I just moved into my first "real" house not a week ago. I live in the basement, as those of you who have seen my rants about creepy-crawlies will know. Traveling a lot definitely makes you cut down on your packing - this place is fucking bone-empty, because 90% of my stuff is clothing, and everything fit in two suitcases. I see a lot of department store/grocery runs in my future.
I just helped my mom move into her apartment this past weekend from a 3 bedroom house. This house had 2 attics and a basement as well. The amount of sheer crap that she kept overwhelms me. Because she didn't want to take the time to go thru things, she would put piles of paper in a box and label it "go thru". She would also put stuff that she wasn't sure if she was going to keep or not in boxes labeled "misc.". More than half of what was moved out of the house was moved into my grandmother's garage because she didn't want to get rid of it. I'm talking about 80s-style end tables and the like. She actually moved a box of hangers into the garage. HANGERS. Why the hell do you need to keep a box of hangers? Because of this, and because I live in a teeny-tiny apartment, I keep nothing. If I don't use it or wear it for more than two months, it's gone. I can't stand keeping stuff I don't need. And I certainly can't understand why you would want to keep a box of hangers you're not using.
HAHAHA. Your parents would have spontaneous seizures if they saw my parents' flat. My dad's tools are ALL OVER THE PLACE, because his toolboxes (he has 4 - 1 upstairs in the flat, 3 in the garage) are all full. There are papers everywhere, since both my parents sit on multiple committees for various things - they generate more fucking paper than a paper mill between them. There's currently a huge tile-cutter sitting in the lounge that my dad bought last year for cutting tiles for the bathroom THAT HAVEN'T BEEN BOUGHT YET. They both always have at least 3 books out on loan from the library - also always all over the place. My dad always has at least 5 pairs of shoes in the lounge (God forbid he puts on the wrong pair of goddamn boots. They all DO THE SAME JOB. FUCK.). There is a 20 litre paint bucket now sitting in the lounge - I moved that so my mom can get to her cupboard, since she filled the other two that she has (including one that got moved to my room for me to use, since my cupboard has very little hanging space - that is now filled with her stuff again). The dining room table is filled with papers and yet more of my dad's stuff (it gets cleared once a year for Christmas - talk about a wasted purchase there). They have three wine racks in the lounge - all of them are full yet they KEEP BUYING MORE. That couch that got recovered two years ago? Covered in MORE of my dad's paperwork for various things - I just laugh when he says he can't find something, which is almost every day. The man seems to be allergic to filing. My mom leaves at least 2 handbags on the floor of the lounge and usually 2 pairs of shoes too - next to their bed is 3 huge piles of clothes (2 on my mom's side, and one pile on my dad's side). I have a pile next to my bed - 2 towels, 2 pillows and three jackets (remember my lack of hanging room?), and a pair of shoes which I use regularly. The only thing I hoard are car magazines and various books. I do have a box full of various TV and computer cables in the corner of my room, but that's neatly filled. EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention the 2 car garage my dad managed to fill up with stuff, that stuff not being cars but plastic models (he has more of these than he can build in his lifetime yet keeps buying more) and other assorted tools. There are fishing rods there too, but since those are his 3m+ long surf sticks, they don't really fit anywhere but there, so I don't count those. ALT. FOCUS: Thanks to my parents, I will NEVER be a hoarder. I cannot stand living around clutter now. I know where my dad gets it - my gran would always pick up after him, but my mom? My other gran always kept things neat with no clutter... maybe my mom is rebelling against that?
This. I've moved three times in 18 months. Every time I've moved, I've shed more shit, and removed more of my children's shit. Even shoes. And clothes. If I'm keeping them "just in case", fuck it. They're gone. I have some things taht I keep that are important to me, but I've learned to detach myself pretty quickly.
This is an excellent rule, and one I live by as well. If I had my way, I'd throw out much of the stuff in our house. The Mrs and Missanthropic aren't down with this though. Other than a decent baseball card collection, I could fit most of my stuff in the trunk of a mid-sized car. And maybe the back seat. The Mrsanthropic, on the other hand, keeps everything, including junk mail, and it drives me crazy. Early in our relationship I started throwing out piles of crap, and wound up throwing away a new pair of hiking shoes (she had in a box in the garage) and a gift certificate (in a pile of the aforementioned junk mail). I no longer throw her things away.
I was about to say that I am also one of the clutter free, but I've just realized that's not entirely true. I keep a lot of random travel mementos. The first thing you see when you walk into my house is an Egyptian rug made by Egyptian peasant workers, and if you head to my room I have some framed papyrus on the wall and a Moroccan silk on my bed. My shelves are cluttered with pieces of the Berlin wall and a signed photo of David Copperfield. Head into the kitchen and I have Turkish tea cups, and the laundry is filled with hookahs of various sizes from the Grand Bazaar. I love it when I'm idly walking past to get a bourbon and something grabs my attention and my mind wanders to past adventures. Beats thinking about work.
