I think there are some missing cats in here somewhere...

Well it’s that time of year again, namely the new year. Each year Sara and I go through our stuff and find things that fit into either the Goodwill or eBay pile depending on what it is. If we think we can make some money on it then it goes in the eBay pile otherwise it ends up in a box bound for Goodwill. So far this year we’ve already made about $500 dollars in donations to Goodwill according to their pricing sheet and I’ve got about 30 auctions going on eBay with many more to come.

My favorite part of all of this is not a tax write off or the pay off from getting rid of stuff we didn’t even know we have (we made over $1,000 dollars on eBay auctions last year) but eliminating the clutter from our lives. It’s very cathartic to eliminate 15 – 20 boxes of clutter from our house and all of the sudden be no longer owned by our belongings. Last year Sara and I did some late spring / early summer cleaning and found 25 plastic bins like you see in the pictures there in our attic and closets and decided it was time to make some changes. Last April / May our office was full to the ceiling with these plastic bins and our spare bedroom was full of huge cardboard boxes of stuff of all manner that we had accumulated over the years. It was maddening because we couldn’t for the life of us figure out where all of this clutter had come from and it was driving us insane.

We both grew up in homes where clutter was pretty much the norm. Sara’s parents managed to keep it out of the house and had several storage buildings of years of accumulated stuff including such great finds as 175 lamps her Dad bought at the Pickens Flea Market one day. My parents had no such luck so our entire house was full of books and toys. When we moved out on our own we both lived pretty sparse existences in our respective apartments. Sara had a bed, dresser, desk, chair, computer, clothes, and some books. I had my Futon bed / couch, dresser, desk, chair, computer, records, stereo, and books. All of my stuff fit into my first tiny 10 x 10 bedroom and moved comfortably into a 12 x 15 bedroom when my roommate Jeff and I moved to lake Keowee. When we got married and moved in together it was an entirely different story…

Once you’re married your parents want you to get everything that is “yours” out of their houses post haste. Sara and I took a lot of things from our parents’ homes not to mention our wedding gifts which quickly filled our new apartment. I’ll have to admit that even then we hadn’t taken all of our stuff from our parents and I think my mom is still holding out hope that I might come and pick up my old comics, cards, and toys any day now. (I promise; one day Mom!) Before long we were buying books, DVDs, records, musical equipment, toys, and knick knacks that even further filled our home.

At some point over our numerous moves and finally buying a house we ended up with a deluge of clutter of our own. At first I didn’t care. We just bought more storage bins and threw stuff in the attic. We put so much up there it got to be difficult for the builders to get up there to fix a leak and we still kept piling in the junk. At the end of 2008 we had an epiphany. My nephew was born in October and we went in late December to meet him for the first time and see my brother and sister-in-law’s new home in Roanoke, VA. When we got there we were immediately struck by their spartan living. When I say spartan I don’t mean without any kind of luxury but they had seemingly mastered a simple style of living that would prevent their belongings from ever owning them. Some tasteful furniture and modest decoration seemed to be all they needed and it opened my eyes to how Sara and I had been living for the last eight years.

When we got back we were briefly sidetracked on my mission to simplify our living by Sara’s Multiple Sclerosis attack and diagnosis and Vlad’s bout with Lymphoma and hospitalization but by April we were feeling up to tackling our first Spring Cleaning. We ripped the house apart in the course of two weeks and pulled everything out of our closets, attic, bookshelves, dressers, car, and every nook and cranny we could find in the house. The picture afterward was vastly different from the  picture above and I really wish I had taken it for comparison. The office was so full of stuff there was only a small path from the door to our office chairs and in the spare bedroom there was only enough room to walk in the door and toss stuff into boxes. The hall upstairs only had enough room for me to setup a small area to photograph things for eBay.

The first step was to split things into two categories; Goodwill or eBay. After we had everything separated our parents came by and picked the Goodwill pile over. When they finished we still gave away nearly $1000 dollars worth of stuff to the Goodwill and Salvation Army. With our spare bedroom reclaimed we were on to tackle the eBay pile. Over the course of a month I listed auctions daily and Sara helped me pack up, manage payments, ship, and track all of the items. By the end of may we had auctioned at least 100 items and made over $1000 dollars. Through some delusions of my own I undercharged for a fair few items and charged way less on shipping than I should have but we still netted close to $750 dollars that we didn’t have before and with a cat battling cancer and a wife needing another MRI every penny helped.

The thing that amazed me most about all of this is that most of the stuff we had gotten rid of was stuff we had completely forgotten we ever owned. We made a lot of the money off of toys I had collected and kept in their original packaging which was no surprise but we also made a killing off of old computer software and hardware peripherals which was quite shocking. At the end of the day I decided this stuff was no use to me in the attic or a closet and Sara had not only patiently tolerated me owning this stuff for years even though I couldn’t remember it but helped moved it four times so I owed it to her to get what I could for it and make some room in our house and lives.

As things have calmed down toward the end of the year I decided it was important we finish getting rid of the stuff we set out to rid ourselves of at the beginning of the year so now I’ve got a whole slew of new eBay auctions going up for toys, books, computer software and hardware, gaming consoles and systems, games, posters, records, and maybe these cats if I don’t find them in the box pile. With any luck the rest of it will be out of here by the end of January and I can finally have my office back after nearly a year of living with boxes, storage bins, and clutter.

I’d recommend to everyone to take a look at the things they surround themselves and give it some hard thought. Do you own your belongings or are you owned by them? When it comes time to move do you really want to continually move a houseful of junk you never use and don’t need? We didn’t so we did something about it.