I was just checking in on my forums on HotCouponWorld, one of them is It’s Got to Go! which is all about getting rid of your stuff. One of the members on there is lamenting about how she bought a GPS a few years ago, and now it’s really not working, doesn’t know what to do, etc. I think what she is expressing is a very common behavior for those of us that live frugally–we don’t know when to let go. We don’t know when to just cut our losses, admit that we’re done, that we have to buy something new, and just THROW IT AWAY.
When you live frugally, trying to stretch all of your dollars, you see the hidden value in everything. We think about resale values, no matter how small. We think of ways to repurpose items, if not now, in the future. For the most part, nothing to us is completely useless (except real trash of course) so we have a hard time parting with things because they do have some value, even if that value is small. When we are finished with an item, we try to resell it on craigslist or at a yard sale. If it doesn’t sell, we hold on to it, because some day it might sell.
This weekend, let’s do a Smart Spenders challenge, and THROW IT OUT.
Because junk weighs on you. It clutters your home, no matter how organized. It prevents you from seeing what you do have that is useful, because it’s hidden behind junk. It’s time consuming to keep moving it around and reorganizing your basement, your garage, your closets; and time is money. Suze Orman has written and done some speaking about this topic, how this “stuff” can weigh you down mentally and emotionally. Case in point: the GPS person on the HCW thread I mentioned. She doesn’t want to buy a new GPS because she has one. But the one she has is broken! It has cost her hours of her time and gets her lost. Getting lost is stressful, being late for appointments is stressful.
Look around your home–what’s weighing you down? What have you been trying to sell but can’t? What items do you have that have some “someday value” but have no value to you today?
A few weeks ago, I loaded up a bunch of stuff in my car and took it up to SECCRA (our dump) where you can pay to dump stuff. Back of my wagon and back seat and passenger seat were stuffed with stuff. Twenty-year-old college textbooks that had been on half.com for over a year. A coffee stained down comforter that would never resell because of the coffee stain, and my husband HATED it because it was too hot. Christmas decorations that we just didn’t like anymore. Some of my clothes and some of the boys’ clothes that didn’t sell at consignment store.
I paid SECCRA just $7 to dump it all. Freedom! That freed up several areas in my basement, that I was now able to organize. I used one shelf to hold my big kitchen appliances like crock pot and bread machine, so now my pantry isn’t overcrowded. When I need it, I can just go down & get it. Freedom! My pantry is no longer overstuffed, the books that didn’t sell aren’t staring me in the face, that section of my basement is no longer cluttered and so on. Freedom!
Make that your goal this weekend, even if it’s just one small drawer in your kitchen or a small closet. Clean out what you really don’t need. Have a part to something that you don’t know what it’s the part to? And once a month for two years, you find it in this drawer and think “Some day I’ll figure out what this goes to.”? If it only has a “someday value” clean it out and get rid of it. It feels so rewarding!
