Somehow this has never been a problem in my life until now

The past few years I've slowly been accumulating stuff and its getting on my nerves. Its like a frog boiling in water the way its been accumulating

I don't buy or choose this stuff myself. It's things like a friend gives me a neat coffee mug as a gift. I have plenty of coffee mugs already, but I put it in my cabinet anyway. Another friend gives me a fancy water bottle for christmas. I already have one so this just collects dust in a drawer or cabinet. And so and so on over the past few years. It's filling my place and stressing me the fuk out.

What the fuk am I supposed to do with this chit? Re-gift it? Drop it off at goodwill? drop it off at the county landfill? Srs

Do you feel bad that people spend all this money on this stuff and it just goes into the trash?

Do you tell people to stop giving you permanent chit, and only consumable things that you use and then throw away?

Encourage people to keep giving you stuff so you can resell it on Amazon for a profit

Get rid of it however you choose. Preferably not in a landfill. But I agree, consumerism is a burden on the buyer and recipient

I had a friend make me a cutting board.

I said thank you and threw it out when i got home that same day.

My wife was like "that's so cold. why not keep it for at least a couple days?"

no thanks jeff

Yeah just give it to Goodwill. People re-gift and give away stuff from others all the time and very few people fully realize it. When I was young I used to hit up garage sales all the time and people were always throwing in extra crap "Yeah I got this from my uncle. I never really wanted it so you can have it for free"

Don't feel bad about it, either; not many people really put serious thought or heart into their gift-giving anyways.

shinty things tickle my brain and give me the dopamines.

Just throw it away

Taking to goodwill or trying to sell online takes time and effort and the juice won’t be the squeeze

You didn’t ask for the stuff right? Don’t feel obligated to keep it

I throw chit away every year it feels great

Stuff isnt bad when it serves a purpose.

I have chit tons of stuff I use for various activities. Tools...fishing, hunting, camping gear, trapping equipment, etc.

What kills me is when you ask specifically for no stuff for christmas, and people get you stuff you dont want, and you have three or more family Christmases. Just becomes exhausting and most gets tossed

I use a store called value village

Probably get 5-6 truckloads of kids clothes and random bullchit / decorative crap from me a year. Goodwill would work. Can claim donations for taxes if you want but I never want to do any paperwork etc.. just drop off boxes of chit and bounce.

Garage sale

stuff you use and enjoy = good

stuff that is just there = blah

I've been buried in stuff and continue to work on reducing.

- stuff my mom and brother had here in the house before I arrived
- stuff from my condo in MI
- stuff from ex's house after he passed [mainly because daughter]

I've got two boxes to take to donate in my backseat right now...kitchen pans I don't need and a bunch of somewhat valuable dishes. It's a lot of work going through everything and making decisions about what to do with it.

I took nearly 100% of my mom's clothes/shoes/books/etc., but it's not the easiest thing to do- some things are a no-brainer, many you wonder if you should keep "just in case", or because it has/had some kind of sentimental value. I know there is still more in the attic that I haven't even touched yet.

I also have a lot of "kid stuff", or I should say my daughter has it. I feel like it could be at least reduced, but she isn't willing/ready to do that.

I struggled for a while thinking I should sell stuff and finally just had to be honest with myself that no matter how much I might need the money I just hate selling stuff too much.

Getting rid of things and simplifying your home will relieve a lot of stress, srs. The less material “stuff” that you have to think about managing, the more you can focus your thoughts on things that will make you happy/productive.

This

I'll go ahead and second the notion that the juice usually isn't worth the squeeze in terms of trying to donate/sell stuff off you consider useless junk. At best you'll get a halfassssed tax write-off (assuming you bother itemizing your taxes in the first place) or a few extra bucks that amounts to cash for an extra beer run or something. So much easier to just throw it in the trash or haul it to the dump, boom done and over with. Only time I bother with taking stuff to goodwill for donation is when it's legitimately useful stuff I'd feel bad about throwing out, but it's few and far between.

You wanna know what's really brutal in terms of this stuff, OP? Try living with a wife/gf who is a semi-hoarder. The amount of literal junk I realized I had to go through and get rid of when my ex left the house was fkn insaaaaaane. I chit you not, I dedicated like 3 mornings/afternoons to hauling useless crap out of there with a decent sized trailer I rented out for it. That was on top of a couple of years of religiously making sure my weekly garbage bin was close to as full as I could get it for a majority of weekly pickups.

