Too Much Stuff!

timberweasel

Platinum Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
6,194
I bought my house about ten years ago now, and it is utterly amazing to me just how much crap that my garage had somehow managed to accumulate: boxes, empty paint cans, broken hand tools and patio furniture, old BBQ pieces, junky scrap material, oddball hardware--all of it useless rubbish that did nothing but take up space. Well, last summer I finally did something about it.

I rented a much bigger dumpster bin than I thought I'd need and got to work. I stacked everything in as neatly and as efficiently as I could and, yeah, I ended up maxing that sucker out. It was a tremendous feeling to watch the rental company truck pull out of the driveway with that bin on board. And what an inspiration to walk back into my decongested garage! I have so many future project ideas and a lot of reclaimed space in which to do them.

Ok, basement, you're next! I'm going to get another bin this year and say goodbye to all the boxes and bags of old clothing, defunct electronics, Christmas cards, kitchenware, et al. Junk. All of it.

To anyone out there who has even had the passing thought about renting a dumpster and decluttering your life: do it! Feels good, man. :D

-Brett
 
Getting your Kondo on! ;)

Yeah, I try to purge the accumulated junk every year to help prevent it from getting to that point. De-cluttering a room definitely brings a solid sense of satisfaction.
 
Heck yeah! :thumbsup:

It's also nice to appreciate an empty space and not feel as though something needs to fill it. Maybe kind of a Zen thing?
 
I did a 40 cy dumpster s few months back. We are mandated to use the same contractor the city uses. They messed up the delivery day and comped it to me 100% after I sent a formal complaint to the city manager. Amazing what we gather and later do not need or use.
 
I did a 40 cy dumpster s few months back. We are mandated to use the same contractor the city uses. They messed up the delivery day and comped it to me 100% after I sent a formal complaint to the city manager. Amazing what we gather and later do not need or use.

I'm sure some city official is getting fat off that monopoly deal, but I'm glad to hear they made it right for you!
 
Have you ever watched that show Hoarders, yeah, watch a couple of shows of that and you'll be cleaning up more often.

I live pretty close to my job so I just walk the 15min it takes to get there. Along my route, there was an old ramshackle house that was sort of hidden from the street by old trees and unkept hedges that had grown thick and tall. From what I've heard, it was an elderly hoarder couple who lived there. I don't know if they were finally rescued or if they were taken away by the Coroner's Office, but the house was bulldozed about a year or two ago and a City fence now surrounds the property.

To this day. walking by, I can still catch a whiff of a foul odour coming from the rubble filled foundation. Clearly, they had a lot of cats. I can't imagine how those folks lived day-to-day in that old house. Damn sad way for any human being to exist.
 
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I did the same thing with the roll-off box to address my garage. I can tell you that initially things seem pretty open, but they fill up again as the storage and accumulation thing is a mental aspect that you generally have the saving tendency and are generally comfortable with it.

It's hard to estimate how much dumpster volume you need during these clean outs.
 
I have rented many a roll off in my 25 years of renovating an old farm house and getting rid of several outbuildings. I've also got them for throwing out a bunch of "stuff" as my wife and I call anything that does not have a specific purpose in our household. Despite that, our house is still full.

After our son went off to college we decided to "downsize" which somehow ended up with us adding a 400 square foot addition to the house and stuffing it full of furniture. Not sure how that happened. :rolleyes:

Maybe this summer we'll do another purge. I think that most of our stuff now can be donated to goodwill or recycled, though, instead of just trashed. I'm trying to convince my wife that we don't need our household bills from 25 years ago!
 
I bought my house about ten years ago now, and it is utterly amazing to me just how much crap that my garage had somehow managed to accumulate: boxes, empty paint cans, broken hand tools and patio furniture, old BBQ pieces, junky scrap material, oddball hardware--all of it useless rubbish that did nothing but take up space. Well, last summer I finally did something about it.

I rented a much bigger dumpster bin than I thought I'd need and got to work. I stacked everything in as neatly and as efficiently as I could and, yeah, I ended up maxing that sucker out. It was a tremendous feeling to watch the rental company truck pull out of the driveway with that bin on board. And what an inspiration to walk back into my decongested garage! I have so many future project ideas and a lot of reclaimed space in which to do them.

