Stuff: How much you have, how much you want, how much you've changed

In My Humble Opinion
1

I used to just basically collect stuff, then I married someone who LOVED stuff and we soon ended up drowning in stuff. I underwent a sea-change sometime during our marriage and have turned into someone with a low tolerance for accumulating stuff. I discard and donate things all the time and really think about what I buy before I bring it into the house.

You get to define “stuff” however you want, whether it’s junk or useful, valuable or trash worthy.

Tell me about your stuff. How much do you have? How much do you want? How much has your attitude toward stuff changed throughout your life? Are you in conflict with anyone over the amount of stuff you and they want?

2

I’m at a point where I am sick of stuff. Nearly every horizontal surface is covered with stuff. When friends find out we like to collect fairy things, we get all sorts of crappy collectibles, and they have taken over every shelf in our house. My craft room is overflowing with stuff in boxes, including empty boxes I have yet to put stuff in. Which means I have to moved stuff just to get to the stuff I want. Our storage spaces in the basement are crammed with crap we will never, ever use again. The office desk I am at now is covered inches deep with papers my husband can’t bear to throw away. Everything is covered with dust because who in their right mind wants to spend their time dusting crap they don’t even care about?
Hmm. I’m a little more upset about this than I thought. Must get rid of crap.

3

I have very little stuff. I’ve moved four times in the last eight years - including one move from the US to Europe and then back - and I’ve gotten rid of a LOT of stuff along the way. It’s okay with me.

4

Moving is a good “stuff shedder”. Everytime we have moved, I will open at least one box, and ask “why the hell did we even pack this shit up?” And that box will get moved to the garage to dropped off at Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

5

Also, my rule about clothes are, if you haven’t worn them in at least the last 18 months…THEY MUST GO!

6

My mom used to be ambivalent about “stuff” until we started having to help her sisters move. All 3 of her sisters are pack rats (not quite hoarders).

We had to hurriedly move the oldest sister when her trailer park was being shut down. Mom went nuts when she found out how much crap my aunt had around. Ok maybe she was a hoarder…the whole thing involved cats and roaches. There was a lot of yelling and crying about throwing away crap.

Then a few years later the same aunt died, and we had to go clean out her new apartment. In just a short time, she had re-amassed more crap. Mom went ballistic again (this time compounded by the death of her sister).

This was when I was a teen. Ever since then, mom and dad both have been really anti-stuff. Mom is mortified at the idea of someone coming to her house after her death and thinking “boy did she have a lot of crap.”

So my family has been pretty stuff-free since then. When I moved in to my own house, I stayed stuff-free as well. There is very little in the way of tchochkis here. I don’t buy gadgets until I’ve given it tons of thought. I have an entire basement full of stuff that is not mine - it’s my brother’s or friends’ stuff. My parents and I donate things to charity regularly, and I recycle or throw away a lot.

Mom and I are pretty snobby when it comes to “stuff” too. She always comments on the amount of crap in her remaining sisters’ house. We don’t approve of the over-tchochkis-ness decorating style of my SIL. We shake our heads at the fact that when my bro and SIL got married, they had no room in their house for his over-abundance of stuff due to her over-abundance of stuff (hence my basement).

Then again, I have friends who have asked me to help them organize and get rid of crap when they moved. So my snobbishness sort of comes in handy. That and my addiction to the show “Clean House” :slight_smile:

I don’t think there’s one thing in my house I would not be willing to lose or leave behind if I had to. I am very much not attached to my stuff.

7

We have a ~1000 square foot house and double garage - the house is about 3/4 full of stuff, the garage has just yard and car stuff in it (and space for two cars - I will throw many things out before I give up my car space in the garage). I would be very pleased if we maintain this level of stuff (or winnowed it a little). I am no fan of keeping stuff just to keep it. We just moved last summer, too, and we did get rid of a bunch of stuff, but we have to remain vigilant to not let it accumulate again.

My husband tends to keep more stuff than I do, but he has a large room in the basement for his stuff; he can pack that room floor to ceiling, wall to wall if he likes, but the rest of the house isn’t going to turn into a Hoarders episode. :slight_smile:

8

Paul Graham wrote a good essay on stuff.

I try to minimize my acquisition of useless stuff, and get rid of useless stuff when it somehow finds its way into our home. I face each Christmas with some dread, because the gift-giving compulsion means that we will end up with yet another pile of useless shit that must be dealt with. I love my parents and sibs, but I wish we could back away from this gift-giving pressure we put on ourselves.

We have a neighbor down the street who have two cars parked in the driveway, and one in the street. The two in the driveway haven’t moved in the four years we’ve lived here; I know this because the tires have been flat the whole time (they must have been parked there quite a while before we moved in). But for some reason he won’t sell them. Every now and then he has his garage door open, adn I am reminded why he doesn’t keep them in the garage: that space is occupied, floor to ceiling, with mountains of stuff. I expect he’ll turn up on A&E’s “Hoarder’s” program one of these days.

