How Hoarding Can Be Your Enemy

First Published: October 1, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Many of us find that the key to being financially secure is to ensure that we always have one eye on what is coming in and one on what’s going out. Making sure that there is more coming in than going out is, in most opinions, absolutely essential. But hoarding money is one thing, while hoarding possessions is quite another. Many people become quite attached to their possessions, and will keep the old ones no matter how many new they add. The reasons for this are perfectly understandable – when we bought them, these possessions represented something useful to us. It is often quite a wrench to part with them.

However, the time will come when you cannot move because your house is so full of the many things you have collected without even really noticing, and after a period of time just squeezing things in wherever they will go starts to be both difficult and pointless. In this case it is really worth thinking long and hard about whether you actually need half of the stuff you have accumulated over the years. Of course you wanted it at the time, but the fact is that you have probably got by without it for some time now. Maybe someone else could get some use out of it. This is where online auction sites like eBay come in extremely useful for you, and for others.

If you have got to the point where you have so many hoarded possessions that they are beginning to bulge out from every available corner, then it really is time to de-clutter, and one way of doing this is to sell some of the things that you have collected it. If you are a hoarder by nature it is probably still in fairly good condition anyway, so why not have a look and see what people might pay for it? You might actually find that you benefit from having your own policy of only buying something new when you have cleared some space to put it into. Rather than just throwing it all into a dumpster – which a surprising number of people will do when it comes to the time to rearrange things – you could put it up for sale and make some money – allowing you to budget better for anything new that you buy.

You will find that if you use online auction sites, people will pay more for an item that has some rarity value, or that comes as part of a pair. The more things you have that are like this, the better when it comes to trying to raise some cash. Of course, you may find that some of the possessions have sentimental value to you. It is perhaps a good idea to hold on to some of this if you feel that you would be negatively affected by selling it on. The best advice in this situation is to ask yourself whether it is something that is preventing you from moving on, or something that helps you remember. This will help you decide.

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