Things you got rid of and how ditching it enhanced your life

[khorrell]

Giving up my recipe books has been a freeing thing. I gave away several book boxes of them and haven't noticed yet. If I have any urge for a recipe, I just surf the 'net until I find it. Sometimes you have to look creatively but so far there isn't anything I haven't been able to find. I, like klaxiam, do keep frequently referred to recipes in a binder with page protectors - my computer isn't near the kitchen, I hate to waste the paper printing, and it gets annoying running from the kitchen to computer and back.

One thing I try to keep up with is clothes. I find I'm happier when I own five good outfits rather than a closet full of individual pieces that take work to put together. This is also true with my children. In some odd way, past the point of basic necessity, more clothes seems to mean less to wear. (Plus, their rooms are cleaner.)

[Miss Rosie]

Originally Posted by Joanne

hee-hee... I'm waiting for someone to say their husband or wife. LOL

Sadly, that would be me. His spending habits were such that I live better on SSD than I did when I was married. Although to be fair, he divorced me, not the other way around.

I already keep recipes in a binder. Maybe I should do the same with magazine articles. I borrow magazines from the library, so I'd just have to copy what I want.

I've done two book ditches and am due for another soon. People give me books.

I replaced Blockbuster with the library. It takes some planning and patience, but they actually have a more interesting selection and will deliver my online selections to the nearest branch.

I'm also on the local free-cycle list, which lets me find a home for the weird, random crap we don't use anymore or outgrow.

[anitra]

Almost all my childhood books and toys. When my parents divorced a few years ago, they both urged me to take all my stuff - but I lived in a small, shared apartment, so I basically had one bedroom and a small storage closet. I couldn't take the vast majority of the stuff. I sorted through and kept 4 toys (with sentimental or replay value) and no additional books (I had already taken several boxes of books to school, so I knew those were the ones I valued).

Pretty much everything else went to charity - and I'm glad! It would have just weighed me down with a lot of things I'd never use again. I'll have to buy some new toys and books when I have kids, but I'd have to do that anyway.

[peregrinak]

Once our children left home, we realised that it wasn't a big deal to downsize to one car, I am happy walking or biking most places and although we rationalised that it was cheaper for us to take the occasional taxi, than maintain and additional car, we have never really needed to I to that in the last couple of years.

More recently we have cancelled our newpaper subscription and read the news online and I have begun to borrow magazines for free from the public library. These have all resulted in less waste and I think less stress.

[gt0163c]

Originally Posted by Jess

Have you been selling them back? I have a lot of friends who keep holding on to their textbooks from previous semesters thinking they'll reference them at some point, but I think it's kind of pointless.

I'm ten years out of college and regularly refer back to a few of my textbooks both for my job and occasionally in "real life". I would think that this is probably most likely due to my major/job being engineering. There are often formulas, constants and/or concepts that I don't use regularly enough to have memorized but I do use them regularly enough that it makes sense to keep the books.

For math, science or engineering majors, I would recommend keeping all of the books from your core math and science classes as well as from your major classes. The thing is, it's hard to know for certain which books will be useful later on and which ones won't. Also, don't get rid of the "outdated" computer programming language text books. In school many people told me that FORTRAN was a dead programming language. However, in industry, it's still alive and well. I use it on a fairly regular basis in my job.

And, if you are able to find it at a reasonable price, pick up a copy of the CRC Mathematical Handbook. It's a great reference for all kinds of math questions and concepts that you once knew and could do in your sleep but no longer remember. I call mine my "magic green book". It's been an invaluable reference both when I was in school and now at my job.

[rstlne]

Originally Posted by gt0163c

I'm ten years out of college and regularly refer back to a few of my textbooks both for my job and occasionally in "real life". I would think that this is probably most likely due to my major/job being engineering. There are often formulas, constants and/or concepts that I don't use regularly enough to have memorized but I do use them regularly enough that it makes sense to keep the books.

I do still have all my college textbooks too, including tons of math, science, and computer science texts. Some of those books are classics that I definitely should keep but I'm beginning to change my mind on keeping the rest because a lot of the information is now available on the web and is more up-to-date on the web than in those books.

[megRDJ]

After having collected recipes in binders for close to 30 years I have found that I rarely used them after a few months as there are just too many to keep track of (and they tend to grow exponentially). The few that I do use frequently and my family enjoys I type into MSWord and convert to a PDF file and put on my family web site. That way I have access to them anywhere and my children (all grown) and other family members and friends can access them at any time. Also if I lose track of my current copy it is easy to reprint it. The added benedfit.... I recycled all those binders full of recipes and now I have more space for other books and more time to do other things.

[twofingeredtypist]

I was searching for a place to get rid of my paperback books that I'm not reading any more. Does anyone know of a place that buys these?

[amyschiff]

Originally Posted by Michelle Dawn

During our last year I also became aware of how many bath and body products I have accumulated. Usually I buy items on sale or have them given to me, but really I probably have enough moisturizer and body wash to do me for the next year.

The same goes for me, mostly with lotions. I have accumulated so many and I am really bad about using them (possibly because they're just thrown in a drawer that's sort of a pain to get to). To make the lotions more accessible to me I've put most of them in a basket in my bathroom. I'm hoping that I'll use them more often because I can grab them more easily.

I don't buy anything from Bath and Body Works now because I never find anything I really need.

[gt0163c]

Originally Posted by twofingeredtypist

I was searching for a place to get rid of my paperback books that I'm not reading any more. Does anyone know of a place that buys these?

Depending on where you are, you might find a used book store that will take them either for cash or for credit. In the DFW area there is a chain of stores called Half Priced Books. They buy used books, movies, music and magazines and then resell them. I sign up for every free magazine subscription I can find, collect them all in a bin and then sell them to the store every month or so. I get $12-$20 depending on how quickly I get the magazines there, how many other of that issue they have, if I've tossed in any books or DVDs, etc. It's not a lot, but it helps to cover my used book and comic book habit.