I became a Life Coach only after having my own business as a personal organizing coach, a job I still occasionally do. I love to go through and get rid of other people’s junk. Because I am usually also life-coaching for these clients, however, I try to give them skills and even rules to avoid the re-building of the City of Junk. When I’m doing the organizing, I am painfullyjunk aware of the hundreds of dollars worth of things we wind up throwing out or giving away and the hoarding tendencies and careless spending habits of my clients. Here are some tricks to save money, save space and save your sanity:

1. Try putting yourself on a thrift-store junk/e-bay splurge/mall-spree/garage sale drive-by Buyer’s Diet for three months. Give yourself a hug when you want to buy something. Strangely, once you see that you can live without accumulating junk and giving in to every whim, you will begin to challenge yourself to see what other non-necessities you can do without.

2. People give is strange presents. Re-gift only if you will really re-gift, as in you remember to give presents and you actually regularly re-gift instead of just going out and buying something. If you have saved things in order to re-gift them and haven’t re-gifted anything in a year, take all of it to the Goodwill.

3. Go into a clothes closet, linen closet, storage shelves, set of drawers or an entire room and try and loosely add up the monetary value of the items which you never use.

4. Next time you are shopping, realize the environmental and social impact of buying morestuff for less money. If something is cheap, it was often made under bad labor conditions, of unhealthy materials and it won’t last as long as a more expensive, more well-made product. Buy better, don’t buy more. If you have $100 to blow for your birthday, buy one nice thing that will last instead of filling your goody-bag. The animal-rights people won’t like this, but one thing I do is invest in leather bags and shoes which will last far longer than other materials. I don’t have as many pairs of shoes as some do, but I have good ones and they look great after years of wear.

5. Having a garage sale is fun and profitable only if you have the time to do it, a friend to do it with and if you live on an easy-access street. Otherwise, it is worth it to make Goodwill/Thrift store runs just to make more room and get the stuff out of your woo-woo ‘psychic energy field’. Here’s a good rule:

6. If you have not touched something in a year, there is no reason to try to make money on it unless you can easily get $50.00 or more for it locally on Craigslist or $100 for it on Ebay. Otherwise, just give it away! Many cities have companies which will come and collect bags from your doorstep.

People have larger spaces tend to be the worst pack-rats. They have an entire basement and guest room to move clutter into. People who have larger incomes tend to collect the most actual junk because they have the luxury of living by the saying “If you can’t find something, buy a new one.” and they tend to “upgrade” their items often without getting rid of the old. If you’re not worried about saving money, think of the Buyer’s Diet as a shifting of funds. Shift funds into investments, hobbies, allow yourself to buy more theatre tickets. (Always a plug to support the arts!)

I am all about hobbies and collections and as an organizer, I don’t take them away from people. I stopped my own buying tons of cosmetics, toiletries, stationery, all plastic things, and cheap shoes in order to pay off my debt and now that I’ve done that, I am adding to my beloved collection of matching bras and panties. Ooh la la.

To see if your financial life is organized, see Allison’s post.