Cleaning Out The Closet (De-cluttering of Long-Held Collections)

[StubbledCPA]

So, as part of my process on figuring out what things are really important to me in the realm of materiality, I've embarked on getting rid of some of the things I have taken a little bit of pride in.  In this case, I am referring to my movie and video game collections.  I'm sure several others had a bit of a collecting habit prior to becoming Mustachians, so I thought it would be fun to see what kinds of things others eventually got rid of as they fought the anti-Mustachian feeling of "must buy more."  Please feel free to share what you might have gotten rid of or if you haven't done so yet, maybe this can spur you to take a look at what your possessions are really worth to you.

For myself, I'm getting rid of about 40% of my movie collection (which even the remainder is probably too large) and over half of the video game collection I had which weren't doing anything more than filling up a shelf.  My movie collection itself can be viewed at this link and the video games I am getting rid of are in the attached spreadsheet.  The movies I am getting rid of are under the "For Sale" category.  My plan is to box everything up, hide the box for a month, then see if I really miss anything (which I don't believe I will).  After that month, it's time to cash in on all my previous stupidity and put the funds towards paying down more of my debt!

Please, share what kind of things you have found yourself no longer needing as you have embarked on your journey into Mustachianism :)

[queenie]

Books!!  I used to keep so many books.  I started getting rid of them a few years ago (pre-mustachian days and motivated more by the need to declutter than anything else).  I now only have a handful left.  I sometimes have pangs of regrets over particular books, but I know that if I really wanted to read them again, I could borrow from the library.  I don't need to own them.

We ditched all DVDs a couple of years back as well.  They were getting scratched too often by the kids anyway, and 99% of the time we'd watch a movie once and never have the desire to watch it again.  We're happy with Netflix instead.  We are a 100% DVD-free home now.

[noisyninja]

This is one of those things that's going to be tough for me. Thankfully our 'Stash is already plenty big enough to retire (I've realized this as I've dug into the articles here and recommended books), so I don't need to sell our game collection to pay off debt because we have none. But we have a LOT of games. My wife and I both play, we both collect, we've both worked in the video game industry for about a decade, we're very into games and gaming history (I've even been published on the subject). We're the gaming equivalent of the film aficionado who obsesses over getting "just the right print of just the right film and it must be on 35mm in the correct aspect ratio because they recolored it and screwed up the transfer back in the 60s and that's the version that everyone has."

Part of me wants to keep them. I've thought about making youtube videos talking about the history of gaming and basically dumping my knowledge on the internet, lecture style. I've also thought about trying to get a gig at a university teaching game history. I've heard of a few places that have this role, and I think I'd really enjoy it. I also want to play a lot of the games I've never gotten around to playing. We have around 2,600 games and the over 40 machines required to play them, all in working order and many in pristine condition. It's a HUGE passion for us.

But, on the other hand, we have to house all this crap. And keeping them kind of goes against the whole anti-materialism thing. So we're really struggling with what to do here.

[FarmerPete]

For our movies, I don't plan on dumping them any time soon.  What I would like to do is take them all and put them in binders.  I've transferred most of them to digital format on our server, but I want to keep the discs for backups.  I'm thinking two or three +200 CD binders will do the trick.  Shelf space will go from 12 sq ft down to 1 sq ft.  I did similar to my CDs a long time ago.  For books, I dumped about a third of my collection two months ago.  It felt good.  I'll probably dump some more stuff yet this month to take advantage of 2014 tax deduction.

[oinkette]

last year I downsized from a 1300 sq ft home to a 575 sq ft apartment to save money (and rent out the house to make money). Even though I was barely using half my house (2 bedrooms stood empty) I still had to downsize A LOT. Combine the smaller living space with packing and moving and I got rid of most of my furniture and a lot of crap. 

My books were always the one hold out.  I always LOVED being surrounded by books.  Then when I moved from that apartment and the books were packed in boxes for about 3 weeks, I found I LOVED the empty space even more.  It was so calming!  So I literally halved my (300+) book collection and I'm planning on doing it again in 2015.  Basically only the few books that are dear to me or that I literally read over and over are staying.  Everything else goes!  I never thought that would happen.

[eyePod]

This is how I started selling on eBay. You have a lot of fun games. Let me know if you have any questions about selling them, but lotting them out would be easiest, and Craigslist as a bulk lot wouldn't be too bad either. Otherwise, you'll need to get a lot of individual packing materials to handle them.