Facing Your Financial Fears When Decluttering

In this episode of the Simple Joy Show, I navigate the often tricky emotional terrain of financial fears tied to decluttering. 

I explore four common fears: the perceived wastage of money when letting go of unused items, the worry of having to replace decluttered items, the fear of discarding potentially valuable possessions, and the pressure to recoup money by selling unwanted items.

You will find valuable insights and practical strategies to help you confront these fears and find empowerment in the decluttering process.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to free their home from clutter while also alleviating financial anxieties.

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Transcript

Hayley Forster [00:00:00]:

Hello, and welcome back to the Simple Joy Show. When we start to declutter, we often encounter fears that can hold us back, especially those that are financially related. It’s not just about the things that we own in our possessions. It’s about the money that was spent to attain them, and then the perceived value we then attach on those. So today, I’m going to cover the financial fears that often get in our way when we start our decluttering journey, and I’m going to look at how they might manifest themselves and what you can do to overcome them.

Hayley Forster [00:02:07]:

Thank you for joining me on today’s episode. I want to continue the theme that I started last week, which is about decluttering fears. And I’ll be honest, there’s so many of them. I had to put this theme into a few different episodes because I thought if I do this all in one, it’s gonna be quite overwhelming for you, and some of the fears might not necessarily apply to you. So I’ve tried to block them in different categories so you can dip in and out for the ones that are relevant to you.

So the topic that I want to focus on today is about financial fears. And when we eliminate items from our home, fears do come up about the money that we’ve spent on them and the perceived value that we then associate with those possessions, and they can manifest themselves in lots of different ways.

So I’ve got 4 main financial fears I want to just touch upon, how they may feel for you and therefore what you can remind yourself of and how get through them.

The first one I wanna touch on is worrying about wasting money when you’re getting rid of items. and it can be really difficult to see all the stuff that you’ve bought and that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, but now you don’t really use them, you don’t need them, or you’re falling out of love with them. They’re just not something that you want in your home anymore. And sometimes letting go of that stuff can really feel as though you’re wasting your money. It can feel like keeping that clutter means that you’re not wasting the money that you spent on it in the first place.

So what can you do about that? Now the important thing here is to remember that you’re not wasting money by getting rid of something that you don’t use. The money was actually wasted when you bought it in the first place. When you bought something that you didn’t really need or you didn’t really love at that moment.

So keeping an item you don’t need or you don’t use or you don’t love won’t bring you that money back. All it’s gonna do is add clutter. It’s gonna add stress, and it’s gonna add guilt in a year life and who needs that? Let’s be honest.

And in addition to that, obviously, all the things that I keep mentioning all the time, it’s stealing time, it’s stealing your energy and it’s stealing the space in your home as well. So really, you’ve got to think, is it worth it? The money’s already spent. So you can let go of that item and the guilt that goes along with it.

And what you need to do is just use that as a lesson to help you shop more intentionally moving forward. You’ve got to remind yourself when you’re out there and you see something, “oh, I like that. I think that would be lovely in my home”. Just question yourself. Do that purchase pause that I mentioned in the last episode. Stop. Ask yourself do I really need it? Is there not something else that I’ve got at home that could already do the job? Is that gonna replace something that I already like, or is it actually not as good as what I’ve already got?

So that purchase pause is incredibly powerful to just question your shopping choices and help you not make the same mistakes again that you have done in the past.

Another common financial worry is worrying about having to replace or re-buy an item if you decide to declutter something. So are you gonna declutter something now, and then you’re gonna need it if you months down the line. Again, and I’m gonna keep going back to this. Once you know, this is at the root of your declutter and fears, what you can do is then reframe it and question actually, is this a valid feeling? Is this a valid fear that I’ve got?

So you need to decide what’s more important to you. It might be more convenient for you to keep everything that you want because you won’t need to replace it. You won’t need to re-buy it in the future because you’ve got it in your house somewhere.

But are you willing to risk that you might need this at some point at some unknown time in the future, but you’ve got to live with a house of clutter and associated stress that it causes in the meantime.

Is that worth it for you, or would you rather you cleared the clutter, create a home, a house that you love, makes you feel comfortable, makes you feel loved and relaxed and free up your time, your space, and your energy.

Would you rather have that now, but run the risk of maybe needing some sort of replacing something that you might need in the future. And that’s really the scenario that you need to to pull into this. It’s up to you to decide what’s more important to you in moment.

