We all have things in our home that we either stopped using or never used to begin with. The question you have to ask yourself is “Why?” Why do we hold onto things that we no longer use, need or love? One could argue that some of those items have value, but that value may have diminished right after you purchased it. Like driving a new car off of the dealer’s lot, your new gadget, toy or knick knack has just transitioned from being “brand new” to being labeled as “used.” 

You’ve spent the money to purchase it or have been given an item as a gift and it just sat around your home taking up space and adding to the clutter. Did you ever consider that just holding on to so much “stuff” is costing you time and money? 

You’ll lose time sorting through all of your belongings to find something that was lost or misplaced. You’ll spend hours dusting and caring for all of those items throughout the year. How long does it take you to thoroughly clean your home?  It will cost you in time, lots of time, when you want to sort and downsize all of your things at once so you can move into a smaller home, a ranch house, or a retirement community. If it took you years to accumulate all of these resources, it will take you months to decide on what to keep and what needs to go. 

It costs you money when you need to buy more organizers, shelving, or containers to store your stuff. You’ll exhaust more money in heating and cooling that larger home over the years. If you run out of space in your home, you’ll fork over extra cash on a shed or in monthly rates at a storage unit. If it’s a storage unit, you’ll even pay for the fuel to drive things back and forth from your home! You may even choose to buy more insurance to cover your assets or purchase extra home security measures. 

What is the cost of the stuff you’ve collected over the years? Have you ever considered how your current or former purchases impact your budget? 

When considering the cost of all of your stuff, you need to also look at what you will spend in time, energy, and money to get rid of all of your stuff!  When you decide to part with your collection in an attempt to downsize, you’ll pay for more fuel to drive it to the donation center, or on boxes, postage, and packaging to ship it to a relative or friend. If your item isn’t worthy to be given or gifted, you’ll pay for the trash guy to haul it away. 

If you want to recoup any of the value your items have left, you’ll spend time researching the selling prices on Ebay, or searching for the perfect auction house. Will you take the time to learn how to sell on Ebay yourself or will you seek out someone else to sell on your behalf? If you find a consignment shop who will give you a portion of the selling price, you may have to pay to have the store pick up your furniture or you’ll need to buy the fuel to drive your clothing or small items to the store yourself. 

If you find that downsizing your home’s contents is too large a task and too overwhelming to handle yourself, you’ll need to ask for help and take up someone else’s time to assist you. If friends and family aren’t available, you may need to hire a professional to join you. 

When you are ready to move into your new home, you’ll spend your finances on the packing, moving and unpacking of your belongings by professionals. If you choose to spend time doing the job yourself, you’ll also spend money buying the boxes, bubble wrap, tape and paper to protect your items.

Multiply most of these calculations by two if you have a beach house, mountain cabin or second home that stores more of your assets and will need to be downsized one day. You may spend time and money traveling back and forth to handle the contents and real estate of  your vacation home or in hiring a moving company to consolidate your furniture and belongings back to one home. 

If by chance you move to your heavenly home before downsizing, your loved ones will need to spend their time and money trying to determine which things in your collection were most important to you and what to do with all the things you’ve amassed. 

As you can see already, having a lot of stuff will cost you in time and money. We get caught up in the worth and value of our items, but forget to look at the cost to our most precious resource… time. We can only make a withdrawal on our time, not a deposit, and the funds are limited.  How much of your life has been lost to your things, when it could have been spent with the people you love?