海角大神

I have about two dozen shirts, all told, in my wardrobe. They have various levels of wear on them, from a few that look practically new to a few that look like they鈥檙e approaching 鈥渞ag bag鈥� level.

Whenever I buy a new shirt, I don鈥檛 just toss it in my drawer and go on with business. I make sure to transfer a shirt to the rag bag (or to the 鈥渟ell later鈥� pile) at that point.

If I didn鈥檛 make that transfer, it wouldn鈥檛 be long before my shirt drawer and closet were overflowing with shirts, making it difficult to find the shirt I wanted. I鈥檇 also be putting money into clothing that I didn鈥檛 really need.

This same philosophy works well with almost everything that you have a 鈥渃ollection鈥� of that takes up physical space, whether it be DVDs or home decorations or vintage soda bottles. When one comes in, one goes out.

There are a couple reasons why this tactic really works.

For starters, if you stick to that rule, the overall volume of your stuff won鈥檛 expand very much. Often, it is the expansion of one鈥檚 鈥渟tuff鈥� that makes a home upgrade desirable, so that you have room for all of your stuff (and, eventually, much more). A home upgrade is an enormous expense, one that can often be postponed or avoided by simply having a firm grip on your acquisition of items.

At the same time, a one-in, one-out rule like this one makes you carefully consider purchases. Is that new shirt really better than any of the shirts you already own? Is this DVD more essential to own than any of the ones already in your collection? If you can鈥檛 answer yes to those reasonable questions, you don鈥檛 buy an item. This keeps money in your pocket instead of in the coffers of retailers from which you purchased something you really didn鈥檛 need.

We use this tactic with quite a few of our collections.

For example, I鈥檝e long instituted this rule with my video game collection. This led me to not directly buying games, but instead trading games I had played through at a local used video game store, replacing them with new ones to play.

We鈥檙e even starting to introduce this to our children as a tool for reducing the growth of toys. Sure, they receive several toys as gifts from grandparents and parents on their birthdays, but that means it鈥檚 time to re-evaluate the toys that they already have.

This tactic reduces clutter, reduces the growth of one鈥檚 stuff (saving on potential housing costs), and saves money on purchases. That鈥檚 a victory in three directions.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. 聽