If that still exists, I’m jealous. Good lord.
Yeah I only get physical books from the library nowadays. We have a bunch for our toddler and I have some that I’ve kept from over the years, including a few poker books!, but trying to to accumulate any more.
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Physical books are fantastic and you people are monsters. Only books I’ve thrown out are like Master Microsoft Excel 2007.
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Not coincidentally, it’s always Windows 95 for Dummies that I see in the free book boxes. Maybe I’m just not quick enough to snag the romance novels and David Baldacci thrillers.
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I just did an internal double take.
“Why would you throw that out? 2007 is like the latest version of excel!”
The only physical books I buy now tend to have lots of photos or illustrations. This is my most recent - it’s big and heavy and gorgeous and it was expensive.
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I have one of these outside my house. It gets used all the time.
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Was pulling out a few more boxes, and found one more unlabeled box of antiques, which came from my in-laws’ house. Turns out there were two tiles from an ancient Chinese pagoda that was destroyed in a war. “Found” by (white) ancestors of my wife. Apparently quite valuable, but seems wrong to sell them instead of giving them to the appropriate museum in China.
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When the second post in this thread started with
I thought “Wow, this is turning dark fast”.
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We’ve been purging and purging. I’ve been binge watching Hoarders, and reading Stuff, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. Does anyone have a person with hoarding disorder in their life?
We sold our house, and rented an apartment, so we now have a firm deadline for getting everything out. Unfortunately, we will be renting a dreaded storage unit for some time, until we buy a weekend/vacation house. But we will be getting the smallest one we can.
We had an appraiser look at all of the antiques, silver, and some artwork. He was quite good, has a $125/hr. rate, and categorized the silver into “plate, bring to dealer” / “sterling, bring to dealer” / “worth something on its own”, and categorized antiques into “appraise” / “don’t appraise”. A couple of art pieces turn out to be worth in the thousands, and we’re still waiting for appraisals on most of the “appraise” category.
Meanwhile, we have a dumpster from a construction project, and I’ve been tossing everything I can fit into it. I cleaned out some years of files, looked up how long to keep stuff, and shredded or tossed everything else. We’re also freecycling tons of items, as well as doing curbside donation of bags of clothing. Finally getting rid of those damned dress shoes that are too tight. Not only did they not spark joy, they caused a lot of pain.
I’m going to send away a couple of external hard drives that dies years ago before I could get the photos off of them (they died while I was in the middle of rescuing a dying drive, or some such bullshit. Thanks Obama.) That little task has only been gnawing at me for 10 or so years.
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I watch Hoarders when I want the motivation to get rid of stuff. I said to my bf the other night “Life was so much easier when all we had was 2 bags of stuff and a dog”. I miss those times but it’s still so hard letting go of things, especially when there’s an emotional attachment.
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I need to hire you. We bought a house 10 years ago on a bit of a whim, and ended up getting a storage unit for the crap from our condo. In that time the rates have gone up from probably $150/mo to $250/mo.
The grand total value of items in that unit – both real and sentimental --is approximately $0
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Yes, we have a sculpture that we’re “holding” for a relative. They got sick of moving it around, and so dumped it on us, while still retaining ownership. They’ve finally given us permission to donate it to a couple of appropriate homes, or to claim it as ours if we truly love it. I don’t love it, so I’m hoping one of the good homes will accept it.
I just chucked a computer table that I used for decades, after rescuing it from work in the 80’s. It was 2" thick butcher block, and it split about 7 years ago when I tried to move it. “Someone might want to glue it back together,” I rationalized, as I stored it in the basement. Into the dumpster it went. In Stuff, they make the point that hoarders avoid that pain of separation, and to change their behavior, they need to experience the pain. Once they do, the pain recedes quickly with time. In a few weeks, I won’t mind at all, and probably won’t think about it until I see an old photo years hence.
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Hmm, I’m retiring later this year …
That’s quite a business model they’ve got going. We had my MIL’s crap stored for 5 years. At least it turns out some of it is valuable, but what a pain. We hired 800-GOT-JUNK before emptying the storage unit, and only now are dealing with the crap.
Our neighbors who are buying our house need more space, especially “storage.” Mwahahah!
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My parents have moved around (to different cities/countries) a lot in their lives. Most of the moves are far enough that taking all or even most of their stuff is impractical, and getting rid of it is unthinkable, so they’ve accumulated a bunch of storage units over the years in multiple cities.
Finally they moved everything to Cali which is where they decided to retire. They started with 3 storage units full of stuff. In the last 4 years, they managed to get rid of all of the storage units, by discarding some of the stuff and … moving everything else into their garage, which probably has about the same capacity of the 3 units combined. I guess that’s progress, tho. At least now, they’re saving several hundred dollars a month storage unit fees.
Storage units are the nut low. We had to travel a 900 km round trip to empty a storage unit my mum had. I’m still trying to empty my garage of stuff we acquired. I’ve decided to make a big push on the garage and have it cleared out (relatively) by winter.
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Good bump. We are approaching a Stuff reckoning day. We have downstairs an extra bedroom that MrsWookie eyed specifically as a guest bedroom for visitors and that was a particular selling point of this house for her. It even has a bathroom with two doors, one to the hallway and one to that guest room, so it can function as an ersatz en suite. Her folks are coming to visit us in about a week and a half. Right now, that room has nearly a dozen boxes of her Stuff, at least half of which have remained in boxes unmolested through multiple moves spanning perhaps even more time than our marriage (her folks gave her a literal whole truckload of Stuff after her dad remarried after her mom died, and some of that Stuff has never been unboxed). So, we have the classic situation of the unstoppable force (her folks coming to visit) versus the immovable object (her Stuff). I’m optimistic that the unstoppable force proves victorious and results in getting rid of a fair bit of Stuff.
Oh man, I forgot! Just tonight, we opened up the Valentine’s present from my folks to the girls. They sent two vests from a now-obviously-problematic, Native-American-cultural-appropriation-fest thing I’d done as a little kid, along with a note I wrote to go with them, that they’d saved all these years and that now they expect our daughters to dress up in. Yo, that shit is trash and should have been in the trash years ago.
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This sounds like one of those things that should be a teachable moment for the children but ends up just confusing them. “Now, kids, see here how everyone was racist 30 years ago? Even your dad! They’re all still racist, actually. I’m not sure what my point is. Who wants ice cream!”
Just moved back to the USA from living 3 years in Germany. Currently in our old house in Pittsburgh but will need to move again to New Jersey in a few months when it is safer. We have several boxes of stuff that were unopened the whole time we were in Germany that I still struggle to get rid of. Seems like if I get rid of a box of my stuff my wife just buys something for her and the space keeps filling up.
I have a lot of stuff I feel like throwing out but we might have legitimate use for (e.g. twin size bedding and I have toddlers growing up), and golf stuff (everything from impact bag and chipping net to golf shirts and rain gear that I wouldn’t wear off the golf course) that I will get back into when the kids are able to have their own activities on the weekend. Kitchen stuff (gadgets like a vacuum sealer, dehydrator, wok, juicer, panini maker, sous vide machine) that doesn’t fit in our small kitchen but will likely fit in a larger kitchen in New Jersey. It makes it worse that much of the kitchen stuff was wedding gifts and that means my wife wants to keep it forever. Not to mention my wife’s wedding dress which I think she paid a couple hundred bucks to have professionally preserved.
Really not sure why I am posting this, I guess I don’t have anywhere else to unload this feeling of helplessness I will not be unburdened from a pile of stuff for a long time
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