The psychology of downsizing

The psychology of downsizing

January 13, 2013  5:30 a.m. 

Every day, I pick one small thing to get rid of – whichever method of recycling I pick to do it (donating, selling or dumping). As I wrote before, I am taking baby steps.

Yesterday, I picked something very simple again – a basket full of old magazines. The magazines have been read but looked so new and shiny that I noticed myself placing this issue and that issue to the side “to look through one more time”. When am I going to find the time for that if it wasn’t even a priority up until now?!

Here is where I have to “get real” once again and just toss the things un-reread. Even though I am not as far gone as the people on “The Hoarders”, it is not easy to let go. Just close my eyes and toss.

While purging myself of property can be psychologically stimulating, it can also be as slow and painful as childbirth. Yes, it is liberating to lighten the burden of possession because the care and feeding of all that stuff ceases, leaving time for more important things. Reminding myself that I have to move it to dust under or behind it, clean it, wash (maybe fold or iron) it, vacuum it, water it, mow and/or trim it, store it, paint it, rearrange it, stack it, repair it, etc., helps a bit. Yet sometimes I experience real “Trennungsschmerz” – the pain of separation. The words “sticky attachment” fit perfectly.

We often emotionally attach ourselves to objects that we never use, but that give us some sense of comfort and promise for achievement or a greater tomorrow.  And yet our finest dreams remain fantasy.  It is only when we begin decluttering that the feelings come rushing back and with them the ‘reasons’ for keeping them around another day.  Ah, good intentions keep our lives entrenched in clutter and our goals in shackles.

A possible solution?

Question: How do you make something instantly twice as expensive?


Answer: By thinking about giving it away.

I paid hard-earned money for that!! I can’t just give it away!

But this quirky idea is not only limited to things bought: A team led by psychologist Daniel Kahneman carried out an experiment. They took a class of ordinary University students and gave half of them a University-crested mug, the other half received $6 – the nominal cost of the mug.

The students should begin to trade with each other. The people who were given cash but liked mugs should exchange some of their cash for a mug, and some of the people who were given mugs should trade their mugs for some cash. This, economic theory says, is how prices emerge – the interactions of all buyers and sellers finds the ideal price of goods. The price – in this case, of mugs – will be a perfect balance between the desires of people who want a mug and have cash, and the people who want cash and have a mug.

But economic theory lost out to psychology. Hardly any students traded. Those with mugs tended to keep them, asking on average for more than $5 to give up their mug. Those without mugs didn't want to trade at this price, being only willing to spend an average of around $2.50 to purchase a mug. 
 How can the lack of trading be explained? It seems the only way to understand the high-value placed on the mugs by people who were given one at random is if the simple act of being given a mug makes you value it twice as highly as before. 

This is the endowment effect. It is also why car dealers want you to sit in and test drive a car, urging you in every possible way to imagine what it would be like to possess the car. The endowment effect is so strong that even imagined ownership can increase the value of something.

Now that I know about the endowment effect, I don’t need go through my possessions one by one and try to make a decision on what to do with them. Because then the endowment effect would begin to work its magic, leading me to spawn all sorts of reasons why I should keep an item based on a misguided estimation of how valuable I found it. After hours of tidying, I would then have kept everything, including the old box of rubber bands (even though they are getting a bit brittle from unuse), the statues on the piano (I lugged those from Asia) and the unmanagable computer cable holder (it was expensive).

I can now ask myself a simple question: If I didn't have this, how much effort would I put in to obtain it?