For anyone interested in what happens to all this "stuff" at the other end...
I administer several deceased estates (the process for which is to locate and prove the will (if applicable), gather in and dispose of the assets, distribute the balance).
As most deceased people tend to be in the 70+ age bracket, it is very unlikely that you can even comprehend the volume of "stuff" involved in that undertaking.
Typically, 1% - 5% of the stuff has any commercial value. There might be jewellery, an antique or two. I can usually get $100 for a working fridge. Unfortunately we live in a disposable culture - we are geared to buy new rather than re-use old.
Some small proportion of the rest of the stuff can be donated (ie. charities will accept it). The rest fills up 2-5 rubbish skips (6 cubic metres each) and subsequently landfill.
Look around your house. Experience indicates that on your death I'll recover approximately $900 from selling your stuff.
I've heard of "apartment-looting" parties in Vienna, don't know if this is common elsewhere?
In order to empty a deceased apartment, they publicly sell a limited number of tickets (~20-30EUR iirc) for a cleaning/looting event.
At the event, they let in a certain number of people at the same time, so it doesn't feel too crowded.
Once inside, everyone is free to take whatever they want and can. This is fairly popular with students who just moved into their new flat and need stuff like kitchen supplies, lamps, frames etc.
Now, a variation on that where I could designate a room in my (tiny) house where people could come and just take stuff would be good. Do people ever do this while still living? Perhaps moving away?
I've seen and heard that from folks who are moving cross-country or even cross-continent. So far it's mostly been students with smaller apartments, but it's not unheard of. (I'm in Germany.)
We sometimes raid the bulky refuse collection that is done every few months. I hope the next one is soon, half of our chairs are broken.. and sometimes there is stuff by the side of the road with a 'free' sign. Or I'll put up a notice to inform the neighbours of our plight and see how many chairs they have..
It's really interesting. There is so much stuff going around that a student shared house doesn't have to really buy any furniture at all.
Unfortunately we live in a disposable culture - we are geared to buy new rather than re-use old.
I think a lot of that has to do with the markets for new & used goods. There are many things I would be perfectly fine buying used, but have no hope of locating for sale in any reasonable span of time.
We are moving across country right now. We are going from a 1500 sq ft 4 bedroom house with a full basement and shed to a two bedroom 800 sq ft apartment with a 5x5 storage unit. We don't have much choice but to purge 50-75% of our stuff. It's been one of the greatest things I've ever done for myself. The focus it's allowed on the really important part of our lives is amazing.
We've sold well over $5000 of our stuff. We are fairly young so maybe our stuff is in general more desirable but if you work at you can sell a lot of stuff I think. That said we have also given away more than we sold. We put out a free sign and put it in the front yard and it went incredibly quickly.
Wow, hate to sound insensitive, but there seem to be a lot of "First World Problems" on Medium today. "Do I really need all my possessions?" and "I'm leaving my great job at Google because I'm sad".
Why can't people just enjoy the fact that they're doing better than 90% of the planet, and not always be trying to find something to have an emotional crisis over? As someone who's been unemployed and weeks from insolvency, I'm happy for the job and stuff I have, and appreciate it, because it could be taken away at any moment.
People lack, for want of a better word, meaning in life. They're looking for it in various places, whether that be via the frisson from buying that glass hummingbird at Gump's or getting a new job selling advertising space on the web.
That this is a 'first world' problem is a sign of affluence. You're bouncing against the ceiling of Maslow's 'esteem' and failing to break into 'self-actualization'.
When you look at these people wondering at the angst they feel because they can't believe they made poor choices in buying not just twice the amount of stuff they need, but three, four, or ten times as much, it's because they live in a society that has (more or less) solved hunger, personal safety, social interaction, etc.
There's this middle ground where they can see that they're unhappy. They can't see what would make them happy, only things that would make them unhappy. They look at people who don't have the current source of unhappiness and they see that those people do not seem less happy for their lack of possessions. "Oh, it must be my attachment to tchotchkes that causes my unhappiness. If I get rid of everything, I will be happy."
In many cases, this "meaning" was provided by religion or by an extended family. Some "higher purpose", whether it was preparing the next generation for the future, or their souls for a post-physical existence. In many cases, it's a "legacy" that is a third way to immortality.
People have to reach a point of deciding if "happiness" is the optimization they need or want. A friend uses the phase "Budweiser and NASCAR" for the condescending view of the basest American pursuit of short-term happiness or amusement. This is just another form of that, just of a different social class.
