Appreciating the value of space

Being frugal means living a certain lifestyle that involves seeking out good values and not wasting anything. This can lead to me buying things in bulk, and buying things on sale or on clearance simply because they are a good value. I was frugal with my money and time, but it wasn’t until recently did I truly appreciate being frugal with my space.

The true value of space

More space usually costs more in terms of money or time. If I want a bigger house, I’ll pay more. I can trade off some of my time; the further away I live from a big city, the bigger house I can buy with a given amount of money. The result is a longer daily commute. If time was a premium in my life, I’d live right in the downtown core. If money was a premium, I’d live far up north. Given the more time made available by living downtown, I could invest more time into earning more money to buy a bigger house. At the other extreme, I might not need to invest as much time to earn money. I live somewhere between these two extremes; this allows me to pick and choose what I feel are the best aspects of both worlds for my own tastes and desires.

The perils of filling up space

Are they really worth it?

I’ve come to value space as I do time and money. Consider, for example, if I filled up every moment of my time with something. I could be very efficient, utilizing each and every hour to maximum benefit. I could take on extra jobs, take extra courses, but I would be sacrificing leisure time. Eventually, I would burn out. I need periods of “Do nothing” time to unwind, reflect, and think about my future. Imagine if I budgeted every penny earned for something productive. If I didn’t ever allow some money to be spent on toys and fun stuff, I wouldn’t feel as though my life was really mine. I’d wonder, what am I doing this for?

Filling up my space with things has the same effect as filling up my schedule with only productive things or budgeting every penny for productive expenditures. Eventually, my life at home would make me a slave to those things, with no free space to just play, unwind, and relax.

The creep

Our first house, at 995 square feet

At first, I didn’t recognize the impact of losing space in my home, because I didn’t lose it all at once. The first house I bought with Sally measured 995 square feet. It had two bedrooms, an unfinished basement, and a one car garage. We didn’t have much furniture between us, but we had enough, and living in this house after coming from a bachelor apartment felt huge, even though this house was the smallest model on the street. Over time, well-meaning people would give us stuff. I’d find things at flea markets and garage sales. It wasn’t long until we started looking at wall units, built-in shelving and bookcases to keep everything organized.

Eventually, we did what many homeowners do, and bought a bigger house. That, too, eventually filled up, and so we repeated the cycle again. With each move came the realization that there was more stuff to move. When we started out, everything fit in a standard U-Haul truck. By the time we got to the house we’re in now, we were overlapping closing dates so we’d have a week to truck things from the old house to the new.

We didn’t just buy a new house for more space; it made economic sense as the value of our house went up, interest rates on mortgages went down, and our equity grew. Our mortgage payments remained the same as they were in that first townhouse, but the equity we realized with each sale kept growing. So was the amount of stuff we were accumulating.

Doing the purge

A library of wasted space left unbought

At least once a year, I do a purge. I go through my wardrobe and boxes to get rid of stuff I won’t wear or use anymore. I usually donate these to the local Value Village or Goodwill. The benefit of this is twofold: One, I liberate valuable space in my home. It’s like going through my budget and eliminating unnecessary expenses, or going through my schedule and eliminating those things I don’t really need to do. The other benefit is that I discover things that are actually useful, but got lost in the clutter. This can be really fun and exciting, and also illustrates another problem of having too much stuff.

We are now starting to look at purging as something we do as a family ritual. By making it an annual event in our household, it becomes something to celebrate and look forward to. Like many others, we tend to do this in the spring.

The joy of more space

A new show on HGTV called “Consumed” really helped to illustrate the intangible benefit of exchanging stuff for more free space. This show became a favourite in our household, as it demonstrated to us that most people prefer more free space over more stuff to fill that space, and has helped to increase our consciousness to this effect. It’s also helped us to be conscious of what we buy and how we buy it. We now recognize the true value of digital content and streaming video services. The value of the bargain bin DVD or blu-ray diminishes greatly once it’s viewed as another piece of clutter to manage after we watch it one or two times, when compared to a service like Netflix where we might find the same movie available for streaming for less than three bargain bin DVD's. No more compact discs to add to my clutter with online music services. E-readers allow us to buy a huge library of books with which to read, some of them free, and there’s no box of books to get rid of.

I’ve concluded that it’s the content that enriches our lives, not the stuff; and seize every opportunity to extract the content and eliminate the stuff. It’s an ongoing process, and one I’m glad to have added to my frugal lifestyle.