And what I will say is don’t forget just because you might need an item again in the future, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you might need to re-buy it. You might be able to borrow it from a friend or a neighbour. You might be able to find something else to use, or you might even work out that you can do without it.

So ask yourself that question. Is it worth living with it? And that item causing additional clutter and additional stress in your day to day life, or would you rather be prepared for some instance that may occur at some point in the future or not.

Another financial fear is the fear of getting rid of something that actually might be worth something in the in the long run.

And I’ll be honest, that’s not one that I’ve come across that frequently because I would say that in our modern consumer culture, world of mass production of items and the fact that trends change so frequently, not a lot of us have things in our home that do hold a lot of value after you buy them, unless you’ve got family heirlooms, things like that that have been passed down through generations.

So what I would just say on this is it’s not worth hold on everything, just in case something in there is gonna be worth something someday. Now I had, a Commodore 64 when I was younger, and also an early Nintendo. I can’t remember which version of I’m not up on my computers, but I remember telling my husband about these a few years ago,

Hayley Forster [00:08:45]:

and he said, “well, they’re they’re actually they can be worth some money, have you still got them?” And I said, no.

Hayley Forster [00:08:53]:

And he was mortified and it’s it wasn’t actually my doing. Although within the last 10 years, I probably would have, would have decluttered them at some point, but it was my dad.

He threw them away when I moved house. So I moved out of my dad’s house when I was 21 to move in with my now husband and he had a big clear out when I left obviously. And he threw away my Nintendo and my commodore 64.

And I’m not entirely sure of the value, but I know that they do have some monetary value more than what they were worth back in the eighties and nineties when I had them. But I was really upset about that because I had something that was worth monetary value. And back in back in my early twenties, I didn’t really have a lot. I didn’t have much money. I was just starting out in the world of work. And I thought, do you know what that would have been fabulous. I could kept them and I could have built them up over the years, and I could have maybe sold them at some point and earned a bit of money from it.

And that was a big thing for me when I younger because I would look at stuff, and I would think about the potential value it had for me in the future. And I wasn’t looking at what was able to meet in that moment.

So try and reframe things a little bit. If it’s not adding value your life today because it’s not something that you use, your need, or your love. Can you get rid of it? So go back to that scenario I mentioned earlier, where you’ve got to question yourself, what is most important to you in the moment? Is it more important that you keep these items just in case there might be worth something one day and then live with the consequences of being surrounded by clutter? Or is it more important for you to to let go of those items and and thank them for the time that you’ve had them, but then just pass them on and live with the benefits of having less clutter in your home.

So just keep going back to that scenario. Is it worth it? is it worth you keeping multiple items in your house, just in case 10, 20, 30 years down the line you might get 50 or £100 for it.

Now I’m not including items that you know are worth something, and you know are gonna increase in worth over time. Now those are kind of a separate category, so I wouldn’t even bulk those into this section. This section is very much for on things that you’re keeping just it’s it’s very similar to the just in case items that I mentioned in the last episode, but this is just in case it becomes worth something.

So this is something that you’re not sure is gonna happen. I love investments. I love thinking about investing in things that are gonna give you back something in the future. So if you’ve got items in your home that you know will do that, then that’s perfectly fine. What you do need to question yourself is about those just in case items.

Hayley Forster [00:11:58]:

And the last one I want to touch on is about

Hayley Forster [00:12:02]:

when you can focus on re-couping your money spent. So it’s really, really easy for us to to hold on to items with the intention of selling them one day. Now this was a big thing for us in our family because I was very much about well, I’ve spent money on this and don’t want to just give it away. I want to get something back for it. and you want to recoup some of the money that you perhaps have spent on it, but actually that becomes a massive excuse in itself.

So what you want to do with this one is if you if you know you’ve got the time and you want to put in the effort and you’re quite happy selling items, then that’s perfectly fine – go for it. I have done that in the past with certain items and me and my husband actually made a fair bit of money getting rid of media. I sold loads of DVDs through a website. I don’t know if it still exists, called Music Magpie, and I made a couple 100 quid from that. So then that tells you how many DVDs were had because you can usually sell them back for only, like, 50p or a pound. And then the, the special editions might be £2 at most, but, yeah, so it tells you how many we had!