Looking at the 99% or the developing (or failed) countries is still an externality. It can help frame the scope of your unhappiness, but it is irrelevant how happy you are related to a child soldier in Somalia. You can be grateful for your fortune and privilege, and that can be a good thing, but you're not interchangeable.
Unfortunately, there's no royal road to enlightenment. It is, and should be, hard work. Knowing yourself and discerning what is truly important takes a lot of honesty and reflection. You'll have to redefine superficial and deep, as well as a lot of other labels. You'll have to figure out your worldview, your true values and principles, and how far you are from becoming the person you want or need to be.
Who are you to judge? Nowhere in this article did the author say 1) he's not enjoying life, 2) he considers it an actual crisis, 3) he doesn't appreciate what he has. He had a realization and decided to share it with others.
So people aren't allowed to think critically of their lives if they pass a certain income threshold? Who gets to make that decision? While I agree that we should be happy if our only problems are "first-world", we can still strive to improve ourselves. This article in particular made me realize maybe I should turn my AC off more often. I (or a charity) can do a lot with an extra $50 a month.
It's funny, people always say "money can't buy happiness" and yet when it comes to talk about "rich people with problems" nobody seems to believe it.
Despite the ordinary prejudice against the wealthy that has developed over the past few years it is still a universal truth that life is a difficult thing, and figuring out how to lead a rewarding and fulfilling life even more so.
That's an excellent point, and one that I've not really considered before. Those two common memes do indeed clash in an interesting way.
And on this subject - it's worth noting that one of the most popular books on how to be rich of recent times, "Four Hour Work Week", devotes a substantial section at the back of the book to a discussion of how to cope once you are rich - talking about depression, search for meaning, and similar things.
That's pretty good evidence that being rich, in fact, does not automagically cure all problems, and that there's not a one-sentence answer to those problems remaining.
Don't think this is insensitive at all, pretty good point actually. These are the same people who are probably living better than 99% of people in the world and being 100% thankless about it.
If you feel like not owning stuff, stop buying it right now or throw it away. Simple.
Wow, hate to sound insensitive, but there seem to be a lot of "First World Problems" on Medium today.
So? Do you really think that simply screaming "first world problem" at somebody makes their problems any less important to them? At the end of the day, we are all living our own lives, and our own problems are pretty damn important in relative terms. Should we criticize somebody for wanting to maximize their happiness during their short-time in this world?
Given a choice between having money that allows you to afford crap, and not having it, I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone will chose to have the money.
That implies that people with money -- regardless of how they chose to spend it -- are doing better than people without money.
I would like to direct you to the study by Dan Gilbert that concluded that a year after either winning the lottery or being paraplegic, the levels of happiness of people were about the same.
Unfortunately, I could not find the original study, however that link seems to summarize it pretty reasonably.
While most people may choose the money, that choice isn't necessarily better, and hence doesn't mean the people with more money are necessarily 'happier'.
It only implies that if you think people are reasonably capable of predicting how happy a given amount of wealth will make them in the future. There is plenty of evidence to suggest this isn't the case.
Given a choice between winning anything for free, and not winning, the choice most people would take is obvious.
The point is that "doing better" comes at a cost, and unless you live in a society that taught you to value that above other things, it's pretty hard to understand.
No, it's pretty simple really: we adapt. We're amazingly flexible creatures and have a knack for adjusting to our conditions, whatever they may be; for 'better' or 'worse'.
We actively re-adjust our perspective of the world to balance ourselves. If you grew up under impoverished conditions, that would be your default line, and if you then became 'rich' afterwards, you would probably be happy for an amount of time proportional to the amount of time you spent miserable. But if growing up under 'well-off' conditions, that will be your default line, and objectively speaking, you'd need a lot more to be happy/thankful than the person who started off in a lower position than you, just because you adapted to your living conditions that well. That being said, tradition/values/morals/etc are all a part of our environments just as much as our pay checks.
This strong ability to adapt to our environments is what helped us survive so well; unfortunately, it's also the same trait that makes us treat bills like they were saber-tooth tigers.
EDIT: To clarify, I dislike 'first-world problem' rants as much as anybody else, but the problem isn't the people writing them. The problem is right there in the name of it: the "first-world".
People get used to their condition and find things to worry, nit pick, and complain about. I think what you do with those feelings comes down to how much perspective you have.
