10 Unexpected Costs of Owning Things
02. Jun, 2008 
97 Comments
I am sitting on my couch in the middle of my dining room writing this, nursing a very sore body. This weekend we gave away and sold everything we own. Our king sized bed, 30 boxes of books, the guitar I meant to learn how to play but never did, even our Panini grill and espresso machine (and so much more). I thought it would be hard to lose the things my husband and I collected in the past eight years, but you know what? It was actually very freeing. The act of physically moving these things out onto the sidewalk, setting prices and then watching as strangers walked away with even the most personal of our possessions, was a strange kind of relief. Even as I reflect back now on what I might miss, I’ve come to realize just what I’ve gained by letting go. Here are 10 Unexpected Costs of Owning Things:
1. The things you own have a cost of ownership. Even if you don’t use it, you’re paying for it. Over the years we’ve lived in bigger and bigger places. When we first met, I was renting a single room in a house. Everything I owned fit in the 15X20 space. Our first apartment was 2 bedrooms and 700 sq feet. When a few years we graduated to a 1300 sq ft house with 3 bedrooms. Soon it was the 2000 sq ft home that we had to buy more furniture to fill up. It seems insane now, to pay for larger and larger living spaces just to store our stuff- but that’s what we did. Over the years, we could have saved thousands on housing and utilities, just by downsizing our lives.
2. You are carrying around the emotional weight of the things you don’t use. I always wanted to play the guitar. Six years ago, my husband bought me one for my birthday. I learned “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Eight Days a Week”, got some blisters and promptly gave up. But the guitar stayed with us, and periodically I would feel bad about not playing. Now my guitar has found a home with a drummer who had been looking for a cheap ax for months. And now I can finally admit it: I am not interested in learning the guitar; I don’t want to spend my time focusing on that particular skill. It’s ok; there are lots of other things I am interested in. And now I can just let that aspiration go.
3. You don’t learn your lessons on overspending, because you never face reality. You stuff the pair of shoes you never wore into a closet somewhere and forget about it. While I was pulling storage containers out, I was amazed at how many things I owned but hadn’t used. I think I had 4 different unopened blushes (makeup). I kept putting them away under the bathroom sink and forgetting about it. But I wasn’t learning my lesson. I wasn’t connecting the fact that I bought something I didn’t need, so I wasn’t getting the message to change my habits.
4. You let yourself buy status symbols—whether an exhaustive book collection, to show off how smart you are, or artwork from around the world to prove you have traveled, you let yourself belief these tangible proofs are more important than the fact that you have read a lot or you have traveled a lot. This will shift your priorities slightly, as the acquisition of these items becomes a priority in itself. What if you didn’t outwardly give the world clues about who you are?
5. You use objects as comfort. I admit it, I’m a secret nester. I like building a cozy home, and filling it with things that make me feel happy. It’s interesting though, because even though we’ve had a guest bedroom for the last 3 years, we rarely have guests overnight. I think it just makes me feel good to have it, to walk past that room and smile at the coordinated duvet and pillow shams. But the truth is, you don’t need those things to be happy. It’s a wicked habit, and I can’t help but think I’ve been influenced by a lifetime of Pottery Barn magazines.
6. You are weighed down. If you can’t carry it, you can’t travel with it. The whole point of selling this stuff is so we can move abroad and travel as we please. As we were buying it though, we weren’t thinking, “Lets buy this, so we can be even more chained to our possessions. Maybe we should get two, that way we can be landlocked even if one breaks!”
7. The more stuff you have the more blind you become to it. There were so many books, DVDs drawers full of stuff that I hadn’t remembered seeing for years. And yet there they were, in plain sight for years, just obscured by the details of so many other things. We didn’t appreciate what we had, because there was just too much of it!
8. If you are overspending, you will never see that money again. When you sell off your stuff, expect the going rate to be 25% or less of what you spent for it. We have spent thousands over the years and the whole lot when for a couple hundred bucks. Ouch.
9. Each object has a path before you bought it. We don’t often think about where things come from, but everything that you buy has been manufactured somewhere. When you think about the never used guitar that was made in China, by someone making pennies a day, shipped overseas, using lots of gasoline, driven across the country to a store near you, just so it could sit in your closet. At some point it must occur to us that we’re not just wasting our money, but the planet’s resources as well.
10. You like the idea of owning something more than the reality. For years I held onto all my books, because I really liked owning them. But two things happened this weekend. First, I realized I hadn’t opened many of them after the first time I read them. Second, I was passing on my favorite books to other people, who were excited to read them. Instead of keeping a great book for my collection, I will now always pass it on.
What are you some ways the things you own, own you?
You can find George Carlin’s monologue on ‘Stuff’ at the following You Tube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
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We sold our stuff on ebay, very time consuming but we got a lot more for our money than selling stuff on yardsale. Great post!
My husband & I did give away most of our stuff to go sailing in 2000. We kept a the smallest rented storage unit available- the lesson learned don’t pay to store stuff – it’s double the cost. And I didn’t really like the stuff that much anyways. But I do know the pleasure of being free of stuff. Now we are done sailing for awhile due to illness and living in a house. I need to remember that stuff owns me. I take pleasure in knowing everything I see from where I am sitting typing on this computer was bought from craigslist or garage sales. (except for the rugs…I have cats and so I can’t trust used rugs not to be previously “used”).
