Originally posted on 1 year 11 months 9 days. This blog is no longer being updated - you should come check out my new blog: Too Short To Be A Storm Trooper 
Letting go
I have a lot of books.
Tracey has a lot of books.
Together we have A LOT OF BOOKS.
It’s just one of those things, when we met we each had a decent collection of books, I’m not talking about comics either – that’s a different kettle of fish completely and one I won’t burden this discussion with. We began with two collections of books and then combined them when we got married. Ten years on we have been adding to it nearly all the time. This has resulted in living in somewhat of a library with a number of books still in storage boxes downstairs.
The removal guys curse us whenever we move home as we end up having far too many book chests that are extremely heavy.
On top of this we add all the ‘stuff’ that we collect, a sizeable CD collection, a large DVD library and for my part a huge collection of figurines and collectibles.
We’ve got a lot of stuff and we’ve identified it as a weight around our necks and now we are shedding all these things to streamline our lives. The hardest part of all this was deciding to let go and making some huge realisations:
- if I’ve read a book and really loved it I don’t need to hang on to it.
- I’m not going back to playing the Playstation 2 despite having a bunch of neat games and some of which I haven’t even played.
- I don’t need X-Files or Independence Day figurines that sit in boxes in the back of my cupboard.
- Not all of my collectibles have significance to me.
- Once I finished playing a game on PS3 history has shown I rarely ever go back to playing them.
- Some stuff is important to me and I won’t sell it but I need to not confuse this with “hanging on”.
- There are more important creative things that I need in my life such as art supplies and equipment and by offloading this makes more room for that!
The other really hard part of this is how slow it takes to get most of this stuff up on eBay which is our online garage sale of choice. It’s not as easy as just saying yeah I’m going to sell all my stuff then you’ve got to systematically go through all of it and get it up there.
But we are slowly doing so.
Anyone else gone through a giant clean up of their lives or considering it?
We gave our Playstation 2 and a stack of games to the children’s hospital in Perth -- they have a big games room and they really appreciated it. And PS3 games are good for trading in -- Dave always does that, if he didn’t really like something or has played it out, it goes straight back for credit against new games while it’s still worth something.
The biggest problem with collectibles is there’s not enough room to display what we have. I’ve thought about this too, but it’s too hard to figure out what to part with.
You should check out goatlady´s last post… Beer Metal
I’d love to do that with the PS2 but I’m such a miserable capitalist that I want the cash for it
I’ve thought about trading in, I finished God of War 3 for instance and see that it’s still quite expensive at EB Games so I wonder what return I could get on it.
Some games I won’t sell because I do love them and there is a remote chance of going back and playing them Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe for example but then on the other hand Street Fighter IV is going to go.
Tracey has all the Angel Smile Time puppets which are really hard to put on display so she is constantly considering them. All my figurines are just too many to put out so I’m culling them.
I expect you also have a stunning collection of black t-shirts
Heh, the thing with the PS2 is that last time I checked, they’re not worth much! This one was an original too, pre-ordered and picked up on release night (November 2000). Nerd much?
I have so many black tshirts I wrote a post about it:
http://enterthegoatlady.com/2009/07/16/the-t-shirt-problem/
You should check out goatlady´s last post… Zombie workout
It is just too bad Goozex/Playswap wasn’t running in Australia/NZ, because I am sure you could have traded in a bunch of those PS2/PS3 titles for other games you wanted (in North America you can get movies too, which is awesome).
You should check out MC´s last post… An Emmy for Conan?
The only thing about the swapping or trade in deals is that I can possibly get a better price on eBay with a little more irritation so I’ll generally opt for that (mainly because so far Tracey has been dealing with eBay and so my irritation has been limited!).
We realised the other day that we don’t have a lot of stuff at all. Compared to some friends who have rooms full of stuff that they’re planning to put on ebay, we’re pretty light on -- a half-full bookcase and a small entertainment cabinet with games, cds & dvds.
We read lots of books, but we’re big library users. When we do buy books, we sell them on ebay pretty much as soon as we’re finished.
My wife is also quite benevolent, and not averse to giving stuff away. For example, our Sudanese refugee neighbours are now the proud owners of an old laptop, stereo, sofa, dining setting and probably more that I don;t know about. Likewise, some of Kylie’s patients and work-mates have been given old phones and computers.
I guess we just don’t get attached to ‘things’.
You should check out Heath´s last post… The Great Cricket Swindle
It’s something that I’m just started to be comfortable with. Growing up we had very little so was always envious of people who had “stuff” and unfortunately I held onto this into adulthood.
First of all, congratulations on your realization and acting on it. That’s a big step.
We currently have a pile (and I mean that quite literally) of stuff under our basement stairs that are earmarked for a yet-to-be-planned garage sale. And when I say “under” the stairs, I mean that a small portion of the pile is under the stairs, and the rest is taking up valuable floor space. If there was an outdoor exit in the room it would be a fire hazard. (Sadly, behind that pile is a 5′ x 5′ pile of empty cardboard boxes waiting patiently to be discarded. A lot of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ goes on in the basement.)
I also constantly say I’m going to put stuff up on e-bay or craigs list, but have only done it once (with fabulous results, btw, that you’d think would encourage me to do it more often).
So… good luck with the clean-up!
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I was looking in some of our cupboards and they honestly have stuff in them that I would refer to as junk -- actual junk. The medicine cabinet is a very guilty member of this party as well.
I’m just going to be hard arsed about a lot of this stuff and get it out of the house!!
I dread moving. We’ve been here since about three months after we married (23 years ago), moving then was a nightmare as we had Lee’s ‘problem’. We are both big readers and while we had a lot of overlap in our authors we only had three actual titles which doubled up. When we moved here we had 33 wine boxes of books, since then we’ve filled up the bookshelves we had then, added several more book shelves and some of those are double stacked. This is all without looking at my stock, I have an estimated 3,000 books in stock.
We’ve considered moving a number of times over the past couple of years but I look at the books and just cringe.
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I sold a load of stuff around 6 years ago -- mainly comics and role playing books which i knew i’d never ever use again.
Then three years ago we had a ruthless clearout of our bookshelf and sold or threw away 90% of our books. I can honestly say I don’t miss a single one of them. Realistically I was never going to read any of them again.
Our house is still absolutely crammed to the rafters with junk though. Having kids is one of the major contributory factors and we have toys and clothes from every single stage of their lives. We want to get rid of most of it, but as you say it’s not that easy. You have to list every single bloody thing and then post it out and it’s a lot of work.
It’s not an option for you, but I find amazon marketplace good to sell DVDs and books and stuff because you don’t have to write any descriptions and the listing stays up there until it sells.
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I’ve been considering a post on just this subject, though I’m not sure I’ve yet reached the point of doing anything about it.
It’s starting to occur to me though that many of the things I’m saving to read / watch again later I’ll just never get round to. When you’re younger and you have less things it’s not so much of an issue… is this a sign of growing old(er)?
You should check out Rol´s last post… Thoughtballoons -- Mephisto
I am forever decluttering.
Ours is toys. Also as a homeschooler, books are everywhere. THEN we have the boxes of stuff the kids have made over the years. That is really hard to sort through and decided what to keep and what to throw out.
I am not a hoarder as such and am happy to declutter, my rule of thumb if I am undecided about something is to let it stay until the next declutter. If I haven’t, used, looked, read, touched it, it goes.
You should check out WiddleShamrock´s last post… You said
I’ve got 26m2 of space to fill..and it’s crammed, but there’s still space. If the room is full…I think I’ll just move.
I might consider selling some stuff from my parents house though..but we’re gonna keep every brick of lego!
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