A Super Simple Retired Items Spreadsheet For The Frugal

You have no idea how excited I am to be sharing this with you. At the end of September, I started my retired items spreadsheet. My retired items spreadsheet allows me to keep track of everything that I own, how long I have something for and when I retire it.

This new habit of mine is hugely inspired by one of you (you know who you are!). Thank you so much for the inspiration. As you may know, I recently shared with you the start of my yearlong shopping ban and its rules among other things.

My yearlong shopping ban is something that really excites me. I thought starting a retired items spreadsheet along with it would be a fabulous idea!

Why a retired items spreadsheet?

I keep track of all my expenses and have been doing so since 2014. However, keeping track of how long an item actually lasted me, isn’t always that easy if a purchase was made years ago.

A new system needed to be set up and that’s where my retired items spreadsheet comes into play.

How I organize it

Firstly, let me start by saying that I exclusively use Google Sheets via Google Drive for all my spreadsheet needs. I can access my files wherever I am and really enjoy using it. This is also how I go about keeping track of my expenses.

Now, let me share with you the basic structure of my retired items spreadsheet.

The main categories

As you can see, my spreadsheets main categories are Outerwear, Tops, Dresses, Bottoms, Shoes, Accessories, Underwear, Electronics, Home, Etc and, of course, Retired items.

I tried to keep the categories as simple as possible and limited myself to the most useful ones.

The structure

Let’s have a look at my “Outerwear” tab:

As you can see, I currently have three pieces of what I consider to be outerwear. The “purchase date” is not meant to be specific. What’s most important to me is the purchase year. Unfortunately, my “olive colored winter coat” could have also been purchased in 2007 or earlier. I don’t happen to know when exactly I purchased this one.

Going forward though I aim to note down the month and year of purchase. I don’t need for it to be more specific than that.

• purchase date: month and year of purchase
• item: a brief description of the item including color, brand and style
• source: where the item was acquired

The “Notes” section

The “Notes” section is for information that’s relevant to how the item wears.

Let’s have a look at the “Dresses” tab:

As you can see, I currently own one dress. The “Notes” section is very helpful in this case because it allows me to make a note of a hole that developed in 2018. Should an item be repaired then I would make a note of the repair in the “Notes” section.

Let’s have a look at the “Bottoms” tab:

This is another great example of what the “Notes” section can be sued for. As you can see, I made a note of how my “black organic leggings” have worn and how I will continue wearing them. I also made a note of the color fading of my “loose black pants”.

The “Retired items” tab

The retired items tab holds everything that I retire. I simply copy the item in question from the tab in question into the “retired items” tab. I then add the retirement date, lifespan and any additional notes relevant to the item.

As mentioned, I just started this list in September and the two items listed are the two most recent items that I retired.

• retirement date: month and year in which the item was retired
• lifespan: rough time frame between purchase date and retirement date
• notes: any relevant information as to why the item needed to be retired

My retired items spreadsheet

This was everything there is to know about my retired items spreadsheet. As mentioned, it’s something that I recently got into and I can’t wait to work on it for years to come.

This will give me a much better understanding of how long my items really last me and, most importantly, why. I already have a pretty good understanding of what fabrics last me, and which ones, generally speaking, don’t.

Using this spreadsheet will give me an even better understanding of it all.

On top of that, it will make me so much more conscious of everything that I do buy. I love using spreadsheets, what can I say!

When you look at my retired items spreadsheet, is there something you would add or do differently? Have you ever thought of keeping track of it all?

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