Inventorying "stuff"

[Slim11]

Not for me, I didnt have the money or time to make sure stuff got loaded corectly, packing materials boxes etc. If you would have paid for it, I would have done it!

 

[Teacher Terry]

Not for me, I didnt have the money or time to make sure stuff got loaded corectly, packing materials boxes etc. If you would have paid for it, I would have done it!

You would have done it if someone else paid for it which tells me you had the time and renting a uhaul for a day is dirt cheap. Anyway it doesn’t matter since it’s done and if you felt good about it not sure why you need to keep justifying your actions.

Mainly I am hoping this thread will cause others to think before taking the easy route. I am out of here because animals and destroying the environment are my two pet peeves and I doubt that I have ever changed anyone’s mind or behavior by what I say unfortunately. I need to stop banging my head against the same wall

 

[MarieIG]

You would have done it if someone else paid for it which tells me you had the time and renting a uhaul for a day is dirt cheap. Anyway it doesn’t matter since it’s done and if you felt good about it not sure why you need to keep justifying your actions.

Mainly I am hoping this thread will cause others to think before taking the easy route. I am out of here because animals and destroying the environment are my two pet peeves and I doubt that I have ever changed anyone’s mind or behavior by what I say unfortunately. I need to stop banging my head against the same wall

Terry, I really like things to go where they are needed. I had trouble giving away some of DF's things, until I discovered that the veterans would be glad to take them. (I really did not want to sell his stuff.)

 

[Slim11]

Yes, because with money comes speed. Hire a bunch of movers over a few days to pack stuff up. Busting something up with a sledge hammer, and a Sawzall is quick. If people wanted or need it they had the time and opertununity to do so. Some stuff people dont wven want if free. Plus ,my way was way easier then a few truck loads of stuff to the thrift store an hour away. My decision was good for me. You are free to do what makes you feel good. I tried. 8n life you cant please everyone and I dont bother to try. Lol.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Marie, that’s wonderful that the veterans wanted your dad’s things. I have downsized my possessions so they aren’t a burden for my kids. I have given my kids what they wanted except for a few pieces of furniture that I am still using.

When my parents were 63 they wanted to downsize to an apartment and they had saved everything from our childhood. They had a small house but it had a basement. We tackled it together and it was a fun project. They moved into a 1k square foot apartment.

When my mom was dying she took much of her own stuff to the thrift store. We didn’t realize she was doing that because none of us lived there anymore. She was very thoughtful and didn’t leave a bunch of stuff for us to deal with.

When she died we already had been given what we wanted so just had to sell or give away the rest. It’s ironic that you spent your early years accumulating and your older years getting rid of it. The younger generations don’t collect stuff so won’t have this problem. All 3 of my kids fall into this category.

 

[MarieIG]

. . .

When my mom was dying she took much of her own stuff to the thrift store. We didn’t realize she was doing that because none of us lived there anymore. She was very thoughtful and didn’t leave a bunch of stuff for us to deal with.

When she died we already had been given what we wanted so just had to sell or give away the rest. It’s ironic that you spent your early years accumulating and your older years getting rid of it. The younger generations don’t collect stuff so won’t have this problem. All 3 of my kids fall into this category.

Your mom was very considerate of others. You take after her.

And yes, I find my desire to accumulate "stuff" has really tapered off. When DH wants to buy another gadget, my first thought is usually "Oh no, not more stuff!"

 

[brett]

On retirement we downsized from 3700 sq ft to an 8X8X16 container.

It took three or four passes to get down to that. Books were among the hardest to cull for me.

A year later we had that container delivered to our condo rental. We promptly gave away some of the unwanted contents. So much for must haves. Perhaps a year of retirement and travel changed our perspective.

Twelve years later we still have five or six unopened boxes from that container. Must haves, or so we thought. Taking up room in the basement and in the garage. Go figure.

There is not one thing (so far) that we disposed of that we wished we had kept.

The last thing either of our children want is our bits and bobs. One lives on the other side other county, the other is not interested in the fossils' keepsakes or used furniture. Maybe one granchild will want the convertible however that is the extent of it.

