Some of you may have heard me say that I will be moving soon. I've been saying this for twelve years now, but it is starting to look like I will actually be doing it soon. Thank goodness I have had twelve years to get ready.
The Easy Part Of Culling Your Stuff
Cycle through these three steps until you are down to only the stuff you want to keep:
Throw one thing away, or put it aside for donation, every single day. This can be as small as a broken pencil, or a single document, but it must be something. You will find that, most days, you'll do more than just one thing, but if it's only one thing, you will have met with success!
Give stuff to friends, family, freecycling, or charitable organizations. This is all very satisfying, and, in the last case, tax deductible.
Sell stuff, which puts spending money in your pocket, and is highly pleasurable social contact.
Here's how I went about it
The first part of the house I tackled was the basement. My basement is HUGE. Sixteen foot ceilings and about 2000 square feet of unfinished room to store crap in. When my hubby and three young kids moved here 21 years ago, we brought a lot of boxes of stuff with us, and stashed all those boxes in the basement. There were business records, personal records, projects "in progress", toys, books, records, memorabilia from before we met, etc.
Water had ruined the business records - out with them! Mold ruined anything with paper or wood in it - garbage! I hired guys to carry it all up and take it to the street for bulk pick up, every month a bit more of it, until all the garbage was gone. Some of it was hard to get rid of - the rocking chair my mother rocked me in for instance - but it was ruined, so out it went. The good news is that, once you start throwing things out, it gets easier and easier to do. It feels liberating!!! My basement is now completely empty!!!
Next up was the garage, and lastly the house proper. Same strategy - I threw out anything that was useless to me or anyone else.
Then I started giving stuff away. Friends and helpers got good stuff, and a great deal went to charity. If I knew of someone who was upgrading to a larger home, I invited them over. The charity I use has made at least twenty visits to my house over the past few years. At around 15 boxes or bags a visit, that's at least 300 boxes or bags that I've donated! It's astonishing how much stuff I had in this house!!!
I then started putting the stuff I wanted to try to sell in the garage, setting it all up like a cute little store.
I have maintained what I call My Store for the past year or more. I list the larger or more valuable items on various marketplaces, and put those items, along with everything else I would like to sell, in my garage. When folks come to buy that one thing they saw online, they usually leave with a couple other things. It's much easier for me if folks walk off with stuff for a couple bucks, than it would be for me to package it up for donation or drop it off at a thrift shop.
The Hard Part
The above are the easy parts. Next to discuss is the stuff that is very hard for me to part with: children's art, and photographs.
Culling My Children's Art
After going through it all and throwing quite a bit away, I still had way too much. How could I just throw away even more of the masterpieces my children produced for the 13 years they were in school? Finger paintings, early scribbles, early writings, shells with stones glued on, sand handprints, etc. They brought home so very much of it!!! I had kept it all, and every piece was precious.
This is my most ingenious tip. I'm packing, so I need packing material. I had been wadding up paper to wrap fragile items in, or to fill up a box, when I had a eureka moment.
I now use my children's art as packing material!!!
This way I get to both keep it, and throw it away. Win win!
The Hardest Of Them All - The Photographs
My hubby and his father were avid photographers. They both got everything developed in doubles, and kept the negatives. It was easy for me to toss the negatives - which saved a lot of space - and any duplicates. I got rid of all those envelopes photos used to come back to us in, further reducing the sheer bulk of photographs. Then I spent several weeks throwing away photos, by sitting every evening in front of a TV, putting photos to toss in a big box to my right, then sorting the rest into smaller boxes, one for each remaining member of this family.
But I still had way too many!! Half a dozen large boxes of photos still to look through. I became resigned to carting these photos around with me for the rest of my life.
Then I figured out the remedy for getting rid of even more photographs.
Top Tip!
Let your kids do this!
Do not watch them while they are at it. My kids were ruthless with the photographs, and I do not miss a single thing they threw away. I got rid of several large boxes of photographs this way. I had to stop them when they were about to throw away ALL the photographs from my own childhood, but with those of their own, they kept very few. Bliss.
When I think I've gotten it down to just the stuff I want to keep, I find more things I can live without. Perhaps this will be endless, and eventually I will have no possessions left to my name. That sounds lovely to me.
Packing is a breeze now that I've rid my house of the stuff I don't want to keep. I have very little stuff now. I'll move to a furnished place, and maybe even donate the few pieces of furniture I have left.
It sounds like a big feat to me. I too store a lot of unnecessary things and if we ever move out I'd need a month just to decide what to keep and what to get rid off... but it must make you feel so light and free when you throw away things you haven't used in years.
Oh honey it takes a LOT longer than a month. I've been doing this for twelve years now, but I escalated my efforts a good year ago. It's a huge job. Moving is great motivation to do it. To clean out my parents' home of fifty years, we had to just throw most everything away. I don't want my kids to have to do that. Looks like I might be buying a new home full of stuff though, and I'll have to do it again! At least it's better stuff than anything I have.
wow this is a big project! Hope everything goes well :)
@tipu curate
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Thank you very much!!! I'm in the home stretch, thankfully.
