All my "stuff" will go to auction when I move/die. In the meantime I will enjoy it when I can. I love opening a box I've had packed away and finding so many treasures. I change my "decor" often and I can shop from my boxes for free plus the enjoyment of looking at my treasures.

I have two cabinets of "stuff." The problem is, every item has a story. "Got this on vacation, this was a wedding present, that was my mother's"....and on and on. It's difficult to get rid of those items.

Excellent advice, imstill. The photo is a way to remember, yet let go.

It's difficult to destash when a family member is against it.

If nothing else consider those who will have to be responsible for taking care of your "stuff" if you don't do it.

I think a good example is my grandmothers thread bare Josheghan rug. I'm shopping for a newer one. If an opportunity comes up, I'll buy it. When something ceases to function I cease to enjoy having it around.

Or......my cedar chest full of fabric scraps. Each scrap is from a treasured project. I donated a heaping bag full to a charity. Maybe someone else can make use of my scraps. Let it go.... is a good call!

We've been going through our belongings at a pretty good pace and make at least one trip to donate to a thrift store each month, or try to find someone who can use still useful items. I started this after reading "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", and have recently moved the book back onto my desk to read again.

Paper is my biggest challenge right now. After decades of teaching soooooo many classes I have piles of files (in filing cabinets, crates, boxes....) on so many subjects, I really MUST try to reduce it.

I gave over 500 books to a small community library that just started up 25-miles from here last summer, and I could probably repeat that number. At one time I had between 6,000 and 7,000 books in my library but have donated at least 75% of them over the last 10 years. If anyone needs to know the best way to move a large number of books, I'll be happy to share. We moved that many twice in 4-years.

Now we'll start back through the "tidying order" in the book again as we change clothes for the season and work our way through the other items in the tidying order.

My mother-in-law was a good seamstress and made a lot of her own clothing, as well as for her 4 daughters. She had a huge stash of leftover fabric, and when I asked her if she had any cotton fabric she could spare while I was teaching myself how to quilt (and we were as poor as the really POOR, poor church mice), but she said no. She might use it - although she never did..... Even after I was teaching quilting classes and I offered to teach her so she could make each of her daughters a small quilt with fabric she used for their dresses, she still didn't do anything with the fabric. When she moved from her home to an apartment, my husband brought me ALL THAT FABRIC - thirty years too late - but it was all brittle and destroyed, and full of silverfish after years in a home where she wouldn't turn on an air conditioner and the excessive heat and humidity had destroyed that fabric..... Thanks --- for nothing. We had to put it in the trash. It broke my heart to see such waste.

My dear mother was good about destashing, keeping her things to a minimum to make it easier for our family to settle her estate when she passed. I deeply appreciated her doing this; it was a gift. It's what a loving, unselfish person does, in my opinion. However, it was still a lot of work to go through her things, but vastly less than if she had not made an effort.

I put a lot of items out by the sidewalk with a sign free/gratis, it makes me feel good that someone else might stop by and pick up the item and enjoy it. Sort of like a RAOK, but it benefits me too because the house is less cluttered.

Here's a funny song/video that might make that decluttering go a bit faster!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyOs-RUVa1M

Oh, grainlady, your post breaks my heart;

even worse than the waste is the callousness.

Thank goodness you can buy your own fabric now!

I my own self am on a sort of controlled de-cluttering spree, shedding "stuff" as I come across it or need the space but not going on a rampage.

When I go on a rampage, I tend to become exhausted & frazzled & throw out the baby with the bathwater!

sylviatexas1-

Thank you for your kind thoughts.

My problem with waste paper is that I like to turn it into handmade paper (the ultimate recycle) and make my own gift tags, cards, envelopes, gift wrap, decorative items, and assorted other things you can make from all kinds of paper products -- including junk mail. But you can only have so much of that stuff around too.....

