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Thinning out your belongings and getting rid of old stuff


Guest El Chalupacabra
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Thinning things out and making room  

23 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your preferred method of getting rid of stuff you are no longer interested in (IE books, CDs, DVDs, collectibles, other things you don't use anymore)

    • Ebay
    • Craigslist or simular site
    • letgo or similar smartphone app
    • second hand store
    • yard sale
    • sell privately to family, friends, neighbors, etc
    • give away to family, friends, neighbors, etc
    • donate to good will/charity
    • TRASH!!!


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Guest El Chalupacabra

Help!

 

So, I started looking around my place, and noticed I have accumulated a lot of stuff. God I am disgusted with myself. I have all kinds of Music CDs, DVDs, books, old clothes, guitars, framed prints that are of stuff I haven't been in to for a decade or more and I am tired of (that I paid pretty good money for at the time), game consoles I haven't touched in literally years, computers, etc. On my dining room table, I have this bill for storage, where I put all the crap like collectibles, stuff I have kept because of sentimental reasons, etc, that quite frankly haven't seen the light of day since I placed them there almost 4 years ago, when I moved to my current condo. Almost 4 YEARS of storage fees for crap that I probably could have re-purchased 20 times over by now, because the stuff in there is not worth a lot. I don't have a place that exactly looks like something out if a Hoarders episode, but my place isn't all that big, so it is getting a bit cramped. It's amazing to me how much crap I have, and honestly it's to the point where it looks cluttered and I am embarrassed by the cluttered look. Basically, I have a 1 bedroom condo, but I have enough stuff to fill a 2 bedroom house, if it had a garage.

 

Time to simplify! I need elbow room. I'd like space for a new kegerator and a wet bar credenza. I want new furniture that looks nice. I want things to look clean and uncluttered. Which means I have to purge like 80% of everything I own. A task to be sure, because a LOT of it is going to be trying to decide what stays and what goes. One thing that is hard for me to get past is thinking to myself "I paid "X" amount for this thing, I can't just trash it," or "I've had this thing so long, I can't get rid of it." So I became curious as to what other people's methods to mentally prepare to get rid of stuff, and once they decide what they want to jettison, what their preferred method of disposal is. How do you let go of stuff? Do you have a rule of thumb, or do you just rip it off like a bandaid and deal with the regret of purging a little too much later?

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I am absolutely terrible at this, too. Things just build up tremendously because I get attachments to things and don't want to get rid of them. When I was in my one bedroom apartment, it was so cluttered because I didn't have enough room for everything, though a ton of it was stored in closets, which it thankfully had plenty of.

 

When I moved two years ago, it forced me to go through a lot of things in order to pack. If things were already/still in boxes, I just kept them because it seemed like too much work otherwise (though I clearly didn't need them since I hadn't touched them in three years of living there...but most of those are sentimental collections). I went through a lot of dvds, though, putting a bunch in binders to help condense space, but I had some duplicates from upgrades to blu-ray and other movies that I knew I never wanted to see again. I gave some of these to friends and tried to sell others, along with old video games, at a yard sale.

 

For clothes, any old clothes that were still in good condition went to goodwill and any that weren't just went in the trash. For a lot of other assorted items with no real particular value, I just ripped off the band-aid and threw them out. I also just chucked my desk, which would have been near impossible to move in one piece without it breaking (which it did while trying to get it to the dumpster).

 

I still undoubtedly held on to far more than I need, but it was at least a dent. It didn't take long to overtake my three bedroom house even though it's just me and my dog. It'll be interesting to see how I deal with getting rid of things once that (hopefully) is no longer the case.

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I did a purge when I moved out of my 2nd home into my ghetto apartment. I'd made a similar move when I left my 1st husband, so I already knew what it felt like to move crap I never use and I swore, never again.

Anything I hadn't used in the 2nd house was gone. If it was in good shape, it went to Goodwill. If not, I tossed it.

