I struggle to declutter because I think of the value/money spent on the items and donating them feels like a loss
I’ve been trying to declutter for most of my adult life. I’ve finally learned to be okay with donating things that were gifted to me. I don’t struggle with getting rid of things that are sentimental (for the most part). I’m fine with getting rid of old clothing.
But I struggle in two areas:
I keep things because I’m certain I’m going to use them someday, and therefore it would be a waste of money to get rid of them. This can be things like hobby supplies, jewelry, candles, essential oils, etc. They are useful items that I do use from time to time - but I never use ALL of them, and some things even remain unopened or unused for years. Yet I still feel like it would be a waste of money to get rid of them, especially because they’d be tough to sell and I’d need to just donate them. Which leads me to struggle #2….
For things that I know I don’t need, if there is a financial value to them (in my mind), I really struggle to donate or throw them away. I think to myself, “I could sell this for $….”. And in many cases, I have sold stuff, and it’s a fantastic feeling. But the problem is that now I have bins and bins of stuff that I’m “going to try to sell”, but I never get around to taking pictures or creating listings. Other times, I’m motivated to declutter, but I stop to take pics and create listings for each item I want to purge as I go along - which is great for actually getting the items listed, but bad for making any real declutterring progress. And while I have had success with selling my stuff, I’m only getting rid of one thing at a time that way.
I have no interest in a yard sale - getting 50 cents for an item is a waste of my time.
Even though I KNOW it would be good for me to just let the stuff go, to have clear spaces, etc - I just struggle so much with knowing I’m donating things I could sell.
One of the areas I struggle with the most is high-fashion jewelry. Jewelry style is so specific to each person that I know I’m not going to find someone that wants to buy my whole collection, but even if it’s a whole bin of jewelry I’ll never wear again, the thought of donating jewelry that I spent $2000 on stops me from donating it every time. (This is not fine jewelry, so I can’t sell it for its value in gold or silver).
I’m aware of the sunk cost fallacy, but it still doesn’t help me overcome this issue. If I’m confident an item is worth $10+, it feels wasteful to me not to try to sell it and get something back from it (I also know that sometimes we perceive an item as having a lot more value than others will because we know what we paid for it, but I am aware of that and price my items accordingly).
Particularly because I have had lots of success selling stuff on FB MP and getting money back while also reducing clutter, it’s so hard for me to justify donating thousands of dollars worth of stuff. I can’t get past the feeling of knowing I’m “losing money” on the items (and I recognize that the money was lost the second I bought the stuff, but by not recouping some of the money by selling it, I feel like I’m somehow losing money unnecessarily).
Has anyone else been in this situation, and if so, how did you get past it? I just absolutely cannot get past that mental roadblock and feel like if I just forced myself to donate it, it would continue to bother me after the fact. I need a way to reframe it so that I don’t think about the money lost or the money I could’ve recouped by selling it.
TL/DR: If I know I can sell my stuff rather than donating it, I have a hard time just donating it and getting it out of my space. But if I don’t take pics and post it in the moment I’m decluttering, it builds up in bins of “stuff I’m going to sell”. If I stop to take pics and list items as I’m declutterring my progress slows to a crawl, which then kills my motivation. How do I get past the mental roadblock of holding onto stuff that I can make some money back on, and just donate it without feeling like I’m throwing money away?