I moved pretty recently. I don't drive, so I pretty much moved with what I could carry with me (subsequent trips yielded more stuff, but the whole thing was still pretty ad hoc). Suffice to say I don't have very much stuff at all, which is pretty ok with me, I'm pretty low-key about that sort of thing.
Having moved through four places in college I have become a minimalist. The last time I moved I made one trip with everything small in my mom's Mini Cooper and my bed and dressers in a friends pick up. I hate imposing on other people while moving so the inevitable asking for the use of a truck becomes easier when you say it'll take one trip and it does. My brother on the other hand I think deep down inside is a hoarder. He works in construction management so when ever they renovate something or have left over shit he carts it off. There is high end cookware, LED lighting, Bar stools, a set of old school stainless steel diner doors, a garage full of marble tiling, and so on and so on. He claims he'll either use it all when and if he ever buys a house, or at some point sell it all for boocoo profit! Since he moves around the country for each job (or out of the country) it just sits there. One of his other big collections is clothes. At the Gap Clearance Center I used to work at you could find 80-100 dollar Banana Republic shirts for 5-6 bucks. Every time he's in town he goes and picks up more, there are piles of garbage bags filled with dress shirts and suits he got there that have never been worn. While living in Shanghai it has been off the charts since getting tailored fit clothes are dirt fucking cheap. He's probably doubled or tripled his collection, though he does wear that stuff more now. I won't even mention his car and music equipment collections.
As I'm currently deployed, I don't much with me, and I am resistant to buying anything I do not need, as I would have to carry it to a new location or tote it back home. I was sharing a room with two other guys, and there was no room. In fact, I didn't even had a wall locker, I had to stack my luggage on top of one another and put my clothes and what not on it. The rest of my worldly goods are back home in a storage unit. Taking a mental inventory of the contents leads me to the conclusion: I have too much of the wrong stuff I have at least 10 boxes of packed items from 2004. I'm pretty sure I don't need them. I have no real furniture, with the exception of a 6 ft wide Lovesac. I have to clean out the wardrobe filled with clothes which I thought were cool at the time, and clothes I have never worn, but bought such as nice slacks and dress shirts for job interviews. Before deploying for the last two years, I had an apartment without a single stick of furniture. The apartment was supposed to turn into a 3 month deal, and I didn't see the point of buying furniture for that amount of time. So I had a sleeping bag, blanket and pillow and I slept on the living room floor. I ate standing up in the kitchen. Well that 3 months turned into a year. By that point, I was so used to it, I stopped thinking about it. However, I"m coming home and I will need a place to stay with furniture to actually sit on.
I am currently in the process of trying to get rid of stuff. Lots of stuff. I am 29 now and have not bought any "stuff" I don't need for some time. However, from the ages of 16-23 I sold drugs, and had tons of extra money. Money for stuff. Stuff I wanted, but did not need. Thousands of old star wars, transformer and gi joe toys, more clothes than a small army would need, every pair of Jordans and other Nikes that I always wanted as a kid but never got, thousands of cd's, dvd's, hundreds of video games and asorted consoles, everything I wanted. I also had space for the stuff, something I don't have now. I have been going through these seemingly endless boxes of stuff, and I have no clue what to do with most of it. I have narrowed the cd's and dvd's down to what I think I will watch again someday, but even that could be replaced with an external hd. I don't want to just give the toys away, as I know they are valuble, but I have no time or patence to put them on Ebay. Some, like the first run Transformers, I don't even want to part with. I just have too much goddamn stuff, and don't know exactly what to do with any of it.
I have a nervous habit where if I go into a store, I'll buy something so long as I have money for it because I don't want to leave empty-handed. Among other things, this has caused me to buy a gorilla costume, an xbox game (I didn't own an xbox), a gun, ammo, a blowtorch, a 4-function office machine, and a stockpile of books, and clothes. Most of this stuff I bought between my 20th and 27th addresses. After moving back into a dorm this past week, I decided that this shit has to end.
The trick to not having a lot of stuff is to move in with a girl, and then break up in a way that's horrible with her. Repeat that every 2 years or so. I have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff, but most of it is scattered throughout girls' apartments. Sure, it's stupid, but I'm way happier owning nothing. Sure, I shouldn't buy it in the first place, but I'm retarded. If you want a new apartment full of furniture, and if you're really lucky a car, just come date me for 2 years.