But there are multiple different options for you out there for selling things. You’ve got Facebook marketplace. You’ve got eBay. You’ve got Gumtree. There’s loads of different ways to do it. So if you’re willing to put the time and the effort in, perfect. Just make sure that you actually follow through and actually get the items out of your house because what you will end up failing, and this is something that I have fallen into the trap of in the past is that you create a pile of, oh, that’s that’s my sell pile. I’m gonna sort those out. actually, it just ends up going into a box or a bag in the back of a cupboard because one day, you’re gonna get around to it. You’re gonna get it listed on eBay, and you’re gonna get it sold, but actually, you don’t end up doing it.

So just ask yourself, is it worth the time and the energy to sell it? Is it worth you taking the time to put that listing up to take the photos to do the descriptions, then do the admin of of the purchases wrapping up, wrapping it up, and take to the post office and get it posted off. Are you willing to do that?

And what we decided actually with ours is that we had so much stuff that we could potentially sell is that we decided that we were gonna donate anything that was worth less than a certain amount. So if I said, right, if I’m gonna get more than £10 for this, I’ll sell it. But if it’s anything lower than £10, It’s not really worth the time and effort that I’m gonna have to put in and get rid of it and to sell it. So that was the cutoff for us, and that really helped because That helped me make real decisions of like, well, actually, how much could I possibly sell this for? Have a quick look on the internet. If I could sell it for a £10 perfect, let’s do it. Let’s action it. Let’s get it done because you were you knew you were gonna get a decent value for it, and that’s more of a drive. It’s more of a motivator for get going and get that out there and sold for you to get that money back.

But if you were selling things that perhaps you might get £2-3 for. It’s not much of a motivator. so that was for for us a really helpful differentiation, actually. I’m not gonna get much for this. I’m just gonna donate it. I’m gonna give it to a charity shop. Someone is love someone’s gonna need this, and I’m gonna donate that, and and I’m gonna save my time and energy.

So what I would say is just hold yourself accountable. when it comes to selling items, set yourself a deadline to list the items for sale, and set yourself also time limits for how long you’re have these things for sale and to have available because there’s some things that I would put on for sale, and then I would forget that they were on there, like, perhaps, like, would not with eBay where you’ve got, like, an auction time limit, things like on gum tree, and they might be on there for 2, 3 months and you’re like, oh, actually, I forgot I had that.

So just give yourself deadlines for, a, when you’re gonna put it up for sale, and then, b, when you’re actually gonna sell it. And if it gets too long and you’re still storing it, you’re still waiting for someone to buy it, then it might be worth donating it. And as an add on to that as well, I would also give yourself time limits to donate. So if there’s a collection of items that you’re gonna donate, either pop them in a box or a bag, get them in the car and you can just take take them straight there, or say, actually, do you know what, I’m heading a town on Thursday, I’ll drop them in when I when I go down.

Because otherwise, all these things are just gonna hang around indefinitely, and you’re gonna end up with lots of bags lots of boxes hanging around your house that are all action items, and that’s just gonna weigh you down again.

It’s like an additional it’s compounding the anxiety and the stress that you’ve got from the clutter, it’s adding that because you’ve got an you know, you’ve got a list of other things to to sell or to donate and do. There’s more actions there for you to take so the quicker you get them out of your house, the better.

So that’s it. That’s the 4 main financial fears. And I’m sure one of them, if not all of them, have come up for you, I know that they have for me. So whether you worry about the perceived wastage of money when you’re letting go of unused items or you worry about having to replace items, or you’ve got the fear of getting rid of something that potentially have value in the future or you’ve got the pressure to to try and recoup some of the money that you you feel as though you have lost. I’ve put those in inverted commas, by selling unwanted items, I’m sure you can resonate with this episode. And I hope that some of the things talk through today is really resonated with you and helps you to think about things in a slightly different way so you can get through those fears and start decluttering those items from your home.

And I think this episode, as well as the last one, just really goes to show that decluttering isn’t solely about just dealing with objects. It’s also about us grappling with emotions and fears and a lot and a lot and a lot of worries that are connected to your possessions. And by acknowledging and facing these fears that we’re gonna do over the next few episodes, we can really try to make the decluttering process much less daunting and much more empowering for you.

So thank you for joining me today on the Simple Joy Show. Until next time, stay stayed joyful. And remember whilst on the journey of our pursuit of simplicity, we’re also gonna have to come across some difficult challenges and confront and conquer our fears, but don’t be scared of them because on the other side of those fears, it’s something so much more wonderful than you can imagine.