throwing stuff away - help!

There is stuff that has gone that I wish I still had. A lovely letter from a headmaster (of a rather expensive public school) that had been staying at the resort where I worked years ago. Jack had made friends with their son, (Jack would have been about 9 or 10)

The man wrote to me after their holiday saying what a pleasure it had been to meet Jack, and how impressed he had been by Jack's manners.

After I had left exdh, (and before Jack died) I asked him if he had the letter, as I would have loved to have it, even a copy, but he said he didn't

Agree Absent after all, we can't take it with us.

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris.

I know how you feelEnvious American . I would like to buy a flat and for about a year move things in from home until I had only what I wanted or needed then get rid of the rest. I had stuff from my mothers home and grandmother including a teaset for ten which I have rarely used and no one in the family wants . Selling it would be wrong. I am hoping for a nephew getting married and perhaps his fiancé might want it.

We gave so much stuff on 'Freecycle' - it was brilliant and we really enjoyed helping people in so many ways by giving stuff away (when we sold our house to move abroad). Our old trailor helped a young unemployed woman start her own gardening maintenance business - she also had some of my tools and many garden pots. Our local hospice, Loros, also had a great second hand bookshop - which made it so much easier to part with some of our good books.

my dream would be to move out,taking what I really need and have a estate sale for the rest.I feel the heavy weight of all my stuff which doubled after keeping too much of my parents belongings after they past. I'm too sentimental and I know if I started packing I'd still take too much. If I could just close the door behind it all! It's all a dream because I'd have to sell before I could move.So here I sit!

Gosh that is brutal absent - are you shipping anything off to your new home?
In the wings we have a DH who has started packing stuff to stash in his mother's loft. He has filled nine largish plastic storage boxes with his CD collection. He has copied the majority to hard disc.
He is screwing up his courage, I hope, to get rid of 3 shelves of National Geographics. He also has a comic collection that he is not going to get rid of. Because he might get interested in reading them again one day. There are about 25 boxes of the darn things.

I think the world is divided into hoarders and chuckers. As a chucker, my advice is, unless something is extremely special, if it hasn't been used, read, worn or listened to in the last year, get rid of it.

My husband used to play in a brass band, and when we were "courting", strange word nowadays, I`d save all my entrance tickets and programmes from the band`s concerts and contests, quite a lot of them, it continued until a few years after we were married, and they`re still at the back of a walk in cupboard in what`s known as "the big black bag", even though it`s now red! There are also birthday and Christmas cards in there, doubtless when we`re gone our off-spring will just chuck `em, but till then they`ll take up much needed storage space under the stairs.

Sounds like you are doing very well. You do have to be brutal . Perhaps put yourself in mind of the person who clears up your stuff when you die. {sorry to mention it.} They will either just chuck it in a skip or be in trouble knowing what to keep. So If in any doubt chuck it out.

PS I am the hoarder whilst DH is the opposite and I am convinced he slips things in the bin from time to time when I am not looking.

Am resolving to chuck some stuff every day...
Then there is the stuff belonging to other people - you know the ones. Fruit of ones womb. Those ones.
Just found a shoebox full of DS2's photos. He emigrated 8 years ago.
Photos of holidays in Greece and assorted stag nights. Have not seen these before.
All I can say is thank goodness there was no facebook then
But if you don't mind I will report for duty regularly here. Today:
have thrown away some dead pens, some business cards (other peoples) some language cassettes and some blindfolds I made for a training course.
Found a nice little paint box that used to belong to my mother. Will keep that.

During a declutter of my filing cabinet I found a bunch of news cuttings -about men in divorce cases.
Lawyers,Bob Geldorf and other Dads all reported that Dads come off worst after divorce and often lose contact with their children.
The date of these cuttings was 2002 ! So not much has changed there.
Any nice or nasty surprises in your decluttering?

gilly now that is a good idea!

Hi JessM When we moved house 2 years ago we moved from a large 4 bedroomed property with a garage to a much smaller 2 bedroomed house with no garage. Prior to moving we took on a storage unit and put everything into it that we did not need immediately. We then took our time and gradually emptied the unit of the things we no longer needed by selling on ebay, giving stuff away and taking the rest to the tip. Good luck.

JessM What about sending your collection of feminist science fiction (such an interesting concept) to auction?

When I was a teacher I used to have an agreement with my teaching assistant.
" If in doubt throw it out." Harsh but it worked and I never looked. "

I can offer you no advice whatsoever Jess - I find it so difficult to get rid of anything that has the slightest sentimental value, even when it's no use whatsoever and I haven't even looked at it for several years.....

I give a lot of things away on freecycle but books go to the special bookshop of our local hospice. I signed up so they can get gift aid on anything of mine they sell.

I have no idea how you persuade youself to throw stuff out though Jess if that is what you are looking for!

I never accumulate stuff. Every year I have a brutal throw out/disposal session. If it hasn't been used in a year I don't need it and off it goes to a new home either charity shop, freegle or, if totally useless, the dustbin. It hurts at first but gets easier each year.

So I would agree with pinkannie. Be ruthless.

If it's a collection of books, you could probably sell it for a good price.

I'd say be ruthless! The move before this one resulted in loads of 'stuff' that we didn't really want to get rid of being put in the loft. When we moved again ten years later we hadn't given most of it a thought so it all went - along with a lot more accumulated books and goodness knows what. It is so liberating! send it to the charity shop and then forget about it - get on with life!
Annie

I de-cluttered before the building work and ended up getting rid of things I really would have like to keep but needed to clear the area. I told myself I could buy new whatevers to replace them and of course over time I have managed without so didn't really need the objects anyway.

Oh Jess! We, if you remember, spent much of last year decluttering, in Kent and then here. We have a huge loft over the double garage here, and Theseus (and DGS1) has spent his new found energy putting up there all the stuff that we couldn't part with, but didn't want in the house. His line is "In 25 year's time someone else can deal with it." (With evil grin at DD)

I have some canvas, zip up wardrobes in the garage, and they are extremely useful. Full of things that I will probably never wear again but....

There's a smaller loft over the utility room, and that is full of pictures - what do you do with them?

I did manage to donate a load of books to the local libraries -the one in Kent even took by somewhat abstruse PhD texts.

But there is always, always, left over stuff.....