Anyone ever just think screw it sell it all? Car....stuff?

[Shiloh]

I am looking at our monthly outgoing...
darn that car is expensive, dh could get a job locally within bus/subway..
it would save us so much... sell the car...put our money to use...

I just think maybe I place too much premium on 'space' we don't need all this crapola... the kids could do with only a few toys, we could get a small condo downtown maybe even dh walk to work....

anyone ever do this was it as freeing as I think?

[RainbowSquidney]

I *SO* want to do that too.
Get rid of it all! I wanna be self-sufficient....
DH won't go for it.

I'll be watching this thread.......

[Shiloh]

Now I don't mean this so don't flame me....but sometimes I think of those people who have housefires/floods and think darn if I could take my jewlery box and pictures I'd feel so relieved...

(now we had a housefire its not that glamerous, you actually end up with more crap as they clean your old stuff and give you $ to buy more, buy more to get you through, then people give you stuff....)

I keep thinking we'll win the lotto then get an rv and go...
we are drowning in our crap! I just think how much more $ we'd have if we lived simply, lived next to where dh worked, forgot about owning a car we can rent one.... I dunno but buying downtown is very expnensive....for little space... but really more space more $ you spend to fill it decorate it

[supermuma]

I SOOO want to do this as well. I was just talking to a friend about it actually. I just want to be simple. I was actually looking at my car with some bitterness today...why do I have to pay for it? It is SOO expensive and all that other crap...I don't need it. I want my life to be simple.

[Alkenny]

I've thought of doing the same, and even slowly gotten rid of some things. But alas, I'm not the only one in the household and DH and the kids just want to hold onto their "stuff".

[JesseMomme]

:

[srain]

We know people who've done it, and they loved it. We're not willing to let go of our suburban yard yet, bu we have friends who went from being fairly consumerist (more so than us) to going down to what they could fit in their car.

If you tried it- what would you have to lose?

[wryknowlicious]

Anyone ever just think screw it sell it all? Car....stuff?

yes, yes we did.

I don't have time right now but Ijust wanbted to let you know that a looooong post on this is forth coming within the next 2 days.

[1growingsprout]

downsizing

yes thought about it and think about it all the time. we are contemplating a move across country this fall and if not then locally... this house seems to be bursting at the seams... if i can ever get my act together i could make a fortune on ebay...i could probably open my own kiddie resale shoppe somewhere. with 5 kids and being pgnt there has to be an end somewhere... i dont want to get rid of baby stuff etc but it just is taking up space...
we even talked about moving across country and just starting over wtih new stuff... costly but what we save in moving costs and what we make selling our things we could almost break even....

the cars are a sore spot for us.... we need a bigger one right now i have a honda odyssey and i love it but it just fits all 5 kids and i need room for 6 kids ( 3 car seats and one booster) soon... i HATE the expedition/excursion and i dont want a full size van.....
DH has a 2002 chevy malibu which was originally mine but it has over 90k miles and needs more work then the car is worth....(tires, motor mounts, gasket head, belts , hoses, etc) so what do we do? keep the odyssey and get a monster vehicle? sell them both and get one mega vehicle? or sell them both and get 2 new vehicles?

living in the city really isnt an option with our large family but i long to be on the mass transit line....
we do a lot of shopping at sams club so a large vehicle is almost a must...

[jlazx2]

:

[rachelmarie]

I have dreams of this, too: selling most of our stuff and moving to a place where we could walk just about everywhere we need to go. Just living a more simple life. Maybe someday...

[Shiloh]

somewhere warm sigh....

[Valian]

Yes, yes you can and you will probably love it!

This will be my first post on MDC (although I've been a reader for a while) because I can't resist sharing that yes, we have done this and it felt amazing.

Twice I've moved across country, East to West and then West to Midwest. Both times I pared down to only the things that would fit inside my Jeep once my queen size futon was placed in there.

The first move I wasn't long out of college so I hadn't collected too much junk. The second time the two of us had set up "house" and were dedicated to just ditching everything that wouldn't fit into our 2 cars before the move. We made $1,000 at our yard sale, selling all of our thrift store furniture and second hand housewares. No joke. We unloaded a lot of stuff. As things started to sell, we just kept adding more, bringing it out and saying, let's just see if this will go. In the end, it felt so good not to have to spend emotional energy worrying about moving, storing, and protecting stuff that we didn't really care about.

After arriving, we switched to public transportation and ditched our second car. We managed to stay minimalist until DH got a different job so he works out of our home (enter tons of office paper and work materials) and we decided to have a wedding. Ugh, major source of clutter. :

We're in our first home now and with a new baby we're fighting our way back out of clutter again. For us, the key thing to letting go is that lots of our stuff comes from thrift stores so its not difficult to let go of because we didn't spend much to acquire it in the first place. In fact, our current clutter problems stems almost entirely from owning brand new items or receiving too many gifts that were new and expensive so its difficult for us to part with them. (I know, I am so ungrateful). But the truth is, I don't want stuff in my life taking up space and time. Once we can find a way out of the guilt of giving away gifts, we'll be paring down again.

