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walkitoutI’ve been reading about decluttering for a really long time now. I blog about it at intervals; it’s a pretty normal activity for me during the winter. I’ve made a lot more progress than normally this year, for two reasons. First, there is one fewer person in the house to slow me down by asking questions over and over and over again, forcing me to produce explanations, resulting in me abandoning the project in favor of really anything else that generates less interrogation.
If you want to stop someone doing something, just ask them questions about it until they can’t take it any more and go hide. Really, this is the basis for most political resistance, now that I think about it.
Anyway.
In the course of reading about decluttering, I inevitably have read a ton about decluttering around the time of death, or downsizing or moving to a senior living facility or whatever. In general, I would summarize that as “No One Wants Their / Your / My Stuff” discourse. It is often framed as an attack on boomer culture, altho the details suggest it is more often than not Silent Generation in the crosshairs. When you read the details, it is usually a bunch of quotes from professionals who help clear out in these situations and/or their clients. Sadly, not a ton of quotes usually from people who are haulers, and who often do a ton of “last mile” work in this area, trying to reduce what they have to pay at the landfill.
Here is a good sample: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2017/02/12/sorry-nobody-wants-your-parents-stuff/
Most of this discourse is explicitly: no one wants it. But what is meant by “no one wants it” is, no one wants to pay what you think you should be getting for it (“endowment effect”). This leads to people advocating (including towards the bottom of that same article and other like it) donating / giving away for free vs. trying to sell things.
I ran across this in a forum on a website I used to hang out at:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/sell-donate-or-throw-out-old-stuff-(i-throw-out-and-here's-why)/
Extended quote unattributed here (you can follow the link above):
“If you do not need the money, the article says give your things away instead.
Reselling your clutter adds time and energy, anxiety and frustration.
I agree and i used to donate.
Then 2 things happened:
1) I used to be part of a local neighborhood FreeCycle yahoo group.
You list things you dont want and people respond if they want it. Then you msg them item location. (ie: curb on XYZ street)
I found a new unopened electronic item in my closet. I had no use of it anymore.
I listed it on Freecycle and i got 3 msgs almost the same from 3 different people:
- Would love- in my house.
- Your- would look great in my home.
- I could really use that- at my place.
All 3 mentioned using it at where they live, which i found odd.
None of my previous listings had that type of response.
it was more generic responses like "I would like that, if still available."
As if all 3 were putting an emphasis on the item not being re-sold.
Which made me think all 3 were re-sellers and were going to re-sell the item.
2) I then shifted to giving stuff away at my local Goodwill.
Till they were caught throwing away big items (furniture, cabinets, chairs, etc) at the community dumpster.
Why go through the trouble of bringing them items when i can save the trouble and throw it in trash in front of my house?
(My items are small and are mostly clothing.)
So that's why i just throw old items away instead of donating.
How about you?”
My summary: I freecycled until I realized people were reselling. Then I donated to Goodwill until I saw them throwing stuff away. Now I just throw stuff away because it’s easier all around.
I want to be clear here: I think we’ve really overdone the shaming on throwing stuff away, in exactly the same way we’ve overdone the fatshaming. Hoarding disorder and eating disorders have a ton in common in their lived, internal structure — people who get through life based on a set of rules, and who experience distress when they don’t perfectly adhere to the rules, who often lack mechanisms for modifying the rules, and who are then screwed by those rules and then go, fuck it, I’m just gonna whatever it is was their earliest impulse.
So. No shame here. I’m pointing out the way global application of locally sensible principles has really outlandish results.
I’m going to look for some research in this general area next. There’s a guy out there advocating hard for minimalism, donation and local donation to charities whose values align with one’s own values and this entire portion of the discourse is full of echoes of him (including the mustache forum I quoted), which is limiting the diversity I’m seeing right now on web searches.
If you want to stop someone doing something, just ask them questions about it until they can’t take it any more and go hide. Really, this is the basis for most political resistance, now that I think about it.
Anyway.
In the course of reading about decluttering, I inevitably have read a ton about decluttering around the time of death, or downsizing or moving to a senior living facility or whatever. In general, I would summarize that as “No One Wants Their / Your / My Stuff” discourse. It is often framed as an attack on boomer culture, altho the details suggest it is more often than not Silent Generation in the crosshairs. When you read the details, it is usually a bunch of quotes from professionals who help clear out in these situations and/or their clients. Sadly, not a ton of quotes usually from people who are haulers, and who often do a ton of “last mile” work in this area, trying to reduce what they have to pay at the landfill.
Here is a good sample: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2017/02/12/sorry-nobody-wants-your-parents-stuff/
Most of this discourse is explicitly: no one wants it. But what is meant by “no one wants it” is, no one wants to pay what you think you should be getting for it (“endowment effect”). This leads to people advocating (including towards the bottom of that same article and other like it) donating / giving away for free vs. trying to sell things.
I ran across this in a forum on a website I used to hang out at:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/sell-donate-or-throw-out-old-stuff-(i-throw-out-and-here's-why)/
Extended quote unattributed here (you can follow the link above):
“If you do not need the money, the article says give your things away instead.
