Anyone else sick of "stuff"

[Anonymous]

I am realizing lately that a lot of my life is spent dealing with "stuff" i.e. buying it, washing it, sorting it, putting it away, working to accumulate more of it, giving it away, then repeat. Others feel this way? What do you do to get out of this cycle? Looking for inspiration.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely. I'm amazed at it all. The only solution is to say no to getting it to begin with.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Agreed. I think I can get a good handle on my own stuff and my husband's. But what about the kids? How do you handle all the gifts, and toys, etc. So much just random stuff!

I need to work on the clothing front (for all of us). We need so much less than we buy. With a little girl, I am often very tempted.

Others with good ideas chime in!

[Anonymous]

I so agree.
We have a fairly large house and every spare storage space is filled with bins of stuff. Just today I am trying to figure out a way to better configure our basement to store more outgrown kid clothing (keeping it as we are hoping for another child).

Since we had children the stuff just multiplied ten fold. The clothing that they outgrow every season is going to be the death of me. And the toys and the zillion gifts that we honestly don't want or need.
I just keep donating, donating, donating.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. Although I use a much more crass word than 'stuff' that also begins with an S.

My big barriers to streamlining are as follows: gifts from relatives, relatives who visit our home frequently, that I can't quite discard.

I'm way to lazy thus far to deal with Freecycle.

I'm too lazy to drive to whatever place that is in the District to recycle electronics.

I'm too unmotivated to actually drive down to Martha's Table to donate high quality children's stuff.

A spouse who keeps buying kitschy shit. oops, I just used my bad word.

A vague, latent sense of environmental stewardship that prevents me from throwing away, say, a perfectly good toy/sweater/pair of binoculars that no one has used in 3 years. I could Freecycle these items 1 at a time, but .... see above.

Suggestions???

[Anonymous]

sorry, "too" lazy. I'm way TOO LAZY.

[Anonymous]

I agree with everyone on this. I've tried to take the approach of buying to replace what is worn/too small/out of fashion, etc. So if I get a new pair of shoes, theoretically an old pair should be trashed or donated. Prior to every Christmas, I try to make room for new toys by getting rid of the old. That, plus scaling back the occasions that generate the stuff - e.g., smaller birthday parties (2 or 3 friends instead of the whole class) perhaps with "no gift" request on the invite; asking grandparents to limit Christmas to 1 special gift per child with contribution to college fund if they feel compelled to spend more; substituting fun outings for things as incentives/rewards for good behavior (trip to go bowling instead of a new video game).

I think the key is regular, consistent, small efforts that over time become habit and compound to make a big impact. Each month, I choose one room or closet to clean out - it's too daunting to do the whole house, but it sure feels great each time I finish a room. I wasn't able to really do this until I got clear of the baby/toddler years. Now that the kids are older, it's easier, and they can even help.

Note - Lupus Foundation and Vietnam Vets both pick up donated items at your house. For Lupus FOundation, you can schedule online. So pack up all the s%?* you can and pile it in the driveway for them to pick up. Much easier than schlepping to Goodwill.

[Anonymous]

National Children's Center does great pick ups. We have them come once a month. They are so easy to deal with. And goes to a good cause, you get the tax slip.

[Anonymous]

We love National Children's Center. You just put the stuff in trash bags, tape a piece of paper with "NCC" on it to one of the bags, and they come the next morning and cart it all away.

[Anonymous]

I have dubbed 2009 the year of the pitch.

I am cleaning out AND telling family NOT to give us anything! I can not handle the CRAP. More than 50% of the toys my children got for Christmas have been put in the attic and will probably stay there for a year as some were definitely not age appropriate (a remote control car that says age 5+ for my 2yo? and the gifter has a young child - what were they thinking?. ) As birthday's approach I will identify magazines my children would like OR shows at adventure theater that might be fun that family can give (they will not take no).

I am hoping to have 20% less stuff in my attic and garage in Jan of 2010. I have already gotten rid of a year of old Real Simple Magazines - my son's pre-school is thrilled to have things to cut. And I cleaned out a kitchen cabinet - who uses the spice whole anise anyway?

Also - for baby clothes that we are saving just in case #3 comes along, I am passing a whole lot of clothes to friends and family. I would much prefer to have someone wear them then for the clothes to sit in the attic.

I am hoping that this energy stays through to later this year!

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

The stuff in my house it literally taking over....there is no way to combat it. I freecycle, donate, drive it around, use NCC...it still keeps coming. We are coming off of Christmas, and many bdays. Ugh.

[Anonymous]

It is so interesting. I live abroad in a developing country and I was just talking to the secretary at my office about the holidays. For x-mas, her 5 yo son received a transformer and a little train engine (a la Thomas) and was thrilled with it. I compare that with my daughter who got innumerable gifts, as we were back in the US over the holidays, and really seemed to not be too excited about them after a while. I guess the point of my post is that sometimes all that stuff is just not needed. Hopefully I will be able to remember that when we eventually move back to the US.

[Anonymous]

I just realized that I've been too enamored with shit all my life and have been liberated by having to move TWICE in the last year, first to a bigger then to a smaller place.

I willingly gave up a lot of my own stuff to goodwill, and since the holidays I've been conscious of making sure that if I buy something, I get rid of an equal amount of stuff.

The hardest for me is letting go of books--particularly children's books, esp. if I like the author & illustrator.

[Anonymous]

to the person who is too "lazy" to freecycle (I'd say you are just busy with other stuff) (-:

Just put it all in a big bag, list a few of the items and say "assorted misc -- take what you want and freecycyle the rest". I promise you someone like me with more time than money will be happy to pick it up and take care of it for you!

[Anonymous]

We've finally gotten to where we've got things at a manageable levels--when we got married my FIL had remarried and was moving into his wife's smaller home and his "gift" to us was basically the contents of the family house. It was nice to have some of the stuff, since at the time we didn't have a lot of money for furniture, etc., but it's taken 10 year for me to convince my husband that we can let go of a lot of it. Part of it was that his mom and older brother had died when DH was in college and so anything belonging to them the whole family thought of as sacred--we had his brother's old suits and ski clothes, and there was no way that stuff would fit my husband--it took up valuable closet space in our 1935 Arlington house for YEARS. FIL passed down this idea that "I payed $$ for that in 196X or 7X whatever and it was top of the line" blah blah blah. So I had a lot of deprogramming to do. We still have his mom's old sewing machine, which I have and will never use because to change stitches you have to swap out parts, and I have a nice new one where you just push a button. The old one is just to HEAVY for pregnant me to get up the stairs and out of the house right now, but it will just disappear someday.

Some stuff I just got rid of when we moved, like old cookbooks that we've never used (does anyone need a whole book of jello mold recipes?). We've moved twice in the last 3 years and that helped us get rid of a lot, but I still have a large coffee table out in the garage that DH was supposed to take to a consignment shop when we still lived in NOVA and he brought it back because he didn't think we'd get enough for it. Who cares? As long as somebody is using it, because we never will.

I loved Freecycle when we lived in NOVA, but in the other cities where we have lived the last few years it's different--a lot more people asking for stuff all the time, much less offering. Different economies, I guess. We have sold some stuff on Craigslist, too.