To work towards true financial independence, becoming detached from as many material items you own as possible is extremely important. The more you value possessions, the less you may value things in your life that really matter, like people. Also, you’ll end up spending more money on stuff you don’t need.
“The things you own end up owning you.”
- Tyler Durden
On my path to living a more minimalist life, I downsized my clothing by almost half a few months ago, but the journey continues. I’m just as guilty as the next person with the amount of electronics and movies I have, but there is always a way to minimize the amount of space possessions take up. I decided to tackle our movie collection next.
The Purge
My fiancé and I combined our movie collection last weekend and we ended up having doubles of a few movies and some we didn’t want anymore. After having gone through both of our sets of movies and asking whether we wanted to sell them on Half.com, donate to Goodwill, give to friends, or trade them on SwapADVD.com, we got it down to only the ones we wanted to keep.
Yes, we have a lot of movies. To minimize how much space they take up though, I bought a 320 disc CD/DVD case off Amazon and went to work.
Saying Goodbye
As I went through each individual case, took out the discs, and put them in the new mega-case, it was actually hard to part with the plastic cases (as silly as that sounds). Why did I care how these little disc cases looked on my bookshelf?
After slowly parting with a few of the Blu-Ray cases and realizing how ridiculous I was being, I went through the rest with no hesitation. Sometimes all it takes is making that difficult first step to accomplish a much bigger goal.
Why We Kept the Movies
Movies are a hobby that my fiancé and I are passionate about and it costs us nothing to keep the movies we already own. We have scaled back to buying movies only when we have gift cards for the past year and were Netflix member for a while until we got too busy wedding planning.
Buying movies is not an impulse we are susceptible to anymore. We are comfortable keeping the movies in this way so we can still enjoy them, while not having the clutter of over 200 plastic cases on our shelves.
The Takeaway
What does getting rid of plastic cases for movies have anything to do with financial independence? We have to disconnect ourselves from the false feelings of gratification from continually having more and better stuff. Until you can detach yourself from the things you own, you will continue to buy things you don’t need.
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Where in your life could you minimize your possessions without losing anything of value to you?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Amazon.com buys old DVDs and you get that back in a gift card. I’ve done that with some of my DVDs.
This post is timely because lately I’ve been thinking of all the STUFF I’ve acquired since I’ve moved into my house 8 years ago. The stuff we buy doesn’t happen at once. It’s gradual and we don’t even notice it until one day.
I have a storage closet not too far from me now that needs to be cleaned out. I know I have so much stuff in there I don’t need.
I’ve got to go through my closet and donate clothes I don’t wear anymore.
I remember back when I lived in the dorms in college. Moving in was fine. Moving out was the problem cause of all the stuff I ended up buying and adding throughout the year.
Hope you have a great time at WDS!
I haven’t tried Amazon for buying old movies. Too late now!
For me, the easiest way to get rid of stuff is just one space at a time. It is simple to get overwhelmed by all of the different pieces that need to get cleaned up.
Wow that is a lot of movies. Ever consider ripping them off of the DVD and maintaining your collection on an external harddrive?
I’ve been trying to follow a new policy where I refuse to buy a new item until I can find something older of equivalent use that I can throw away. This way I maintain a balanced quota all of my possessions. Been working out pretty good so far!
I’ve considered ripping them, but the way we enjoy them currently is not through a home theater PC.
I try to get rid of one thing for every one thing I bring in as well.
Hmm. Great posts. I was looking on the Internet for opinion on whether keeping DVD cases was worth it or not - in the case of resale, etc. I have a serious problem. I have a vast DVD collection that has its own catalog. People cannot believe my Movie binder for selecting movies. That is just for reading! The movies are preloaded into juke boxes at 400 movies in each unit. The problem is that all of the cases are neatly stored in large boxes in the closet but I need the closet. I am concerned about dumping the cases. I weeded the movies about a year ago and got it down to about 920. Understand that this is a home theater with not only recent movies but also childhood favorites, etc. It is our own “on demand” per se. Does it matter to keep the cases?