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When my wife and I retired (from full time work), we moved to a new place and purged. We through out so much stuff. We used Groupon to find place that would haul away our stuff for a small fee. We gave away things to Goodwill and Freecycle. We filled the trash cans to the max every day the garbage man came.
Every time things were moved out of our basement and given to the trash man or charity, I felt a sigh of relief and joy.
Why did we buy all these things? Why did we keep them for so long?
It would be great if the fellow retired people on this board would tell us their stories of getting rid of things when they retired? (How did you get rid of your junk, etc.)
A few years after I retired, my husband died, and I decided to downsize from an 1800 square foot 3-bedroom 2-bath house with a 2-car garage, to a 900 square foot 1-bedroom 1-bath condo with no storage outside of the apartment. I got rid of so much stuff before moving into the condo, and even more after I moved and found I still had too much stuff for the space.
I took many van-loads of clothing and household stuff to Goodwill. I donated boxes of books and CD's to the library. I sold a leather sofa and three tall bar stools at a consignment furniture place. I took a load of household chemicals (cleaners, pesticides, etc.) to the county solid waste facility. I had Habitat for Humanity come and pick up a kitchen table and four chairs, a tall chest of drawers that wouldn't fit into my new bedroom, a desk and several bookshelves, and a cedar-lined storage chest. My daughter and son-in-law took a big recliner chair. I took some old electronic stuff, including a dead laptop, to Best Buy for recycling. And stuff that no one could use got thrown away in the twice-weekly trash pickup. I did have to pay someone to haul away a Sleep Number mattress, because no one would accept it as a donation.
And I sold the big van, since I no longer needed to haul my husband's wheelchair around, and bought a small sedan that gets twice the gas mileage of the van.
Why was I holding on to all that old stuff? Because I had space to store it. But when I was getting ready to downsize, I knew I'd have to be ruthless about getting rid of half of what I owned.
We are currently going through the house getting rid of stuff we do not have room for (and do not to move anyway) when we move to our retirement home. It is amazing what you accumulate. I just sold my kayak and a tabletop full of power and hand tools. My wife has been hauling off clothes. I saw her looking at my fishing stuff the other day so I took it to the storage unit and hid it!
Going through the process now. It's so very difficult. As sure as Murphy's Law is a fact, another irrefutable law I discovered is:
Given an allocation of space in this life . . . you will fill it with junk!
Since I come home so tired from work every night, I don't have much energy to sort through stuff. Still have seven months, so there's a bit of time yet.
Just beginning the process and had my first of 2 or 3 garage sales last weekend. It was mainly clothes that I just don't plan to wear in retirement, a few nick knacks, books and such, some low hanging fruit on the purging scale. What doesn't sell is going to the Salvation Army. I'm actually looking forward to getting rid of all the accumulated junk that has taken up residence throughout the house. My husband might just be right that I've not met an empty space I didn't want to fill. I really think I'm over that though and am in serious de-clutter mode. My biggest problem is what to do with all the things that have been passed down, like your grandmother's china, a cabinet full of crystal, or the 2 full sets of actual silverware. A lot of it is already boxed up and in the attic. Do I pack it up and take it with us only to be put back in the attic but at a different house? We're not formal people and will probably never actually use them, so I'm torn on what to do with these kinds of things.
The young adults these days do not want our fancy china and crystal. They want things that are fast and convenient. They mostly want stuff that will go in the dishwasher and doesn't need polished. Last Thanksgiving DD was appalled that I used the real china which needed to be hand washed instead of paper plates. So, if we're not going to use it, we should donate to some place. I'm looking forward to shredding and burning lots of paperwork when we retire. I just printed off rules from IRS about how long we need to keep stuff so I am ready.
The young adults these days do not want our fancy china and crystal. They want things that are fast and convenient. They mostly want stuff that will go in the dishwasher and doesn't need polished. Last Thanksgiving DD was appalled that I used the real china which needed to be hand washed instead of paper plates. So, if we're not going to use it, we should donate to some place. I'm looking forward to shredding and burning lots of paperwork when we retire. I just printed off rules from IRS about how long we need to keep stuff so I am ready.
I began purging a couple years before retirement, and it really helped to get that early start. Discovering that I didn't miss the stuff helped mentally in the final process too, because you have to be kind of ruthless about it and it's hard at first. Thankfully, neither of us ever kept a bunch of old clothes. I was tired of my everyday dishes, so I kept a set of China and we use it every day now. We put it in the dishwasher in quickwash, and it looks fine!
We've spent the last year getting rid of stuff. Two garage sales, net sales $1K, many trips to Good will, and a bunch of stuff going into storage. We've really cleaned out a bunch of junk.
First, offered things to friends/relatives. Threw out stuff that wasn't worth donating. Held a garage sale and then found a couple of charities that would do pick up had them come once a week for weeks.
Some stuff we put at the street and most of it was picked up before trash day.
We had already bought our retirement home and were going back and forth, so we had furnished it with basics. It was a really zen feeling to have a sparsely furnished house lol. And, we lived here for around 9 months where I never missed anything in our old house. Part of me wishes I had just gotten rid of all of it and started fresh here, but when push came to shove there were things I just could part with.
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