This Halloween season, the scary thing is how much stuff I’ve accumulated in 30 years of living in the same house.

And in two decades before that.

And what to do with it.

Much of this stuff results from having done a lot of writing since I was, oh, eight years old or so, and long before the age of easy digital storage. This photo is of 23 boxes of my writing and correspondence, dating back to the 1970s. And there are another 10 banker’s boxes with similar material still in my home office.

As well as 13 bookcases of books.

And 10 boxes of documents and press clips related to my nonprofit career.

And 50 long boxes of comic books.

And all my musical equipment.

And 31 pairs of shoes. (The latest pair arrived today, and I love them. Here’s what they look like.)

And about three dozen tour shirts from bands I’ve seen, and another 40 t-shirts, and a couple dozen dress shirts, and five or six suits, and my ski jacket and ski pants, and about 30 polos… and all of that is AFTER pruning. Yes, the “yard sale” pile is piling up.

Much more of it has to go, because I’m putting my house up for sale in February. I have a new wife, and I stay with her four nights a week (sometimes five), but it’s just not enough. When I’m over in my house rather than in her house, I miss her. So I’m working on moving in with her full-time, and figuring out how much of my stuff can go with me.

My good friend Claude has been a big help. I gave Claude a list of all my stuff, plus the timeframe I’m working from, plus the layout of my intended new home office with my extremely cherished and attractive new wife, and Claude has been just the sort of tough-talking friend you would hope for, telling me:  Here’s what’s moving with you; here’s what needs to be sold or gifted; and here’s what needs to go into storage.

Having to rent a storage unit presents a painful reality. Renting storage is one of the worst financial decisions one can make. Sure, not paying your full credit-card balance is higher on the list (love that 29% interest rate), but I never do that. Spending $300/month for coffee at Starbucks is another (and I never do that either). But having a storage unit is pretty dumb, too. I have, at times, talked friends out of their storage units by saying this:  “You’ll spend $4,000 a year just storing junk you should have gotten rid of. You’ll probably do it for three years. You could buy that stuff all over again if you ever missed it, and for a lot less than $12,000. Just get rid of it all.” Smart words. I somehow like to think they’re not applicable to me.

Now, I am indeed working on deaccessioning many of the books  (ouch!), and I can sell 80% of the comic books (ouch again!) later. But, Claude, as well as my friends Doug and Dennis, pointed out that I’m not storing furniture and the like — it’s all of those personal documents, which are irreplaceable artifacts from my life and career. Theoretically, I could digitize them — but I have no time to do that between now and the end of the year, especially with my overseas two-week honeymoon starting in six days. So now I’ll be the guy paying for storage. Depending on what I’m looking for in a setup, and the overall size, I’ll be spending between $174 and $400 a month. Maybe part of why I’m posting this is so that I can publicize the dumbness of this and get it all resolved more quickly and the storage space de-rented sooner.

As for planning out my upcoming destination, Claude has done a floor plan for me, and placed my desk and the desk return, and the three bookcases I can accommodate, and the file cabinets I can take, all in what looks like a reasonable and sensible fashion. My new home office will be tidier — honest! — and more sensibly and neatly kitted out. 

Next, I just need Claude’s help writing a plan for what I’m going to do with all the books and comics and clothes and shoes I’m going to acquire over the next 30 years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2026 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.