Your house is not your warehouse
January 13, 2013 1 Comment
Also known as a lesson in de-cluttering and cost effectiveness. I have seen too many of my friends upgrade their houses based solely on an increase in junk accumulation. Household junk is very much like being in debt in that both will weigh you down. That’s a hard to justify cost increase when many items will go unused. At the very least, moving the excess accumulation to a storage unit would be a lower cost method. But why give your money away on that option? For what it takes to maintain, secure, and store excess items, a better deal exists: the opportunity to liberate yourself of your more useless possessions. Not only would you free up some cash which could be put to better use, but your house will seem bigger than ever before.
There’s a personal rule which I have adhered to for years. That rule is that if an item hasn’t been used within the last year, it gets sold. If I need it in the future, I can always buy it back, usually close to what I sold it for (often less). There are some exceptions to this rule; reference books, personal mementos, and occupational related items. Those will be kept, but in the case of old video game systems, that extra computer monitor, power tools, or DVDs; out the door they go.
>>> There’s another benefit of this technique. Repeated over time, it will transform you into a better sales person. It will also increase your eye for value and perhaps make you more critical of what to take in to begin with. Choosing a house to live in will depend on many factors; desired location, good schools, commuting distance, personal sentiment, etc. Just don’t let the ever-expanding pile of junk be one of them.