Ok, basement, you're next! I'm going to get another bin this year and say goodbye to all the boxes and bags of old clothing, defunct electronics, Christmas cards, kitchenware, et al. Junk. All of it.

To anyone out there who has even had the passing thought about renting a dumpster and decluttering your life: do it! Feels good, man. :D

-Brett
Lol! Clutter is my enemy! It's like when you walked in your garage before the cleaning... Your head felt like that didn't it lol! It's the worst, duder.. OCD nightmare.. congrats, brother.. congrats lol!
 
We have been in this house for almost 16 years. I have been trying to get rid of stuff that has been stored in our shed untouched all that time. My wife has filled every closet in the house with clothes that she doesn't wear. She asked if she could put a couple of things on my side of our bedroom closet. I should have said no. Half of my closet is now full and she is eyeballing the small section that I have left.

I need to rent a front loader and a dumpster.
 
I have rented many a roll off in my 25 years of renovating an old farm house and getting rid of several outbuildings. I've also got them for throwing out a bunch of "stuff" as my wife and I call anything that does not have a specific purpose in our household. Despite that, our house is still full.

After our son went off to college we decided to "downsize" which somehow ended up with us adding a 400 square foot addition to the house and stuffing it full of furniture. Not sure how that happened. :rolleyes:

Maybe this summer we'll do another purge. I think that most of our stuff now can be donated to goodwill or recycled, though, instead of just trashed. I'm trying to convince my wife that we don't need our household bills from 25 years ago!
Filling a new space with furniture is a common reaction. I would probably do it as well but try to keep the amount reasonable considering the furnishings in the rest of the house. The bills thing.... I'm a little guilty of that. The answer is a shredder unless you can burn the stuff at your house.

I cranked up my shredder the other day when I noticed I had credit card statements from more than 10 years ago and I don't even have those accounts any more. I need to go through my filing cabinet and discard a lot of old stuff.

Getting rid of clothes is a problem for me. Most are perfectly serviceable and I have a very hard time just tossing or even donating to Goodwill clothes. I have clothes in my closet that are 40 years old.... makes no practical sense to keep the stuff, but I find that I do anyway.
 
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I can kinda relate - we moved last year from Illinois to Tennessee. In IL we had a larger home with a big basement and a 6 stall garage. We lived in that house for 27 years, so yes, we really accumulated the junk.

I did purge a lot of it, not to mention 9 motorcycles before I moved all the rest down south.

I still have a lot to get rid of, but it is my project to get rid of it by either selling or donating to charity all of the items of value.

I even threw out my high school yearbooks. You get into a mindset, and yes, it is cathartic and gives a sense of accomplishment.

best

mqqn
 
When I first moved into my house, I didn't really have a lot of stuff--a few sticks of furniture, the usual electronics (like a TV and stereo,) some cheap kitchen wares. And pretty much everything I bought for the house came over-packaged in boxes, plastic wrap, styrofoam, crappy included hardware and poor-quality assembly tools.

So yeah, I accumulated all this junk in a hurry. I also found myself with more personal space than I've ever had before; with so many more corners in which to store it all. "I'll deal with it later" became an all-too-comfortable mindset, but it seemed acceptable when confronted by a stark and barren space in my new abode. Ever see a home with nothing but paint on the walls? Not much of a 'homey' vibe, IMO.

During the purge, I did think about all the trash that was heading for the landfill. I'm not Captain Carbon Footprint or anything, but I wanted to cut down on the waste. In an effort to 'reduce, reuse and recycle' I ended up with a few projects that I feel worked out rather well. I found a stash of old cassette cases (mostly classic rock themed) that I hot-glued together to make a unique wall hanging for my home bar area. Same idea using cassette tapes that I glued together to make square panels, each spraypainted a solid colour (very retro-cool effect, IMO.) I used scrap 2x4 to make a deck bench that I put potted plants on in the summer. I placed old horizontal blinds up in my garage windows--maybe too ratty for the kitchen, but actually an improvement to my garage. I framed in a section of scrap wood wall panelling and made a 'wall feature' wine rack using some old wooden towel racks--added a bit of paint and a $10 LED light kit, and it looks pretty darn good.

