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I don't NEED nor WANT all this stuff. DH and I donated dozens and dozens of lawn and leaf bags full of clothing, shoes, etc to various charities. We also donated several unopened gifts (mostly trinkets). I just kept asking myself, "how much stuff do I really need?"
I'm just really fascinated by this statement-I have to ask- do you really mean dozens and dozens of bags? as in 24-36 bags of clothes and stuff? I just can't comprehend having so much excess stuff- If I emptied every closet and dresser in my house I don't think it would fill 5-6 bags- just curious.
I don't NEED nor WANT all this stuff. DH and I donated dozens and dozens of lawn and leaf bags full of clothing, shoes, etc to various charities. We also donated several unopened gifts (mostly trinkets). I just kept asking myself, "how much stuff do I really need?"
I'm just really fascinated by this statement-I have to ask- do you really mean dozens and dozens of bags? as in 24-36 bags of clothes and stuff? I just can't comprehend having so much excess stuff- If I emptied every closet and dresser in my house I don't think it would fill 5-6 bags- just curious.
It adds up faster than you realize. I'm a veteran of 5 major moves, and stuff seems to grow when you pack and move it. Last move I literally lost track of how many bags I donated to Goodwill, but probably "dozens and dozens" As it was, we barely fit into this house, and its fairly large.
Two things I've learned:
If you're in doubt about whether to get rid of something, ask yourself if it can easily be replaced. I found it easier/cheaper to order some new dishes to be sent directly to the new home rather than wrapping, packing, and shipping mismatched old dishes. Don't get rid of something you could never replace, like my g-grandmother's photo albums.
Second---as a veteran of multiple moves, I've learned that "awww.....$hit....feeling when you open boxes on the other end and wonder WTH did I pack and bring this crap. You learn what's important to bring and what's not. It might seem important to pack, but when its unpacked, you could kick yourself.
In short, if you can replace it for about the cost of moving it, get rid of it. If its irreplaceable, keep it, or.....donate it to someone who can use it. I recently donated some albums, title abstracts, photos, etc, to various historical associations. I did keep copies stored on disk, just for the information, data, but wanted the originals to go to places they could receive the respect they are due.
Before moving to Hawaii I had a very strong attachment to all of my stuff. Much of it was very unique antiques I inherited from my dad when he passed and I was 18. Since then I based all of my living decisions on whether or not those antiques would fit since I didn't want to put them in storage. And then I was always paranoid about a break in or something since they were somewhat valuable so I became paranoid and had double deadbolts on all doors. It was a strange time for me. Anyway, before moving to Hawaii I realized the furniture would probably not hold up on the move or in the humidity. I decided to sell everything at an auction, and felt way better afterwards! My husband and I sold everything but 17 or so boxes filled with more sentimental items like yearbooks, photos, and clothes. It felt great and only after selling all of that did I realize how attached I was to it. Now I just buy items off of CL that are more to get the job done. A sofa to sit on, dresser for clothes, etc. I don't form attachments to any "stuff" anymore and only buy things that are useful (no dust collectors). It does feel much better and I'm sure someone else is appreciating my old stuff now.
Wow, so many great responses to my original post. I dunno; I guess if you look at possessions as zillions of little totem poles--quasi-spiritual object infused with your own history--and if you tend to be passionate about your interests-- You tend to acquire lots of things.
I come from a family of severely afflicted hoarders, so I have been a great "bags of stuff to Goodwill" person. It's only now that I realize that in my case, "bags of stuff to Goodwill" may just indicate that I'm a Second-Degree Hoarder. Does that make sense?
And the problem with being a Second-Degree Hoarder is that you don't have a sense of proportion about what really is essential: i.e., you buy/gather/acquire stuff that you then give away because you don't want to be a hoarder, without giving adequate consideration to the fact that, while you may not be a hoarder, the act of cleaning or giving away is in a way no different from the obsessive hoarding.
It adds up faster than you realize. I'm a veteran of 5 major moves, and stuff seems to grow when you pack and move it. Last move I literally lost track of how many bags I donated to Goodwill, but probably "dozens and dozens" As it was, we barely fit into this house, and its fairly large.
