The dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. Sometimes, stuff equals capability. This is especially true with tools, renovation supplies, and hobby supplies. That old drain snake in the garage? $350 plumber call. Rarely used winter gear in a closet? No $$$ rental on the occasional ski vacation. Sewing machine and supplies? Now you can alter or repair your clothes.
It can also be resiliency. All those extra Christmas candles? Great for a power outage during hurricane season. Buying, preserving, and storing summer produce can save money later in the year. A deep pantry can be a critical safety net for some people with job insecurity.
Of course, there’s still a lot of crap we can get rid of, like old hand-me-downs and things we’ll never use.
It’s really a balancing act between the cost of maintaining capability and the cost of paying for outside services. For me, I basically add an entire room to my house for $150 a month, and still get to keep the ability to do the things I love and have some resiliency in my life.
Maybe if you aim for the absolute bottom, but…I inherited my grandmother’s house and belongings when she passed away. I own at least 90 towels, 20 sets of bedsheets, 6 sets of dishes including the sacrosanct “We don’t even serve meals to god himself on those plates” “good china”…There’s a lot of shit you can do without, or without as many of.
I hate that just throwing out all your shit is more cost effective
… Also would be pretty true for long moves.
Possible partial solution: Just minimize the shit you own.
You have to have a lot of money to live a minimalist lifestyle.
The dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. Sometimes, stuff equals capability. This is especially true with tools, renovation supplies, and hobby supplies. That old drain snake in the garage? $350 plumber call. Rarely used winter gear in a closet? No $$$ rental on the occasional ski vacation. Sewing machine and supplies? Now you can alter or repair your clothes.
It can also be resiliency. All those extra Christmas candles? Great for a power outage during hurricane season. Buying, preserving, and storing summer produce can save money later in the year. A deep pantry can be a critical safety net for some people with job insecurity.
Of course, there’s still a lot of crap we can get rid of, like old hand-me-downs and things we’ll never use.
It’s really a balancing act between the cost of maintaining capability and the cost of paying for outside services. For me, I basically add an entire room to my house for $150 a month, and still get to keep the ability to do the things I love and have some resiliency in my life.
Maybe if you aim for the absolute bottom, but…I inherited my grandmother’s house and belongings when she passed away. I own at least 90 towels, 20 sets of bedsheets, 6 sets of dishes including the sacrosanct “We don’t even serve meals to god himself on those plates” “good china”…There’s a lot of shit you can do without, or without as many of.
She might have come from an era when people were turning flour bags into dresses. At that time, you kept every scrap of decent fabric you had.
The word “decent” is doing a lot of work there. As for all the dishes, if your old ones are good enough to keep, why buy new?