Retail Therapy and Moving

One of your really good friends has a life changing event happen and they need to move.  Marriages.  Divorces.  Job Changes.  Moving Up in House.  Moving Down in House.   Shortly after this is announced, you can just hear the ummmmm-I’m-busy-that-day-excuses.  The moving boxes.  The bribe of work-for-free-pizza.  Lets face it, its a lot of work helping a friend move.  When you’re the person moving, you know your true friends are the ones who show and help get things done.   One of the questions that keeps going through everybody’s mind at a moving party.  Why do they have so much stuff?  Boxes and boxes of stuff!  (That’s if your lucky.  If you’re not lucky, its not boxed yet and its just piles and piles of stuff.)  It is stuff we don’t really need any more, we haven’t used for years, but now that’s its moving time, we have to box it all up.  Because its so hard to get rid of those college text books that you paid $150 for 10 years ago, we tend to hang on to them and guilt our friends into moving them with us.  After all, you never know when you could use that accounting book from college right?

This past weekend, I helped a friend move.  Then I came up with a brilliant idea.  Helping my friend move was a case of “retail therapy.”  The next time your out at a store and temped to buy some item, think ahead a few months or years to your next moving party.  How long will it be till it ends up in a box?  Which of my friends will be willing to help move this item as life happens?  Do I really need this stuff?  For years I’ve told coaching clients one of the best things you can do to curb spending, is have a yard sale or ebay items.  When you compare what you spend to what you get for an item on ebay, it helps curtail spending.  Over the weekend, I attended a “moving party” and came away with the conclusion, moving is really retail therapy!