We see our bags and boxes of clutter ready to head out the door, and while part of us feels relieved, another part feels ashamed. How much did we spend on all these items? Did we get our money’s worth?
Our impulse is to try and mitigate that feeling of guilt, fear, and loss. We decide we’re going to try to sell our stuff to “recoup our costs.”
Here’s how this goes wrong: We’ve probably overvalued the item because of the endowment effect. We think to ourselves “Well, I bought it, and I’m smart, so it must be valuable.” We create detailed postings with dozens of photos. We wait for the perfect buyer willing to pay close to full retail. We keep telling ourselves we’ll have a yard sale one of these weekends…
These items languish in our basement. We’ve decided to let go, but we haven’t actually decluttered. Our home becomes a poorly managed consignment shop.
Here’s how this can go right: We acknowledge that if that item is going into the marketplace, it’s value is determined by what people are willing to pay. We don’t try to “break even" and we look for most simple sale, not the most lucrative sale.
We price those bad boys to MOVE, and arrange an immediate pick-up. Or we drop them off at a consignment shop and let them handle the resale. The items are out of our homes, in the hands of someone who actually wants them, and we get a little cash tip for our efforts to declutter.
If you’d like some cash as the cherry on top, go for it. But also, consider how your excess can be someone else’s assist.
Post to Buy Nothing Baltimore or a neighborhood page. Drop off donations to House of Ruth, The Book Bank, the Teacher Supply Swap, BARCS, or the Junior League. Arrange for the Green Drop truck to come by. Put things on the curb with a big ole FREE sign. Trust that these items will be of use to someone deserving., even if we get zilch in return.
Frankly, we should feel a little pinch when we declutter. We bought things we didn’t need. We hoarded things that stopped serving us long ago and could have been of use to someone else. It’s that pinch of seeing all that former-money leave the house that’ll curtail future impulse buys and encourage more intentional weeding.
And that pinch will fade, once we realize what we gain: space, energy, time, freedom. These can feel even better than money.