Moving Is Helping Us Simplify

Posted on November 10, 2007 by Eric
Filed Under Charity, Household, Psychology

Definitely Goodwill We’re excited about moving and have been packing in anticipation. It’s a lot of work, but it’s actually been pretty enjoyable. We’re being very critical of what we decide to keep.

Melissa and I have been part “pack rat” in the past. I think some of this is just part of being human. It’s not like humans always had easy access to whatever we needed historically. That’s a much more modern invention. For centuries, we’ve had to make do with what we had and reuse and store literally everything. You never knew when you might need something, and it’s not as though you could go to the convenient 24-hour Walgreens down the street when that time came. Those who were prepared fared better than those that didn’t. It’s just a leftover ancient human survival mechanism.

So now we’ve been going through each item, and talking about it. We have 4 piles we’re using:

Keep - something we feel strongly about keeping.
Donate - something of sufficient quality and something we think someone could put to good use.
Gifts - we have several items that would make good gifts. We have a pretty good pile for our neighbors, and some for family.
Sell - items we think we can easily sell and help fund part of the move.

We’re definitely leaning more toward the “donate” pile. We do intend to write our donations off, but it’s more about giving than it is about the benefit to us. I’d really like to think that some of the items we’re donating will improve someone’s life.

Each time we talk about an item, we go through a little list :

Is this sentimental in nature? We’re trying to be really honest here. It has to have a true sentimental value to be kept.
Do I really need this? If no, it goes straight into one of the donate, gifts, or sell piles. If yes, we continue.
Am I really going to use this? And we don’t allow “well, if” situations to take too much control. You either have a good reason or you don’t.
If it’s been in storage for X months, do you really need it? It’s surprising how often this makes you realize you can easily live without something.

A big key for us was to not let ourselves get too stuck on the “what ifs” or the “well ifs”. Well, I might need that USB hub. No, I don’t. I have 4 USB ports, and only 2 items that need USB. There will never be a critical need for a USB hub. That goes directly to Goodwill.

Another thing we’ve noticed about ourselves is that we don’t really rewatch many movies now. In the past, when we watched more TV, we might consider rewatching a movie. Now, we hardly ever have the TV on, and the movies sit and collect dust. We’d rather donate, give those away, or sell them. They just take up room.

It’s a great feeling. I think the whole concept of simplifying your life needs more coverage, but maybe in another post. Right now we’re happy to just be reducing what we have, and hopefully helping other people in the process.

Picture by janetmck

Comments

8 Responses to “Moving Is Helping Us Simplify”

Elizabeth on November 10th, 2007 11:21 am

I’m a serious pack-rat and it’s a trait I really dislike about myself. I had the best of intentions when we moved from our rental house into our purchased house 5 years ago but with two little kids running around and my talent for procrastination, most of our “stuff” moved with us. Now we have even more “stuff.” It’s really starting to take over and I just hate it.

My family went through some seriously lean years when I was a kid and my husband and I went through some very lean years together when we first started our family. I find it very difficult to donate things that I paid good money for even though we haven’t used it in years. And I find it even more difficult to get rid of anything that might possibly be needed or wanted again in the future.

It seems like every time I finally get around to clearing old stuff out, I end up having some use for it soon afterward.
Eric on November 10th, 2007 11:59 am

Elizabeth - I’m just taking a break from sorting through DVDs now. Melissa is having the same issue you have - she doesn’t want to get rid of many of the DVDs because she *might* watch them one day. I’m forcing her to make some tough decisions today.

If DVDs have been sitting on the shelf unwatched for years, do we really want them? We’re deciding that yes, some of them we do want to keep. But most we are deciding could go the library, friends, or we could sell them. I mean, we hardly even watch TV anymore these days. There are many more things we’d rather do than watch a movie.

Sometimes it’s just really hard to give things up.
betsy on November 11th, 2007 3:05 pm

This is a great process to go through. It’s also important to not just reacquire a whole new set of stuff in your next digs. I try to think about this a lot every time I get more stuff. I have been a moderator on our local Freecycle for four years and have given away a huge volume of things. I have never missed anything I’ve passed along!
It’s more effective than donating to goodwill, I think, if you have the patience. This way someone specifically wants your item. If no one wants it on Freecycle, it’s probably not worth GoodWill’s time.
In your new place, freecycle is a great way to pickup items you actually need, from people who are like-minded. Good luck in the move!
Dividend Investing, Resume Building, Budget Tools @ The Carnivals on November 14th, 2007 12:35 pm

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Eric on November 15th, 2007 7:37 pm

@betsy - Good point on not trying to fill the new house. We’ll be avoiding that as best we can. I think the new house is gonna be pretty sparse for a while. I’ll have to checkout Freecycle too. I’m not that familiar with it. Thanks for the tip!
Organize Your Life Carnival #18 on December 5th, 2007 8:07 am

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Sunny Daydreame on December 5th, 2007 11:21 am

We moved in August and had to do a serious decluttering job. It was a major down size (2 bedroom with a garage about 900 sq ft total down to 1 bedroom no garage about 300 sq ft.) We gave away about 1/3 of our stuff, and took a big load of stuff to the dump.

Since our new apartment is just a temporary step on the way to buying our own house, we put about 1/3 of the stuff in storage.

Still as we were moving, we touched everything in the house and asked ourselves, “Do I use this every day?” If it was something to go into storage, we asked, “Will I feel bad if I don’t have this when we get stuff out of storage?” Mostly the stuff in storage is furniture and books (old friends).

I think we might have downsized a bit too far though because Even though I only have 1/3 of my stuff in this house, it still feels cluttered. I’ve gotten rid of more since we moved in.
Eric on December 7th, 2007 10:06 pm

@Sunny - That’s some serious downsizing! Congrats on moving toward buying your own home!

I have a feeling we’ll downsize some more when we move in too. We’ll have some more space when we move in, but we’re bringing in everything from storage too.

Thanks for the comment!