105. Donating Now for Future Sanity

How many times do you pass by an item in your house and say, "I really need to do something about that." But then weeks, maybe even months go by, and you've clocked yourself saying that again maybe 10-15 times? Finding a DIFFERENT way to let go of your stuff will not only free up space, but it will offload mental weight as well. If you find yourself relating to the scenario above, then this episode may help you tremendously.

Transcript

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I just got back from dropping off some stuff at Goodwill, and it is always a good feeling. I know many of you are gonna say, okay, yeah, you're gonna say it's a good feeling to donate. I don't really care about that. I feel like in the whole scheme of things, I am a contributing member of society. I feel like I have donated things over the years just out of the kindness of my heart. I've actually purchased things to donate. So it's not just about, okay, I think someone else could use this. I feel good about that. Today I want to talk about actually feeling good about getting things off your plate, getting things out of your car, out of your space, and how that reward, quote unquote reward, can actually outweigh the fear that you may have of getting rid of that item. Okay. So let me give you an example. I've got two items that I'm getting ready to go pick up from my storage unit, and I'm getting ready to go donate them. Why does that matter? It's just two items. Well, there are two items I could actually sell on marketplace. Okay. I've got a TV mount that I paid almost $100 for. I've had it listed on Marketplace. Um, it's down to like $25 or $30. No one has asked about it. No one has shown interest. I have a printer that I paid, I don't know, $60 for. My old printer that is a dinosaur works so well. But I was afraid, since it was so old, I needed a backup. So a few years ago, I went and bought a brand new printer. It's not as good, it's not as well made, in my opinion. It's the same brand, just a different model. And the ink is more expensive, and it takes more ink to print. So I don't like it. If someone needs a printer, then yeah, going from no printer to that printer would be okay. But again, no one has shown interest. Things just aren't moving as well, in my opinion, on marketplace, on next door. Some people just aren't acquiring new things. They'll still pick up free things for sure. But as far as paying for someone else's stuff, we really have to get to a point as a society where we're more comfortable with donating, not for the greater good. Okay. I know some of you are like, stop it, Sarah. We all need the money. We do all need the money. I need the money. I'm a single mom, I need the money. But let me open your eyes to a new possibility, okay? Taxable donations. If you are self-employed, you know what I'm talking about. If you go donate something, Goodwill asks you, do you need a receipt? Sometimes I say no. Most of the time I say no. If I'm donating towels, donating little gadgets, maybe small kitchen items like, you know, ladles or just random hair stuff. Maybe like an old hair dryer that cost me $15, like a travel size hair dryer. Okay, I don't want this anymore. I'm gonna donate it. Do I need a receipt? No, it's more work than what it's worth. However, when you donate larger items, you say yes, I would like a receipt. And then that day you actually write on the receipt what you donated and what its quote unquote worth is. Now, let me just tell you, I am not a tax advisor. Do not take tax advice from me. What I'm sharing with you is my personal experience as a business owner, as someone who does their own taxes. When TurboTax asks me, do you have any donations? Did you make any donations last year? I can say yes, I did. And then if I have a receipt for something, I can put in the value of that. Sometimes it's what that item was brand new. Sometimes it's what that item is if you went to sell it. It walks you through that. Okay. And if you're someone who goes and has your taxes done, you can take that receipt and said, Hey, I made a bigger donation. I donated a TV, I donated a car. You know, if you donate something for your work or for your business, then you can definitely write that off. So instead of looking at it as I'm gonna let this sit in my storage unit, because my storage unit is almost cleared out. Now, when I had a bunch of other work stuff in there, it didn't really matter. It's like I've got the space, I can let that stuff sit there until I don't have the storage unit. Well, now I'm at the point where I'm not gonna have the storage unit because where I live now, I have a really, really inexpensive storage closet in my hallway in my building. I'm not gonna leave the building to go to my storage unit that now has very little in it. So now is the time. And part of this, we talked about moving in the moving series, how getting a storage unit can actually really be helpful for you while you're moving. Well, I moved about six or seven weeks ago. So now it's time. Now that I'm not gonna have it for work, now that I'm not gonna have it for moving, I'm gonna clear it out, I'm gonna close it out. And then if I ever need it again, I can always go back. But chances are I'm not gonna need it for another five, six months or even a year. I just don't need that much storage space because I sat down and said, I don't want that much. And I've talked to my clients over and over about this, and I've mentioned it on the podcast many, many times before. You do not need that much. A lot of the stuff you guys are holding on to, first of all, you don't know that you have. Secondly, if you know that you have it, it's actually weighing on you because you're like, oh, I know