 

[aja8888]

And yes, I find my desire to accumulate "stuff" has really tapered off. When DH wants to buy another gadget, my first thought is usually "Oh no, not more stuff!"

I'm in the process of going thru the household and deciding what to keep now that it's just the dog and I going forward. The movers will be here Thursday morning and I better have the items boxed or put to one side. I have filled the large trash can right to the top each trash day since February, and my DD and the step-kids have taken what they wanted. This is from a decade long collection of "stuff" from each of our two marriages.

I Have donated lots of clothes and hard goods but now I am down to the finish line! My garage is left for the next two days and it's full of hand and power tools and a large air compressor. Ugh!

I gave away the dining room set, hutch, server and all the china/crystal.

I don't move into my new house until late August when it is supposed to be completed so all the remaining goods are going into storage.

I hope this is the last time I have to do this. This new house will be my 9th and final, I hope.

 

[FLJim]

Marie, that’s wonderful that the veterans wanted your dad’s things. I have downsized my possessions so they aren’t a burden for my kids. I have given my kids what they wanted except for a few pieces of furniture that I am still using.

When my parents were 63 they wanted to downsize to an apartment and they had saved everything from our childhood. They had a small house but it had a basement. We tackled it together and it was a fun project. They moved into a 1k square foot apartment.

When my mom was dying she took much of her own stuff to the thrift store. We didn’t realize she was doing that because none of us lived there anymore. She was very thoughtful and didn’t leave a bunch of stuff for us to deal with.

When she died we already had been given what we wanted so just had to sell or give away the rest. It’s ironic that you spent your early years accumulating and your older years getting rid of it. The younger generations don’t collect stuff so won’t have this problem. All 3 of my kids fall into this category.

"The younger generations don't collect stuff". One of the fastest growing businesses in the country is 'storage'. Life Storage, Public Storage, and MANY other private storage locations that people rent, fill up, pay the montly rent, and NEVER empty. We are a nation of hoarders! People move, pack it ALL up, move, unload the containers and NEVER open them up. There is so much STUFF and few if any people even recall what they have stored. Wish I knew why.

 

[Teacher Terry]

FLJim, I never really understood using storage units except as temporary between moves if your new house isn’t ready and you have to leave the old ones. I have known people to do exactly what you describe. It’s such a waste of money.

Many people in my condo building rent storage units. I downsized to 855 sq ft and if things didn’t fit I got rid of them. I am helping a friend of mine empty her small storage unit so she can save 75/month. She’s rented it for 7 years and nothing in it is worth what she paid. My youngest son wants my antique dining room table and chairs and 2 other small antique pieces that I am still using.

 

[Andre1969]

I'm sure I've probably told this story before, but I used to live in a condo that had a 1 car garage. There were four condos to a cluster, and our parking lot had two clusters, so our little lot had 8 garages. Out of those 8 garages, only two people actually used them for cars. One of them was me, who kept an antique car in there, and one was my neighbor who kept his Camry Solara in there. He was a bad driver, and had some kind of disability on top of that, and was constantly scraping the side of the door opening. Everyone else used those garages for storage. Now one guy did keep a small pop-up camping trailer in his garage, but he also had junk piled up behind and on top of it.

As for younger generations and hoarding, I wonder if it's a trait they will acquire, as they get older? When I was in my 20s, for example, the only possessions I really had, were what was in my bedroom. But when I bought my condo, suddenly I managed to expand to fill 1254 square feet. Although, I guess I should confess, I packed a bunch of stuff in boxes, mostly old school books and such, up in Grandmom's attic. Only problem is, I put them up there when I was in my 20's, so I used larger boxes, and packed them pretty heavy...the type of stuff you don't think about when you're a young'un.

Well, we finally cleaned the attic out earlier this year, in anticipation of finally getting the house ready to sell, and I learned that the stuff you can lift when you're in your 50s, is not quite the same as when you were in your 20s! Plus, I was up there, balanced on top of a ladder, half way up in the access panel, and trying to hand these boxes down to my Mom and my uncle...both in their 70's now and neither in the best of health.

