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Comment by r12s | Hacker News Reader

The "ruthless" spring clean is a similar tradition in our household. Now, if only we hadn't bought all the stuff we "no longer care about" in the first place.

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Want something? Bookmark it in a folder in your browser. Forget about it. Come back a couple weeks later. Still want it? Get it.

I do this with Amazon wishlists. The side benefit is that often things from that list end up as Christmas or birthday presents so I get to both stop buying so much myself, but receive some of them anyway.

Me too. I add stuff to my wishlist throughout the year, then one month before Christmas and my birthday I go through and remove all the items I no longer want. Plenty stays on, of course, but plenty is also like "Ehhhh...I wouldn't actually do much with that", "Ehhh, I ended up seeing that elsewhere and don't care to own it", etc.

I also like going back to them occasionally and realizing I could buy everything on my wishlist for $1000 or whatever. I still don't though :-)

Stop doing presents for christmas and birthdays too then, and make it clear you dont want them.

I've been trying to convince my wife's family that I don't want birthday or Christmas presents for years. No such luck... I end up having to put a bunch of useless crap on my amazon wishlist just to keep them happy.

The trick is to request non-physical stuff. As an example, request a track day on a race car track (if you're into cars). That way, you get an interesting experience and no/reduced clutter.

I always ask for Kiva or Watsi gift cards/donations in my name, and make it very clear that any other gifts will get sold or returned to fund those two things.

I do this for all my old technology books. Like most of you I was sure there was a nugget of knowledge I could still extract from some old book so I kept them for a long time. In one day I bar-code scanned in all of the UPCs and saved them in a wish list. If the book was available cheap then it went in the paper recycling bin. I told myself that if I really want that OLD book back it is available for $1+s&h used. I cleaned up a lot of shelf space and still have my books available on a few days notice.

PS-I have never needed to buy anything back from my old book wish list.

To be fair, half of the stuff I throw out when cleaning each year is stuff that I already got my use out of: old tshirts that are getting frayed, worn socks, old underwear, old towels, inner shower curtain, clothes that no longer fit right, worn/stained bedding, stacks of papers, half filled notebooks, felt pens that have the tip worn down (I write too hard/poorly), etc.

What's amazing to me is the volume of "long term consumables" I seem to go through - eg, things that I'm not wearing out on a weekly rate, but nevertheless, and wearing out on a quarterly/yearly rate.

Couple that with things that I realize need replacing (old dishwear that's accumulated stains/damage/missing pieces), that I've lost a bunch of silverware but still have a pile of spoons, etc and you end up with a fairly sizable selection of stuff every year, even though all of it makes sense both to have bought in the past and to get rid of now.

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