Moving is the time to purge, not accummulate MORE stuff!
I used to have a stack of totes full of stuff. Childhood stuff, clothes I don't wear, kitchen stuff I didn't use often. It just got moved from place to place. Then I got tired of that. I decided a long time ago that stuff I hadn't seen since my previous move obviously wasn't important to me.
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We got rid of a lot of stuff when we evacuated after Fukushima, because we couldn't afford to bring everything with us cross-country. It was very stressful getting rid of things I loved, and trying to decide what to part with. I made several mistakes, shipping things we don't need and getting rid of things we should have kept. I still suffer regrets about some of the things I parted with.
Now we are planning to move back to the US, and need to get rid of things again. I think it will be easier though, because we're not suffering the stress and emotional shock of radiation fears from a meltdown, and we're not in a rush to move quickly. Besides, replacing things in the US will be easier, because prices are lower.
I can see keeping some basic things, such as clothes, maybe some dishes but not keeping everything. When I move this coming summer I am getting rid of most of my stuff. No need to hold on to stuff that I don't need. I was a major hoarder in my last move and really regret getting stuck in that mindset. I had a pickup truck with U-Haul, think about mileage and cost of gas, all those things ad up. Why did I hold on to junk that I haven't touched in years? Makes absolutely no sense at all. I love the mantra Less is More. More just causes clutter. I believe in Feng Shui and positive energy flow. I feel bogged down my clutter, which causes distraction.
Not all that long ago, I found myself safely moved cross country and surrounded by stuff. Stuff that belonged to dead people. My H, his parents, my parents, and even some of my grandparents stuff. H had promised me he was going to be brutal and get rid of all the stuff, but he didn't. And then he died too.
And I got rid of tons of stuff before I moved.
Probably 3 or 4 times a week I load up the SUV full of stuff and donate it. I am hoping to have most of it gone before the end of the year.
My best advice is to get rid of everything before you move and just take the bare minimum. Whatever looked great in your old house won't be right in the new one. Or the movers will damage stuff too. You can usually replace used furniture with used furniture for much less than it costs to move the stuff cross country!
You sound just like me! Sometimes, I feel like I'm the "Keeper of The Dead". My parents died over 20+ years ago. They were low-grade hoarders, who lived in another state. all we could do was have their stuff boxed up and sent to us, put in a storage unit, and go through it 1-2 boxes at a time, it took over 2 years to go through all that!
Along with my parents's stuff, was the stuff of other deceased relatives. Don't get me wrong, I cherish my g-grandmother's Victorian photo albums, grandmother's Nippon chocolate set, etc, not to mention some old uncashed war bonds they apparently thought were worthless, and I was able to cash! But did I really need my deceased uncle's snow tires? Especially in Texas? HTH did they get mixed up in my parent's stuff?
Ok, I decided to keep some of my parent's things (not the snow tires), but now, we're doing a pre-retirement move and downsizing --- I'm finding I'm still picking through dead people's things! Over 50 pieces of stemware that belonged to my mother----I had packed away, for what? The next time 50 people come to my house looking for a drink, I guess Also, I'd forgotten about a box with over 100 pieces of table linens, I think they were Grandma's, bunches of handtools that belonged to my grandfather, the real kicker is-----my MIL's ashes! Ok, ok, she passed away last Dec, no life insurance, we paid for a basic cremation but then found we couldn't afford to bury them at the time. She has a grave plot next to her husband, but to have the grave opened and closed, a burial urn and vault, a headstone, well....that would come to $2000+.
Not to mention the mementos of various dead cats I've been carrying around for years. We've had our elderly, sick kitties put to sleep, and buried them in the back yard, but seems the vet always wants to send us some sort of memento, usually a plaster cast of their paw, I have a little cylinder container with one cats whiskers-----geez! Maybe I should have a mass memorial service for all my deceased furbabies in a mass grave somewhere, then, sneak MIL in along with them....hey, she was an animal lover! There were times I thought she had some strain of "female canine" in her, too
Look, I'm the end of the line, being an only child of an only child. There's simply no one left to dump this crap on! I've found some historical societies I've given things like abstracts of my father's farm, original photo albums of relatives, still.....WTD with MIL's cremains? I hate to think I'd end up in an abandoned storage locker!