I echo your feelings. I was homeless (living in an abandoned boarded up storefront) for two years after the downturn. I think back to then whenever I get wacky irrational feelings of material inadequacy.
I thought that as well about the leaving Google post. Sometimes it can be helpful in life to experience a financial non-abundance (I would hesitate at least in my case to call it a lack) so that if you then do really well financially you are able to properly appreciate the flexibility it allows. Money won't solve your problems... it definitely can "grease the wheels" to get thing done more quickly and efficiently in your life, though. I don't find my identity or my happiness in the amount of money that I have... I can be happy earning $20k a year or less. But I do aspire to do cool, helpful, and meaningful things for others and for my family. Money can be an asset in getting things DONE.
Yeah, really. If your biggest problem in life is that you have too many Tiffany vases, you're doing pretty well. Sell the vases and be happy for your good fortune.
Pessimistically, maybe this implies that what we do and achieve has little impact on our well-being.
Optimistically, maybe this means that our well-being and contentedness is a lot less dependent on external circumstances than we tend to think. Maybe practicing gratitude as a means to lead a more fulfilling life, and less on chasing external carrots, is the way to go.
Why can't you just enjoy the fact that you have Internet access and not complain about how you find the content annoying, after all it could be taken from you at any moment. Annoying idle-reading-time content is such a first world problem wow. :|
How to life a fulfilling life with less material consumption seems like exactly the kind of problem the first world should be solving right now. It's much less selfish than it sounds.
Incidentally, saying you're happy for what you have because it could be taken away at any time sounds like Stockholm syndrome.
Because most people in the first world have absolutely no direct experience with less affluent parts of the world. Do you? I don't. Given that they have no experience with it, is it even a reasonable assumption that they have it subjectively better, as in leading a life that feels overall better than 90% of the world? No. Partly it's because they assume that they lead a superior life to people in the rest of the world. Partly it's because some places in the world just plain suck. Is it better to live in a war-torn run down village, where you have to fend everyday for your life, than to live in the first world? No. Is it better to live in the first world than be a subsistence farmer of a part of an Amazon or African tribe? That's debatable. But isn't 90% of the world a war-torn shit-hole? I don't know. That's what the news keeps telling me.
We have become great at having more than enough food and shelter, ie. surviving. Great. But have we learned to live a fulfilling life? That is shrouded in mystery to many people, still. Some people want to live, not merely survive (even comfortably so).
It is insidious. In what I thought was a clever inversion there was a gal in LA who had a 'reverse' birthday party, which was that it was her birthday but the living room was filled with things they didn't use, so the rule was everyone had to leave with a gift and no one could bring one.
I find I have a hard time throwing stuff away that I know somebody would use. (example a complete orignal Xbox with about a dozen games, two controllers, remote etc) Freecycle used to be good for this, Craigslist still is. Weird though when people get into fights over something you're tossing.
That sounds like the Hobbit way of celebrating birthdays.. the prologue of Lord of the Rings is quite interesting in this regard.
..'anything that Hobbits had no immiate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.'
The wife and I moved cross-country two years ago, and were living out of suitcases for a couple of weeks while the moving truck caught up to us. Somewhere around day 10 we realized: If the moving truck was vaporized by a meteor, and they handed us a check for the amount it was insured for, we would have considered it a good trade.
So a lot of crap got ditched (after paying to move it clear across the country facepalm). We now live by the equal-volume rule: For anything that comes into the house, something of equal or greater volume must leave.
"Stuff" really is the worst. I'm only 27 and I'm already feeling the pain.
All I can say is that I'm very happy that media no longer takes space to store. My father has acres of shelf space dedicated to books, CDs, records and even cassette tapes.
I will never buy a physical book again, and I really need to get around to giving away all the books I have now. I've never owned a physical CD or a DVD. I wont be plagued by photo albums.
And then there is paper. If I never receive another letter in my life it will be too soon.
I bought a ScanSnap scanner a few years ago. It's a $400 scanner that can scan pretty much any document -- even double-sided ones. It applies OCR to printed text and can create searchable PDFs for you. At first I balked at the price tag, then bit the bullet and purchased the scanner, and now I think it's one of the best purchases that I've ever made. I've been able to recycle thousands of documents thanks to this thing.
Last year we sold our things and left to travel around the world. We'd lived in a house for three years, I'd lived in an apartment for two prior to that.
It required two garage sales and countless trips to goodwill. It was sickening at times, how little you could sell your things for. We got back a thousand maybe 1.5k on our goods, the rest was a write off. Even still we had about 8 boxes of stuff when we moved out.