I am so torn about buying stuff because I want to cut loose and travel again. Although I am not sure it is the traveling I want or the running away part. Geographic cures always seem right to me when the going gets tough. My illness prevents me from doing the geographic as I really do need the stability of one place at least for a few more years.
I will live vicariously through the travelers I meet online and I will focus on living a minimal life.
Over the past few years I have had a real thing against “stuff”.
I watch my friends get married and continue moving farther and farther away so they can afford bigger and bigger places to house all their “stuff”. What’s the point?
On June 29th, our house burned. I felt free and my husband felt bewildered. As the restoration and salvage team went through the house seeing what could be saved, I realized none of it mattered to me it was just stuff. The house and debt of the house were weighing us down – now is our opportunity to be free. I work from home and my husband could work from home. Now I am weighing our options – insurance will pay to replace our items at replacement value, they will pay to rebuild our house (a total gut job down to the bricks) – what if we used that money to pay off the house and land, bulldoze the house, sell the land, and become free? I realized this morning that I did not have a long list of chores to do – no huge house to clean or projects that needed to be done. We are living in a rented RV at the moment and it takes 5 minutes to clean.
Any advice on the next step? I am not sure that my husband can comprehend how different our lives could be. We are 49 and 52 and have no children except for a black lab and 2 cats.
I spent a lifetime of accumulating ‘stuff’. Sure, nice stuff, but ‘stuff’ nevertheless. Over 30 years of collecting antiques, same with books. I had a garage full of ‘stuff’ that didn’t fit inside the home. I had more ‘stuff’ than I could ever hope to use. I went to Costa Rica for what I thought was going to be a short time. While there, I decided to move there. I came back to Canada for 3 weeks, had a huge 3- week garage sale, sold my beautiful home, all my antique furniture, all my ‘stuff’, and moved to Costa Rica with 2 bags and two small tote boxes. (one with my most favourite dozen books out of 700) It was indeed a freeing experience.
I’ve been here now for almost 3 years, and have only bought a few, basic needs. .. a simple washing machine, a bookcase, a toaster oven. . that’s about it. I used to own 7 mixing bowls, now I own 2 (will double as a salad bowl), no more microwave, no more TV, no more car, no more three ladders, 2 wheelbarrows, 2 lawnmowers (1 gas, 1 hand), no more 3 couches, 3 armchairs, ….no more tons of pretty antique dishes that, while I did use them, still, how many plates, bowls, and platters does one really need?
True, I live in a semi-furnished house now, which came with a couch and 2 chairs, oven, stove, a handful of plates and cutlery, and 2 simple beds – that’s it…. which means I don’t need to buy those items. Do I regret leaving my old life style, and living more simply now? Do I regret all those high expenses, and living in the rat race? Nope. Never. It’s great, it’s liberating, and it makes way more sense. I pay $200/month rent for a lovely house with garden, and my total living expenses now are around $8-10,000/year. That includes rent, electricity, water, internet, food, entertainment, restaurants, and a trip or two per year. I encourage all who read these posts to re-evaluate what’s really important to them in life. Life is short, and gets shorter with every passing day.
Mags
correction: that should read fridge, stove… not oven, stove.
I moved to CA 25 years ago from the Manhattan suburbs. My three kids and I lived on the first floor of a beautiful old house. We had a huge garage sale. We sold or gave away everything except the piano,a guitar, a couple of antique chests,some clothes, and a few things we all thought we couldn’t live without. For years, whenever I cooked, I couldn’t find the pot, or the dish to present it in.The most painful were the books. They told the story of my emerging spiritual life and the story of my children growing up.
A new life provides new interests, new friends, new paths. Often the old no longer fit. New things usurped the place of the old.
Now it is time once again to move on. I am waiting until I hear the call, clearly.
I am actually just picking up on this – my family moved recently, and actually putting my stuff in boxes was shocking – there was so much stuff that I never wanted in the first place. Since then, I’ve been slowly getting rid of the outright trash. I used to have a full closet, a wardrobe (Not holding just clothes, but still), and storage in my desk. In my new room I have no closet, but there’s only one moving box of stuff that doesn’t fit in two of the above three.
I’m doing much better already, especially with a pretty packrat-ish fmaily.
So very true — it’s easier to save $5 than it is to make $5.
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It sounds so harsh yet so true at the same time. Thanks for the post, Christine!
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I sold my car after months…errr years of talking about it. It became a running joke- whenever I said I was going to do something, someone would always reply “oh sure, like how you’re going to sell your car?” I finally did it! I live in the city, and was spending more money on parking tickets than gas. I was worried that being without my car would be limiting and so far I haven’t even missed it.
Thank you so much for sharing! Sounds like this has been a very powerful undertaking. You are very brave.
Happy travels,
Mike
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Too many possession weigh us down, both physically and mentally. Sure it is good have nice clothes, DVD’s, car, etc nothing wrong with that in my mind. However it is a good idea to have a wee clear out from time to time.
