Really Good Post on "STUFF"

I just have to share this with you because it perfectly sums up what I am getting at with my Happy Shiny Me quest towards minimalism.

If you like decluttering, then it's worth the 2 minutes to read it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

This part in particular could have been written about me 10 years ago:

It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, [a house] built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of toys my [kids] have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my [kids'] rooms the bed is the only clear space.
Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven't changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff.
That was a big problem for me when I had no money. I felt poor, and stuff seemed valuable, so almost instinctively I accumulated it. Friends would leave something behind when they moved, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night (beware of anything you find yourself describing as "perfectly good"), or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price at a garage sale. And pow, more stuff.

It was my affliction too. Thrift Stores were my Siren's Song... it caused me physical anxiety to drive by my favourite places for fear that I was missing out on some underpriced treasure! It would be different if I had an antique shop or an eBay store specializing in vintage toys to flip these things at... I didn't. I just WANTED them because they were cool and cheap and "worth more" than I paid for them.

Now owning fun, vintage things just for the sake of owning them is done for me (at least 90 % of it), and I am willing to just let go. Some other person in that accumulation phase will find them at the charity shop and squeal with glee and maybe even be able to turn a profit, but that's not where I am anymore. And the value of the experience of having these things when they brought me pleasure is done.... finito, over.

I guess I don't feel "poor" anymore!