Why Do I Even Have This?

Moving to a new home is exciting. It also sucks. Last year we decided to move to the city to be closer to our family, which meant a smaller place.

It’s hard to tell how much stuff you’ve hoarded over the years, until you realise you will have to fit it in half the space you used to have. Surprisingly, I didn’t ask myself “How are we even going to make room for this?” but rather “Why do I even have this?”. It almost felt like when you’re at the end of an RPG and realise you haven’t used a single consumable throughout, and you’re still keeping the rugged leather armor you started with.

We were halfway through February, and the moving company was coming the first week of March. And there I was, looking in disbelief at everything we had yet to pack.

There were clothes for when I get back in shape. Warhammer minis that have been plastic grey in a box for two decades. Philosophy books I’ve had for years and have never read. Enough cutlery to have 25 dinner guests and the spiral slicer to make zucchini spaghetti. There were even the couple of unused Raspberry Pi I got back in 2012, with some unopened components. And I could go on.

There was no way I was throwing away those—definitely not ready for battle—Space Marines. So we packed it all in boxes and for the next few days we pretended we weren’t living in a room made entirely of cardboard cubes, like some kind of low-budget Minecraft build.

The Minecraft phase

Fast forward a few weeks after the move, and we found ourselves living in a small flat, as cramped as it gets, that felt even smaller than it looked when we bought it. It didn’t take long for me to start feeling a bit snappy; tired of tripping on furniture, boxes and basically stuff that didn’t fit the new place.

Home is supposed to feel like your safe place, it’s supposed to feel calm and relaxing, and getting home from a short walk felt anything but calm. So I had to fix this somehow, and so I started selling stuff on secondhand platforms.

I saw secondhand selling not as a way to make money, but rather a way to let others buy me cheap square footage. Those clothes and books weren’t only worth 30% of their original value to buyers, but they were costing me 100% of the space they occupied. From this perspective, it was easy to let things go, and it helped me declutter pretty quickly.

The process of secondhand selling got messy fast. At some point my home office looked like a shipping company—full of boxes, shipping labels, and bubble wrap—and there were moments where I questioned whether it would be better to throw everything in the garbage container at once.

I was trying to be less stressed, but some days those trips to the post office, getting creative with packing and dealing with buyers only added to the chaos. I do believe though that it’s better to give stuff a second life—especially when most is in perfect condition—and I didn’t mind the couple extra bucks.

Somewhere around sale #195

It’s now been a few months, and after around 200 sales and countless trips to the post office, home is finally starting to feel like home again. As much as there’s still some more stuff I want to get rid of, I’ve already noticed a huge shift in my mental health.

Nowadays I don’t need a search-and-rescue mission to find a shirt. There are no Warhammer minis making my inner child feel guilty anymore. Our kitchen drawers now hold 4 pieces of cutlery each, instead of 20, and you can actually close them. We have half the furniture we used to have, and some of it we’ve changed for half its size. Our tables are now usable, instead of being storage space. It almost feels like we’ve moved to a more spacious place.

I don’t trip on furniture anymore. But most importantly, when I look at the stuff I have now I can ask myself “Why do I have this?” and actually provide an answer to the question. I either use it, love it, or it makes my life better.