I have decided to restrict my files to one nice file cabinet, and if it doesn't fit --- well, you know the rest. ;-)

This is a timely post. We did some serious culling of garage and yard stuff yesterday; I'm still sore this morning.

Items included stacks of plastic nursery pots of all sizes, clay pots, a carpenter bee riddled wooden arbor with the decorative metal inserts removed, extremely bent tomato cages, and an old, rotten wooden garden cart.

We put everything on the curb by noon.....and enjoyed watching it all being carted away, including that wooden arbor which was carried off on the roof of a small sedan.

The only things remaining are some hopelessly crushed plastic nursery pots.

It was our semi-annual total garage gutting event, required because the garage is a haven for black widow spiders. We discovered the BWS attraction the first year after moving here. Alarming, to say the least.

We've learned to be very fastidious in our outdoor environments, and the garage gets completely emptied, vacuumed, and dusted with diatomaceous earth. Everything stored in the garage gets cleaned, too.

You don't want to know how many spiders we found.

Grainlady, my MIL was the same way. No matter how much she had, she could not part with even a little bit of it, and not even for family in need. I can only think that the need to hold onto everything formed from her childhood in the post-Depression era.

Anything I haven't worn in a year, I take to Goodwill. Same with other items. If it sits around gathering dust it's gone,

I think I'm like this because of my mother. My sis and I are currently moving her from her home of 50 years to a senior independent living place. My mom is a low grade hoarder. It's not like there are pathways with five foot tall stacks of junk everywhere, but every horizontal surface is loaded with stuff. The basement is a nightmare. She's essentially never gotten rid of anything that we ever purchased in the entire fifty years of living in that house.

We've shuttled a lot of stuff to a consignment store after her inspection of it. Now, she's put her foot down. She can't part with any more of her hoard, so we will rent a storage locker to hold it all until she dies. I'm frustrated, but this is "her" stuff. I'm not sure how much of it would really be useful to other people. My parents were heavy smokers (mom quit twenty years ago) and there remains a musty odor in the house and all it contains.

I am moving in two weeks. Nearly divorced, and I will be closing on a small condo this week. I know that I will have to downsize some of my books and other stuff, so off to Goodwill I will go. It goes to a good cause.

With that said, I do understand the sentimental attachment to some things. I have a shirt that belonged to my ex gf, who is now my best friend. I can't bear to give that shirt to Goodwill, as I associate it with her and our romance/relationship. I try to understand my mom's affliction by imagining that she might have such a strong attachment to the mountains of stuff in her basement and home.

I know I have too much "stuff". I have sold a few things that I didn't want to give away, and am still going through things. If I had half of what I have now, my house would still feel too full. I have a tiny house. I've thought of selling my collection of Boyds Bears, tea cups and bells. They're all dust collectors. I thought of selling all my scrapbooking supplies. It would make a lot of room in my craft room which I never use as a craft room. And heaven help me if my husband goes before me. The mess he has in our garage will take 10 years to clean out. I don't want to leave all of this "stuff" for my kids to clean up after we are gone.

rhizo- can you explain more about cleaning up to get rid of spiders? I have brown recluse and maybe black widow in my shed (large, same size as many garages) in the back yard. I need to get on a program, such has you have posted about. Thanks for any directions or links to appropriate websites. I already have the diatomaceous earth, just not sure how to use it effectively. Thanks!

Last weekend and this weekend have been dedicated to clearing out and getting rid of STUFF! I don't know how many trash cans and bags are going to be at the curb but a lot! I am using the garden club meeting as an excuse to get things done. Husband will help but having a good reason to do it now makes him more accepting and willing. I am exhausted.

I call the transitory stuff, the stuff you keep awhile but then don't need, a lot of it paper and packaging (magazines, boxes, fliers, jars, etc), "house poop". :)

"house poop" LOL!

My cousin has been posting on facebook this whole week-end about the things she's shredding, recycling, burning, giving away, & setting at the curb.