[Amys1st]

We are in the midst of turning our office (one of the bedrooms) back into a bedroom for my dd2. Originally we were just going to move but now we are staying put- love our mortgage payment and our debt free style living way too much to rock the boat. Its has been fun.
DH builds furniture as a hobby and his younger brother took the oak bookcase in the room for his office. We are moving the desk to our bsmt, and we just purchased a laptop to get rid of the clutter of a desktop. Once the inks run out on the printer, we will get a smaller one as well. It feels so healthy to get rid of stuff since that is what it is-stuff.

[Shiloh]

As things started to sell, we just kept adding more, bringing it out and saying, let's just see if this will go. In the end, it felt so good not to have to spend emotional energy worrying about moving, storing, and protecting stuff that we didn't really care about.

lol great idea! Must have garage sale this year for sure.

or receiving too many gifts that were new and expensive so its difficult for us to part with them. (I know, I am so ungrateful).

oh no its a major source of hassle for me, gee thanks for another ride on toy but really I have what I need please either buy me what I say we need or a gift certificate it bothers me to have people waste money on crap I can't appreciatte

But the truth is, I don't want stuff in my life taking up space and time. Once we can find a way out of the guilt of giving away gifts, we'll be paring down again.

Scrap the guilt, take picture of your kid wearing the outfit, playing with the toy send to person look how nice they look etc.
Then give away and manage the gift giving from then on.

[Amys1st]

Adding on to clearing out the office to make way for the bedroom:

We have a bunch of books I am donating and a stack of dh's things. I am going to give him until Friday to do something with them otherwise they go to the charity drop off on Friday.

[sciencemama]

We did this 2 years ago. We moved from the east coast to HI and shipped my car, packed full. We brought 2 suitcases each and that was it. OK-- well we did have family ship some books-- we love books. We still have boxes stored in basements across the country.

We moved into a 1 bedroom furnished rental house- it's lovely. Small but with a great open floor plan and nice yard and carport. Actually it came with a bit too much furniture for the space but we have slowly moved some of the unneccessary pieces out of the way. We have one large closet.

We haven't bought much in the past 2 years-- some toys, some bookcases and books, dh bought a junker car to drive to work-- and guess what? We STILL feel like there's just too much stuff here!!

[Delight]

What a great post. I think about this constantly. We just bought a house last year ... and about 2 months into it I started thinking..."oh my gosh. I just wanted a sweet condo downtown...dang!". So now we are contemplating selling the house and getting rid of everything. We are ready to do it, but we are unsure we will get what we want on the house. I think we will put it up for sale by owner and see what happens.

But...thanks for the stories. It's nice to know we aren't crazy. I am happiest in a nice hotel room. Where everything is clean. I can walk to the bathroom in 2 steps. And go sit on the deck when I need space Actually all of my radical simplicity feelings came on right after a 3-week hotel stay.

What about furniture? We just bought some new really cool Pottery Barn-looking couches that I love, but could part with. I keep thinking of just selling them. Is it silly to sell things you will just have to buy later anyway?

[AsYouWish]

I have this fantasy too.....

and actually hope to live it out on some level in the coming weeks. dh and I are moving to another apartment just next door on June 1st. The layout is a lot better than what we have and the kitchen and bathroom are bigger (which is the main reason for the move), but we will be losing a lot of storage space. So dh's idea is to use this beautiful extra room for storage, and I am totally against that idea because it would be a shame to just cram boxes/bins into this lovely room. (I actually want to have an inviting spare bedroom for when we have guests.) I'm hoping this scenario will be the push dh needs to go through all of his crap and get rid of it. So we are already starting to sort and purge. My hope is to organize everything into two categories of "donate/give away" and "sell on ebay". I'm willing to use that spare room for a while to hold these two categories of items until they are all donated/sold. I'm hoping once dh starts to see the extra $$ coming in from ebay auctions that he will be even more willing to get rid of even more stuff.

This is possibly a losing battle btw. dh's parents have three houses (count them - three!!) full of junk. When dh was growing up, he even got crowded out of his own room by all the crap that his parents (mostly his mother) kept buying and was forced to share a room with his older brother. Isn't that nuts? Stuff lined the hallways so that there was only a narrow path to walk. After a while, it just became invisible to him. And it is like that around here. There comes a point when he just doesn't see the junk anymore. And if he can't see if, he can't get rid of it. It's a problem. If I can get dh past this issue and actually minimize a little bit, I think anyone can go through this process! I'll keep you posted on our progress!

[Delight]

Originally Posted by AsYouWish

My hope is to organize everything into two categories of "donate/give away" and "sell on ebay".

I've had a giant shelf of "to sell on eBay stuff" for almost 6 months. We have just decided to give it all away instead of selling. So much less stress (i.e. taking photos, listing, shipping). Don't get me wrong, I've made a lot of $$ before on eBay, but I just don't have the patience. Salvation Army here we come!