I think I might make a few collage pieces from all these knife boxes that I can't seem to throw away and frame them. Hey, even a properly framed turd can look like art... :p

Maybe I'll post some pics if/when I ever switch my old Photobucket image hoster.
 
When I first moved into my house, I didn't really have a lot of stuff--a few sticks of furniture, the usual electronics (like a TV and stereo,) some cheap kitchen wares. And pretty much everything I bought for the house came over-packaged in boxes, plastic wrap, styrofoam, crappy included hardware and poor-quality assembly tools.

So yeah, I accumulated all this junk in a hurry. I also found myself with more personal space than I've ever had before; with so many more corners in which to store it all. "I'll deal with it later" became an all-too-comfortable mindset, but it seemed acceptable when confronted by a stark and barren space in my new abode. Ever see a home with nothing but paint on the walls? Not much of a 'homey' vibe, IMO.

During the purge, I did think about all the trash that was heading for the landfill. I'm not Captain Carbon Footprint or anything, but I wanted to cut down on the waste. In an effort to 'reduce, reuse and recycle' I ended up with a few projects that I feel worked out rather well. I found a stash of old cassette cases (mostly classic rock themed) that I hot-glued together to make a unique wall hanging for my home bar area. Same idea using cassette tapes that I glued together to make square panels, each spraypainted a solid colour (very retro-cool effect, IMO.) I used scrap 2x4 to make a deck bench that I put potted plants on in the summer. I placed old horizontal blinds up in my garage windows--maybe too ratty for the kitchen, but actually an improvement to my garage. I framed in a section of scrap wood wall panelling and made a 'wall feature' wine rack using some old wooden towel racks--added a bit of paint and a $10 LED light kit, and it looks pretty darn good.

I think I might make a few collage pieces from all these knife boxes that I can't seem to throw away and frame them. Hey, even a properly framed turd can look like art... :p

Maybe I'll post some pics if/when I ever switch my old Photobucket image hoster.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
 
I'm minimalist by nature. A friend once told me, "Sometimes you don't end up owning things. They
end up owning you." I believe he got that saying from the movie Fight Club though.
 
I'm minimalist by nature. A friend once told me, "Sometimes you don't end up owning things. They
end up owning you." I believe he got that saying from the movie Fight Club though.
That is what they say about cats, owning you. I guess when you start buying or choosing houses based on how much stuff you have and not the space you need the stuff sort of owns you.
 
Back when I was in still in the Navy, I rented out my house to what turned out to be a pair of packrats and horders. They were still in the house when I got off active duty and went back to school. Since I needed the money, I left them renting it and moved back in with my parents to save money.

Well, the husband died, and the wife moved out, leaving my house, garage, barn and pasture full of cra....

One of the bedrooms had newspapers stack all the way up to the 10 foot ceiling and had a small trail from the door to the bed. Every room was packed full of junk. The garage was packed as well. The husband had set up a welding shop in the barn. Before she left, the wife sold all the equipment, but left all the junk. I also had 4 old bobtail trucks, 3 old pickups, a 50 pax school bus that had been converted into a hunting cabin, square and round hay balers, a couple of tractor frames, a 50 ft house trailer frame and a bunch of other pieces of equipment behind the barn in the pasture. He had hauled all the vehicles and implements in as "supplies" in his "junk art welding" business.

I ended up filling up 4 40 yard dumpsters and a 30 yard dumpster just from the house. The detached garage filled up another 30 yard dumpster. The barn gave up 5 pickup and 16 ft flat bed trailer loads to the dump. 15 years later, I'm still cleaning old implements out of the pasture behind the barn - there is still one tractor frame, the trailer house frame, a round bailer, a cotton trailer and a dozen old implements. It's all non-working and has trees growing around and through them. I have to spend time cutting down and then cutting up trees just to get to remaining pieces and then use a cutting torch to convert all the stuff into manageable sized pieces. Extended burn bans during droughty periods has slowed me down frequently. No outdoor burning includes no cutting torch work.
 
I think I figured out what the problem is: at our house you can’t throw anything out unless you make a copy of it.
 
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