We came back from traveling sooner than expected and had to re-buy a lot of things, but we've been cautious not to get too many 'useless' things. That isn't to say there is nothing to adorn our apartment, just... much less.
In general I'm happier this way, we've got pictures we took on the walls, a few things we picked up traveling, kitchen stuff, and furniture. I hope never again to get to the point where we were before.
Worst part of selling your stuff: getting rid of our books.
"Worst part of selling your stuff: getting rid of our books."
The actual mechanics is easy, OXFAM. Its the choosing I find hard. I cleared a couple of single shelves (out of 34!) and ended up re-reading about 5 books.
Books and musical instruments are two things that are dearly loved. Can't even lend them to others while we are travelling because no one takes as good care of them as we ourselves do. Sigh.
Ever since watching a few episodes of Hoarders, I've become acutely aware of all the clutter and crap I own, and the line from Fight Club ("The stuff you own begins to own you") resonates with me quite well.
I'm also given a regular reminder by my parents who have a nice plot of land in the suburbs, a pool, hot tub, and whatnot, and all the time that's spent keeping up their impeccable lawn, keeping their pool and hot tub clean, frankly, I'd rather just pay my $14/mo for a gym membership to have that pool and hot tub when I want without having to dick around with maintenance.
That said, I still have a stack of old decommissioned servers that I just can't bring myself to throw away despite the fact that a cluster of a few Raspberry Pis will be just as powerful for significantly less power. I need to just bite the bullet and scrap them.
The majority of my 'stuff' by volume, and probably by weight, is books. Even with the advent of ereaders, I still prefer having the thing in my hand. They're interesting things but I find it a lot harder to just flick through reference manuals and the like picking out interesting things in that format.
Next up's probably clothes - it just takes a lot of space to hang stuff properly; if you fold a nice dress into a draw, it can easily get ruined.
"...once you've accumulated a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the other way around. I know of one couple who couldn't retire to the town they preferred because they couldn't afford a place there big enough for all their stuff. Their house isn't theirs; it's their stuff's."
My parents just built an extension onto their 3 bedroom house (just the 2 of them living there) because the dining table didn't fit comfortably into the kitchen/dining room.
A good chunk of the space is used up by a sideboard and a display cabinet full of fancy china which is used once a year at most.
I asked them why they didn't just buy a smaller table but they wouldn't answer the question. I have a hunch their relationship has failed and has been for some time and they are using the extension as a distraction.
Since I moved house earlier in the year I've had 5 boxes of "stuff" sitting under my desk. I make bravado about selling it but I haven't had the balls to yet. What if some day I need all those CDs of mediocre 90s indie? Instead I read endless blog posts by preachers of minimalism and take comfort in my good intentions to do something about my own shit, some day.
CDs are the low-hanging fruit. Digitize them. All it requires is about three hours per linear shelf foot of ripping... or half an hour of queuing up illegal downloads.
All the stuff I have,
-Herman miller chair
-army cot
-2 blankets
-small foldable table
-mbp
-iphone
-casio f91w
-10 pairs of dress pants and dress shirts (custom tailored in SE Asia), a black suit, 2 jackets, 2 pairs of shoes
-two pelican cases
-a cup, a pair of chopsticks, a spoon and a small knife
One thing I do really miss is my piano.
Not owning too much stuff feels really great. I get this strange anxiety whenever I have too many possessions.
Moving is a pain in the ass if you have too many things and I don't like staying in one place for too long.
At the end of the day, it saves money and you can spend that on traveling, good food and other entertainments.
I'll never understand why more people don't live like this.
Most people wouldn't have to work so much if they didn't waste all their money buying useless stuff. Hell, they might even save enough to retire early.
Some of my buddies in college had a whole kitchen of utensils, giant tv, desk, couches, humongous bed, piles of clothes, etc.
When it came time to move out, it took me an hour to pack up. It took them days.
One occasion, I helped a friend move out after his lease ended and he was taking a vacation in Taiwan.
He took me to his storage unit and I was in awe at the sight, piles of plates and cups (I had no idea why he needed all these plates), brooms, fans, old tv, etc.
I think it costed him more money to store this stuff than the values of the stuff itself. In the end, he ended up never coming back to the US.
I'm currently helping clear out my wife's grandparents place. They are 93 and 95 years old. So far we have thrown away over 2000kg of crap accumulated over the 62 years they have been in the house. None of it has any use or value at all. We have to pay to get it taken away in a skip. We're probably half way through now.
