Trick #9 - Do a Full Inventory

It might seem surprising to write about doing a full inventory of your stuff at the end of this blog. Most of us would think inventory comes first. Ha ha. If inventory were Trick #1, no one would ever do it and no one would ever recover from stuff overload. Therefore, I have put this trick last, as a culmination of all the little tricks you have already used.

A full inventory is a detailed list of all your stuff, including quantity and location. A full inventory is not for the faint of heart, but this is where you need to go if you want to make a lasting change in your relationship to your stuff. Most people have to work up to it.

One approach is to do the inventory item by item. For example:

6 roasting pans (2 kitchen, 3 garage, 1 guest room closet)
21 purses (10 bedroom closet, 1 in use, 10 guest room dresser)
106 pairs of shoes (41 bedroom closet, 22 den closet, 30 boxed in garage, 3 office, 10 storage unit A)
12 hammers (8 garage, 2 kitchen, 1 car, 1 purse)
13 tennis rackets (5 hall closet, 2 laundry room, 1 car, 2 kids room, 3 garage)
5 bicycles (1 porch, 3 garage, 1 garden shed)
975 books ...

Or you might choose to do inventory by location. For example:

Living Room:
2 sofas
12 floor pillows
3 TVs, 1 working
2 computers, neither working
9 foldup TV tables, 3 broken
4 shelves
17 board games
54 Star Wars figures
3 fish tanks, 2 empty, 1 with snake
225 DVDs
and so on ...

An inventory requires a significant amount of time. It took you a while to accumulate all this stuff and it's going to take you a while to unaccumulate it. The inventory is one of the tasks. You might insist that you are a person who prefers to "just do it" rather than make lists of your stuff. That's doubtful, or you wouldn't have gotten into having too much stuff in the first place. Then again, you might be a person who will spend years making a beautiful inventory and never reduce your stuff a bit. This is another reason to do the inventory after you are well into the process.

If you can't face the full inventory, hire someone else to do it, as embarrassing as that might be. In fact, you could hire someone else to do everything, but that won't happen because you are not that kind of person. No, you are the kind of person who acquires stuff and holds onto it.

When you see the final inventory of your stuff, you might be horrified, but you will no longer need to hide.

Think of it as freedom.