Dilemma - Where To Put What?

[cabinetman]

I was looking for the /sarcasm comment, waiting for you to say, "if you have an older home, with no insulation in the walls, all this paper can be insulation".

Actually you are more right than you think. As Ric suggested, I already have done the "treasure hunt" for space. With all the "stuff" being stored in most every conceivable area, either in shelves, cabinets, closets, or just stacked up, the insulating factor is probably R-99 with all the paper products.

Besides the paper problem, how about all the little "collections" that I swear will be "collectibles" after I'm dead and have gone to the woodshop in the sky?
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[Anna]

Besides the paper problem, how about all the little "collections" that I swear will be "collectibles" after I'm dead and have gone to the woodshop in the sky?
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When you're dead, why would you care that they will be collectibles? If you want to leave them to your kids, ask them if they want it now. If not, you might just as well get rid of them (sell/donate/trash). Life's too short to spend on worrying about these things.

[jackellis]

Grooooaaaannnn! My wife is like this. Collects everything and anything. We have 400 square feet of attic space in one house, over a hundred linear feet of shelves in the garage of another house, plus closets and a storage locker full of her stuff. I can use a 16x16 space in the center of a two car garage for my ww equipment.

My advice is to start getting rid of things you don't use, 'cause otherwise someone else is going to. If you don't care, they why are you keeping it all. if you do care, better you figure out how to recycle it than having someone else do what you would otherwise be unhappy about.

I used to move a lot so I go pretty light in terms of stuff I keep. Textbooks from college (I've actually opened a few from time to time), important records, some photos.

I'm going to start scanning stuff from the magazines I get that I think I want to keep. Most of the documents I deal with at work are in electronic form. They take up a lot less space that way and I can access them from just about anywhere.