I've watched them for the last decade clinging onto these things and I think it's kind of pitiful that possessions hold so much value and are so important.
They have sacrificed their health and remaining life to have a large house to hold it all rather than take a bungalow which they can actually get around and live in.
There is no conclusion here apart from: please don't end up like this - it's heartbreaking to watch people enslaved by it.
I myself have a precise "100 things for me and 100 things shared with the family" policy. I will never compromise on that.
"They have sacrificed their health and remaining life to have a large house to hold it all rather than take a bungalow which they can actually get around and live in."
Having had similar experiences recently, that may not just be the things. It may be the memories of children, life &c, coupled with a reluctance to face the loss of independence.
I'm surprised you see a rigid policy as more important than the awareness. It might be nice to have both the kayaks and the bicycles if you end up on the right lake...
The "stuff" I struggle with pitching is books. It just seems criminal. And I hate that I can only get 10% of what I paid from a used book store. But I miss very little of anything that I've pitched over the years. Out of sight, out of mind.
Lend them to friends when they visit, give them to a charity shop - that way someone else will enjoy them too. Why would you need to get money for them?
There's no need to throw a good book away, or leave it collecting dust on your shelves (which is close to the same thing). Most books nowadays won't last longer than a human lifetime due to the perfect binding and terrible paper, so you're not keeping them for posterity by hoarding them.
I'm with you on goodwill and lending, or giving. I found that most folks don't give back when I lend so I don't create the expectation that they should.
It's interesting how books have this almost religious aura to them, that it's morally wrong to throw them out. Like discarding a book on Windows 95 will somehow lead to book-burning and totalitarianism.
Is this a universal view, or are there people who have no trouble discarding unwanted books?
I have a ridiculous number of Sci-Fi and fantasy novels hanging about. I never get rid of them. I think it's because each one represents something like an entire year (often much more) of one human's efforts.
With movies, say, you know it was hundreds of people. So it's no big deal. But with books you are tossing someone's whole world.
It took me a long time to pitch old SF books but I never reread them. I feel that each time you read a great book you can get half the remaining insights so unless a book is awesome I will go for new ones.
I have gotten rid of a few books like that, but once they get old enough they seem to acquire a certain quaint charm. My books on DOS and BeOS, for instance, I'm stuck with now. Of course, Windows Game Programming with VC++ 6.0 was a goner.
"The things you own end up owning you." Tyler Durden
I'm enjoying the life of frugality as a college student right now. My summer apartment has little besides my laptop, a couple of books, clothes / toiletries, my saxophone, and food. It's rather nice. It's hard to waste time being idle. If I'm bored, I need to be social and hang out with someone; I can't waste time playing video games or watching TV. (I'm fortunately pretty sparse with my computer use — GChat, vim, and music mostly.)
Every now and then, a friend, upon entering my apartment, will comment on how bare it is. I just smile and say, "Isn't it much simpler this way?"
Articles like this reminds me that I'm probably not the target audience of the Palahniuk quote.
I tend to think things like "do I really need to own a large pot? Couldn't I just do several smaller batches of food in a small pot?" and "why do I need a chair in my bedroom if I can sit on my bed?"
But I actually try to banish these thoughts--they're almost as dangerous a mindset to get into as that of a hoarder, I think--because the experience of sitting crosslegged on your bed typing on a laptop, with your back aching, reminds you that some possessions actually are a marked improvement to your life. There are a certain number of objects I am alright with being owned by.
I certainly wouldn't call owning a chair being owned by your belongings. :P
I think the bigger picture to look at here is that we, as humans, are creative. When we move into an empty apartment, we see a blank slate, prime for decoration. It's very easy to browse Target, Marshalls, or Ikea and want to buy things that look cool because hey, I have a decent salary and cheap housing. Case in point — I bought a Nerf basketball hoop as a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Haven't touched it once. I definitely had to use restraint on other such purchases. So I guess that's what worries me. It's so easy to acquire junk that isn't essential. A pretty Spartan summer definitely showed me what is really essential and what isn't.
> If I'm bored, I need to be social and hang out with someone; I can't waste time playing video games or watching TV. (I'm fortunately pretty sparse with my computer use — GChat, vim, and music mostly.)