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Our oversized house is bursting with not-worthless objects collected by three or four generations of middle-class Americans. That’s because our house can fit the stuff, so it comes here when they die. Now we have too, too much STUFF. Furniture, framed prints, books, toys, appliances, gimcracks, doodads, and partially disassembled gizmos. Sometimes I think of having a fire sale — with a match and can of gasoline. But once I listed my grandfather-in-laws old woodworking tools for sale on Craigslist, I started to feel better. No one’s called yet, but it’s a start.
Great advice — “If you are overspending, you will never see that money again.” Like my dad said: “It’s much easier to save twenty buck than it is to make twenty bucks”. As always, enjoyed your perspective, Christine.
Daniel´s last blog ..Best of Two Go RTW: November 2009
I tend to de-clutter fairly often, and I’ve recently adopted the principle of not buying anything I don’t absolutely love.
But the spare bedroom…? I need my spare bedroom. We sometimes have enough friends to stay that we fill both spare bedrooms, the sofa, and the floor!
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I’m in the middle of getting rid of all my stuff right now (preparing to travel the world for a year) and I can’t believe how much junk I’d acquired over time. So far it’s been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, both extremely freeing and a touch sad at times to see the stuff go.
I took photos and scanned a few sentimental items, digital reminders are way better than storing clutter. The sense of relief when it’s all out the door I’m sure will win out over any regrets. If I ever settle in one spot again I’m making sure I remember the true cost of stuff.
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Wow, I just wrote a guest post for Timeless Information (.com) and talked about balancing the art of materialism. I do not collect junk but I love my belongings. I admit there are things that I do not actively *use* but I keep them for memento purposes. I do sell a lot of things that I don’t use or donate a lot of older clothes and furnishings, but at the same time, the luxury lifestyle brings me comfort and joy and I can’t imagine parting with it….although I don’t mind buying new things all over again if I sold these! So I guess my point is this – if I have balance, and know exactly where I have put everything I ever bought (I am insanely organized), then I wonder if it’s ok to nurse this attachment and enjoy the joy it brings me! A very thought-provoking post.
I love this site. I found it while looking for writing ideas on what to do after quitting a job. Now I’m hooked. With my article on the back burner I am working to catching up on past entries. But this one hit me and I thought I’d comment.
From the time I was a kid I was referred to as a pack rat. Clothes books, trinkets, old candy box tops because it had a cute flower ( which is often removable) attached stuffed animals. When I grew up parts of that “trait” came with me. I couldn’t toss out Anything, my husband and I had to buy storage bins to store paper I could not part with. Needless to say my husband was getting frustrated with me.
Several times I had began the process of “getting rid” of stuff I didn’t use , want, or need anymore, but before long that ended and I just added more stuff.
Finally I no longer had to be wishy-washy anymore, we had a house fire and those things were destroyed. I didn’t have to worry about “getting rid” of my stuff anymore they were lost forever. As I sat in the hotel room that night it occurred to me, the only real important thing
that matters was what I had right here *points to noggin* in my memory. I could re -write my stories, I could buy new things, but I could never replace what i valued the most to me- my husband. So that night as I slept I thanked God because he did what I was unable to do get rid of “stuff” that really doesn’t matter in the first place.
i love this site cause the articles inside is great
love #10
i have wanted a nintendo wii for aaages. a friend let us borrow one for a month and after 2 weeks we never played it.
Good way to save $400
When it comes to ownership, less is more.
The more you have, the more things you have to break and worry about.
Of course you need important stuff – and that’s why it’s better to buy high quality goods as well.
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That’s it. i’m getting rid of everything on Ebay…and maybe a garage sale
Probably my biggest regret in life is that I had a dream of going to Australia and I found an improbably way to be there for 6 months BUT I had a great apartment full of great stuff and then there was my car and I just couldn’t think of getting rid of all this – I would never get this all back.
A few years later I realized I was owned by all that stuff and moved to a 10×8 bedroom in NYC, keeping only my bed, a dresser and 2 small chests of drawers. I couldn’t even sell most of the stuff and spent huge chunks of time taking things to the Salvation Army and eventually dragging what was left to the curb.
Last year I found myself owning most of the stuff in my 2 bedroom NYC apt but when I had the chance to move to Paris I didn’t hesitate: if it didn’t fit in my 3 duffels and 2 backpacks I got rid of it. Now I’m trying to downsize from the 3 duffels too.
I cannot understand people who pay to store their stuff. If you’re not using it get rid of it. The more stuff you have the less freedom you have for your mind, body and soul.
I strongly recommend everyone watch “The Story of Stuff” at http://www.storyofstuff.com/
And everyone simply must watch George Carlin’s monologue on stuff!
Correction: “improbable” instead of “improbably.”
And that’s 10 feet by 8 feet, not meters
Hey, I just found this blog! My husband and I did the same thing, selling everything to travel the world. It was so rewarding, but I can completely relate to all your are saying about our worldly possessions that we try to hold onto. I am also a Pacific Northwesterner. We should chat some time about travels and writing. My travel site is http://www.spankyandsarah.com. Cheers!