I'm exhausted just reading it!

I now live in a one bedroom apt so have cut my belongings way down over the years. Before I donate or sell anything I ask the kids if they want it. I have asked them what items in my home they do want, and have the items marked with their names on the bottom or back. So there is no squables between them. Clothes etc are way too small to fit anyone I know. So they get donated when I spring clean.

jesshs, we don't have a method, it's a process much like you would think.....take everything out, use a blower and vacuum, apply DE along the perimeters, corners, behind cabinets, etc. Everything gets cleaned before returning to its place.

It goes without saying that the appropriate clothing, gloves, and dust mask need to be worn.

We tackled our shed yesterday!

I've been through serious decluttering twice in the last five years. What helped me was realizing that first and foremost it's just "stuff." If you are sentimental about things you still have your memories and don't really need the "stuff" to call them up. Secondly, your family is not going to treasure your things the way you do and will just get rid of them anyway.

we got rid of a lot of stuff last year and we will do the same this year. Our firehall is having another craft show next month so again we are planning our yard sale that same day. We also post pictures on gregs list, so I hope it helps this year like last.

We moved about 10 yrs ago, and 1/2 of our stuff went to storage. It's only been in the last 2 years that we were bringing that stuff to this house.

I've been going through it and culling like crazy. I still have a few boxes to go, but I've gotten rid of a LOT of stuff.

After our DD got married 2 years back, I started purging in her former bedroom, then moved to the next room. It feels SO good to be shed of so much! My goal has been to take a box a week to Salvation Army, or who ever calls saying they'll be in my neighborhood.

I've worked in an auction house, and have seen more than my fair share of "hoarding" instances. The families are overwhelmed, and sadly "treasures" that have been passed down from one generation to the next are tossed aside, unknowing of their value or history. I've been determined not to have that happen. If my kids don't want the family treasures, then I'm passing them on to cousins who do.

I have been "ruthlessly" tossing out items the past week or two. This small house is packed to the gills and it's suffocating me.

I had a large Rubbermaid container of Bride and Groom figurines? They all went to the thrift store (from whence most of them came). I brought up three large containers from the basement/dungeon and pared them down to one small box.

I have a wonderful vintage Singer 15-91 that I am keeping; but the broken down, not rare nor valuable Singer cabinet #72 it was in is out on the porch waiting to be picked up by a FreeCycler.

I have a slot for the machine in the sewing room closet and I will find a good carrying case for it. My sewing room is small. I have one larger sewing cabinet I'm keeping. Letting this one go cleared up a 2 ft. x 2.5 ft. square of floor space. It also forced me to trash or file the papers that were parked on top of it.

Purses - I had far too many, and have carried only one tried-and-true purse for the past two years. I purged them down to where they fill less than one-third of one drawer in my dresser. I had to weed out a lot of far-too-small/old/ugly sweaters to make room for the purses. I may weed them out again in the fall.

Paper is my biggest problem, but I've made some good headway there, too.

Next up to the guillotine? Hats. 1940s-50s hats. Cute, beautiful, wispy, veiled, feathered, flowered...you name it. They are everthing except being worn.

I may put them on FreeCycle, but that takes a lot of time, or just take them to the thrift store too. I am keeping my Grandmother's wedding hat, and two veiled velvety beauties I wore in the 1980s, The rest are Bye-Bye.

I tossed out one of my three Deviled Eggs Plates. I might put a second one in the box before I drive off to the TS. We do not eat that many deviled eggs!

"Breathing Space" is my mantra.

Grainlady

I loved your idea of '1 file cabinet' so much that I got a new file cabinet and I'm going to copy your idea. Right now I'm in the middle of planting the garden, but as soon as that project is over I'm going through all my papers and getting rid of anything that doesn't fit in the one file cabinet.

Great idea!

Caroline, do you have a community theatre in your city, or a high school with an active theatre department? Your hats would be much appreciated.