I don’t have a specific amount of time, but I rarely buy anything without thinking long and hard about whether it is worthwhile for me to spend my hard-earned money (even $20) on it. If I frequently find myself thinking, “I could sure use a [whatever] right now,” that gives me an idea of how often I would actually use that whatever if I purchased one.

I don’t think Trent is saying get rid of your hobbies — but perhaps simplify to one or two hobbies. I know that I have ‘stuff’ from the following hobbies: scuba/snorkeling, reading (tons of books), film photography, DVDs/CDs, metal detecting, travel (various kinds of suitcases and carryon bags, assorted souvenirs), a ‘gourmet’ cooking phase . . . I’ll be keeping the snorkeling and metal detecting equipment as well as about 1/3 of the books, switch from film photography to something like snapfish and weed through the DVDs, CDs, suitcases & souvenirs and gourmet gear.

The “opportunity cost” of keeping up our stuff is absurd.

Cheers, T

Something I had to train myself is that my house is not a museum. I do not need to archive every cool thing I ever notice.

I also had to get out of the mentality that I am poor and that things are rare and so I need to save them. This isn’t medieval times–books are no longer rare. It’s not the Great Depression–I don’t need to save old shoe leather in case I get hungry.

I’m still erring in the direction of too much stuff, but I’m working on the right balance for me; I’ve figured out I don’t want to be a minimalist, even though I want to copy a lot of their ideas. For example, the other day a friend of mine was ordered to provide cupcakes for a funeral (boring story) and I was able to take care of that because I still had my cupcake pans and some cupcake liners even though long ago I had vowed never to make cupcakes again because the liners are wasteful and it takes longer than making cake and people can’t choose their own serving size.

I really do like having stuff. But I also like being able to easily find and get to my stuff, being able to easily take care of my stuff, and having money available to spend on what I most want (such as retirement and travel) instead of whatever I am most likely to encounter at a store (such as more books I might or might not like).

My downfall is tag sales, as it’s just so easy to go home with something if it’s only $1. I do get bored of hobbies and books, etc, so it’s nice not having invested too much money in those things.

I loved painting. I painted again after my first child was born (having given it up during pregnancy just because researching which pigments could be used safely was difficult and time consuming), but haven’t been able to find the time since my second child was born. Several times I’ve started, but can never find the time.

Since I have lots of money invested in this (and am painfully aware just how much I’d have to re-invest if things were to change), I just can’t part with these things.

Just selling the stuff seems to be a lot of work. Any tips on actually getting over that barrier to start shedding unused items? Ebay is cool, but is sometimes a pain in the a$$.

“How do you keep 500 DVDs organized?”
Being in this situation, I can tell you that you get a pair of jukeboxes, each with a capacity of 300 DVDs. The jukeboxes reduce handling of the DVDs and shelter them from dust. A more modern solution would be to rip them to a 6+ TB array on a home theatre PC.