Hello,
My DH and I have always had many hobbies and have gotten more hobbies as we get older. And he is also a handyman who does a lot of things himself and then it is good to have tools. We have collected quite a lot of hobby stuff and tools during the last 16 years (after we bought a big house). Now we live in another big house and most of the rooms have stuff in them that I do not want to get rid of yet. The majority of the stuff is also used regularly.
I count that we need to downsize when we going to FIRE, to free up money that was paid for our current house. But I'm pretty sure we would like to have a lot of place where we can store all this stuff. When FIRED we would have much more time than we currently have to use all this stuff. It doesn't need to be stored inside the house though. A shed would be OK.
Some of the hobby stuff we own:
- 4 Tents of different age/size/season.
- Different size backpacks, bottles and other camping equipment.
- 5 sleeping bags for different seasons.
- Many pairs of skies for different circumstances + 2 sledges for winter camping.
- Many different bicycles. I am planning to sell my racer in spring and will then have only 1 mountain bike. My husband will also sell his racer. He will then only have a mountain bike, a time trial bike, a touring bike, a laying down bike and a brompton. The laying down bike he built himself, so I guess he is quite attached to it. The brompton come in handy sometimes when travelling by train.
- Some swimming gear, including swimming wetsuits (much thinner ones than the free diving wetsuits).
- An electronic piano. I have actually tried to sell it for a good price, but no one was interested. Second hand piano's aren't worth much, so now I'm keeping it for if I ever want to play. That seems better than selling it for a low price.
- Fishing equipment (fly fishing, ice fishing, hand rod fishing), waders, nets, bait etc.
- Soon some surfing equipment, as my husband just collected his old board from his father's house and is looking for a cheap, second hand sail.
Other stuff that we own:
- Tools for fixing the house
- Many pots of paint that came with the house. They might be used in the future.
- Bicycle repair stuff including some spare parts and tires.
- Ski preparing stuff.
- Lot of cooking equipment. Some of it is not used very often.
- Only 3 book shelves. I have given away many old books several times before and gave gone over to Kindle books many years ago.
- Lots of shoes, including running shoes with and without goretex and/or spikes, hiking boots, skiing shoes. A few nice shoes as well, but not so many.
- Lot of bags of several kinds and a few suitcases. Most get used from time to time.
- 1 extra bunk bed and 1 extra double sleeping sofa for visitors. So for we have only had 2 visitors staying at the same time. But our brothers have now children.
- Sewing equipment. Also used regularly. 2 sewing machines, as we recently got a newer one (for free). Maybe we'll ditch the old one.
- An extra chaise longe, bought second hand. I can sell that again.
- Silvery under plates and serviette rings. Received as a gift. Probably not worth much to sell, as it is not real silver. Used only once or twice.
- A collection of DVDs and old video tapes with stuff that is worth ever watching again.
As you can understand, this will not fit easily into a small apartment. How do you others do downsizing? Do you keep the hobby stuff, in case you get more time to spend on your hobbies, at least after FIRE? Do you give up hobbies to be able to downsize? Or do those of you with a lot of stuff just buy a bigger house?