The $1600 bookcase

The apartment we live in is currently for sale. The owners are asking $429,000. The floor area is 76 square metres. (US readers: 818 sq.ft)

With those numbers, a buyer is paying $5,645 for each square metre. (US readers $524/sq.ft)

In those terms, it seems really expensive. So many things that just aren't worth the space they take up.

The bookcase is not the worst, but at 90cm wide and 30cm deep, it takes up 0.27m² (3 sq.ft). Either way, that's $1,573 worth of space.

I gets scarier when that maths is applied to a spare bedroom.

It reminds me of the book Less is More. Kim says that in the old days items were more expensive but space (housing) was cheap. So it made sense to hoard things back then. But now it's the other way around. Generally items are cheap to repurchase (if we ever need to) but the space to store them is costly. These days it makes more sense to be selective about what we hold on to.

In Australia there's a lot of talk at the moment about how expensive houses are. I reckon a big part of that is the fact that we have the biggest homes in the world. So much of that space is just a waste of money - to store things that aren't worth it.

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