And, the majority of that stuff that was packed up there? Went right to the dump! One of the items up there was an artificial Christmas tree that my Mom bought us from Montgomery Ward back in 1981, for around $20. As a kid, I loved that thing, but looking at it now, in my 50's, I was like good LORD this thing is tacky!

But then, I also found something up there that I thought got tossed years ago. Another Christmas tree, this one from the 50's, I think. It was one of those silver/aluminum trees, the type you weren't supposed to hang lights on, although we still did. It originally came with some sort of color wheel/slide projector type thing that you would aim at the tree, to cast a light on it, that would cycle through a few colors. Haven't run across that projector yet, but a major wave of nostalgia came over me when I found the tree itself! Probably worthless to most people, or at best, only a few bucks, but the sentiment was strong enough, that I held onto it. So now, it's in the box, up in the attic of my garage at the new house. And there it will probably stay, until someone does a trash-out of the place after I'm dead!

Oh, on the subject of wasting money, how's this one? My new house has a small garage that's more like a workshop/tractor shed, with a carport attached to it. The total slab is probably 20x28 feet. It needs work. My uncle wanted to build a second level on to it. Nevermind the fact that I recently had a 36x60 garage built, and it has a loft that's 15x60, and I've done a pretty good job of not junking it up too bad, yet.

I asked him what he wanted to store up in this proposed second level, and he mentioned some of the old furniture and such at Grandmom's house. I tried to stress to him that the cost to build that second level would be far more expensive than the value of anything he wanted to store up there. From a logical standpoint, I think he understands that. Alas, logic doesn't always win out. Another one of his harebrained ideas was to buy one of those cargo containers and set it up as a storage/workshop type of thing. When I told him those are usually beat up and need a lot of work to customize, he said he would do it. I was like dude, it takes an act of Congress, practically, to get you to bring the trash bins back from the street; you really think you're going to have the ambition to take on something like that?

As for dining room tables, I do have my Mom's old table. I think it was made in 1969, so it's not really THAT old. I can remember her buying it from some neighbors of my cousins in mid 1970s. The table is pretty sturdy, but the chairs were kind of spindly and kept pulling apart. I finally took them to the dump a year or so ago. Mom still has the china cabinet that went with the set down at her place. For the longest time, I kept asking her to hang onto the china cabinet, and let me have it if she ever wanted to get rid of it, so I could keep the set together. But, in more recent years, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care anymore. Part of it is the realization that stuff like that just doesn't have much, if any value any more, so there's no real need to keep the set together. But, I'll also never use it. Sure, I could use it for storage, but there are shelves and other types of furniture better used for storage. And having the means for storage usually just invites you to hoard more.

The dining room table, at least, gets used. It stays out in the sunroom, and we use it for whenever we have cookouts and such. It makes a great spot to spread the food out, buffet style.

 

[Koolau]

FLJim, I never really understood using storage units except as temporary between moves if your new house isn’t ready and you have to leave the old ones. I have known people to do exactly what you describe. It’s such a waste of money.

Many people in my condo building rent storage units. I downsized to 855 sq ft and if things didn’t fit I got rid of them. I am helping a friend of mine empty her small storage unit so she can save 75/month. She’s rented it for 7 years and nothing in it is worth what she paid. My youngest son wants my antique dining room table and chairs and 2 other small antique pieces that I am still using.

Our first year in the Islands, we bought an artificial Christmas tree. It cost about $100. After christmas, we couldn't figure out what to do with it as our apartment is fairly small. We looked into renting a storage unit. Yep. $100. That's per month. Gave the tree to a resale shop and never bought another one (except a 2 ft one that we leave out/move around all year.) Space is the final frontier after all.

By the way (and I don't mean to make a big deal out of this) you mentioned that we are running out of space to dispose of stuff. It's true that we're running out of APPROVED spaces to dispose of stuff. As far as actual space - space that's probably only good for disposal, there is LOTS of space to do that. Even in the small state of Hawaii, we have an entire uninhabited Island that was used for bombing and artillery practice for many years. The Island is unsustainable as it has no mountains to catch rain. It was full of unexploded ordinance as well and even though millions of dollars was spent to clean up UXO, no one can promise that everything is safe there.