If it was a collectible I still enjoyed, I'd keep it. One that wasn't important went to Goodwill.

I may be moving again soon and this time, chalcedony will get all my unneeded household things.

The professionals on those hoarder shows generally ask hoarders to separate things into 3 piles: Keep, donate and toss, then you look at the piles and re-assess. And if it works for hoarders, it can work for you, 'cause those people collect dead animals, old food and feces.

 

ALSO, I now have Genesis' "Throwing it All Away" stuck in my head now, so THANKS

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Every time I move I do a serious purge. I go in order-- first I offer up to friends, then drop off at Goodwill if it's small, if it's large it goes on the curb, (which is a California thing, we have roving junk men), after that, it gets trashed.

 

I tried ebay and craigslist a few times but it's super tedious and annoying dealing with people.

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eBay is tedious work. My brother-in-law does booming business there reselling collectibles he finds at local thrift shops, but the four months I tried it taught me it really wasn't my thing.

 

When we moved in '07 we took 18 trash bags full of junk to Goodwill, and I "sold" (read: practically gave away) four longboxes' worth of comics to Half Price Books. Nine years later, I have a new stockpile of books, comics, and DVDs on a couple of garage shelves, meant as merchandise if our community ever has a neighborhood garage sale on a summer Saturday when we're not out of town. Everything else goes on the never-ending Goodwill pile. And my DVD collection is now on a rotational basis -- when a few come in over time, a few more get kicked out. (I'm buying fewer than ever nowadays, so the rotation has slowed.) My CDs have nearly filled their allotted space, so I'll have to do the same with them soon, because I'm not remotely interested in expanding them to another shelf.

 

But the worst offender: my weekly comics habit adds a new longbox every year. Sooner or later in the years ahead I'mma have to do something drastic with that.

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Anything I can't give away, I donate. I don't have time or patience to sell stuff. I'm getting better at taking clothes in single garbage bag trips rather than waiting til 2 or 3 pile up, too. Although I have tons of storage now, so I don't have to get rid of so much stuff. Probably still should though.

 

Good luck on your purge, Chalup!

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone.

 

I feel that I may be taking books, DVDs and CDs to the local second hand store and just getting what I can for them.

 

Clothes and weird misc stuff that is still serviceable but can't get much for, will obviously go to good will.

Collectibles, computers, and stuff I could actually sell and get decent money for (if I could find the right buyer) I don't know what I am going to do about, yet. I have to decide if desire to make back some cash (IE contribute to the ongoing monthly fund towards a wet bar, or hell even just a decent vacation) VS convenience of getting rid of said crap is worth just dumping it at little or no cost.

 

I could stand to have some of that zen Driver and Fozzy seem to have to just pitch stuff. I guess I have to get past my own hangups.

 

Six, I hear you about ebay. I've never done that, ever. I once thought about it and started looking into it, and it just turned me off. Seemed like unless you had a lot of spare time (like that WAS your job) and were dedicated to volume sales, the money returned for the hassle you go through just didn't seem worth it to me. That was like over 10 years ago, so it may have changed, but I don't know. Also, comics...I haven't collected in like over 20 years, but I used to. Even now, I haveprobably a stack of 20 or 30 comics packed away, plus graphic novels and compilation books. It was stupid. When I did do a comic purge 20 years ago, I sold a most of my comics, then bought the same story lines those comics covered in book form. I probably LOST money doing that, but thought I was smart because it saved space. Those same graphic novels and compilations have sat ever since, being read only a couple times. And the stuff I kept...it was the late 80s/early 90s stuff that isn't worth anything, anyway.

 

Craigslist, yeah. Not sure if it's like this nationwide, but its pretty bad on the PHX area. I used to be able to sell stuff there as almost a side job fixing up used PCs then reselling them like 10 years ago. Actually made some decent money doing it. Then it was invaded by the tweakers or something. Unreliable freaks that may or may not show up. And when they do, they low ball you. Some stuff, like collectibles might be OK, to sell. I don't know.

