We will be moving in July but....

OH went to Oxford 50 years ago. In the loft is a trunk containing his text books and essays. He hasn’t looked at them since we bought our first house in the 1970s. That trunk is taken from loft to loft every time we have moved. He can’t get in the loft anymore because of his health issues! Madness.

Get some popcorn and watch the Marie Kondo videos with him, she has helped a lot of people declutter.

This is a tricky one! Unless you are downsizing, just let your husband keep his stuff. I do understand it’s frustrating, but it’s his home too!

Ladyleftfieldlover, perhaps someone could get up into the loft and bring down some of your husband’s essays for him to reread and enjoy all over again?

A trunk of books and old notes is nothing we still have those and the gowns.
We took a real skeleton with a skull around from house to house, some poor chap from India. What brought it to an end was on a big move the removal men said my two-year-old had a handful of something peculiar.
She had found the box from the loft with the skull and removed all the loose teeth and she was playing with them while I was busy.
It was finally donated to somewhere that would use it.
These days it is unethical and plastic ones are used thank goodness.

Of course it is his home too ! More than happy to keep his Grandmothers paintings she was a very good amateur artist , old photos and things which I feel the next generations would appreciate but ephemera of lost youth I find bloody annoying !

Can’t bear to hear if all this . What is supposed up happen to all this “stuff” when you die ? Do you have children who will have to deal with it ? So much can be digitised ie just photo sentimental cards etc. Decluttering is so much healthier

Will he have a space in your new home just for him? If so, then it all goes there. If not, rent a storage unit? I am ruthless when it comes to clutter. You could get rid of things in small doses until he notices! Does he look at or use all his stuff? If so, you're screwed. If not, gradually throw out. Blame the moving company if he goes looking for it!

I'm totally with Lucca on this. After many years of widowhood and never having visited the loft, I asked son2 to go up there and dispose of everything whilst I went on a short trip. I knew I might want to keep certain items once I saw them strictly on emotional merit. Such nonsense. My husband had been an awful hoarder. Over all these years I've only ever wanted two items. One I replaced and the other was gone. Not bad out of hundreds of items. I'm still trying to live a degree of a minimalist existence as I had the pain of emptying my lovely Mum's home. The horror still lives with me and I'm trying to reduce that experience for my children.

If you new home is smaller then agree some ' personal stuff space' for each of you. If he can get his stuff in it then that's OK.. if not he has choices to make!

It’s just beyond me. ? why, just why ?

Well, thank you lovely ladies ! Good to know I am not being a horrible person, simply practical in my view.
I hate the idea of my son having to trawl through boxes and boxes of stuff once
we die. Neither pleasant nor informative for the most part I feel.
Have already been through "my" stuff with my son and agreed on things he would like to keep. Simples !

Oh, another hoarder here. Not me - DH. Can't bear to throw anything out. I go through my stuff all the time so the children don't have to do it. My lovely mum left just a small folder labelled 'Memories' which contained a very small selection of letters and drawings by the grandchildren. Unfortunately DF was a hoarder like DH, so lots of sorting to do there. Really not fair on the next generation.

Have you heard of scrap booking? Why not sort through then things he is most attached to and then put them into a scrap book then ditch the rest.

Don't think a pair of skis circa 1980 would fit in a scrapbook somehow !!

My SiL and I have spent the last 6 weeks clearing my mother's smallish flat. She was tidy, so we weren't aware of how much stuff she had. It was jam packed.

It made the job so much harder. Having to clear out stuff that all had a lot of sentimental value. Having to make heartbreaking choices about what we'd have room to keep, what could go to charity, and the worst of all, having to throw things with huge sentimental value away

I'm getting rid of most of mine. I don't want anyone to have to do it for me when they're grieving.

I’m a hoarder by nature but have had to learn to let go. I can’t bear clutter, despite being a hoarder! Books are my biggest failing.

I tend to tidy as I go, and don't have much in the way of letters, etc. When my dear Mum died, unexpectedly, my DD and I had the task of clearing her house and it was heart-rending. She had letters from her youth, love letters, diaries, you name it - and we won't mention the bits and bobs made by her grandchildren. Going through it all was sad and yet joyful, but my DD has made me promise not to make her do the same job when my day comes!

When we cleared my mum's flat, amongst other thinks we found knitting wool that she had bought to knit our son some matinee jackets. He was 25 when she died!

I’m definitely not a hoarder, dp keeps everything and I mean everything from tickets he’s taken off clothes! Every letter is dated on the envelope. He’s got a pair of bike leathers hung up in the garage that he can’t even get on(not for the want of trying) there 40 old yrs old and hanging.
The amount of arguments we’ve had about hoarding.
When his df passed his garage was literally full of things from years back. It took 3 skips ! To empty it. Tools carpet magazines
I told him there is No way I am going through his bags of things there all going in a skip. I think it’s unfair for the person to be burdened with sorting it all out. It’s not necessary

I’m a hoarder, DH is minimalist (except for his walking/climbing gear (who needs 5 x 1-man tents?), tools/woodworking equip & trainset (latter 2 confined to the garage)
Like Kim, I have to just disappear when we agree to clear a room (he started 2 of our unused bedrooms yesterday) as I’d want to keep 75% of what we’ve got - & I can’t even remember what is in half our cupboards until I look!!!
Clearing my mums house last year was a nightmare & mine will be worse for our DS if I don’t get a grip soon!
I’m now going to take a baby step & choose a dining room cupboard to clear ……..

Seems it is the men that are the main culprits here ! Sorry Helen.
I simply do not understand how anyone would think it is OK to leave those grieving , or not, as the case maybe to have to add yet another burden on the family. Bad enough the bureaucracy following a death - who needs more angst .

When I was first married, we moved house five times in eight years and had a policy that anything that was still unused in a box from the previous house move, was thrown away and did not go to the new house. That system worked very well to reduce clutter. The loft space was mainly full of the empty boxes and packing material from appliances which were needed for the next house move!

I now live in a dormer bungalow with no usable roof space so have to be pretty ruthless about what to keep. My craft room has the most clutter as I like to dabble in lots of different crafts so end up with all kinds of things!

I’ve been decluttering our house since earlier this year and have disposed of a mountain of stuff to charity shops, recycling and paper-shredding.

It was a huge task as we’ve been here for 25 years but I discovered a mantra that works for me. It began with going through my books, when I stopped asking myself whether I wanted to keep each one or not. Instead, I asked myself whether I would ever get around to reading/looking at it. If the answer was no, out it went.

We probably got rid of hundreds of books and I haven’t yet missed a single one of them.

I then applied the same rule to everything else. Would I use/read/look at or otherwise enjoy an item? If it didn’t fulfill any of those things - bye bye! For photos, I rejected all the out-of-focus snaps of nameless mountains or beaches or flowers beds etc. I even had pictures of people I don’t know! When I had similar photos of family and friends I chose the best and dumped the rest.

Dh eventually took on board my process and applied it to his possessions, too. He’s not as ruthless as me but an awful lot of pointless paperwork has gone. We had seven boxes of unfurled paperwork and reduced that to one and half boxes. Much more manageable.

It feels as though a burden has been lifted but it’s also been fun in a way, when old memories have come back.