Getting Rid of Stuff You Don't Use

It's an ongoing process here, too. Once realized there was no way to organize all the clutter and excess and have the house look decent, we started to get rid of things. It took a while for Husby to come around but he's been on board for several years now. We've purged almost every space in the house, garage, cabin, and camper now, at least once. Things are much better but we're far from done. We're approaching retirement now (we hope) and aren't sure if we're going to move or not. If we do, we will probably downsize to a smaller house. We need to go through every space again and see how much more stuff we can let go of.

I know the house will be a lot easier to keep clean and tidy if we can get rid of enough stuff, and that's become an incentive for me.

It's a process. This stuff didn't come into the house all at once and it's not going to leave that way, either. We've made enormous progress but it's a constant struggle to keep getting stuff out and not to bring too much stuff back in.

I think the first 10 years of my marriage we accumulated things, the next 10 years I spent organizing them and the next 10 years was trying to declutter. I am now trying to simplify my house, life and minimalize my belongs. I have been working on this for 2 years. It started with getting rid of a big entertainment center in my living room and continued from there. I will only buy small furniture now, things that DH and I can move easily as we get older. I hate having to ask for help or rely on other people.

We also are planning on downsizing when we move one day so I keep making rounds of my house and getting rid of things that I know I won't be moving with us. I do not touch DH's stuff though so there is a lot that he needs to work on although he is not motivated to do it. I keep warning him that he will be packing and moving all his crap himself! We live in a house that is 400 square feet bigger than our last house and I have at least 1/3 less things. DH has 2/3 MORE crap.

I think I have posted this before, but when DH became sick we sold the house and got rid of almost everything. We were doing the snowbird thing and staying in a furnished condo in the winter and found a furnished condo to rent in VT for the summer. All we had was what could fit in the van and some fabric that was stored at my sister's. I always thought it would bother me but it didn't, not one bit. All I wanted was for my DH to be well. (spoiler alert - he passed away) Things did not matter.

I had been a great one for "I might need this someday." My eyes were opened when a friend, older than me, was cleaning out her mom's house after she died, and told me, she had a room just full of jars. After that, when I wanted to save something, I would ask myself, is someone going to look at this after I am gone and ask, what was she thinking?

Also helps to ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen if I got rid of it.? In most cases it's not a very dire consequence.

Also helps to think of someone else enjoying your item. Why keep 12 purses if you can donate some and let other people enjoy them?

Now after 3 years of living in furnished places I am settled down and furnishing my own place. Almost done. For the first few months it was nerve wracking, like I kept thinking, what am I going to do with all this stuff when I go south? But I have gradually gotten used to the idea of stuff again, but I am very choosy about what comes into the house. I have a huge living room and it could easily become a hoarder's paradise. I realize I do NOT need to save everything in the universe that someone is throwing out, that might be useful someday. And I don't need to acquire something because it's pretty. Let it be pretty in someone else's house.

BTW, I am that rare person who DOES want the china - I am using my mom's set that has sat in my sister's barn since 1992 when my dad passed. And I have collected silver to go with it. I really enjoy using it and even my sister liked using it again when she came to visit.

I agree about getting rid of things a little at a time, DLR. That's why I feel it's all a big process.

I feel similar to almost everything you expressed, Josantoro. Especially about saving everything. I keep thinking about my mom complaining about how her one bedroom apartment isn't big enough for her and how she can't get it organized because there's not room for all her stuff, and then seeing the two-foot high stack of plastic deli containers cluttering up her kitchen counter, among many other similar things, stuff she will never, ever use that prevents her from using the counters for anything but holding junk. It will sit there for years until she moves out of that place, and then someone else will have to deal with it all. I don't want to be like you said, having people wonder what we were thinking to keep all that stuff. And I don't want to force someone else, even if it's someone hired to come in and hold an estate sale after we're gone, to have to sort through a ton of excess junk to get to the things that actually have value. I'll never forget Husby having to give up an entire day of his life breaking down cardboard boxes in Mom's old basement because she kept them all for the fifteen years she lived in that house. Even when it was time to leave that house, she was upset for days because 'someone could use those' and couldn't understand why we didn't have the time or energy or willingness to find that mythical someone who wanted a basement full of old boxes. We still have a ways to go purging our own place but we're getting there. I still want a smaller house if/when we move out of this place and I don't want to wait till it's time to move and then be forced to make choices without time to think things through.

I think the biggest thing that helped us get rid of so much stuff is to give ourselves permission to make mistakes. It's inevitable, and if we discover we got rid of something we should have kept, we replace it without any guilt. We can only do the best we can do, and also circumstances change and what we didn't need sometimes we need when something does change. There haven't been many things we've regretted letting go of. Most things, it's been a relief to have it gone.

The flip side of getting rid of things is not acquiring them in the first place. I'm getting better at that and most times I do okay. But with my latest large project, I've come close to falling off the wagon. I'm getting back under control now though. The original plan was to buy two new kitchen base cabinets to build a new craft table, which I really do need. But after some thought I realized I really hated having the two base cabinets we have in our back porch. The things that need to be in them don't fit. I'm making them into the new base now. They need some modification and repair, and they'll have to be painted too. But I won't have to spend hundreds of dollars on them, plus I get the space back they were taking up in the back porch. I've already moved a different storage cabinet into that space, another repurpose that cost nothing, and we'll give that a try before buying or building something new. I already like that better, which is a good sign. I have most of what I'll need to get the craft table the way I want it, which will use up some lumber in the garage and save money. If I don't have what I need, the plan is to change the plans a little to be able to use what we do have rather than buy new stuff. For a while I was thinking I need a bar stool to use with the craft table, but I have a step stool in the kitchen just steps away, so I'm going to see how it goes to just use that. Less stuff in the house.

I was also thinking about buying an antique sewing machine and cabinet, but decided to move one I already have and which is already rehabbed into the house from my office instead. Less stuff, and I'm not acquiring another project I don't have time for.

I'm happy to have thought about the things I can repurpose rather than buying more things. I'm fairly confident it's all going to work out well.