 

I never tried letgo or similar sites, and might just give it a whirl.

 

I think the bottom line is this is more a thing to get rid of stuff, not make money. I know this rationally, but then when I start thinking of stuff I want to get rid of, some voice in the back of my head says "Yes, you might be able to sell that nick nack for $50. THat other do-dad for at least what you paid." I need to over ride that part of my ape-brain, or something :eek:

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I'm a big fan of getting rid of stuff! Except I have a hard time getting rid of books. But otherwise I tend to go through a section of my house every six months or so and just ask these two questions:

 

If it's a potentially useful gadget/tool/thingamabob

1. Did I even know I had this?

2. Have I used/or wanted to use a thing like this in the past six months?

 

If the answer is No it's immediately put in the donate pile

 

For the more ephemeral things (like keepsakes, clothes, media) I simply ask myself one question: does this item bring me joy? If not, then BYYEEEEEEEEEE

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Another option - swaps.

 

There's a group in my community that gets together for a "Really Really Free Market" once a month where everyone brings useful - but not to them anymore - items, and you can take whatever you want from what other people brought in exchange (or nothing, if you want). Anything unclaimed at the end goes to charity.

 

My friends organize clothing swaps seasonally, too. The dress I'm wearing today is from a clothing swap.

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I also sell stuff to Amazon.

In fact, this spring/summer, I've used Amazon, Gamestop, Facebook, Craigslist and eBay. Out of it, I got a PS4, a TV and paid for a weekend away with the family.

My mom likes to give me a bunch of junk.

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Last weekend I put all the boys' old clothing in a consignment sale. No idea how much money I made though. I priced everything much higher than a garage sale or FB group sale, but I only get 70% of what it sold for. Then I told them to just donate everything that didn't sell.

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They have a place here in Tucson called Bookmans that take all kinds of stuff off of your hands. They can be pretty picky sometimes but you can trade things in for money or store credit. I've traded in bunches of stuff there.

They wouldn't take some VHS cassettes I tried to unload at the Ina Road store. My step-dad had a bunch of crap we couldn't even throw out. I think out of all the VHS tapes we only got money for the Hunt for Red October.

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They have a place here in Tucson called Bookmans that take all kinds of stuff off of your hands. They can be pretty picky sometimes but you can trade things in for money or store credit. I've traded in bunches of stuff there.

They wouldn't take some VHS cassettes I tried to unload at the Ina Road store. My step-dad had a bunch of crap we couldn't even throw out. I think out of all the VHS tapes we only got money for the Hunt for Red October.

 

 

LOL, yeah, they are really picky about what they take. I was looking to unload a bunch of DVDs at that same one and they only ended up taking a couple of them. I think I brought about 30 with me. They just ended up going to the Goodwill down the street. :)

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Guest El Chalupacabra

So, I consolidated some plastic bins in my storage unit, and threw away or donated some things. Made a dent. On the home front, I used to have a bookshelf full of DVDs, and sold or donated about half by going to various local second hand shops. The first place paid the best. The rest not so much. Also donated some old clothes that was still serviceable.

 

 

 

They have a place here in Tucson called Bookmans that take all kinds of stuff off of your hands. They can be pretty picky sometimes but you can trade things in for money or store credit. I've traded in bunches of stuff there.

Bookmans is indeed picky, and in some cases, give you worse than pawn shop money for your items.

 

Zia, which is another AZ second hand store, is no better.

I used to love going to bookmans when I lived there. My brother still does.

I just went to bookmans this past weekend. $.50 a dvd is what they offered (mind you they were viewed once, most were $15-20, new), and $1 per graphic novel (that I paid $15-20 or more). Eff those guys. I ended up donating the DVDs I couldn't sell at the other stores I went to,to a local library, rather than take the $12 Bookmans offered, and they only wanted half of the DVDs I brought with me to sell them.

 

Bottom line, Bookman's (or ZIa) are good if you are looking to buy, but suck ass if you are looking to sell.

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