Help me to throw out...

I`m not really a hoarder, but save carrier bags to use as bin liners, also for lining the cat`s litter tray, that takes 2 of them. I save small to medium sized cardboard boxes for books to go to the charity shop, and plastic parcel wrapping is saved to be used again as parcel wrapping. Hubby, a retired engineering toolmaker, hoards tools, we have LOADS of them in the garage that will never be used again, but he won`t be parted from them. A few months ago I persuaded him to wring a scrap metal dealer who took 8 old car batteries off our hands, I mean, WHY does anyone hang on to 8 useless old batteries?

Age UK would welcome wool donations. They are always knitting, especially the little hats for Smoothie Bottles! Charity shops might appreciate carrier bags too??

Anya, I so feel your pain over the wool, I love cross stitch but have seventeen unfinished pieces in their own boxes because I may finish them one day, if my eye sight improves , if I change from not liking them to liking them and if I ever get the hang of back stitching , which I very much doubt

appygran that's a good idea re the toilet roll inners - must start saving them!

Left over balls of wool! Anya don't bin them, send them to the charity shop. Someone will buy them to knit squares. (But not me because I have three large boxes and one large bag full and I bought more this morning. Why?)

DH culled most of my small cardboard boxes then I couldn't find one to post some things off to DGS.
Polythene bags go into an Ikea thingy on the back of a cupboard door.
Receipts were gone through and most shredded recently.
What kind of plastic boxes do you mean? Old icecream tubs or good Tupperware boxes? Some of my Tupperware is nearly 50 years old!! I don't use it but I can't won't get rid of it.

The rest of the house is overflowing with, well, everything else

Dvds are great bird scares ............... mmmmmm am I just justifying all the hoarding ?

Single bed sheets make great play tents/dens , drape over the clothes line . Bit of posterpaint and a great Happy birthday / anniversary /welcome home banner . Local dogs home will take them

Anyone else have a large bin bag full of cardboard inserts from toilet rolls. DH saves them to use for planting sweet pea and runner bean seeds. Not sure just how many he intends to plant.

I am not good at this!
single sheets - my first reaction was nooooooo. My second was, now hang on, may be? Though I couldnt tell you for what!
DVDs - first reaction, no, they are easily replaceable, and you didnt like them. Second immediate reaction, perhaps they are not replaceable?
3 printers - no idea
cables - no idea!

Ask some other gransnetters. I am rubbish!

I'm not a hoarder of anything but I have been keeping some clothes that are too big for me because they were nearly new. this week I have tried them all on and having seen that they are too floppy have popped them all in the Sally Ann bag which came this week.

I want to declutter, really want to, have even made a list, will the cables in the cable drawer from computers long gone really come in useful one day? will I watch again the DVD's I didn't enjoy the first time I watched, do I need single bed sheets when I haven't a single bed , do I need three printers? And so it goes on,

Here in mid Essex the Council provide every home with containers for reclycling paper, cardboard, tins, bottles, tinfoil and plastic and collect every two weeks so there is no excuse for hoarding. We are a two person household but have two large bags of plastic every two weeks.

My great grandson loves bubblewrap which makes very satisfying POPs when he jumps on it so I save that. I also save those bags you put wine in when you receive one for a present and re-use them.

Apart from this I am not a hoarder by nature though DH is. We used to move around a lot in the early years of our marriage and I soon learned to be ruthless about throwing things out regularly.

I dont think that household stuff in general is as useful as it used to be. Partly because replacements, if needed, can be bought so cheaply.
My daughter got married recently. Their house was empty when they started. It took no time at all to be given some larger items that other people no longer needed, be given some wedding presents, use the cash that some people gave instead of presents to buy the small stuff they didnt have, and all of a sudden, to have a fully functioning house.

SIL is an awful hoarder, I have to hide things I am putting out to the rubbish in case he sees them. DD going mad, in their store room there are 7 printers, some not working and most very old, he keeps them, 'just in case', in case of what for goodness sake.

Yes Anno the Blue Cross, when I used to volunteer, does take odds and ends of wool. Now I just have to convince myself I'll NEVER knit those dolls clothes.

Plastic bags I use as bin liners- they are so thin nowadays they barely do that job.

Carboard boxes are stripped of sellotape, folded and placed in the recycling bin. Tubs are washed if they can be recycled if notm put in the bin for rubbish.

I'm terrible for hoarding make-up and have loads of old stuff that I can't bear to throw out. Half used tubes of foundation, used lipsticks, old blushers etc. What I would really like to do is throw the whole lot away and start again with just a few posh selective products. Chance would be a fine thing.

I don't think there is an actual law MiniMouse but there should be. It would make things so much easier.

I did get rid of loads of old shoes when we moved house a couple of years back. I now notice that the shops are full of those flat brogue styles very similar to a couple of pairs I got rid of.

Note to self: Keep all shoes and clothes for at least 30 years as they will no doubt come back into fashion. although I might not be around to see it

Charity shops will often take oddments of wool/yarn. It's worth asking. I have taken a lot of duplicate knitting needles to one of ours.

I dont knit. Go dispose Anya?!

Thanks gillybob

A collection of cables that I can't remember what they're for and probably don't even have the device anymore.

I too have a jiffy bag collection soontobe and an over flowing plastic bag holder and a stack of tubs and various sized pieces of bubble wrap and........

Left over balls of wool!

Here we can recycle plastic shopping bags , it does feel more virtuous than storing them

Oh, this is such a reassuring thread! I thought it was just me . I learned a valuable lesson when I cleared out my Aunt and Uncle's flat. I could not believe how many black sacks I filled with 'stuff'. The entire bottom of one wardrobe was filled with carrier bags. There were receipts for things that were donkeys years old and they no longer even had the items they related to. Leaflets, thousands of them, for things they were never going to buy, enough shoes to keep half the planet shod . . . I swore that I would never go down that route I, too, come from a long line of 'make-do-and-menders' and find it so difficult to part with anything that might come in useful. I even used to wash used plastic food bags and re-use them , but I gave that up years ago.

The hardest thing for me is actually deciding what really will be useful - how long do you have to keep something before you decide that it can go? Is there a law for this?