Another bad way junk adds up fast is when you have relatives who decide to unload their old crap onto you that no one wants anymore. When she was moving a few years ago, my mom asked me to go through her stuff and see what I all might want of what she had to unload, and I wasn't interested in most of it. Well one day my garage was filled up with all kinds of old cheap furinature and other mostly useless chit from some movers she hired because I didn't get around to looking through it fast enough. Dedicated almost an entire morning and afternoon just to carting the chit away to a dump, which of course costed me a couple pretty pennies to dump so much heavy chit at all once.

I like the idea of taking it to Goodwill. You might not have a need for these items but there's always someone out there who will.

this pretty much. i think people underestimate the relief you feel when your home isn't filled with so much crap you know you will never use. a cleaner home with less chit just feels better it's hard to explain. alot less to worry about.

alot of people who like to own and hoard chit have psychological issues, i.e: they have a hard time letting go of baggage, whether it is physical or mental. people hoard chit for sentimentality purposes (i.e: my cousin got me this mug at that one christmas gathering that was amazing, etc).

anything you haven't used for a year and don't plan on using. just throw that chit away or donate it. I do the same thing with clothes. Anything that I haven't worn for a year, I give it away. i think there is something to it when people say that having less material things and living more simplified is the way to go

The things you own end up owning you. Great quote.

I'm moving soon and have already thrown out at least ten garbage bags full of stuff myself and my kids haven't touched in a year. It feel great to purge it all out. Something everyone should do at least every couple of years IMO.

My grandfather would respond with "every engine is another heartache" anytime people would talk about the next material position they wanted. He explained it to me when I was young but now I actually understand it.

We buy things because we think it will make life better but that thing sets a new benchmark required for our minimum level of happiness. In addition most times the maintenance, repairs and ownership of almost always outweigh the joy of whatever we purchased. In the end we have higher expectations with the misery of maintaining those expectations.

Sounds like every boat owner I've ever met who owns a boat that is more than maybe 4 or 5 years old. For every hour they spend out on the lake actually enjoying the things, they spend 10+ hours between tinkering around on it in their garage/storage unit, winterizing it, un-winterizing it, putting equipment in it, doing various repair work that is completely inevitable, and fretting about the whole thing in general.

I have a buddy who owns a decent multi-purpose boat (good for fishing, crusing around on, overnight camping with a space to even sleep if you really wanted to, and you could do tubing and stuff like that) that was made in like 1976 or some chit. The amount of time and effort he puts into maintaining that thing is unreal. Then the dude tells me only took it out for like 3 day trips to local lakes of the area that are within half hour drives from home all of last year. I'm like dude wtf, I'd need to take that thing out like 30+ times a year to justify putting so much damn time, effort, and money into it.

It funny you mention it because I had a Supra wakeboat for about a decade. Just about every time I took it out my grandfathers words rang true...

Now whenever I buy anything I ask myself "is this motor worth the heartache" from an expectation and or maintenance perspective. I ask that question about anything from golf clubs to something useless on Amazon.

Yeah I get what you're all saying, but to me, 99% of the time it's not worth the hassle to drive the stuff to goodwill or whatever when it's as simple as tossing it in with the weekly trash. Don't get me wrong, I'll donate legitimately useful stuff, but I don't waste my time with stuff that most people would instantly consider junk minus considerations of sentimental value.

When my GF moved she took pics and set a price on "offer up."
One dude drove from NC to DC for plates and she made about 1,000 for her "stuff" total.
Well worth it if you dont meet a shady guy in a parking lot, and no electronics.

I bought a giant trash can and just went through every cupboard and closet and got rid of stuff.

Like you say it slowly accumulates

until you are basically the caretaker of a bunch of crap.

If I found some stuff that was decent, I leave it next to the dumpster in a nice box for a day or two so the guys who pick through there can help themselves.

After that i toss it as they had their chance.

You could donate it but anymore thats even a pain in the ass. cant just dump it off like you used to do, at least around me you cant.

I just did one closet or cupboard a day until it was done. Only took a week or so.

Now I simply dont allow anything in the house that i dont really need. i have no qualms against throwing or giving away brand new stuff.

Thanks for the responses misc

I went with a hybrid:
- I threw out a bunch of stuff today
- Stuff that has some value and still in packaging I gathered in a "re-gifting" section. When christmas/birthdays come around I'll give this stuff away if appropriate
- Some stuff thats valuable but opened, I asked some people if they wanted it and going to give it away
- Some clothes that have some value but I dont wear I'll drop off at goodwill

I don't have junk thats worth my time to try and resell on ebay or whateverIts not like that where I live, but I can see that. A lot of people use goodwill as a dumpster to get rid of stuff for free when they would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it (the landfill charges by weight, not everything can fit in your garbage bin)