Oh, I'm spending massive amounts of time dealing with the hoard. Today the mail came, and I handed it out to the correct people. Then I opened my mail and saved 5 coupons for things we use (which took less than 5 minutes, so even when you add on the extra time to use each coupon, I'll be 'making' above minimum wage on the groceries, and the paint one is huge - this is one of the places where my time becomes "income" for us.)

then, and this is where the hoard part comes in, I spent two hours churning through all the papers finding every single coupon and putting the expired ones in the recycling and the good ones in a folder( and recycling some other stuff). So there - the dehoarding - is where it takes time. Otherwise it takes seconds to toss the unopened coupons into the hoard, seconds to grab the flier before I leave for the store, if I can still see it, and seconds to push the box back and forth with my foot when I sweep. Or I don't take the coupons - lost savings opportunity, no time investment.

And honestly, there would be the LEAST time investment if my kid just tossed the whole box of papers after I die. If I left behind 30 boxes of papers, it would still be Least time per paper, it's just that it would be all in a row and not my time.

(optimum time use - put recycling bin next yo mailbox and toss all mail in directly. Do not look at mail.)

if you vacuum every day, your house is cleaner than if you vacuum once a week - but the vacuuming isn't 7x faster if the carpet only has 1/7 of the dirt.

at one point, btw, I had more than 30 boxes of random paper. Now I have 1. In between getting "paid" for time spent handling paper and spending virtually no time handling paper, there is a lot of "wasted" time. But it is the same sort of wasted time as swimming laps is pool to lose weight. Yes, clearly it would be better to eat less. Assuming that works with the swimmer's metabolism. Which it may not.

also, most of the stuff in the hoard was "free" or super cheap. The feeling that I was not contributing financially and didn't WANT to be spending money unnecessarily was part of what contributed to me collecting giant piles of stuff the kids or I might need. I still have two shoeboxes of pencils that are slowly being used to refill the supply in my classroom as kids walk off with them. I have never bought a pencil. If you spend $7 on a big bag of clothes at a thrift sale (which is a fun activity, so no more life cost there than fishing) and your kid wears three things that would have cost $5 or more when they were needed, you have just cut clothing expenses in half!

btw, I do work for money now. Far fewer hours for the same poverty level total I made when I supported dh financially for the first 4.5 years we were married. - my investment in his degree seems to have paid off a lot better than your investment in yours.

and please read the original elephant thread and reach an understanding of the reasons for the addition before commenting on them. You don't have to agree with them, they just have nothing to do with the quantity of stuff in the house. If the house were literally empty, the rooms would still be too small and badly located.

i need the land to keep the people far away. The animals turn mowing (dh time) into barn chores (my time)

if if you did a time audit of hoarders and minimalists, you would see that we both spend way to much time on this website, but no one is under the impression that they are paying me to do something else.