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Swimmer963 comments on How To Have Things Correctly - Less Wrong
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I think I might be the same way. It almost seems weird to be any other way.
If you want to become this way yourself, here's a possible way to do it. Next time you're moving, as you're packing your stuff, decide, for each item, whether you ought to keep, sell, or trash it. (Keep in mind that most of the things you own you could buy anew pretty easily, so selling something amounts to converting it to a more convenient form of wealth (currency) for a certain overhead cost.) I used to experience a lot of cognitive dissonance when I did this, because I'd find myself wanting to hold on to stuff that had negligible market value and no obvious use cases. Then I made the connection with the endowment effect, realized I was irrationally overvaluing the stuff just because it was mine, and became way more willing to throw stuff out.
Or read this essay. Or watch this video.
I think that for some people, and some things, it may be rational to value things with 'negligible market value' just because they are theirs. Examples are knicknacks that you bought as souvenirs of an enjoyable trip, gifts that you don't use but like looking at once in a while, photos, etc... I don't personally like having souvenirs lying around, and gifts that I don't use are annoying, but I know other people who seem to get a lot of emotional comfort from physical objects.
Sure. One good test might be: If you lost this item and miraculously found it again at a flea market, would you buy it back? If you would not, that suggests the item is worth less than its market price to you, and you might want to sell it for its market price (assuming that's not too difficult).
I'd say valuing something as a memento and valuing it just-for-ownership are different traits. I routinely gift away my dishes when I move because the effort of moving them is less than the cost of replacing them. I keep a box of ticket stubs, love letters, certificates / awards, and other mementos.
That said, there's definitely a failure state where everything gets labelled a "memento" to protect it from being thrown out.