And, just like OP, hubby keeps promising to clear out stuff, then never does, or drags his a$$ to the point time runs out and we end up packing it up to clear out, with the intention of sorting it out later, which just never happens!
Note to the "younger generation" don't let relatives dump their crap on you. Tell them if they don't want/need it, donate it to charity, have a garage sale, you're not their waste removal service!
Went from 3 bedroom house down to 1 bedroom apartments to find better employment in another city. Ended up renting an iffy place (couple of times) alone and ran off abandoning lots too. I highly recommend you resort to digital document and photo storage. Just outfit a place from garage sales and thrift stores. Mattresses are worth the price of buying it new because some off-brand mattresses are actually recycled, rained on and broken down nasty things but recovered to resell them cheap. Only move with clothing, work computer and maybe a pet....
I really doubt I will ever DECORATE anything again after my last few years of terrible pay, crappy employers and marginal income in expensive cities....
Stuff owns you. Experiences & money just kept in the bank are easier to pack up and leave misery.
Mmmmmm, right now, I don't have too much that's on the list not to make this move.
There is the $400 leather chair which my first cat turned into a $400 kitten toy and an $4 dollar leather chair. Her claws in 3 years did quite a job on it and then, in the 11 years after, the next cats put their contribution into it. But it is something, after all, that my first cat left me to remember her by.
Then there is a decades old leather chair that my father had in his den when I was in grade school, that my parents gave me after my sea duty in the Navy. I've had it personally for 27 years, it's been in my life for almost entirely all of it,but it pretty well destroyed now.
For all the memories those chairs have, it's time to let them go because they are too far gone to be recovered.
Further, they come under the question of "Do you want to move with this?" "Do you want to put the energy into moving with this?".
BUT.....I do hear you. I was looking down at a box of books tonight, a shelf of marine biology and animal books, and remembering the time when I bought them. The 90's, I think, when I looked at the world with so much hope. For me, if in anything else, that is often the reason for keeping things, when I can look at them and feel, if only for a few seconds, the positiveness of that era.
As it is, right now, I'm going through the dumping of what I an before I get to the panic point of time and just start throwing stuff into boxes to be sorted later. It's not that hard to make a decision on what should go, just that time consuming to figuring out which box what should stay should go in. This is a temporary move, less than a year, and I don't want to unpack most of the boxes or even open them. But trying to figure out what should be in ready supplies is not always that easy.
Books, yes, those are easy. DVD's, CD's, and VHS, yes, those are easy, primarily because there is an inplace infrastructure for them. But, say, finding spare elastic for my zils (Zill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )or a shooting log and wondering if I can afford to idly box that or if I should take the time to find its ready backpack and put it in there, that's what slows things down some.
Still up in the air about the not in use fish tanks. On one hand, it's been probably more than a decade since they were in use and it will probably be at least another year till they can be filled again. On the other hand, it is just a move across town and new fish tanks are not necessarily cheap.
On the other hand, rugs and pet beds where some pets spent so much of their time, if you know what I mean, those are much easier to say the heck with it, forget about any method of cleaning, and jettison they are.
Which is probably true about a closet that self destructed with mildew. There may be a sewing machine in there that is recoverable and some of the stuff on the top shelf may have escaped, but I suspect when I get in there, it's just going to be shovel into a large trash can. I may be saying goodbye to dozens of pics I took during the 90's, but there is a question to how recoverable are they really.....to say nothing about my lack of photography skill back then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RecentlyMoved
......We also donated several unopened gifts (mostly trinkets).......
Most of the stocking stuffers around here are pocket knives and emergency packets. Currently, most of them are being opened and placed either in emergency packs or here and there, such as first aid kits, tool kits, just about anywhere where finding a pocket knife would be a nice, pleasant surprise.
Granted, they were suppose to be given to someone at some time, but since they weren't, they've been pressed "into use".
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaryleeII
..........If you're in doubt about whether to get rid of something, ask yourself if it can easily be replaced..........
