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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, if it's my closet or the landfill (as opposed to reselling, and the associated depreciation and opportunity costs) I'm not in a rush to toss things.

Unless there are circumstances like an impending move, or I am running out of space in the closet.

It's kind of a difficult line to walk. I used to keep way too much stuff. But just yesterday I pulled equipment (tools, a VGA cable, a prototyping board) out of the back of my closet that I hadn't used in four or five years, and was able to save myself a couple hundred bucks (computer repair). That VGA cable occupies very little space.

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I would advise you to not completely rule out the tax that every item you own has. Even just looking at a drawer that is full of odds and ends can be stressful. With that said I am all in favor of re-selling things, then someone can get use out of them and overall waste in the system is reduced. Now I just need to sell my $300 jambox that I only used 10 times...

I have never found a drawer full of "odds and ends" stressful: I can see how you might, but from my perspective seeing that drawer is satisfying and soothing, as it means that I'm more likely to have whatever it is that I might need. The tax is only in "whether or not you can find it", which some people have also cited as being stressful, especially when you are trying to find something you know you own but are unable to do so; but, once you realize that throwing something away means you can't find it, it becomes acceptable to sometimes fail to find something and end up with two of them. The secret is just to make certain that the stuff that you don't use often is the stuff most likely to be lost. (Of course, if you can find someone else who will find these things valuable, I'm all for giving the objects away.)

I imagine that how organized the unused stuff is would be a factor in how high the tax is. If you can't remember that you own it and where it is when you need it, there's no usefulness to having it. If it's getting in the way of finding other stuff, the value becomes negative.

In large quantities, stuff taxes also include how large a dwelling you need and how difficult it is to move.

Studying abroad made me more aware that there are penalties for not having stuff, too. It was mostly basic cooking implements that I missed, and also things that are just useful to have around, like tape and plastic wrap.

I'm definitely aware of that. But I am also avoiding the other extreme. For years I was cutting "stuff", largely because I was moving constantly. Then I bought a small house and stopped living with other people, and found that a barren house is its own brand of distressing.

I'm not very good at creating a "warm" house, but one thing I do know is that empty rooms and bare walls are not it! So I am not afraid to have a little extra "stuff", for example my $10 pair of ice skates. What little annoyance they provide (Where does one KEEP ice skates!?) is easily repaid by the fun they provide pond skating each winter.

Reading your post, I imagined the ice skates as wall decorations. Just a nail needed, and maybe an old frame or some of that fancy ricepaper sticky tape.

I hear this. Oh, do I hear this.

First, you can donate many things to other people who will get use out of it. My house has two recycling bins: one for the traditional recyclables, and one for the stuff to donate to AmVets or Goodwill or the Salvation Army or whatever.

Second, I also feel the tremendous amount of waste going on with so many things that have piled up in my house (against my will in the first place). And many of them would not survive a trip through the Goodwill.

One reason I want to go live on Mars is that I'll never come in from working on the fields to find a bunch of new junk in my hab.

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