become less attached to material possessions

I found some DVDs that I have been wanting for a long time at an amazing price so I bought them. I ended up buying a few others I wanted at the same time. This is exactly the kind of behaviour I am trying to avoid.

I feel like I am becoming attached to things again. Now that I have had a job again for a few months I don’t feel as guilty about buying stuff I don’t need.

The less things you buy the less things there are to become attached to. Prevention is better than cure as they say.

trying hard! i seem to have transfered my possesion onto money now, and food. since these are the 2 main things that effect my life they are the only thing that holds importance – if i can break free of these then i will be at peace!

I’m going to mark this goal as done because I believe I have achieved my original intent with it. I no longer feel the same attachment to my material possessions as I used to and it has become so easy to say “I don’t need this, it can go” and let go of stuff now.

I’m still working on decluttering all the stuff I have accumulated over the years, but I think I’ve got the source problem licked :)

I’m especially attached to items that have some sentimental value. Today I was vacuuming and crushed this cute ornament my mom gave me a few years ago. I felt sad and instead of throwing it away I tucked it away somewhere. I’m way too nostalgic I hate having loss especially with things I’ve accumulated over time. I think I could be a packrat!

doing well with this, i dont hold meaning in objects so much, and dont feel the need to buy things ‘just in case i may need them in the future’.

the only things that still hold value to me are money and food, im kinda obsessing over them, which isnt good.

Whenever I try throwing something away I get criticized for doing it by someone who says that I might need it in the future even though I have thought about it very carefully myself before doing it. I end up having to throw things away in secret for fear of someone trying to stop me.

I am sure a lot of people who are trying to achieve this goal have had the same problem and I sympathize with you.

I have a collection of programs that I keep a copy of. I hate all the bloat and slowness of new versions of a lot of software so that is why I keep older versions of the software.

I hate being attached to these programs because I know that eventually I won’t be able to run them like the way a lot of DOS programs don’t run anymore.

I have been forcing myself to use new programs that do the same thing as the old programs and I don’t enjoy it but I don’t have a choice.

I am a self confessed packrat and have far too much stuff. It clutters up important areas of our house so I then move it to somewhere like our spare room where it collects in piles. The piles then tend to topple and cause even more mess and clutter.

I’ve started to attack the clutter and we’ve had a number of productive purging sessions here over the last 12 months. Cleaning up the clutter only solves half the problem though. I need to break my attachment to my material possessions and even more importantly, the urge to purchase/acquire more uneccessary stuff!

I’ve noticed that since we started purging the whole process has become easier. The first step was to break the feeling of “security” or “preparedness” that having all this junk was giving me. Strangely enough it was a blog post by Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, on traveling light that caused the lightbulb to suddenly go on in my head. Starting to think about what items I really needed to take away on a trip with me flowed over into thinking about what items I really needed to keep around me at home. Strange, but it worked :)

It now feels much easier to let go of stuff I no longer need and it’s also much easier to resist acquiring more new stuff. As we clear a space it becomes motivation to start work on the next area.

The other thing that’s helped with all this is keeping in mind the simple list of decluttering questions:
- Do I love It?
- Do I need it?
- Is it essential?
- Does it enhance my life?

I’m applying these questions to all new acquisitions too.

Still a long way to go, and still a lot of decluttering to do, but I feel like I’m really starting to make headway on forming this new habit.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20081129/twl-shop-worker-killed-in-sales-rush-3fd0ae9.html

people in the 3rd world are dying from hunger. people in the 1st world die from greed!

I got rid of all my old university textbooks. I have no idea why I was keeping them. I have not used any of them since I left university and I know that I never will. I think I just kept them around to impress people.

I went through all of my stationery and decided what I needed and didn’t need and threw all the stuff I didn’t need away. I discovered that I am a pen addict because I have about a hundred pens.

I stopped buying the PC gaming magazine I always used to buy at the beginning of the year. It didn’t make me feel as bad as I thought it would. I have now decided that I will stop buying the PC magazine I always get but I will only stop buying it at the end of the year. I hardly read it anymore so it is a waste of money. I want to still get rid of my huge magazine collection but I hate the idea of doing that.

I got rid of the clothes that I thought I would never wear again.