Home Inventory

We have just finished a whole house cleaning and inventory. The home inventory is something that we have done every five years where we catalog and photograph everything that we own. This activity probably sounds pretty crazy to a lot of people. It is a huge chore and consumes lots of time.

The inventory was useful when we were robbed, but that is not the main reason that we do it. It has also been fun to look back at some of the old photos of our stuff. Even if you never do a home inventory, I would recommend taking pictures of the rooms in your house.

The main reason to do the inventory is to know how much stuff you have. The home inventory is one of the nine steps in Your Money or Your Life. The point of the step is to look at the things you own with a critical eye. Which items are things that you really use and value, and which items are just a burden or clutter. Reading the book is what triggered our first home inventory in 2004. A side effect of looking at our current possessions critically, is the realization that many of the things that we bought did not end up being worth the time it took to earn the money that they cost. Doing the inventory has made us less likely to buy things that we aren’t sure we are going to use. Another advantage of cataloging each possession is that we realized how many of the items we owned were never, or almost never, used. The 80/20 true-ism applies to possessions too. We really use only 5-10% of our stuff on a daily or weekly basis. Another 50% is used occasionally and the rest is almost never used.

We feel like each item creates a mental burden. The burden of remembering that we own it, remembering where it is, how we got it, how it works, etc. Keeping track of hundreds of items that we almost never use is not a worthwhile way to use our mental energy. So part of the inventory process is to purge unneeded items. If an item hasn’t been used since the last inventory, 5 years ago, we have to either get rid of the item or make a plan to use it. There are some exceptions of course. Some things have sentimental value: some gifts,  heirlooms, or souvenirs can be kept even if we aren’t using them. Also, now that we are retired, we are a little more hesitant to get rid of an item that we might have to re-purchase later. So this year we have a new category of stuff that gets boxed up and stored till the next inventory. Things that haven’t been removed from the box in five years will have gone 10 years without being used and will be purged.

Making decisions about what to keep, store and give away drain our mental energy very quickly. We are only able to inventory and make decisions for one room per day. As tiring as the process it, when the stuff is finally dropped off at Goodwill, it feels really good to be rid of it.

When we were younger we moved all the time. Every semester in college and every year or two while we were in apartments. We have been in this house for 15 years, and the one thing that I miss about moving is that you have to box up and move each and every thing that you own. It forces you to consider each item and leave behind the ones that aren’t worth the effort of moving. For us, the inventory and purge is a stand in for that paring down part of moving.

Having said all of that, we still have a LOT of stuff. Way too much stuff. With the inventory complete, we have a spreadsheet that lists all of our possessions. There are 715 lines in the spreadsheet, but each entry can represent multiple items. The item count stands at 3135 with a very rough replacement cost of $100K. We are a lot closer to the family on the left than the one on the right. (Image from Material World: A Global Family Portrait).