Financial Regrets: Accumulating Junk

When my wife and I got married we lived in a small one bedroom apartment. All of our possessions could fit comfortably in a space no bigger than 10ft x 10ft. When we were expecting our first child, we bought our first house which was a two story five bedroom house.

When we moved in we joked at how we could never fill this new house with stuff but nearly 25 years later, every closet nook and cranny has stuff. What kind of stuff? Well all sorts of things that were useful or needed at some point but no longer have any real use.

Holiday Junk

The first category is all the holiday junk we keep. Ornaments for Christmas trees and all the associated Christmas paraphernalia. We also have Halloween, Easter, Valentines, Birthday, New Year’s and other holidays just to name a few.

Storage Bedroom Junk

We had so much junk around the house spilling over that we dedicated the smallest bedroom in our house (my former office) into a storage room because I refuse to pay for external storage. This room is filled with stuff that has some use but isn’t being used. One year my son received a nice telescope as a gift but now it sits in the storage room along with other similar items.

Garage Junk

Unlike most people that turn their garage into a storage unit, we actually park our cars in the garage but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of stuff in there: tools, paint, hardware, and you guessed it, storage bins.

The Great Cleanse

I have mandated “spring cleaning” once a month and demand that some of this junk go via donation or trash. What has slowed the process is our trash cans fill so fast that we have a queue of stuff to trash. If it is of use to someone we take it to a donation place so don’t think we’re throwing away everything.

Lesson Learned: Financial Regret of Accumulating Too Much Junk

I am at a point in my life where I much rather have experiences than stuff. As you get older, it becomes abundantly clear that you have too much stuff and it’s highly likely that your kids aren’t going to want most of that stuff. My own mother told me all the stuff she had would be mine and I asked her where she expected me to put all of her stuff in my already full house. She was didn’t have an answer so I told her to start giving it away or sell it. My mother-in-law had a storage shed similar to the photo above thinking her kids would inherit all that stuff and none of them wanted it so we cleaned it all out and tore down the shed.

My regret at this point is looking at how much all this stuff cost and the opportunity cost of not using that money to invest more.