Well, if YOU aren’t thats fine and good for you.
But I bet a fair number of folks aren’t.
I good friend of mine had a coworker that had garage sales on a very regular basis. She was always bragging to him how much they made on every one. It was like high hundreds of dollars to over a thousand every. She thought of it as “free money”. He finally observed that given on typical garage sale you get pennies on the dollar for something, they were spending many thousands to make hundreds 
If you were going to buy it anyway, she’s right. I don’t think most people buy things in order to get rid of them.
No, but people DO buy shit just to buy it (I thinks its a hobby/addiction for some folks). Or they buy stuff they sorta want, confusing it with stuff they “need”. Or they don’t even think about their purchases and just randomly buy crap just because thats what people are supposed to do.
Geez, how complicated is this?
If you are buying it to only get rid of it shortly thereafter what’s the point? Or if you bought it and rarely use it so you apply the six month rule, you kinda wasted your money then didn’t you?
All I am saying is, if you go through purges, great for you. Its certainly better than hoarding. But the purging is certainly an opportunity to look AT WHAT you are throwing away and contemplate whether you should have bought it in the first place.
A computer you had, used a lot, and it finally became obsolete? Because you got a new one? No problem there. Throw or give that sucker away.
Magazines you subscribe to, can’t wait to get, and read cover to cover? Well, makes sense to buy em, read em, and dump em at some point in the near future.
Magazines that pile up that you barely read? Might be a time to reconsider the subscription in the first place…
Purging can be a great method for getting rid of legit crap. But, it can also be an excuse to just buy more crap.
Apparently extraordinarily.
Bless your heart.
It can. But I’ve never known anyone who can prevent “crap creep” in their lives, and the more people you have in your household, the worse it is. Even for the most anti-consumer, minimalist among us, periodic purges are needed.
“Crap creep” - that is exactly what we have. We don’t buy tons of stuff, and we don’t hoard, but it still accumulates. It almost seems like it accelerates as you get older - you buy a thing for the kitchen here, stuff for the living room there, and after five or ten years in the same house, it’s full of crap.
I’m kind of a packrat–when I do purge it feels good, but I’m usually tripped up by the “well, this might actually be worth something so I should sell it…I don’t want to just give it to Goodwill…but putting it on Ebay, taking pictures of it, boxing it up is such a pain in the neck…” and then it just never gets moved.
I’m a WoW player, and I often joke that I really wish we had vendors in real life like there are in Wow–they’ll buy literally anything, regardless of how useless it is. Sure, you wouldn’t get much for it, but at least you’d get something.
For me, though, it’s mostly the time factor. It takes a lot of time to go through stuff, sort it, and deal with it. It hardly seems worth the effort to start if you’re not going to spend at least a few hours at a time.
Start charging rent. If you have a box of stuff, start charging that box a couple of dollars a month just to stay in your house. If you have a small space, it should have a higher rent than if you have a larger space.
Part of it is who we are, part of it is the fact that this is a rental and we still have old mismatched furniture from student days (round 1). And this apartment really doesn’t have storage space! We do eventually plan to buy a place - which is a perfect time for a purge - and we are likely to buy new furniture or make different storage choices.
A lot will change in the next year or two for us; with me graduating, plans to move, new jobs, etc.
Great tip I once read on getting rid of old stuff:
If you have something with sentimental value, but you really don’t need it any more, take a picture of it. Then throw the item away (or donate it). You can look at the picture if you want to reminisce but no longer have to deal with the clutter.
My boyfriend does this with * his* clothes. :eek: Periodically I go through my stuff and throw it out and give it away, but him, never. I’m going to have to do it myself - clothes literally don’t fit in his closet anymore. I lean heavily towards the anti-packrat; he is somewhat more packrattish.
I’m going to be moving on May first and I’m looking forward to purging crap again. I do one every time I move, which happens about every 6-9 months. I couldn’t even fill up a studio apartment with the stuff I own. And my stuff fits into less than 2 car-loads (it’s a decent sized sedan, I could probably fit my stuff into one SUV- or van-trip pretty easily). Takes me two car trips to move my stuff and half of the second carload is destined for the trash or goodwill.
I would like to get a real mattress though. I’ve been sleeping on an inflatable one for a while. It’s a really nice inflatable mattress but still… I want a real mattress. A fluffy indulgent queen-sized bed is one of the things I plan to treat myself to once I pay off my car and can save up a bit.
This is a good idea. What has worked for me in the past was putting the item into the trunk of my car, where I will not see it again until the next time I move. Then when I unpack after my next move, I look at the item and remind myself that I’ve been living happily without it for x months. So I can get rid of it.
You could always go with a Select Comfort bed… we have one and it is a lot easier to move, and the base is even lightweight. I caution you, if you and your sleeping partner have different tastes in firmness, the bed texture can get a bit weird.
As a result, I’m not 100% sure I’d buy one again.
Applied iteratively, this can be an incredibly effective compression technique.
“Oh, honey! Look at this: I just found that picture I took of that photo album we used to have from that trip we took to Greece.”