I relate somewhat as I moved last week and I had to go through so much and replace so much. Yours is a huge move though and you have so much more to deal with as homes come with accumulated memories and most of them are tangible.
Best wishes to you and yours in your new home 🏡
Thank you! Same to you! I didn't know moved. Were you able to get a place with a bit of a yard of your own? How are you doing? It can be so difficult, moving. I hope you are in a place you love.
I had stuff of my husband's from before we met 42 years ago, stuff of his parents' after they died, stuff of one of my friend's who passed, and all the stuff a family of five accumulates over the years. So much stuff. I'm down to very little, and am planning to move into a furnished house, so that I can leave most of my furniture behind too. It's exciting.
Most welcome! Yes... moving is quite hard. Two and a half years were enough for me to get attached to my former house. I am struggling to love where I am (the environment feels more populated and I don't do well with crowds) but I love my house.
No yard sadly and worse the rules don't allow me to even have a pet. We moved here because of the much needed space plus the convenience. I am thinking of turning my balcony into a small spices garden though... I should document it :D
Forty two years? Wow. That feels like a lifetime. I hope to meet someone who can stay that long :) All the best with the incoming exciting changes!
Growing things, any thing, is a connection with nature. I support your herb garden idea!!! And loving the house is a major plus. I never have loved this house, 21 years in it, and will be happy to leave. I will miss my re-wilded yard though. I am trying to communicate to the creatures that they would do well to relocate. Idk if they can feel this. So many happy birds, pollinators, rodents, etc here! I am certain my neighbors will be happy to see them all go though, and perhaps me as well. I have not been a model suburban home owner, lol. The first thing I did was let the grass go. It's so pretty now! Many edibles! Very little grass!
21 years in a home sounds like a lifetime too. I have been a nomad my whole life and the longest I have lived in a house is five or six years. I think it's because I rent.
I believe at this time of my life, connection with anything pure is all I am asking.
I am sure the re-wilded yard and her entire ecosystem will miss your presence too. Kind hands are unforgettable. Forget the neighbours, lol!
I would love to do this BUT I can not see myself doing it. I am too attached to the memories.
That's why letting the kids do it was better for me. I had already gone through many boxes on my own and, as I said, thrown away THOUSANDS, but simply could not face the last few boxes myself. I will not miss them, I know that. I have plenty left.
I would love to have your strength, maybe when it comes the time, I will ask my girls to do it.
Historical societies are generally interested in negatives, if you have more.
Too late!!! But perhaps historical societies would be interested in the several boxes of photos from early 1900's that I also have, and can't begin to cull. If I had given those to my "kids", they would have all been thrown away. It's a good thing my kids don't know I have them. I feel more drawn to those photos than to the photos of my own family, and they are photos of people I only heard about, but never met.
All my dad's slides went into the trash because nobody cared about my childhood in pictures and I was too far away to save them.
He had lots of scenic shots taken on vacations to the mountains.
C'est la Vie.
Those folks will get what they have coming.
How distressing! You have none?
There are days that I think holding on to photos is keeping me in the past though, and that I would be better off keeping only a very few.
I'm a pack rat, I throw nothing away that isn't very definitely trash.
I plan to leave a pile for some lucky scavenger.
I would have given them to the local museum, if nothing else, but that isn't how it went down.
I've got some, or at least, I left some in a barn in Kansas I need to go visit.
My hubby was one of those, and his father before him. Good thing I'm not. Good thing they are both gone and can't stop me too! I love having much less.
I know, right?
I've lived out of a duffle bag for years now, and still have more crap than I can carry.
So how far is the move?
Getting rid of photos would be the hardest for me. The Lyme disease destroyed my memory, and photos are now all I have left to remember things. All my photos are in photo albums, labeled on each picture. Or the digital ones are in albums, again each photo labeled. They serve as memory.
They were the hardest for me as well, so I understand. As far as I know, my memory has not been diminished, but then, I wouldn't know, would I? It feels as though tossing a photo would erase the event from my life.
I am not organized enough (not even a tiny bit as organized as you are!) to take on that task yet. I do hope to do that someday.
I just remember my paternal grandma trying to identify and label 40 years+ of photos when she was in her mid 70's and what an awful job it was. Ever since then every single photo is labeled: names, date, location. It's no good if they aren't for I will not remember.
My maternal grandma had me label the backs of all her photos before she died. I don't think she had me do it for her though. When we grandkids looked them all over, no one remembered a single person in them. Not even me. It made me a bit sad to know all these people are simply forgotten. I have a lot of them, that box has been untouched. I can't do it, and I did not allow my kids to touch it. It's odd that I can't throw pictures of people I never met away.
In my case, I really did have too many. Twenty shots, plus duplicates, of one single moment. Sometimes 40 plus duplicates, if both my husband and my father in law had their cameras out. It had to be done.
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Reusing the kids' art is a brilliant idea. I struggle to part with it, but giving it a different life would help!