This is, for me, the other elephant in the room. The eventual ranch and homesteading. Long story short, if one lives in a city, it's a lot easier to replace it, especially when needed, than if one lives in the country.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaryleeII
You sound just like me! Sometimes, I feel like I'm the "Keeper of The Dead". My parents died over 20+ years ago. They were low-grade hoarders, who lived in another state. all we could do was have their stuff boxed up and sent to us, put in a storage unit, and go through it 1-2 boxes at a time, it took over 2 years to go through all that!
This one is going to hit me on this move. I have half a full size apartment closet with boxes of at least old letters Mom sent her Mom during the Viet Nam War. Catch is, right now, I just don't have the time to go through, so it's going to follow me on this move.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaryleeII
..............
Ok, I decided to keep some of my parent's things (not the snow tires), but now, we're doing a pre-retirement move and downsizing --- I'm finding I'm still picking through dead people's things! Over 50 pieces of stemware that belonged to my mother----I had packed away, for what? The next time 50 people come to my house looking for a drink, I guess Also, I'd forgotten about a box with over 100 pieces of table linens, I think they were Grandma's, bunches of handtools that belonged to my grandfather, .............
I sort of went through this tonight, dumping a jar of non diary creamer down the sink. I almost always take my coffee black, don't use the stuff, but I suppose it's nice to have around for guests. You never know when an old associate is going to drop by with his partner and a headless body in the back for a cup of coffee.
As it is, I do have a lot of stemware, silver, china, and some linen sets. At one time, probably in some fantasy, I saw myself entertaining.......but I don't know now if that ever will come about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaryleeII
Note to the "younger generation" don't let relatives dump their crap on you. Tell them if they don't want/need it, donate it to charity, have a garage sale, you're not their waste removal service!
But do you really have the heart to tell that, "I'm not your waste removal service" to one's parents?
But it is the way things happen, isn't it? My younger brother and his wife at the time "defeated" my Mom's efforts to empty the attic on them by stopping coming to visit in the Delta 88 custom cruiser station wagon.....and arriving in the Toyota compact instead.
My problem was two fold, unfortunately. First of all, for one person, the Corsica had a lot of room....and then my needs got me the Forester and that was the end. Secondly, Mom's hold on me for weekend visits put me in a situation where I didn't have the time to get rid of stuff ("I don't care what you do with it, just take it") that she piled on me.
As it is, the thing that immediately comes to mind of what is taking up room? Dad's military uniforms, perhaps as perfect when he retired from the Army over 35 years ago after over 30 years of service.......maybe I'll bug my older brother on those since he is always bugging me to donate things they (dad and granddad) to the infantry museum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mostlysunny1
......I highly recommend you resort to digital document and photo storage. ...... Only move with clothing, work computer and maybe a pet....
.......
The digital storage is what I alluded to earlier with my infrastructure. A lot of my tapes have been processed into working copies, so in the new place, they, the DVD working copies, will be stored in drawers on a table while the tapes sit in a backroom in boxes. Eventually, I hope the oodles and oodles of tape cabinet drawers and be in the same position, but that will probably take another year.
Computer wise, the working computers get moved, the defunct computers and their monitors are for goodwill and if I get the time, the keyboards will be sorted to determine what goes as well. The old scanners and printer goes as well. Now, if I could find someone who will take that old box TV.......
Finally, let me just say, "Pets are for life; they go with me.".
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), but now, we're doing a pre-retirement move and downsizing --- I'm finding I'm still picking through dead people's things! Over 50 pieces of stemware that belonged to my mother----I had packed away, for what? The next time 50 people come to my house looking for a drink, I guess
Also, I'd forgotten about a box with over 100 pieces of table linens, I think they were Grandma's, bunches of handtools that belonged to my grandfather, the real kicker is-----my MIL's ashes!
Ok, ok, she passed away last Dec, no life insurance, we paid for a basic cremation but then found we couldn't afford to bury them at the time. She has a grave plot next to her husband, but to have the grave opened and closed, a burial urn and vault, a headstone, well....that would come to $2000+. 
There were times I thought she had some strain of "female canine" in her, too
I hate to think I'd end up in an abandoned storage locker!