9

ZipperJJ, I have two sisters who are packrats. I had to tell one sister that she couldn’t store anything in my basement (in spite of all the things she had done for me in the past) - she had a fair-sized house full of stuff, and I figured that allowing her to expand her packrattiness to my house was just opening the door for trouble (basically enabling her). I didn’t feel good about denying her, but if you can’t fit all your stuff in your house, the solution is not more places to store stuff.

10

I accumulate media. Books, movies (VHS and DVD), music (CD and LP), magazines, comic books, and games I pretty much keep forever. I have a lot of these so they’ve accumulated to quite a large pile.

Things like clothing, furniture, and household goods I have no problem getting rid of.

11

Cat Whisperer you’re right…but this is his record collection and his books (well and some other stuff). So it is stuff that means a lot to him, not random junk. I made him buy his own shelving and keep it neat. I refuse to touch any of it - meaning I won’t haul it up or down the stairs. To his credit, he desperately hates his house (his wife bought it before they were married) and can’t wait until he has his own place in which to store his stuff. So it doesn’t bother me that much. Unless they move and his stuff doesn’t go with him - then I will go off! :smiley:

Joe Frickin Friday - a few years ago I declared a moratorium on Christmas gifts. Everyone bitches and says “but opening gifts is fun! Let’s just have a white elephant gift grab!” and I refuse to participate in that too - because that’s even more worthless crap than the worthless crap you get at a regular gift exchange. Instead I tell everyone to bring the $10 they wanted to spend on a gift grab and we play a game and give the money to the charity of choice of the winner.

I don’t do birthday gifts, either. Usually what happens is my parents give me some money to help towards some household project and that’s awesome. I go out to dinner with some friends and they pick up the bill. No stuff!

12

He says these words of wisdom:

So, so true.

13

I forgot to answer part of the OP.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for stuff, but I kept little things, toys, books, etc. We had a tiny house and I shared a room with my sister, so a little bit of stuff seems like a lot in context. I still unfortunately keep little things, toys, keepsakes from places I’ve been, “oh that’s neat I think I’ll keep it,” sort of stuff. I need to stop. It piles up for no real good reason beyond just having it because it’s cute or neat or shiny. I don’t really buy stuff like that anymore, but I haven’t gotten rid of the stuff I already collected. Also, it’s hard to say no when a well meaning person wants to give you something they think you will like.
My future will be about getting rid of stuff. I’m seriously thinking of just boxing up random stuff and giving it away. That would free up more room for the stuff I want to keep, my beads, yarn and other fiberart supplies.

14

I used to like to collect knick-knacks, kept every book I ever read, stored clothes that didn’t fit in the closet, etc.

I am also one of those people who just don’t understand how clutter builds up around them. For a long time, I was constantly battling to keep the house in halfway decent shape, and to be able to keep my papers organized enough to pay my bills on time, etc.

A few years ago, I realized that I am happiest when I limit the amount of stuff I have, and live in a small house. It’s easier to keep it neat and organized, I can find things when I want them, and I don’t have a load of crap I don’t use to tote around when I move.

15

I have far less stuff than I used to. I definitely have pack rat tendencies, but those have changed recently.

When my ex-wife and I bought a house together and were packing to move, I got into the spirit of taking things to Goodwill. It was kind of embarrassing to see the amount of stuff we’d accumulated in the eight years we’d lived in our prior residence. I have always had a very “But…we might need that!” mentality. But as we were moving, I was starting to slowly come to the realization that if I haven’t used something in over five years, and frankly didn’t even remember I’d had it, I could afford to part with it. And if it was something I truly needed, I was generally not so broke that I couldn’t afford to replace it.

Then, last October, my wife and I split up and I moved out. I knew I was moving into a smaller place (about 650 square feet smaller, in fact) and that I just couldn’t justify taking stuff I had no business holding on to. So there was a lot more Goodwill donating, and a lot of just leaving stuff behind.

I can’t claim that I have nothing extraneous in my current bachelor pad. Some of the crap that I had was easiest to just throw in a box and go with it – I moved out in kind of a hurry based on the divorce. But I use all of the furniture I own, which is a good start, and I find myself lacking for little, if anything. I have no drive to accumulate much more than I have now, which is surprising because I love geek toys and what not. I still have a few boxes of miscellaneous crap that I would be well-served to go through and get rid of, and I suspect that will happen before the next time I move, which will be in the next year.

I have no idea if I’m inclined to become more of a pack rat again in the future. For now, I’m happy having pared down to the extent that I have. And the fact that I look around my place and still get annoyed by the number of boxes I have tells me that I’m not going to reverse that trend any time soon.

16

I wish my family would go along with something like this!

I can’t deal with tchotchkes or clutter either. My favorite cleaning method is to just throw things out!

