Two Trash Cans a Week - Still May not be enough

[CharlesV]

You dont have to live on a boat to live on a boat.

I dont yet live on a boat but Im in the same situation as every other poster here. First, the stuff has to go one way or the other. Some cannot ever go, but its only some and manageable.

First thing I did about 5 years ago was close my eyes and give away 50% of it. That was painful, but liberating as everyone knows. This cut my storage bill to what is now around $13,000 over 15 years.

Next, and here is the whole point, I vowed to pretend I live on a boat until I actually did and that means if you accumulate anything, something else has to go first. There is no expansion of any space. This made me think very hard about accumulating and stopped me many times from buying something. Im not buying that thing if I cant first find something else to let go of.

Thats how you start freeing yourself from the tortuous accumulation syndrome. When your head is adjusted, it becomes far easier to dump and dump because the truth is that you NEED far less than you think. In fact its just about nothing.

From now on you live on a boat, even if you dont yet have one! Get the adjustment going, the rest begins to simply take care of itself. All that stuff we all have, in reality its all in our heads.

[Cheechako]

We stored a bunch of family antiques etc in a 10 x 10 storage unit. I'm glad we did, but we also stored a bunch of stuff we didn't need to keep (even though we felt like we got rid of "everything") a 6 x 6 would have been plenty!

[Captain-Avenger]

Same story at our house. My wife retires 12/16 so we are getting rid of stuff slowly for the last 6 months. Have sold very little. It has been donated to rummage sales, Salvation Army, clothes drop off bins type stuff. Books/DVD's to the local library. Every time we have friends over we laugh and give them a paper bag and tell them they have 5 minutes with out backs turned. A couple have actually take us up on it. Larger items like furniture and power tools I have started a "dibs list" for people to sign up to take them at the last minute.

I would rather give the stuff away for free to friends that my wife and I have made over the last 30+ years than to sell it for 10-15 cents on the dollar.

If I give a $100 item to a friend that wants it it is worth $100 to them. If I sell the same item for $15 at a yard sale I only see how much money I lost on the deal. I feel so much better at the end of the day giving $100 to a friend than taking $15 from a stranger.

[brownoarsman]

Of course, we are having this conversation at the same time that many of us in the northeast are getting ready to fork out thousands to haul and store our boats!


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[powsmias]

Originally Posted by texpie

Kindred spirits here. 10 Years in a 2900 sq ft home and prepping the house for listing in April or May. Donating a lot of stuff to the AMVETS charity. Cannot believe how much stuff we collected in 10 years in this home.
Are you guys planning a garage sale before or after the house sales? We had planned to stage the house with our furniture and then try to sale everything else in garage sale/craigslist after the house sales.

AMVETS nice move or salvation army.. goodwill keeps all the money and they make a fortune.. be careful who you donate to.. salvation army is listed as best

[Freemind]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Thing about land is taxes.
you just can't buy a small portion of land without paying a premium, but say you got an acre for 3K, good shed with a concrete foundation to keep it dry will cost what another 3K?

Four years of hangar rent for me, no taxes and no up-keep of any kind. People aren't getting rich with renting out storage buildings, there was a flush of building those things 20 or so years ago with the theory of being a lot of money to make, but like most make money with little work schemes, it didn't pay out.
Coin car washes and big ice machines fit into that category as well

It depends greatly on where you buy the land. Our taxes on 30+ acres in Tn. Are less than $900 a year.

[Juho]

Originally Posted by Gadagirl

Thank you for this thread! I'm hoping many who have been there and many who are in process will provide information, tips, tricks etc.
I'm also planning on listing my house this coming year. I have a long list of inexpensive repairs and aesthetics to work on in addition to "getting rid of the junk".
Has anyone hit a mental "wall"? I was on a roll and then because of some of lifes' normal event's i.e. parents illness, parents death, grand child etc. I haven't been able to "fill the sails" again. Also becoming totally overwhelmed by the tasks at hand. I'm looking for motivational ideas to get out of my doldrums. What has worked for you?