that I have that. I should probably use it, or I have it and I need to get it fixed. I either need to call someone out to come fix it, or I have to take it somewhere to be fixed, which means I've got to pay to have that done. Is it worth it? I don't know. Will I wear it again? Will I use it again? I don't know. So it's this big, big struggle back and forth. What do I do? And let me just tell you, the stuff that I dropped off today wasn't that big of a deal. But every time I come home with Whole Foods bags or the big paper bags with the handles, I keep them open. So if I've got two, let's say I go get some groceries, I bring home two bags, I clear them out, I keep them open, and then I make a vow to myself, I want to fill these up until I feel like my home is perfect in terms of I can move around, I've got stuff strategically placed on shelves. When I go to get in my closet, what's hanging up, what's in drawers, I don't feel overwhelmed. And again, I've talked about this before. I do not live in that big of a space. It's just me and my son. So for us to live in 800 square feet, we probably have it evenly divided. So my personal belongings take up probably 400 square feet. And then I've got this little storage closet down the hall that has holiday stuff, extra stuff, memorabilia stuff, things that I know I have to keep, documents I have to scan for tax purposes. All of that stuff matters, and it's stuff that I have to have. I don't have a choice. And we'll talk about scanning and all of that stuff down the road. We actually have an episode coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm gonna have a guest. It's gonna be great. Okay. We're gonna talk about all of that. But for now, I just want to say that I've got extra organizers from the move that I'm not gonna use. Inexpensive organizers that it doesn't make sense to put them in a storage unit, pay for the storage unit every month when the organizers themselves didn't cost more than $10 or $12 for like a pack, for like two or for four, you know? It's not like I have expensive furniture that I'm storing right now until I get to a bigger place. It's not like I have really expensive organizing systems that I need to find a place for until we get into a bigger place. Over the next year, my goal is to keep things very, very simple. I don't want a lot of maintenance. I don't want to have to clean a bunch of stuff. I don't want to have to pay for storage for things that, uh, not that big of a deal. So what I have been committing to is okay, I brought in two bags of groceries. And even though the groceries go in the refrigerator, the bags are sitting there and I'm thinking, it's gonna be hard, but I can probably fill these because I'm at a point where every single thing that I have really has meaning and it has a place, but I'm challenging myself to do better, okay? Because if I come home and there's a few things scattered on the kitchen island and there's a few things over in the corner on the floor in a little pile, and I go in the closet and there's a few extra things in the drawer, it may be 200% better. It may completely clear up if I donate two bags full of things. I don't have to donate those things that are sitting out, but if I find that I can fill two bags worth of stuff and get it out of here, I may create space in those other areas in order to put those things in. And that's gonna be the most important. What is the most important in my house? Does it have a place? If it doesn't have a place, what is something that has a place but isn't important? Okay, I gotta go find those items, I gotta get them out because it creates so much mental clutter. For people like me who visually have to have things clean, visually have to have things evenly spaced out, it creates so much more havoc in my mind if that's not done, and it needs to be done in order for me to switch gears and do the other things that I have to do in life. So today I went and dropped off three Whole Foods bags full of things. And it may take a little while to fill up those bags because I may have had like some extra printer ink, I may have had a couple of small picture frames, I may have had a couple of small lighting things like night lights or extra batteries or whatever it is that I felt like was extra that I could get rid of. It may have taken a while to get part of the bag filled, but then I found like a humidifier, a small tabletop humidifier that I'm like, yeah, it's fine, but we're going into summer. We bought another humidifier last year that's digital, it's better. I'm gonna let this one go. Okay, so I did that with three different bags, and then I dropped those off, and then I started thinking, okay, I just reduced the price on the TV mount. I've got three TVs. We're only using two right now. So it's like, okay, let's donate the mount. Maybe down the road, I'll list the TV. I'm not sure. But the bigger thing is that I take the item to Goodwill, I get the receipt. Once I have the receipt, I mark the item down its estimated value, and then come tax time, that's actually going to be a deduction on my taxes. So you may not see the item get recovered financially immediately, but you're making a donation, it's a bigger donation. The resale value, most likely, for a $90 item probably is about $45. