Do you own a lot of stuff or are you a minimalist?

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I'm also in a transition to minimalism. Paradoxically, I also have to fight the tendency to hoard useless junk. I have a mental map of the things I own and have a pretty good idea of what I plan to get rid of, someday.

I'm also in the process of replacing my shirts with grey t-shirts. Someday I think I will have the most boring wardrobe in the world, and I look forward to that.

I used to be a minimalist, from early/mid teens ( when developed a loathing of clutter ) until early-mid thirties. I could move house by train, carrying everything but my big box of books.

But from my early thirties onwards I began accumulating, and the last few years it has begun to look a bit like hoarding.
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I have always disliked owning things. I do not own my flat (I rent), the furniture belongs to the landlord including TV and all the kitchen gadgets. I own my laptop which carries all my music. Music is the only thing I have ever collected. My father has tonnes of my records at his house.

I buy a lot of books but usually give them away after a while.

I can't stand the way some people like to own lots of stuff. They define themselves by what they own. And all this owning of stuff ruins our planet.

I like to think of my collections as a museum of "me." I don't know what my kids will do with it someday. Some of it needs to be put in appropriate museums if they don't want the items. But it is a representation of who I am, and someday who I was.

In some of our collecting, we luck into things. I bought three original roller coaster blueprints. One of them I acquired cheaply was an original draft by the designer done in 1928. And the coaster was never built. And this is the only known blueprint of it. So the coaster has come to be like a child to me---it needs to grow up and be built. I am nearing completion of an HO scale model of it. But someday, who knows, maybe it will be built in full size. Or maybe it will remain hidden away in my backroom.

I'm a maximalist definitely: too much is not quite enough. I'm in a 10' X 10' room right now, and not only are all horizontal and vertical surface covered with "decorative" objects, but eight "curiosities" are suspended from the ceiling, including a 7' piece of driftwood that in its turn has things tacked to it, twisted around it and hung from it.

All these things insulate me from the dreaded everyday world. They can't be tossed because they can't be replaced. I have no difficulty getting rid of things replaceable, but most of what I have came through the efforts of the internal/eternal Hunter Gatherer, so they're sacred.

I got new carpet laid the other day and had to box up all my stuff. I was actually very surprised by how much of it there was, as I really dislike clutter. Like, can't stand it. I try to be very minimalistic - I don't see the point in useless objects cluttering up my space. Just that there seems to be more than enough useful objects to do just that.