throwing stuff away - help!

I was just looking through a filing cabinet and found surgery accounts! I left GP 34 years ago!

thats funny galen and I thouht I was bad still having my sons baby report card and he is 28!! I will never throw it though.

phoenix, smoluski

I mentioned on another thread that we've just moved Mum from one home to another. Well, I say we - one brother and I worked well together on the three pile principle, keep, charity, throw. The other brother wander round picking things up, asking if we wanted to keep this or that and then PUT it down again.

I think the fact that my family have all emigrated gives me a slightly different perspective on hoarding. Probably a good thing. Too easy to tell onself that someone else can deal with it.
Moving house is also really useful, she said, trying to convince herself.
Just completed an extremely tedious admin task so heading for study with a recycling bag to do todays quota.
DH is planning to try to sell a lot of electronic equipment and is taking photos and boxing it up .

Jess I'm taking careful notes!

Oh butty I always imagine that you are tidy, organised and don't have lots of silting up corners of your life. Are you going to shatter this illusion?

No, your illusion is right - BUT we are downsizing considerable - so somethings (lots of things) have gotta go! I feel fine about the whole letting go thing, but it's a question of what to keep.

gillybobs idea of renting a storage unit worked for me when my mother died and I didn't know what I wanted to keep or not. I managed to gradually get rid of a lot of stuff and what I still wasn't sure about I boxed and it's in my DS's garage, bless him, ready for a car boot. I'm also nervous about chucking out old statements and accounts even though it's past the 7 year deadline for keeping such things. I think I need a giant shredder! The last time I did some shredding our smaller one overheated with the effort .

The good news is that DH is in the throes of decluttering our little utility passage and I now have space to put the clothes in the washing basket without the whole lot falling in the sink. It must be SPRING!

Phew. Thanks butty. We will initially be renting somewhere tiny, so I am trying to think - what will I really want access to? DH has been briefed to turn on the filial charm this weekend - MIL has a lot of wardrobe space occupied with clothes that are much too big. I need that wardrobe space to store out of season clothes, suits etc. But he has got to persuade her to donate the size 18s and 20s to a good cause.
Chipping away. Emptied a bag of old bank statements and parking fine notices (belonging to sons) into the compost bin. Got some more wine boxes from Waitrose. Started small pile of books i need to NOT hide away. If I keep going at this rate the scary study is all going to be cleared in a couple of weeks.

So maybe there is a case for keeping stuff.
When we cleared our house before coming to Barbados I became quite ruthless,
but still a lot of stuff was left and most of it went into storage which is quite comforting.

We cleared the loft so that our children would not have the problem when we ''pop off''. We sent most of it to auction and recieved a cheque for over £1,500 !! Son's annual season ticket has gone up to £7,000 so that will come in handy. It felt like an ''Antiques Roadshow'' moment.

Gosh I never thought of selling the stuff out of the attic, there was some Meissen china that just went to the charity shop.

As we're on the market to sell, I've offered anything to our sons that they might like. The London lot are interested in one or two things, and my American daughter-in-law would love lots of it, but sadly neither they nor we can afford the shipping costs involved, so it's a case of 'move on' and sell what we expect not to be able to take with us. Interestingly, as word has spread, several friends have made 'inquiries' so hopefully some stuff will go to happy homes.
I'd like that.

butty I love the thought of things going into homes where they are wanted, I dont think you feel quite so torn about getting shot when you know there wanted.

Yes glass - it makes a difference, a very nice difference.

Making good progress here. Study looks worse as things migrate from shelves to piles on floor. But still shifting some stuff every day. Collecting boxes.
Been going through boxes of photos (slight distraction, but i did throw away quite a few - the ones of bushes, blurred landscapes etc)
Found a few items of interest:
A personalised card from China, sent by DH. My name in Chinese characters has 3 of them which mean: Thankful, Parsley and Admiration. ? quite
An embroidered card sent back from WW1 by my GF at xmas. There was obviously a cottage industry in these cards. Colours very vivid.
A picture of great aunt Emmy as a baby circa 1897, taken in Aberdare in a studio. The first of the brood possibly the only one to have a studio photo done as a baby. (ahh) My GGM had about 8 kids, took in theatricals and managed to get the family out of Aberdare (where her husband was a miner), into Porthcawl where she took in holiday makers and saved enough to set sons up with 2 butchers shops and buy 2 houses. Surprised she wasted money on even the one photo of first born. Wish I had inherited her financial acumen.
Pictures of ex lovers I had between husbands - including one shot with two of them in, walking down a lane ! I hasten to add they were sequential not parallel as it were.
I picture of me, very thin, in a Chinese satin dress, looking very angry. I think it was taken just before I left H1

See all those memories, its good to have a clear out from time to time. That's the joy of moving often. Glad you are enjoying yourself.

there are compensations. Found a Welsh dictionary today. AND my long lost orthotic inserts, in a shoe box, which I had been saving for the day when i needed a shoe box - handy for photos.

Reporting in butty - thank you for your nudging back to the task.
I have now sorted all my books. This is a huge achievement seeing as the starting point a couple of months ago was 7 full height bookshelves many of them double parked. The ones I am keeping are sorted into subjects so the boxes can be labelled. The ones I am not keeping are going to be sold donated to oxfam. By this time next week I will have sorted and culled the remaining paper.

Impressed Jess. Day off tomorrow
I am delaying sorting my bookcases, but at the little English library this afternoon I asked if they'd take my discarded books in due course - so I am starting the process......sort of.

I am SOOO impressed with that Jess - we had quite a few books but nothing Ikea as many as you - did cull before we moved but will need to do a lot more when we try and unpack the rest.

Well it looks like more snow butty so maybe another hour or so up there. There is a limit to how long a walk we'll want to do. I enjoyed my little foray into the snowy wood today though. Glad I wore wellies as it is not quite cold enough to freeze the saturated ground.

Reporting in butty - hit a flat patch today, having sorted, weeded and packed the non fiction I am going to keep. Got 3 boxes from Morrisons and that is the sum total of my progress.
Found a very useful book Eva Frasers Facial workout. Toning exercises for the sagging face muscles. A milestone publication I'd say - a classic even.
Here's a dilemma: I normally keep diaries - they are just appointment diaries not journals. I have now accumulated about 30 years worth.
I am someone who spends time looking forward rather than back and there is a bit of me that thinks maybe one day i might like to look through them and remember what kind of things i was doing in 1999 or whatever. . Because my memory of past events aint that great - you have to keep going over those memory traces if you want them to be really strong.
I also have all the faxes I sent DH when he was in HK for 2 years. He saved them (bless him!). It was just before email came in properly. Same problem only more information content.

Ahh Jess ...Diaries. There's a conundrum. I'm having similar thoughts about what to do with mine, which sound similar, with the addition of bits and bobs about the weather.
I've come to the conclusion that I won't take mine with me when we move. I trust that anything worth remembering will be remembered. Leap of faith. I'll start again in the new place.
Keep the faxes.

Second lot of stuff from the roof went off with the Auctioneer today. Not expecting so much from this collection. Sad thing is , when all is said and done,the amount raised would only keep one or other of us in a care home for a few weeks! Ah well!