How much "stuff" do you have?

I have a large duffle bag of “stuff”.
My fiancee has half a garage of “stuff”
I hate hate hate “stuff”.

I stay out of malls so I don’t really buy. But what I do is hang onto things that need repair and never get around to fixing them. Periodically, I haul things to the curb and don’t look back.

I don’t know how much I have, but I can tell you exactly how much my mom had when she passed away in January. Exactly 3½ months worth of time sorting through it all. As I get time, I’m going through my “stuff” and pitching it so someone else won’t have to when I die.

When my Mom died, my sisters, my brother, and I had to go through her stuff. It was a nightmare.
I made my decision that, when I go, I will have much less for my kids to suffer through.
I am slowly getting rid of things, but, of course, now I have a lot of Mom’s stuff.

This question is timely for me. I just committed to go through all the junk drawers and junk spaces in my house room by room. Today I did the junk drawers in the kitchen. Threw some stuff out and have 3 old cell phones and a bunch of cords and stuff that I guess I will see if I can donate somewhere.

I am doing my office closet tomorrow. I have a few smallish boxes full of maps and tourist books for many states, and a pile of that stuff that has not been sorted into the labelled boxes yet. I have to decide what to throw out and what to keep. The maps come in handy quite often, so it will be tough for me. I guess I can always get new info on the web, but I like the paper stuff.

Then I will do an office upstairs. Then my cosmetics in my bathroom

I think when I am done I will have three big trash bags, 2 brown grocery bags of paper to recycle, and two boxes to give away or donate. That is my prediction.

One of our methods we are using to get rid of things:

Where will it go if we keep it? If we can’t answer that, it goes.

My husband and I bought a house when we were 23. It had a large addition built onto the back part of the house that wasn’t livable, plus a long 2½ car garage. My mother would give us things she didn’t want anymore, or things she found at garage sales she thought we could use once we fixed up the addition. Many of these items needed a little fixing up too. Our addition and garage quickly became full of useless items during the 16 years we lived there, especially after my grandmother passed away and we acquired many of her things.

We lost the house to foreclosure and left many of those items in the home when we moved. (maybe a crappy thing to do, but we didn’t have the money at the time to dispose of everything properly)

You don’t know how freeing it feels to not have all this “stuff” anymore. We are so happy now.

Enough stuff to fill a 6 bedroom house. Some of it is crap, and we would love to get something of better quality. But we have too much other stuff to do to try to figure that out. It’s a lot of stuff. Although I wonder if it would be enough to fill a second household.

I’m pretty much a hoarder, I have loads of stuff.

…lol, loads.

I’ve actually lost a lot of stuff when I moved from Winnipeg to Québec, but I’ve gathered a lot since then. Most and foremost, horror movies. I may not have as many movies as my ex boyfriend does, but I sure have a lot. I buy horror flicks constantly, even ones I haven’t seen, and my shelves don’t have enough space, so they end up in book cases, drawers, in my bedroom. I also have a lot of video games, nearly 300 in all. Plus video game magazines, goth fashion magazines, way too many magazines. Some date back to 1989 lol.
I’ve got cheap plastic Halloween decorations all over, metal trinkets, too much fucking dishes. Just today I received this huge set of meat cutting knives I denno what I’m going to do with. Pillows and cushions, chains of all types and sizes, countless paperback books I get from used book stores, wires, modems, computers that don’t work anymore, clothes, a buncha of other busted shit I can’t seem to throw out, ceramic cows…it doesn’t end.
Too much stuff. But I can’t seem to get rid of any of it. But it’s all neat and organized, ecxept when my cats decide to go on a spree and knock shit over.

Bed, desk, 2 chairs, 2 bookcases, 3 lamps, some clothes, some books, 3 small drawers of miscellany, a fan, 1 painting and 3 photographs.

Kitchen necessities: knives, pots, pans, plates, bowls, cups, silverware, some plastic storage containers.

Not much stuff. I prefer it that way.

