LOOK AT YOUR STUFF! - revisited

Again, and yet again...

Yesterday, a Saturday, I got up at 6 and began cleaning and organizing my kitchen shelves.  I took everything off the shelves, analysed my past usage and prognosed future usage of the items, cleaned the shelves and reorganized what I decided to put back.  The rest was tossed or given away.

I've been schlepping my first cookbook with me for over 20 years and cooked from it last when my kids were young.  They are now in their late 30's!! Embarrassment... I took out two love-stained pages with my favorite recipes (which I haven't made in, as I said, over 20 years), and tossed the book.  Nobody cooks with Crisco anymore!!

In my search for the perfect cutting tools, I have bought a food processor, a blender, and two manual cutters, plus a small tool for cutting zucchini into spaghetti. Chagrin...

I placed the plant/flower things together like fertilizer, pots, orchid substrate.  Organized the plastic leftover containers and shall give a bag full to my son.  Put the recipe books in one place but got rid of the ones I won't ever use again at this point in my life.  If I need a recipe for cornbread using coconut flour, I can get hundreds from the internet.

It didn't take me that long surprisingly.  Don't we generally put jobs like that off because we imagine an inordinate timespan being stolen from our precious TV time?

So, now I've LOOKED at all my stuff in the kitchen. What wonderful adventures await me now? ;-)

Are You Paying Rent to Visit Your Garbage?!

Paying for storage facilities might seem like an easy solution when you’re in dire need of short-term space. 

Perhaps you’ve seen the TV show “Storage Wars”.  That is when folks get tired of paying rent to store unused items so the stuff is sold again, and then sold again to retail therapy victims at flea markets or thrift stores.

What's it all costing you?

The storage unit price is determined based on a few factors, including:

• Size of the unit
• Location of the storage facility
• Other special features such as climate control and an indoor storage unit versus an outdoor unit

How much is a storage unit? According to CostHelper, a provider of consumer information, the average national storage unit costs are:

• $40-$50 per month for a 5-by-5-foot unit
• $75-$140 per month for a 10-by-15-foot unit
• $115-$150 per month for a climate-controlled 10-by-15-foot unit
• $95-$155 per month for a 10-by-20-foot unit
• $170-$180 per month for a climate-controlled 10-by-20-foot unit
• $225 per month for a 20-by-20-foot unit

Storage units can be as inexpensive as $25 for a small unit in a smaller population area like Plano, Texas, or as expensive as $538 per month for a large unit in Los Angeles. If you rent a 10-by-15 unit that’s on the low end of the national average — so, about $75 per month — you’re spending $900 per year on a unit. And that price doesn’t include any other taxes or fees the facility charges. (https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/why-still-wasting-money-storage-units)

Even if you’re not a diagnosed hoarder, you should learn to let go of more things to make room in your life — and enjoy your wallet expanding.

Retail Therapy is not a healthy financial plan!

You don't need to be a PhD economist consulting the retail sector to understand that we are bombarded every day by marketing messages urging us to buy, buy, buy. And we do. Way, way, too much for most of us.

Take, for example, clothes. The U.S. apparel industry today is a $12 billion business and the average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The dollar figures are of little significance since it accounts for just 3.5 percent of a family's expenses, on average. What is significant is whether that money is spent on need or waste. The answer is, largely, waste. In 1930, the average American woman owned nine outfits. Today, that figure is 30 outfits -- one for every day of the month.  But, in the end, we generally wear only our favorite few outfits.

How many unworn items do you have in your closet?

We spend money on stuff, then we spend money to warehouse and organize the stuff we spend on. Then we pay to discard it.  Then we pay to maintain the landfills where it sits for ever and ever.

And then there is the time required to maintain all that stuff. That big house doesn't clean itself, after all. Either you must work more hours at a paid job to pay someone else to clean it, or take your own time to clean it. All those 30 outfits must be laundered and ironed. Or, you take all the stuff and stuff it into closets, garages, drawers, attics, etc. You then lock the doors and hide the keys.  Wouldn't you be embarrased if someone accidentally looked in there?!!

Clutter is just another word for deferred decisions.

Before more time passes, try making a plan. Whether it’s setting aside a weekend to sort out your things or accepting that there might not be a place for some of your property and it’s time to donate it, give it to a family member or sell it — action will yield savings and probably some relief, too. You just have to make time for it.

Feeling ill-equipped to perform a certain task is one reason people procrastinate, according to Psychology Today. Therefore, if you are finding it hard to imagine how you’re going to get rid of a unit’s worth of stuff — perhaps all by yourself — then it’s easy to understand why you might want to put it off. It’s overwhelming.

The solution is to just dive in and do it. You can use a cognitive coping self-statement, sort of like “The Little Engine That Could.” Try giving yourself a pep talk in the vein of “I think I can.” Positive affirmations like this can help take the fear out of the task and eliminate your need to procrastinate — and spend unnecessary money on storage fees.

Next time you go shopping, ask yourself how it really makes you feel. Now think of your closet, drawers and attic. Are they full? How does that make you feel? What about your bank account? Does the balance evoke comfort or anxiety?