic things like clothing, housewares and electronics replaced but any reasonable substitute would do. The rest is just generic stuff I don’t care about and it would be nice to get rid of some of the clutter and get to buy new stuff.
I recently moved and managed to fit everything I own excluding a bookcase into my 2007 Chevy Aveo. Quite proud of myself, actually. I’ve always wanted to be a minimalist in terms of stuff, and fitting everything into that tiny car proved it to myself.
I got a really strong urge yesterday to do another cull and throw a bunch of crap away. Haven’t selected any specific crap yet, just aware I have plenty of less-than necessary items cluttering up my house and my life.
I think I’m the odd one out here. I certainly have more stuff than I really need, because all I need is food, clothing and shelter, and technically my family and I would survive wtih the absolute minimum of each. But we’ve progressed to the point where there are things we “need” to live the kind of lifestyle we “want” to live.
I understand that things don’t make one happy, but things do keep one from being unhappy. For instance, we have a house. The house, like most houses, occasionally needs repair in one way or another. I could leave it broken or non-functioning, but that would be a bad way to protect my investment in the home. So I choose to repair it. In order to do so, I need a certain tool. Sure, I could hire someone to repair it, but since I’m able-bodied and enjoy that type of work, I choose to save money by doing it myself. Which means I have to buy the tool, and if this sort of thing ever comes up again, I’ll have the tool to fix it. Do I need the tool? No, I want it. But as I reason my way through the problem, I need to repair my house, and I need to save money doing it, so yes, I need the tool. So I buy it, use it to do the repair, and am satisfied with my work and the fact that the house has been repaired. Therefore, new tool = absence of unhappiness.
It’s that way with a lot of things.
I’ve gotten to a point in my career that I can afford the things that would add a slight degree of satisfaction or simplicity in my daily life, so for the most part when one of those situations presents itself, if it’s financially viable, I get it. That doesn’t mean we have junk littering every room in our house- we don’t. We actually prefer minimalism in our decorating. But although we can do without the specific-use kitchen utensil or some such, in order to prepare that particular dish with a mimimum of difficulty, we get it.
But if I lost everything in a fire, I wouldn’t care as long as my family was safe.
I went through that scenario this summer with 20 minutes to evacuate ahead of a wildfire and nothing mattered at that point but getting ourselves and our animals out of here. We grabbed our laptops and some clothes and important papers when we had a few minutes to spare but saving stuff wasn’t even a concern.
You sleep and eat on the floor?
What Corkboard said. We have a lot of stuff, I guess. I love to cook, and that requires, or at least is made much easier by, a decent collection of kitchen stuff. There are lots of books. There are a few knic-knacs (sp?), but not a lot. There are lamps and beds and dressers and clothes and computers. There’s dog stuff. Hygiene products. Art–lots of art and the tools to produce it.
When we moved to Japan (military move) 3 years ago, we had to put a lot of things in storage, and I do miss some of it. We have some great furniture that we decided not to bring because we didn’t know where we’d be living and how much room we’d have. There are a LOT of tools, and we tend to miss those the most–we like to do construction projects–but there is no room here for that, and we miss it.
I did the backpacking through europe thing when I was 18, and didn’t miss my stuff for a few months, but long term? Turns out I’m not a very good nomad.
I maintain two apartments on two different continents. I have basic clothes and living materials at each, but do not own a car, only one place has a television (but no cable service), not too much furniture. I do have a nice big screen monitor at each so I can travel back an forth with my laptop.
For 3 years during my early 30s I lived out of a backpack and did not own or rent a home for much of that time.
I don’t need much.
Since I’m getting older I am trying to eliminate all the crap I own and concentrate on the things that I have that would be worth something to those I leave behind. Imagine the person that has to deal with the worthless bullshit that was only of value to you.
I do that with paperwork, Omegaman. If something happens to me my partner (or whoever) isn’t going to need every piece of paper I’ve accumulated in my life. They’re going to need clear information on my will, bank accounts, insurance, pensions, and maybe a few year’s tax returns. I keep all of that organized and mostly in our safety deposit box so that no one has to sort through piles of junk I never needed to save in the first place. I did that whenever I left a job too. No one needs a mountain of crap and a history of every meeting you’ve ever attended. I’m the opposite of a pack rat.
I don’t know - we don’t have lots of stuff really - well at least I don’t think so. I have no idea what’s up in the attics.
Just be careful that you don’t put anything into a safe deposit box that your heirs need right away. In some states, I don’t think anyone can get anything out of that box if you die without jumping through some major hoops.