My advice would be to take your time and only then move on to the next phase. After my father's death I took some 6 months of very traditional mourning time and physical rest (that was needed too). After that I felt it was time to move on to new challenges. I think it was absolutely no time to feel any guilt or to force oneself to full speed right away. Different things work for different people, but for me this approach of letting things settle down and take their natural time, without any pressure or guilt whatsoever, was a good approach.

[annsni]

Originally Posted by Freemind

It depends greatly on where you buy the land. Our taxes on 30+ acres in Tn. Are less than $900 a year.

And here in NY, I need to save a few hundred more than that a MONTH to pay for ours.

[Greenhand]

Originally Posted by Dennis.G

Options on getting ride of stuff, in an order or sorts:

1: eBay or Craigs List - Biggest hassle but best price (usually).
2. Garage Sale - big hassle.
3: Consignment store - much less hassle but expect only 60% or 50% of sell price.
4: Donate to friends, thrift store, Habitat Restore, etc.
5. Recycle center
6. Trash bin

We did all of the above.

Forget the "but I paid $100 for that" and think "heck, I could pick the same thing up in a garage sale for $5 if needed".

We went from a two home family, to a boat family in the course of about a year.

I actually like garage sales better than craigslist when you have masses of things. The trick is to NOT label everything individually make a $1 table, a $5 table, a $10 area, etc. And be willing to negotiate. Also, if your neighborhood has a community garage sale, that kind of things brings in lots of people. It would even be worth organizing one. Choose a date, get a few neighbors on board, and advertise it on craigslist as a neighborhood sale. We had an early garage sale, keeping only what was needed to stage the house, then a post sale garage sale. Unfortunately, that sale fell through the week of closing, and we had to stage the house with stuff we were keeping at the condo.

[brownoarsman]

Originally Posted by annsni

And here in NY, I need to save a few hundred more than that a MONTH to pay for ours.

On the plus side, when you're ready to cast off you'll be able to pay for your whole cruise simply by trucking your stuff into central jersey and storing it there for the duration!


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[Madehn]

What worked for us when we consolidated 3 households into one moderate (long story) was to contact an estate autioneer-- they supplied the labor and the wagons to load everything up on-- we just pointed and they took it- they handled the advertising etc and gave a good accounting of what each item sold for-- i think they got 20% but it was done and worth it. really simple -- sell big ticket items like cars yourself but everything else let the auctioneer take-- best part is if it doesnt sell, they deal with the trash- worked like a charm for us.

[Capt Gary]

My wife and I just went through this as well. Can't believe the stuff you can accumulate (in our case over 20 years). I believe now, that everyone should move every 5 years, just so they have to go through all their stuff regularly and toss all the extras.

[MartinAither]

So from reading these posts, I need to start now, so that when my 8 year old daughter goes away to college I won't have to have a storage unit the size of the Taj Mahal.

[Greenhand]

Originally Posted by MartinAither

So from reading these posts, I need to start now, so that when my 8 year old daughter goes away to college I won't have to have a storage unit the size of the Taj Mahal.

Every purchase not made now is more in the cruising kitty in 10 years!

[Hudson Force]

Stuff means security for many people. Having this stuff squirreled away seems to be important even when the stuff is never seen or used.

I have some clothes, books, tools, dishes, cookware, food, toiletries, a laptop, TV, a few musical instruments and a pair of roller skates. With my boat I have ancillary equipment,- dinghy, outboard, bicycles, kayaks.....

I guess my wife and I reached a peak of ownership when our children were teenagers, but even then we never owned anything that was not on our boat except for a couple of cars we used before we retired in 2002. Now we own about the same volume of material that we had when we first moved aboard in 1972.

Maybe I'm wrong! I never had all this stuff that I see that all these others have collected. I said, "Stuff means security for many people", but that's just my guess. What caused so many people to collect these things? I see my friends and relatives that have accumulations that fill spare rooms, attics, outbuildings, garages and closets with huge volumes of items that they have no accounting for and no function.

I don't get it,- why do people have so much stuff?