De-cluttering, the never-ending process

I only ever had the desired kitchen once, in my last house, then 3 years later I moved. I had lots of drawers and some shallow cupboards, so there was still work surface in front of them. The best and most expensive kitchen ever, in the whole of my life

I am making do now,as I know I will not be staying more than another 6 years. I am adding nothing else to this house. I already had wardrobes and cupboards built upstairs and plantation wooden shutters. All in all, it cost me £30k, to make this house my own.

Next house will be my last and then is when I will, maybe, splash the cash. In the meantime I have just given my 3 AC some cash to help pay down mortgages a bit. Better that (for me) than paying for a new kitchen. So I am coping with what was not built to be a cooks kitchen. I had to buy a freestanding large edington butchers block to give me more storage and a better work surface. That was a deliberate buy because I can take it with me or give it to an AC

Ours is a good kitchen, ergonomically well designed, partly upgraded but dated and deep drawers would be so much easier now.

Cabbie21 I feel for you. If I were you I would forget about the loft until you feel you have done as much as you can elsewhere. Then get one box at a time brought down and deal with it. when we emptied the loft we filled the garage with it all. Half of it is still in the garage, housing the local mouse population. every now and again I bring a box in and go through it. Most of it goes in the bin, but every now and again we find something we want.

I will have to forget about it until I get some family to help as I certainly cannot do it by myself. I am hoping to get anything saleable to go with the rest of the stuff which is waiting in the garage to be collected for general auction, but I won’t wait indefinitely. When I have got help they might as well bring down as much as possible. Meanwhile I need to sort out my own stuff to make a bit of space.
Just had some good news that the most recent auction sale raised around £2200 !

Yay! That's excellent, specially so close to Christmas.

Cabbie21 That's brilliant 🥳🥳🥳 What on earth did you send to auction ??? Does that make you feel a bit better about doing all the work? It would me 😁

That was certainly worth the effort Cabbie21!

All round to Cabbie’s for mince pies and ginger wine!

Not all mine, I’m afraid! It has gone into the estate account which will eventually be split three ways. I feel like taking my cut for all my hard work but it doesn’t work that way. There will be at least three more auctions to come so it will take a while.

The kitchen people are still here. I am really fed up with it all, and starting to get very stressed about Christmas.

Th decorator is doing her best to work around them, but it's not going well, and the cleaner is coming tomorrow, supposedly to help put the contents of the cupboards back, but obviously that can't happen.

I've just opened the new fridge, to find that it has an ice box, which I expressly said I didn't want, as I have a full-size upright freezer and a small one in the boot room, so it is fridge space I need, not a bloody ice box. I've emailed the project manager, but she won't be able to get a replacement fitted before Christmas, and obviously I need a fridge, so I don't know what will happen.

I put a lot of things in a dustbin that I intended going through to put as much stuff as possible in the brown bin but I’ve just put it all in the black bin. I’m quite chuffed with myself albeit still feeling guilty. I put very little in my black bin compared to most of my neighbours. I hope I can now do everything possible to go back to my zero waste policy and learn from the mistake I made with the flour.

My kitchen is finally finished, which is good news, but decluttering is now on hold until after Christmas. We did thin out a lot of things from the cupboards as we put them back, though. When the family leave I will start again with wardrobes, and aim for a bag a week to go out.
Are we all in for 2014?

My decluttering is as never ending as my diet. It dawned on me the other day that most of the stuff I don’t need any more is stuff that I now have on my iPad or tv. Many of the books on my bookshelf, necessary as they were at the time, are obsolete now.

Yes, it was counter-intuitive for me to get rid of reference books, as they are no longer necessary. I’d always seen them as things that would last forever, but the Internet can provide more up to date and relevant information these days, so I got rid of a lot.

Well, it is a new year, and the holidays are over. Who’s in for 2024?

I am starting the year with all the bedrooms neat and tidy, which is very different from how last year started. I do need to continue the rationalisation of the wardrobes though, as everything ended up so last-minute that there is not a system of any kind. The clothes are in there, but not in a meaningful fashion. I’d like to reduce the contents by another 30%, organise it better, and move everything onto slim hangers, as the large wooden ones take up so much space.

