Buying stuff, wasting money and clutter

Trifid · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:06

ultralaser said:
I switched to an approach of buying less but buying higher quality items,

I am similar. I focus on items that I will use everyday or very regularly and then focus on precisely what will improve my life. The thing is, looking around my house you will struggle to see precisely where I've cut down as I buy things with the intention of keeping them.

robgmun · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:10

flibbage0 said:
Does anyone else feel that they need to de clutter their life, or that they just buy random stuff and then wonder why they've bought it?

I've spoken to couple of my friends and they also feel that life could be a lot more minimalistic.

Thoughts?

Maybe de-clutter is too strong a word, but I'm definitely going through a re-organisation/simplifying binge at the moment, just going through everything and throwing out/selling anything i haven't used in the last couple of years.

Psycho Sonny · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:10

DXP55 said:
I have a wife so clutter is inevitable - The loft is full of junk just because she didn't like the colour after a few weeks.

Moving house is the best thing you can do and moving twice in 18 months is even better because you bin the junk you brought with you.

Unfortunately after 9 years we are back where we started 10.5 yrs ago.

If anything has been in the loft longer than 2 years then bin it even if it is brand new.

PS - Usher - any tool from Aldi is man clutter - it doesn't count

you ever heard of gumtree?

why are you binning brand new stuff someone else could use?

fair enough if it truly is junk. but for example, i've just bought some fabsil (brand new unopened 5 litres) and 2 brand new unopened sprayers for £20 off gumtree worth £40+ new. i also got a brand new kenwood stand mixer for buttons off gumtree after some guy who decided would start making his own bread never to bother bought one.

it's not the money aspect but the pure waste aspect of it. you are advocating people send brand new items to landfill just because they personally won't use them. plenty of others will.

some people come to this country with nothing. i've even started donating old clothes rather than binning them. by donate i mean to actual people not a bank or a hole in the wall. they get given to the person who will use them.

ultralaser · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:12

Trifid said:
I am similar. I focus on items that I will use everyday or very regularly and then focus on precisely what will improve my life. The thing is, looking around my house you will struggle to see precisely where I've cut down as I buy things with the intention of keeping them.

Understandable but if everything you see, you use everyday then I'm not sure you need to cut down

burtie · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:15

Cables I have loads of cables some brand new! And computers must have 6 in the house, tablets too.

413x · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:16

Starting to declutter.
Now I no longer need anything my purchases in last two months comprise

Set of rechargeable batteries
A drink bottle (as I broke my old one)
A few usb cables (as my old ones are nearly all failed)
A wetsuit (as I needed one living in Wales now)

Apart from that, nothing.
I'll still get decent lego sets now and then but that's about it.
Clothes are now, 2 out, 1 in.

I have a load of boxes with cables and old electrical items I should just chuck as I probably won't need them.

Having so much rubbish really encumbers you.

AndyCr15 · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:17

What I hate is when I lose things and then have to buy them again. I do have a reasonable bit of clutter which leads to this. I actually set up a spreadsheet to log which box things went into, but it doesn't always work.

I know when I come to move house I'm going to find things that I bought again so I will have two...

dowie · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:39

I guess the invention of e-readers helps a bit, I'm not particularly interested in buying physical copies of fiction books these days I guess maybe I could perhaps get say a boxed set of say the ASOFAI/Game of Thrones ones once they're finished etc.. but generally a kindle is fine.

On the other hand textbooks I do find useful to have a physical copy of, at least initially, I guess I could pass some on now and rely on digital versions.

Re: digital media I still tend to buy CDs and then just rip them as they cost the same, likewise I'll buy blue rays, I should perhaps look at putting the boxes/cases into storage and just keeping the disks in folders etc...

Shure · 29 Jul 2019 at 17:44

This topic struck a chord with me when my dad passed away a couple of years ago.
It hits home when someone goes just how much "stuff" we accumulate over time and how wasteful it ends up being.

Hades · 29 Jul 2019 at 18:02

I got into a really bad habit of buying too much a while back. Now I'm slowly decluttering and trying to practice minimalism. Having said that I still have far too much. But I'm gradually selling or giving away duplicate items. I buy far fewer clothes now. I've given away quite a fe witems including old tablets and old computer components, etc. But when I do buy something I try to buy a good quality item. There are some items I reuse to buy now, such as physical media.

flibbage0 · 29 Jul 2019 at 21:13

Glad to know I'm not the only one that thinks this. I find myself on hotukdeals regularly looking for random stuff to buy, I add the item to basket and then I have second thoughts and just close down the browser.

I think it's a distraction from dealing with my shortcomings, doing a job I don't enjoy with no direction, decent income but not enough to save up for a house anytime soon, so I end up wanting to spend it on stupid stuff. It's actually quite embarrassing the more I think about it.

Deleted member 77746 · 29 Jul 2019 at 21:36

flibbage0 said:
Glad to know I'm not the only one that thinks this. I find myself on hotukdeals regularly looking for random stuff to buy, I add the item to basket and then I have second thoughts and just close down the browser.

