Out of the Box Spaces
With Amy talking about spring cleaning and organizing, I thought I would add some out of the box thoughts to help you want to pitch and clean even more. 
My husband, Rich, and I are a great frugal pair. He plays with numbers on the calculator and in Excel spreadsheets, while Googling or letting his fingers to the walking to get the best prices. I head out on the town and know when I've found a bargain. I hate numbers; he hates shopping. We still get the best deals. It works for us.
When we were looking for a house 3 1/2 years ago, not only did Rich do most of his house shopping at local online real estate sites, he kept his calculator handy to compare the cost of square foot plus acreage included, location and various property tax rates. He had spreadsheets that made my head spin. The long and the short of it is we got a really good deal. Yes, you will still hear me whine about our huge mortgage, but for what we got, we got a steal.
The cost of housing is cheaper in rural Fargo. When we moved there in 2003, the cost of housing was running $50-$90 a square foot. When and where we were looking here in New England in 2005, houses were between $150-$180 per square foot. We ended up purchasing our current house for about $100 a square foot. Spreadsheets pay off!
So why am I sharing these numbers? Because every square foot of clutter in your house is costing you BIG BUCKS! Every square foot that is dirty and unusable is costing you BIG BUCKS! Every piece of furniture that you don't use is costing you BIG BUCKS! Self storage centers are charging $1-$7 per square foot of storage. If you keep clutter in your house, you are paying $50-$200+ per square foot for the same storage space!! WOW.
I can't tell you how often I've found an "incredible piece" of whatever for "almost nothing" only to have Rich tell me, "Janel, it may only be 6 bucks, but it's going to take up $900 worth of floor space." Sheesh. How to ruin a girl's fun in one easy lesson. But he's right. If I don't ABSOLUTELY love something, I leave it. When I consider it's going to cost me $100 just to store it, I'm happy to think twice. Not only have I saved money on the purchase, I've got open floor space for the kids to romp in.
If the cost alone isn't enough to convince you, Martha's got 100 more reasons why you should dump the clutter. Ladies, I think it's time to get out the garbage bags and make lots to trips to Goodwill with donations... I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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8 Responses to “Out of the Box Spaces”
March 12th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
The size of the house seems to get smaller and smaller as the clutter builds. You can decrease the dollars per usable space when you have organized you papers, files, etc.
Reducing the clutter can definitely reduce anxiety. Not big bucks or huge time commitment if you keep on top of it.
Sam
March 13th, 2008 at 6:38 am
While your main point about clutter is right on, the subtler point about the value of spreadsheet thinking is what really caught my attention.
We are looking for a new home and DAILY I wish I knew how to use Excel! Any tips or websites for quickly learning how? And no, I haven’t used the tutorial that [I suppose] came with the computer package.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Wow – this is really thinking Out of the Box! I never thought about the cost of space to store that great buy, and I *am* a numbers person.
Thanks. Saying no just got a whole lot easier.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Oh I’m giddy! I’ve out hacked the head hack! lol
Deb, I did a quick Google search for tutorials. There is a good bunch of good links to choose from here.
Rich is the true Excel whiz around here. I make printable charts and menu planners with it. I know how to make the boxes pretty colors… :blush:
To keep track of something like real estate, he defines his categories by interest – acreage, tax rate, sq ft, $ per sqft, out buildings, photo if any, location, etc., etc. Then he puts one category in each cell along the top row. After that he starts loading in the data, one row for each property.
Searching and using the color fill tool is how he narrows his choices. He went through hundreds of properties last move. We ended up physically looking at about 30 because he was able to narrow them down by price and needs.
That’s not much help, but hopefully it’s enough.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Great food for thought, and a fantastic kick in the pants to get me decluttering the garage, a project I’ve been postponing for some time.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Well, we don’t own our home, but I guess we’re paying to rent the space we have so the same logic applies, right?
I agree about not keeping what we don’t love. We’re learning to do that in many areas, such as our clothing, but we still struggle with it in our home, because we haven’t had much money most of our marriage and we’re still living with the remnant furniture of dorm and student loan living. I struggle to get rid of things when I don’t have anything nicer to replace them with.
And at the same time, I really don’t want to have a house cluttered up with things that just don’t really appeal to me. My husband currently prefers to keep most of it. I want to do huge spring cleaning and chuck half of it out. I’m sure we can compromise!
March 19th, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] Out of the Box Spaces [...]
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
[...] your productivity and your sanity. But you’ve already heard me preach about stuff and the cost per square foot. Fill wisely. Dump [...]
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