The Island has been used in the distant past for goat herding with a few intrepid goat herders on Island at any one time (maybe 100 years ago.) What better place is there for burying trash? BUT, no one wants to do that and a single law suit can stop such a practice. Good, bad or indifferent, that's the way it is. Native Hawaiians plan to use the Island for native rituals at some time.

I'm not "lobbying" for burying trash on Koho'olawe's 44 square miles. I'm just saying that there IS room to get rid of trash there. There is simply no will to do so. NIMBY reigns supreme - even on an uninhabited island (virtually uninhabitable island - it's highest population in ancient times was 80 hearty natives.)

So while this Island has been the subject of intense controversy for years, we use burning for electricity as well as land fill on the most populated Hawaiian Island - and yes, we are running out of room (and time.) Everybody's got an opinion about how to do things and any one person's opinion trumps all the other people's opinion. Again, not arguing right, wrong or indifferent. It just is. We've constrained ourselves in land usage - we don't have a lack of land - even in Hawaii.

 

[LJ Dem]

High end consignment

I was lucky to find a wonderful high end consignment store that only deals in fine china, sterling silver, and collectibles etc. I get 60%, they get 40%, which is fine by me as they do all the work. Prices reduce 10% monthly indefinitely. Some silver and gold they melt down and give you melted price. I sold sets of silver, crystal, jewelry and more. See if you can find one on your area. I’ve happily made a very good return. Here’s ours: https://www.aroundtheblock.com/

 

[Major Tom]

FLJim, I never really understood using storage units except as temporary between moves if your new house isn’t ready and you have to leave the old ones. I have known people to do exactly what you describe. It’s such a waste of money.

I agree that for many folk, storage units are a waste of their money, and a result of them being unable to efficiently manage their possessions.

I have a great friend who has a serious problem with organizing her stuff. I hesitate to call her a hoarder, though much of her behavior does fall into that category. Without going into detail, she has recently shown signs of turning things around. For years, she has desperately wanted to tidy up her place before her belongings, and lack of organization, close in on her. She is well aware that her extreme mess (which I find disturbing to look at) is a direct result of childhood trauma. She is in therapy, and making real progress personally.

Ideally, the best way for her to deal with her possessions would be to sort through the stuff in her tiny apartment, throw away everything she no longer needs, and organize the rest. This is such a gargantuan task for her though, that she finds it virtually impossible to do. As a temporary coping measure, she is scooping up a lot of the "stuff" into large trash bags and moving them into storage. Two weeks ago, for the first time in years, she was able to see the floor in her little studio, and she loves it. Now, she can actually walk on the floor, instead of scrambling over heaps of junk, which cracked and broke under her feet as she attempted to navigate her tiny living space. It is very gratifying to see her continue to clear up her living space. She is emotionally quite fragile. If she experiences any difficulties in her work or personal life, there is always the danger that she will backtrack, and her apartment will become messier but, for the time being, this is the most progress she has shown in all the years I've known her. For the first time, I think she's going to continue on this encouraging path.

For years, I tried to convince her that spending money on a storage space was a waste of money. For me, it would have been. I have come to realize that, for her, it represents a chance to get her life back on track. If she continues in this way she will, at some point, sort through the stuff in her storage space, throw half of it away, and move into a small, cheaper storage space. Luckily, she has very cheap rent, thanks to rent control, so even the cost of rent + storage is much less than many people are paying around here for their accommodations.

Our relationship with our possessions is a complex one and, like so many things, exists on a spectrum. At one end are the people who are so impossibly neat and clean, that their behavior seems almost pathological. At the other end are the hoarders. Somewhere in between are the rest of us, with varying degrees of organization.

 

[brett]

SIL/BIL rented a storage container for 10 years. Plus they filled their double garage with junk. No indoor parking on those cold winter days.

The recently emptied the storage locker. Put some stuff in the garage, tossed or gave away the rest.

They said they could no longer pay the storage...rents were up. I hate to think how much they flushed down the toilet on 10 years of pointless storage locker rent.