I’ve got a lot of books I can actually afford to buy a lot of books if I shop smartly enough a lot of instruments I chase dreams of musical ability and a lot of clothes I’ve been wearing roughly the same shirt size for several years now, it adds up … I have a bunch of random things that follow no category, like a few stuffed animals my sister gave me, a tapestry and a really fucking cool one, at that! , some random DVDs, a few nice pens and pictures or posters. That doesn’t count practical things, like the fans, air filter and clock, which prove inconvenient, too. And that’s just in my room.. I have more elsewhere.

Most everything that has any meaning I have had since college. 3 Milk crates full of albums, one electric guitar and amp, one acoustic, duffle bag of clothes, fly rod, mess kit, camera bag and it all will fit in the back seat of my SUV….load up my dog and I am ready to leave the 3 semi’s of clutter behind!

I have enough cross stitch kits, supplies, patterns, books, etc., that if I were to win the lottery tomorrow and quit my job and do nothing but cross stitch for the rest of my life…I’d still never finish it all…

Pretty good over here. I thin the herd of stuff often. Right now I could go through the proverbial junk drawer, thin a few things out of my closet again, but, that’s about it.

Oh, I do need to clean out the console in my car, all sorts of weirdness in there.haha

Well, I used to have a fair amount of stuff, but it’s been pared down repeatedly over the years (and over many moves). For my move to California, I had to pare down even more, as all I could afford was a small U-Haul trailer.

Sure made unpacking easy, though, let me tell you! :)

Bottles of perfumes,lotions,face cleansers,and other cosmetic products. I’m stuffed!!

I’m glad I’m not the only one with too much stuff ..lol.

I can relate with the posts about keeping items that no longer work. I have many parts to things that I’m suppose to fix some day – although, some of it I don’t even remember what they go to. I have broken items that need to be glued. Jeez, we even have a container full of different glues ..lol it’s sad.

I can’t wait to be rid of so much of it. We have decreased our shopping immensely in the last couple years though. My partner had an issue with “sale” items for a very long time ..she’d buy things that we don’t even use, or eat, just because they were on sale. Or just because of the extra points on some frequent shopper card. She’s gotten so much better…but still has work to do :)

My problem is that I have so many diverse activities. My wood working/carving equipment takes up a lot of space, same for paints, printing stuff, collection of art and other’s carvings, the computers and tech gear, the gardening equipment, the bicycles and scooters, kites . It’s all good stuff, if I got rid of it, I would just have to replace it at some point in time. Then there is the sentimental stuff, the brass streetcar whistle that my dad always like to blow on New Year’s Eve, my mom’s jewelry box. Jeez, I have a lot of stuff and we haven’t even started to discuss my husband’s stuff. No wonder I hate moving!

A bed, two lawn chairs, dresser drawers with my clothes in them (no dresser), an ironing board (and an iron, too), and food.

@Blackberry

Haha…that reminds me, I probably have some canned goods in the back of my pantry since about 2006. lol

@Coloma Ewww lol.

All of it. It’s the fear of my life that someone will show up with a large truck and unload it into my house. A reverse burglary, if you will.

@Blackberry
I’d be happy to donate then, are you in need of canned peas? haha

@JilltheTooth

” A reverse burglary, if you will..” lolol
I always love it when people ‘give’ you stuff that, obviously, THEY just want to get rid of.
Someone I know brought me their leftover Easter Ham, under the guise of, ” I thought you might want to make ham & beans or soup ”. Translation, ” I don’t want 5 lbs. of leftover Ham rotting in my trash can for a week, so here, enjoy!” hahaha

I just tossed it into the woods, Raccoon and Coyote party. lol

@Coloma : Definition of eternity: Twp people, one ham.

@Coloma Lol leftover ham.

Enough to wander around and get lost.

Thank you for the replies everyone :)

Ok, so we had 3 garage sales since I posted this question. So far we made $666.15! And we still have quite a bit left, lol.

We are undecided whether we should pack the rest up and give it to charity or try another sale or two. It’s hard to do decent garage sales in our neighbourhood because the area is so new. The first two garage sales (listed in my question) we had were in a different community – one that’s established/older (my partner’s sister’s house). We had the third one at our own house just this last Saturday – we didn’t get many people/sales at all and it just wasn’t worth it.

I still have the loads of collectibles to start selling online too. I need to start soon because we really need to get rid of all that stuff – it’s taking up so much space.