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll get $45 back exactly. Sometimes there is a standard deduction for donations. If you meet that, again, I'm not a tax professional and I've done my own taxes for years, but I literally go through answering questions. Yes, I have this, no, I don't have this. So I pay attention, but I don't always know exactly what's happening. Sometimes they're like, we recommend you take the standard deduction. Okay, that's fine. It all works out in the end. So I encourage you, if you are struggling with organizing your space and you have some extra bags, even if they're just like small plastic bags, I encourage you to make donating items from your household part of a routine. You can either do it once a week, you can do it a couple times a week. Like I said, I just made a drop off today. And I think that when I get done with this episode, I'm gonna go to the storage unit and grab those two bigger items because I can go drop them off, I can get a donation receipt. They're out of sight, and then I know when I go to do my taxes because they're both office items. The TV mount was a TV that I had in my office, and I actually used it to work with. I would project stuff up there. And then when it comes to the printer, obviously that's an office item. It was a backup item. I'm not using it, I'm not even using it for smaller projects because I found that it just goes through ink so quickly. It is causing me more stress than necessary. And to spend $60 on something that's actually causing me more stress, and I purchased it like three years ago, so I can't return it. I could list it and probably get someone to pay $20 for it. But then not only am I spending time to list it for $20, I'm also doing the whole messaging back and forth. Are you gonna pick it up? Are you not gonna pick it up? And then if they do show up, it's probably gonna take an hour of my time by the time I leave my place, go to the storage unit, wait for them to come and pick it up. Okay, they have to sit there and either Venmo me or give me cash or whatever. It's sometimes it really just is not worth it. Sometimes you can go drop it off, get a receipt for it, and then you see a little bit of a return on that item when you go to do your taxes. But what I would suggest, since it's May, tax season is over for this year, if you can actually talk to a tax professional now, if you can do that if you have access to someone and it's something that you want to look into, I would go talk to someone and say, hey, over the next year until you know taxes come around again, what makes the most sense? Should I start donating more items instead of trying to list them, especially if they're business expenses? Should I just go drop it off, get the receipt, plan to put it on my next year's taxes as a donation? Sometimes they can advise you do you have these types of items that you can donate? Because those are bigger items, you know, like I said before, like cars. And I'm assuming trailers and RVs and stuff like that that people can actually stay in and live in. So I would do that. I would try to have some kind of consultation and plan ahead so that that way as you get through the rest of this year, you know I actually make more money working my hourly job or working my salary job, or when I'm out with a client, I'm making more money to where I can't mess with some of this stuff on the side. If I go donate it, get a receipt, and now it's a deduction on my taxes, that's actually going to be a pretty good trade-off because I'm also not gonna lose my mind when someone says they're gonna meet up with me and they don't, or someone tries to haggle at the last minute. Like that stuff drives me crazy. Just something to think about, something to kind of put in your mind that if something's bothering you right now, the quickest way to fix it and get it out of your frame of reference, out of your sight, is to just put it in a bag or a box, put it in the car and just take it somewhere. Go donate it, get the receipt, move on with your life. Again, this falls into the category of, oh, I hate that I did this. I hate that I bought it in the first place. The worst thing you can do is sit there and stare at it every day because it's a constant reminder that you made a mistake, you made a financial decision that you do not support now and the future. And the best thing that you can do is get it out of your way, get it out of your life, forgive yourself and move on. Okay. I think I talked about this in the episode titled, I forgive you, you forgive me. I forget what I titled it, but it was probably within the first 20, 30 episodes. I actually had an episode that talks about this and it talks about forgiving yourself and moving on. If you haven't listened to that episode, I recommend you go back just for that motivation of, you know, let's quit beating ourselves up. Because a lot of us purchase things and acquire things because we think we need them. And that's all part of trying to be prepared. That's all part of survival and trying to make sure we have all the things that we need. But if we realize down the road that we don't need them, I think the best thing for us in terms of survival at that point is getting rid of them, getting away from them. Because now we need to focus on the things that we need for this stage of life. And I think that is actually more responsible. And I think it's gonna help us mentally the quicker that we can recover from those mistakes, or even if it wasn't a mistake at the time, just knowing that you've outgrown that phase and you don't need it anymore, and just recovering quicker, that's gonna help us mentally move forward to where we can do the things we need to do, maintain our space a little bit better, and just get to an overall better place with ourselves and our decision making. I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to subscribe to the bonus episodes. Minimum contribution is only $3 a month, and you get access to all prior bonus episodes, as well as episodes two through five of our moving series that is going on now. If you are moving this summer, moving this fall, you definitely want to be a part of it. Thank you so much, and I will see you in the next episode.