On the other hand, my ex-husband was a hoarder. Towards the end of our marriage, I lived in the front of the house and he lived in the back. I had to clean it out when he was gone. :eek:
I just finished reading this book which may be interesting to posters in this thread: http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Compulsive-Hoarding-Meaning-Things/dp/015101423X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

17

I like to box up my pretties and tchotchkes and take a few out at a time - when I go back to the box, it’s like getting them all over again (yeah, my memory for stuff is that good).

18

When I was younger, I wasn’t exactly a packrat, but I had a decent amount of stuff related to being a vinyl-collecting musician with a taste for kitsch.

Then I moved in with the woman who became my ex-wife. She began a long, slow spiral into mental illness and hoarding. In one six month period, she blew 40 grand on the home shopping channels. We had boxes and bags full of ugly crap piled literally to the ceiling in every room of our tiny one bedroom apartment, including the bathroom. It came to a point that the only spaces I had to myself were the bed, a dresser, a few square feet on the kitchen table, and a hook on the back of the bedroom door. Thanks to the squalor, the place never got cleaned. When we finally moved, I found a ball of cat hair the size of a basketball behind the piles of boxes.

When I finally left her, I made a resolution to myself that I will never, ever live like that again. I’m not a minimalist per se - I just don’t have a whole lot of attachment to things. It’s not like I don’t have any art or tchotchkes or anything - I’m just very, very picky about what I acquire, and I make sure that I’m absolutely certain that it’s something that I’ll use or like for the long term.

About every six months or so, I’ll go on a purging bender, and pitch anything I haven’t touched or looked at in a year.

I had an interesting experience moving in with my fiancee. She’s not a hoarder by any means, but her upbringing has lead her to develop a fear of “wasting” anything. She had these computer speakers that she was trying to get rid of in the yard sale before the big move. Nobody bought them. She asked friends about buying them. Nobody wanted them.

She was getting ready to pack, and I saw her put the speakers in to a box.

“Why don’t you just pitch 'em?” I asked.

“I really don’t know. I’m sure as hell sick of looking at them, but somebody might want to buy them. They’re worth like ten bucks.”

“So it pains you every time you look at them, but you can’t let them go because somebody might give you a few bucks for them?”

“Well…”

“If I were pinching you on the arm every few minutes, would you want me to stop right now, or would you rather I pinch you for another week and pay you ten dollars when I stop?”

She threw them out.

19

I have a lot of clothes and accessories, and a lot of books. And that’s about it. I like clothes, shoes, purses, and books. I don’t have a lot of anything else and in fact purge about every six months, wildly rummaging through closets and drawers and cabinets to see what I can get rid of. I either donate the stuff to Goodwill, give it to friends, or (just did this recently) give it to an organization to sell in a garage sale. Most if not all of my furniture is from antique shows and shops, thrift stores, relatives, or the dumpster across the street.

Even with all the purging I do, I still have too much stuff, but I live in a 900-sq-ft condo. If I lived in a medium-sized house, I probably wouldn’t think I have too much stuff.

20

The short answer: I’ve got too much stuff, I want as little stuff as possible, I’ve become more minimalist since I’ve gotten older and my husband and I, but more importantly my mom and I clash often over what amount of stuff is a good idea to own.

The long answer: For a long time, I bought way more than I threw out for a number of reasons. First, I love, love, love buying things for my children. I don’t do it often, but it’s fun, especially when they’re tiny. Second, I have the money to buy more stuff, which is still kind of novel, even after a few years of having it. Third, it’s really easy to buy lots of stuff at a place like Target where you may only need one thing but there are lots of cool, shiny things you want (I only need shampoo, but there are so many cute baby clothes and my daughter is growing like crazy, so don’t I need just a few things??, for example).

Now that I’m older, I’m throwing out everything I can get my hands on and that we don’t need. This is kind of difficult since my husband likes to keep certain things he never looks at again – such as old copies of National Geographic that he’s never looked at – and I tend to enjoy buying things. However, I now try never to enter a store unless I can meet the following criteria: a) have a list that I follow fanatically, b) need everything on my list (wanting is not enough) and c) can throw out one thing for everything that comes in.

My mom and I frequently clash over the stuff in her house, mostly because she’s obsessed with food. As in, she lives alone and goes to Sam’s Club to buy most of her groceries, which she shops for several times a week. She also goes to the regular supermarket. So she has one-pound logs of goat cheese, for example, and box upon box of muffin mix that she never uses. My sister and I clean out her pantry at least annually, but only with her consent. When we do, my sister brings her car and we either take the food to a shelter or take it home with us.

I once asked my mom why she buys so much she doesn’t use and she said she’s afraid she’ll run out of something. Unfortunately, when she does clean, she tries to give me all her old stuff, which I sometimes accept (if she leaves me no choice, like just tosses it in my basement while I’m at work when she’s in town), then immediately turn around and hand over to Goodwill.