I think it's a distraction from dealing with my shortcomings, doing a job I don't enjoy with no direction, decent income but not enough to save up for a house anytime soon, so I end up wanting to spend it on stupid stuff. It's actually quite embarrassing the more I think about it.

If you saved up instead of spending it on things you don’t need you could probably own a house outright by now. Cruel world.

I’ve got all payslips saved since I was 16 either paper copies or digital copies. Oh if I could only turn back time I wouldn’t spend like I did. I’m only realising now that it’s just money and not to spend it on silly things. About time it goes into a pot.

ikillbears · 29 Jul 2019 at 21:47

don't earn enough to buy stuff, it's one way round it

LuckyBenski · 30 Jul 2019 at 08:37

ikillbears said:
don't earn enough to buy stuff, it's one way round it

Annoyingly true. When I was living in the spectrum between hand to mouth, broke, and poor, I didn't waste anything. And could account for every penny too. I still bought the same sort of stuff (electronics and tools), but I had to justify it more. Ironically receiving student loan payments aged 26 was the first time I had excess cash to waste.

Sometimes I speculate on whether it would be convenient to have a house fire and start again from scratch. I can afford to be more selective with what I put in my home.

malachi · 30 Jul 2019 at 08:46

LuckyBenski said:
Annoyingly true. When I was living in the spectrum between hand to mouth, broke, and poor, I didn't waste anything. And could account for every penny too. I still bought the same sort of stuff (electronics and tools), but I had to justify it more. Ironically receiving student loan payments aged 26 was the first time I had excess cash to waste.

Sometimes I speculate on whether it would be convenient to have a house fire and start again from scratch. I can afford to be more selective with what I put in my home.

With the insurance pay out you probably end up buying more expensive junk and be back where you started lol

Terminal_Boy · 30 Jul 2019 at 08:54

Raymond Lin said:
My worldly possession fitted in 2 suitcases when i came to the UK.
In uni all my possessions can fit into the back of a car.
Now I need house to fit it all.

I need to throw out a ton of the stuff out, like i don't need the books i used in uni...

When we moved to France, all our worldly possessions filled a 19 tonne truck. Before leaving London, we probably sold/gave away/recycled enough old junk to fill a second truck that size.

Raymond Lin · 30 Jul 2019 at 08:58

Terminal_Boy said:
When we moved to France, all our worldly possessions filled a 19 tonne truck. Before leaving London, we probably sold/gave away/recycled enough old junk to fill a second truck that size.

The problem is that I want a lot of stuff, thinking it will make me happy. Like Lego, i love Lego, or my inner child does. Except I don't have the space to display them so they just get unbuilt, unopened, sealed in their boxes. I came to realise it after having like a dozen of them now sitting in the spare room doing nothing.

Then what? So now I look at photos of them, admiring them, not buying them.

This applies to a lot of other things too. These days things really are on a need, not want basis.

Terminal_Boy · 30 Jul 2019 at 09:11

Oh snap! I have one of the smaller Lego Millennium Falcons I received as an Xmas present in 2017 that sits unopened on top of a wardrobe. I’m loathe to start it as I have nowhere to display it and would hate for it to disappear into our new loft never to be seen again.

DarrenM343 · 30 Jul 2019 at 10:52

I'm lucky, being a minimalist by nature and always been a saver (working for a month and saving nothing that month would make me sad), so tend to buy only what I need, mostly. I do tend to overspend on some items though, such as cars in the past and clothing, oh, and computer stuff probably too. All of which gets used but could spend less on, but are pretty much the only things I "treat" myself on.

People should think more about what not buying something means in the longer term. Saving an extra lets say £10k could mean retiring a year earlier. Might not care about that now but aged 67 or whatever you could think "if only I saved a bit more I could not be doing this **** anymore".

I moved into a decent sized house and had hardly any furniture for the first few years until I decided exactly what I needed. Even the TV was put on an empty cardboard box

Psycho Sonny · 30 Jul 2019 at 11:08

DarrenM343 said:
I'm lucky, being a minimalist by nature and always been a saver (working for a month and saving nothing that month would make me sad), so tend to buy only what I need, mostly. I do tend to overspend on some items though, such as cars in the past and clothing, oh, and computer stuff probably too. All of which gets used but could spend less on, but are pretty much the only things I "treat" myself on.

People should think more about what not buying something means in the longer term. Saving an extra lets say £10k could mean retiring a year earlier. Might not care about that now but aged 67 or whatever you could think "if only I saved a bit more I could not be doing this **** anymore".

I moved into a decent sized house and had hardly any furniture for the first few years until I decided exactly what I needed. Even the TV was put on an empty cardboard box

so you are okay with looking like a *****?

live in decent sized house. can't afford £20 for a tv stand or wall bracket.

the rest of the advice i can agree with however there is no excuse for not having furniture in your home.

i take it you don't have any friends you invite round so it's okay if you are by yourself and have nobody over. but the first thing i did was buy furniture.