This is a guest post from Crystal of Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: A Personal Financial Blog about the Next Financial Step. It’s an open fiscal diary and a personal finance blog rolled into one that is looking to get as many people involved as possible.
Minimizing is in. I’ve seen three different articles in two weeks about getting rid of clutter and minimizing your junk. I am personally trying to declutter our home this month as well. BUT, I do have my limits.
I want my house to be rid of the actual junk…the stuff that just takes up space that I just haven’t Craigslisted yet. For example, I want to get rid of our old GPS, cell phones, my wedding dress and petticoat, and two boxes of Nintendo games and White Wolf magazines that we were unable to sell for a friend. I’ve already successfully sold a few things and am working on the rest.
I don’t want to get rid of our books, DVDs, board games, or Magic: The Gathering cards. Those are things that we enjoy or will enjoy again in the future. Do we read our books every year? Nope. Do we frequently watch our DVDs? Nope. But when I want to read the whole Harry Potter series again, I know where they are. When I want to bring The Princess Bride, Paranormal Activity, or Terminator 2 to someone’s house, I can easily pluck them off the shelf.
We own the board games and Magic cards for much the same reasons. Some games get played all the time (like Power Grid), but others only come up once in a while (like Merchants of Venus). That doesn’t mean we want to get rid of Merchants of Venus…we’ll just hold on to it until it’s requested again.
In short, I want to own these things for the ease factor and because I enjoyed them enough to want to have them as part of my life.
I just hope that the true minimalists (like these people) will not accidentally cause a bunch of people to go on a crazy cleaning spree and regret it a month later when they are re-buying the hobby gear they just sold or the clothes they just donated.
Enjoy these other posts at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff:
How We Chose to Buy Our Home
Diminishing Inheritance Returns
Let’s Get Controversial: Hiring Help
Isn’t it interesting the different things people treasure? One friend would never give up her collection of piggy stuffed toys and figurines. even after they started to take over her whole double-wide. Nice thing about games and DVDs is at least someday you may actually use them!
I agree. I read in another blog about getting rid of mugs: “You only need a few,” he said. But I have space in my cupboard for the mugs I own. I bought them because I like them; many are from places I’ve been to. If I like it and have space for it, I should not get rid of it. Same goes with my books; I still have space on my bookshelves…
Some of what looks like too much decluttering–or over-sparseness–is cultural, I think. I saw a clip of Oprah visiting an apartment in Denmark–the 3 little kids shared a room far smaller than Oprah’s smallest closet. She was aghast!
The people in NYC got a lot of press. I think it’s neat to do for a while. And most New Yorkers don’t cook–at least most that I know.
I will never be in danger of decluttering too much.
Check out some of the architect John Pawson’s work if you want to see upscale minimalism.
helio, piggy stuff…hmmm…to each his/her own. 🙂
Jersey Mom, exactly! Why just gid rid of things to get rid of things? I’m in favor of mugs.
frugalscholar, yes, I’ve lived in Holland, but even they did not throw things out just for the heck of it. I’m all for minimalism if someone likes it, but I’m against telling people to get rid of things they will want back later. It’s a different kind of wasteful.
I have been actively working on de-cluttering my excess… but to me. these people have gone to the extreme. But, they made choices they felt were right for them .. home they can afford, they didn’t completely get rid of their clothes – just found imaginative ways to store them …
Really enjoy reading your posts … Holly, hollyberryelf.blogspot.com
Minimizing can go too far, but I don’t think many people are in danger of doing so, especially not in America. Most people could probably stand to get rid of a bunch of stuff without even noticing.
I blog about de-cluttering a lot, but at the start of all of it, I wrote about the fact that people are all different in terms of 1) how much stuff they actually have 2) how much space they have to actually put that stuff away and 3) their attitudes about stuff.
Those are three major variables. For instance, I’m constantly weeding out stuff I don’t need because I like having space, because I live in small spaces (French apartments are notorious for lack of closet space), and because I’ve moved quite a bit lately in the past few years (between CA and France)
That said, I was once helping a person de-clutter who could no longer put things away in her kitchen. We pulled out a bunch of stuff from a cabinet including 1 seed sprouter (unused since the 1970’s) and not one but 3! t-rex cookie cutters. Who needs 3 t-rex cookie cutters? This woman had only grown children, did not make cookies anymore and didn’t want to. . .didn’t even know she HAD 3 t-rex cookie cutters etc.
So, for some people, I think de-cluttering can be a good thing.
Something I read recently talked about un-cluttering a little at a time instead of making it an all-day thing. They said that we make poor decisions about what to throw out when we get tired. That made a lot of sense to me! I’m un-cluttering in layers….
I completely agree that almost everybody could stand to declutter. I just hope they don’t rush and clear out things they’ll want later.
And no one needs 3 t-rex cookie cutter, lol.
But if you can get the thing somewhere else conveniently, what’s the point in owning it yourself?
I recently went on a major de-cluttering run and got rid of things my mother never thought I’d like without – my Sex and the City and Felicity DVDs. I cherished those shows growing up and took the DVDs everywhere with me. But I had watched them so many times that it was beginning to be something I did out of boredom. Did I need to see Felicity choose Ben 200 times? No. And my mothers owns all of the Sex and the City DVDs so I can borrow them anytime I want.
Similarly, I got rid of every book I owned because I can get them through our local library. And if the library doesn’t have them, they can borrow them from another library through inter-library loan.
Just because you have the space to store something doesn’t mean you should. If you only use two coffee mugs but you have 20, there’s no reason to keep the other 18, even though you have the cupboard space for it.
Also, I would speculate that minimalist living and de-cluttering is rarely if ever “another kind of wasteful.” If you’re selling or donating the things you are removing from your home, you’re helping yourself and others. The only time it’s wasteful is when you throw things in the trash or when you donate things and want them back later (so you buy them again).
Red, that was my point on “another kind of wasteful”…a bunch of commenters on a minimalist article at Get Rich Slowly had some regrets on things they threw out or donated. That made me think they cleared stuff out on a cleaning spree instead of thinking it through.
I would argue that you don’t need to keep things around that you can get to easily, but “easily” is also a matter of perception. Even if my mother owned the Firefly series, I would too since she lives over an hour away. I also like owning movies so my friends and I don’t have to travel anywhere to pick something up for movie might. BUT, I only own movies that my husband or I love.
As for only using 2 mugs but owning 20, yes, that person would not need to store the other 18 mugs. BUT, I’m betting that they don’t just use 2 mugs. My husband and I have 16 glasses and only use two at a time, but we usually circulate through all of them at least once every few weeks….
My wife calls me a pack rat. I call myself a collector. i don’t have 100 of the same things. I enjoy collecting favorite movies and upgraded my VHS tapes to DVDs and I do “re-watch” them. I collect books and magazines too. I do think I have a lot of stuff but one important thing is communication with your spouse. I don’t mind de-cluttering as long as I’m not rushed. There are many instances where I suddenly find things missing only to find out that my wife threw them out during a de-cluttering frenzy. What irks me is when we have to buy a new one when, down the road, we needed the stuff we threw out a year ago. I do think that having 50 mugs is OK if you really like them and it’s your favorite hobby as long as you have an existing storage for it. Once you HAVE TO CREATE new storage, then it’s something else. I still have plenty of room on the bookshelf and cabinets for new books and DVDs. I don’t intend to build or buy new shelves or cabinets. Once they start to overflow, I would consider getting rid of some stuff… on my own time.
mario, that sounds about right. We collect board games since we play them with friends and each other. Seems to make sense to me.