Why are other people the magic fix for everything? Hanging out with people can be just as much of a waste of time as watching Paradise Hotel, or whatever. If you walk over to your friends place for three years and hang out with the same three people every day, what has that given you? Maybe it was fun, but did you grow as a person and expand your mind? Or did you crack the same old jokes and references from the same cult movies that you've always done, and whine about the same problems that you had yesterday and still are doing nothing about, and bicker about something on the comical Seinfeld-level of pettiness?
"But it is it's own reward". Yes, but the same can be said for video games, computers, TV, or whatever else we've decided to label as "bad", probably because we are either 1. know nothing about it 2. did it in excess and now think it is the devil.
That's the beauty of a fresh summer, right? I'm meeting new people all the time, making new friends, etc. Even if I socialize with people I already know, there is always an adventure to be had. I'm about to start my thirteenth week ever in California, and I'm very fortunate and privileged to be able to explore all that the Bay Area has to offer with friends, old and new.
All of this breaks the monotony.
Plus, there's something to be said for human interaction and contact comfort and whatnot. So what if I see an old friend and we reminisce about old times, maybe crack some inside jokes? Being with others is psychologically healthy.
I'm not arguing that everyone should pull a Walden. I myself will be moving into my fraternity next week, which has a television and an Xbox 360 (the horror!) and a beer pong table. But I'm certainly living in one extreme this summer, and if I had to choose, I'd definitely choose this one.
A lack of stuff is really liberating. I've always been a minimalist about things, but the notion was really brought home after learning of Bruce Sterling's categories of possessions (via Scripting News):
1. Beautiful things
2. Things with emotional value
3. Functional things
4. Everything else
Here's a link to the Scripting News article which has got a link to Sterling's talk. Listen to the whole thing!
This was actually somewhat of a weak point in the story: Chinese people do not leave the heater off out of frugality but because they think it's unhealthy to have a large temperature difference between the outside of a container (a house, say, or your own body) and the inside.
Of course modern, wealthy Chinese are starting to eat ice cream in summer and turning on the heat in winter (and, to be fair, in places where it gets really, really cold, like in Beijing, they've always had heating in winter) so this attitude is changing, but some of it still persists. Bottled water (and beer in restaurants!) is mostly sold unrefrigerated and Chinese shopping malls in summer are nowhere near as glacial as their counterparts in SE Asia or the west.
Is that because you're so ascetic that you haven't cut your hair or fingernails in 20 years and they are literally attached to your central heating? :-)
That wonderful temperature between 21-22ºC is truly excellent. Paris in the springtime.
I had a rude wake up call not too long ago when I realized our entire world is filled with consumerism and that a lot of us (including myself) are guilty of participating.
I'd love to hear that from my life partner. In her case I'd like "vases" to be replaced with "pots", "flowers", "mugs", "cups", "plates", "furniture", "shoes".
I live out of a backpack. Everything of emotional value is scanned or photographed then recycled; for the originals that I have to keep, they’re kept in safe deposit boxes.
Going with good enough alternatives that could be rented instead of bought goes a long way. That said, I don’t own cars, desktop computers or musical instruments, so YMMV.
All the stuff I own that I care about fits in just enough space to take with me on a plane. When I move, I just give away or sell things like furniture and kitchen stuff. It's not too expensive replacing it all with cheap Ikea items.
Lucky you. Don't have books or musical instruments? Those two are the biggest blockers for me. Furniture and kitchen stuff is easy to give away and buy again.
Edit: Things could be worse though. I play guitar, not drums. :)
I have instruments: some midi controllers and 2 audio monitors to go with it. I found a perfect sized bag that can fit it all, along with my computer stuff. I just have that bag, a big suitcase of clothes, and my carry-ons.
I do have books but not too many, and I don't take them with me. I keep most of my stuff like in long term storage (my parents basement).
I administer several deceased estates (the process for which is to locate and prove the will (if applicable), gather in and dispose of the assets, distribute the balance).
As most deceased people tend to be in the 70+ age bracket, it is very unlikely that you can even comprehend the volume of "stuff" involved in that undertaking.
Typically, 1% - 5% of the stuff has any commercial value. There might be jewellery, an antique or two. I can usually get $100 for a working fridge. Unfortunately we live in a disposable culture - we are geared to buy new rather than re-use old.
Some small proportion of the rest of the stuff can be donated (ie. charities will accept it). The rest fills up 2-5 rubbish skips (6 cubic metres each) and subsequently landfill.
Look around your house. Experience indicates that on your death I'll recover approximately $900 from selling your stuff.