Their double garage...well they can hardly walk around in it any more. Same old, same old. Things that they do not use, do not want, and somehow do not want to part with. I really do not understand that logic.

A few truck loads to the auction house and/or dump would have negated the need for 10 years of storage locker rent and put a few coins in their jeans.

 

[braumeister]

Things that they do not use, do not want, and somehow do not want to part with. I really do not understand that logic.

I don't understand it either, but we have at least a dozen boxes in the basement storage room like that. Things that go back from 40 years ago to probably 150 years ago. Absolutely no way we can get rid of any of it despite those boxes not having been opened in decades. Just too much sentimental value, (no actual value).

We had twice as much of that stuff at one point, but a basement flood around 25 years ago ruined half of it so that was some help.

 

[FLJim]

I admit to being 'different'! We have always had attached 2-car garages in our homes, and have always parked 2 cars inside the garage every night. My parents (when able to own 2 cars) also parked them inside at night. On my last golf-cart cruise thru a 90-home HOA we noticed that every open garage door revealed "stuff" piled high in the entire garage. Then I read discussions on the local Next Door Neighbors about car vandals and catalytic converter thefts many nights. So how intelligent must one be to connect the dots?

 

[brett]

We were fortunate. It took us 7months to paint the entire interior and get the house ready for sale.

We had at least two bins delivered and filled. We only wanted to give away good and useful items, not our junk.

We found homes for most of the furniture. Anything left over went to the womens shelter store for sale.

Best of all a former co volunteer of my spouse had a neighbour who needed furniture for her daugher. She was sleeping on a ten year old sofa bed. We told her go up to our daughters bedroom and take what she wanted. It was all white, top of the line furniture. She came back ten minutes later crying and asked if she we really meant it. Everything went...bed, mattress, desk, dresser, curtains and a few wall decorations.

She was thrilled. We were more thrilled because her step dad took it all away for us that same day. Then he offered to move some large lateral filing cabinets up from the basement to the garage for me. I could not manage them. From our perspective it is better to give things away to people who need them rather than try to sell for pennies on the dollar.

One tip we had from friends. People sometimes say they want this or that but never get around to picking it up. Our solution was to tell them that women in need were coming to pick up on X date. They either had to pick the stuff up by then or it would be gone. Worked like a charm.

 

[Amethyst]

I have lots of stuff, but always manage to keep car(s) in the garage. My dad's ghost would haunt me if I left a car out in the weather! Although I only have one car right now, there is even room in my garage for a friend to park a car when they stay with me.

Yet I've noticed the same phenomenon that you describe, in my neighborhood of mostly large, higher-end homes. In the absence of basements, garages are used as storage units, while vehicles sit outdoors. If you don't have one or more vehicles in your driveway, everyone assumes you must be gone for the season. I've had neighbors tell me they'd assumed no one lived in my house, even though I'm frequently out there working on the yard. I guess they thought I must be the hired help.

I admit to being 'different'! We have always had attached 2-car garages in our homes, and have always parked 2 cars inside the garage every night. My parents (when able to own 2 cars) also parked them inside at night. On my last golf-cart cruise thru a 90-home HOA we noticed that every open garage door revealed "stuff" piled high in the entire garage. Then I read discussions on the local Next Door Neighbors about car vandals and catalytic converter thefts many nights. So how intelligent must one be to connect the dots?

 

[MC Rider]

...................... Another Christmas tree, this one from the 50's, I think. It was one of those silver/aluminum trees, the type you weren't supposed to hang lights on, although we still did. It originally came with some sort of color wheel/slide projector type thing that you would aim at the tree, to cast a light on it, that would cycle through a few colors. Haven't run across that projector yet, but a major wave of nostalgia came over me when I found the tree itself! Probably worthless to most people, or at best, only a few bucks, but the sentiment was strong enough, that I held onto it. So now, it's in the box, up in the attic of my garage at the new house. And there it will probably stay, until someone does a trash-out of the place after I'm dead! ......................

My Grandparents had one, and when they wanted to get rid of it I took it for a couple years. The color wheel was cool.