I also want to continue getting rid of cookbooks - I started at the end of the year, but the kitchen delays got in the way. I will organise a collection soon for the books, as having a deadline pushes me into action. When they are gone I will get rid of the bookcase, which will free up space in the boot room, another area in dire need of organisation. As I’ve said on another thread, in the summer I want to reorganise the bathroom to gain more storage there, and to modernise it a bit.

So, they are my goals for this year. If I can end the year with the boot room refloored, organised and painted, a new bathroom and organised wardrobes I will have done the whole house in three years, and will sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labours . That may be a bit ambitious, and if I carry some over to next year, so be it, but it’s good to have a specific aim in mind, I find.

Does anyone else want to post her goals for 2024? No pressure, no criticism, but lots of support to get through it as well as we can.

Whilst acknowledging that I will need some practical help to shift DH’s stuff, I have to accept that I am the only one who can get my house sorted. I can make the excuse in my mind that I am waiting for someone to collect something, but the bottom line is that I have to get to grips with the stuff.
I have already decided to get an auction house to come and clear the garage, so I need to move everything from elsewhere in the house that needs to be got rid of into the garage.
I need to decide which of my own stuff can go- I don’t think I am ready to be too brutal yet. It will be enough just to get tidy with everything put away for now and each area properly cleaned.

Another one here who plans to get to grips with decluttering. My main aims are the garage, loft and garden shed - in no particular order. A friend will put some things, free for collection, on FB Marketplace for me. Lawnmower anyone?
I’m still going through DH’s wardrobes, nearly 3 years on - time it went.

Ideas please?

DH had a large collection of zipped fleeces. Unfortunately they were all logo’ed - not heavily, but definitely branded. Most for a range of dogfood, others for his company.
I don’t feel they’re suitable for Charity Shops, but would welcome any suggestions. Should I just bin them?

I dont know what homeless charities accept nowadays.
Zipped fleeces are warm.

That’s what I was thinking fancy. I’ve a Salvation Army receptacle in a nearby carpark and wondered about bagging them up and dropping them in there. I’ve a load of similar sweatshirts to dispose of too.

Georgesgran I volunteer at a charity shop and clothes that are not considered saleable are recycled and collected regularly by a company for distribution abroad. We are usually inundated with donations after Christmas, and it’s sometimes difficult to find enough space. Maybe leave it a week or two before taking them. Alternatively, there are often large recycling bins for clothes, shoes, bags etc. We have a number in our local garden centre.

I still have guests.
Then I need to tidy up after, before I can restart the decluttering.

Also, this month and next, a grandchild is due, so will be going to stay there for a while.

Plus a relative is going to have an op, so may stay there for a while as well.

Hopefully they dont both happen at the same time.

Thanks Patsy.
Everything is perfect and clean, so I’ll drop it off at some point and let the shop decide what to do with it.

I'm in for 2024 too! Crafting and sewing stuff, I need to be realistic about what I am able to do, without feeling guilty about unfinished projects. I would rather someone else enjoyed the books and fabrics etc rather than me hanging on to so much of it 'just in case'.
Bought a new frying pan in the sales and got rid of two oldies strait away. One in two out, way to go!

The idea of "the next house will be my last" is quite hard to take on board.

We are about to try to sell our family house which our children and grandchildren have grown up knowing.

There were fourteen of us here at Christmas. We have enough space to put them all up and for many years have loved having friends and family to stay.

However we have to acknowledge that it is now getting to be too much.

We have looked at places with fewer rooms but find it difficult to imagine how we could cope with getting rid of so many things which have sentimental value.

Some friends our age (eighty-ish) recently downsized from a five bedroom house to a smaller four bedroom house but she has told me that she can imagine eventually moving again to something smaller.

The reason we have decided to try to move from our lovely home is that neither of us would want to live here alone - in a big house with a big garden in a very rural area, albeit with wonderful neighbours, but with no public transport.

We do need to move to somewhere that one of us could live in alone but that means getting rid of so many of the treasured possessions acquired over almost sixty years together.

I am annoyed at myself because I have never thought of myself as materialistic, but somehow I seem to have become emotionally attached to a lot of material things.

How can I let go?