Reselling your clutter adds time and energy, anxiety and frustration.
I agree and i used to donate.
Then 2 things happened:
1) I used to be part of a local neighborhood FreeCycle yahoo group.
You list things you dont want and people respond if they want it. Then you msg them item location. (ie: curb on XYZ street)
I found a new unopened electronic item in my closet. I had no use of it anymore.
I listed it on Freecycle and i got 3 msgs almost the same from 3 different people:
- Would love
- Your
- I could really use that
All 3 mentioned using it at where they live, which i found odd.
None of my previous listings had that type of response.
it was more generic responses like "I would like that, if still available."
As if all 3 were putting an emphasis on the item not being re-sold.
Which made me think all 3 were re-sellers and were going to re-sell the item.
2) I then shifted to giving stuff away at my local Goodwill.
Till they were caught throwing away big items (furniture, cabinets, chairs, etc) at the community dumpster.
Why go through the trouble of bringing them items when i can save the trouble and throw it in trash in front of my house?
(My items are small and are mostly clothing.)
So that's why i just throw old items away instead of donating.
How about you?”
My summary: I freecycled until I realized people were reselling. Then I donated to Goodwill until I saw them throwing stuff away. Now I just throw stuff away because it’s easier all around.
I want to be clear here: I think we’ve really overdone the shaming on throwing stuff away, in exactly the same way we’ve overdone the fatshaming. Hoarding disorder and eating disorders have a ton in common in their lived, internal structure — people who get through life based on a set of rules, and who experience distress when they don’t perfectly adhere to the rules, who often lack mechanisms for modifying the rules, and who are then screwed by those rules and then go, fuck it, I’m just gonna whatever it is was their earliest impulse.
So. No shame here. I’m pointing out the way global application of locally sensible principles has really outlandish results.
I’m going to look for some research in this general area next. There’s a guy out there advocating hard for minimalism, donation and local donation to charities whose values align with one’s own values and this entire portion of the discourse is full of echoes of him (including the mustache forum I quoted), which is limiting the diversity I’m seeing right now on web searches.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 08:07 pm (UTC)Stepping firmly away from judging and also
Date: 2025-02-08 09:15 pm (UTC)You and I, I think, prioritize Continued Use of Item / Keep It Out of Landfill / Avoid Having to Devote Resources to Making New Stuff. This is frugality or conservation or doing our part for the environment or however you want to frame it. Donation, sale, resale, we don’t really care — we want to get it into the hands of someone else who will actively use it.
R. has tended to prioritize full value extraction “Use It Up”, and will store if there is still use left in an item, versus moving it to someone else who will use it before we might. The more hypothetical the chain to someone who will use it, the more he holds onto things. If it’s super clear that someone else really wants it, he is not ungenerous, and is happy to let things go.
There are others, however, who think in terms of that bring to mind ideas like Lady Bountiful or the Deserving Poor. They might object to someone buying at a thrift shop or getting something free from a neighbor and reselling online, because they are making money and taking an option away from those who cannot afford to shop anywhere but a thrift shop / accepting used items given away for free / whatever.
I think the person who I quoted extensively pulls from several of these rules. They object to someone taking a free item and making money by selling it, so then they gave to a charity. Then they learned that the charity threw stuff away, so they skipped the troublesome aspect of packing the thing up and taking it to Goodwill and just put it directly in the trash. I don’t think they have the same set of motivations for getting rid of things that you or I do.
It’s very, very popular to pick on Marie Kondo for not advising what to do with items that are not Bringing You Joy; many assumed she was just sending stuff off to the landfill, which may or may not have ever been a correct assumption. However, numerous people have observed that rules around the Correct Way to Get Rid of Unwanted Things can exacerbate hoarding behavior and can push in the direction of Ever Larger Housing and more storage units and so forth.
The original discussion was in the context of minimalism / decluttering as part of living more intentionally, which is a completely different way of thinking about Getting Rid of Stuff. Now, it’s not about monetizing or donating or full use of the item or deserving poor — it’s having the space back by not having stuff in it, and how that supports living the life you want. That, too, can be judged in a ton of different ways, but it’s worth nothing that a chunk of the ADHD I don’t want meds / they don’t work for me (anymore) community benefits from being very intentional about the stuff around them.
The most useful rule I’ve ever come up with in decluttering / intentional stuff management is, “You can get rid of anything you hate, as long as you know what you hate about it in enough detail to avoid accidentally rebuying something with the same problem.” It’s awesome. “Shop your closet”, “Eat Your Pantry” etc. can just be minefields without this rule, but once this rule is around, it’s super easy both to figure out what to move along and to avoid buying more things that sit around unused. I’ve loved a ton of decluttering rules and principles and approaches and systems; this is the one that works for me.
The remaining problem — people around me thwarting my efforts to get rid of stuff I bought — is one I’m tackling by trying to really understand the rules people have inside them that define Right Ways and Wrong Ways to get rid of things.