Today I’d like to share a perspective which helps me acquire fewer things.  It’s that I don’t really own my things.  They own me.  Here’s what I mean. 

Say you buy an intricately carved small statue for your living room from a museum catalog.  It goes just perfectly with your décor, and you give it prominent placement on your coffee table.  But it was also quite expensive, so you decide your dogs probably shouldn’t have free access to the living room anymore, because they might knock the statue over and break it.

Your new sculpture is make out of a dark wood and gathers dust rapidly, so you take the time to wipe it off with the dust cloth at least once a week.   The small card that came with the statue also said that polishing it with lemon oil several times a year would help it keep its luster, so you add the sculpture to your mental list of things to polish when you put lemon oil on the furniture. 

Several years go by and you’ve received some nice gifts from family members which you’d like to display.  Unfortunately, you are running out of room, so you carefully enfold the statue in bubble wrap, place it in a box and put it in the guest room closet. 

About three years later you are going through the guest room closet to make room for some holiday decorations, and you come across the box containing the sculpture.  Gently unwrapping it, you remember that you bought it just after you’d gotten that big raise quite a few years back.  But it’s not your style anymore, so you put it in a stack of things you’ve mentally marked “to deal with later.”

Several months go by and you are still stepping over that stack of things in the guest room.  While many of these past treasures can go to Goodwill, you just don’t feel you can give the statue away.  After all, it cost you a pretty penny way back then.   You decide to list it on eBay.

After listing the sculpture three times, you finally get an offer for almost what you were hoping you could sell it for.  Tired of messing around with listing it over and over, you decide to surrender it at that price.  You carefully repackage it up, take it to the post office, and pay to ship it priority mail to its new home and to the new person it will own. 

Our stuff ends up owning us in a number of ways illustrated above:

• We change our habits to accommodate our things (e.g. your dogs now can’t be in the living room unsupervised, as they might break the statue).
• We have to dust and clean things and provide proper maintenance for them (like regular polishing, in the case of the statue).
• We have to find new places for things when our tastes change (such as our closets, which may already be filled).
• When the time comes, we have to dispose of our things in a manner that feels right (which may include spending time trying to find someone new for the statue to own who is willing to pay for the privilege….)

Of course, a big way things own us that is not mentioned above is when we buy things on credit and then have to pay for them for months or years to come.
 
I keep all this in mind whenever I think about acquiring something new.  Do I want to pay for it, clean it, maintain it, move it, store it and eventually find a way to dispose of it?  Usually the answer is no, which makes buying the thing, whatever it is, a lot less attractive.

Reduce the Number of Things that Own You:  Freecycle
If you think you are owned by too many of your things and would like to find new homes for them, an easy way to do so is through www.freecycle.org.   You can join a freecycle group in your area and then list things you’d like to give away via e-mail.  People who would like to have them respond and then usually pick up the things tout suite.  

I’ve given away an amazing array of stuff via freecycle, including storage containers, packing paper, bales of straw, magnets, a recliner, trade show lanyards, used baling twine, equine shipping boots, fertilizer and an assortment of goodies that could be used as kids’ project supplies. 

I love freecycle.  You can pass on your things to people who would really like to have them, thus getting them out of your house/closet/attic/garage/etc.  with minimal effort while keeping things out of our landfills.   Try it, and I’ll bet you’ll find yourself frequently doing what I do:   going through every room in the house thinking “Now what can I freecycle next?”