Not quite a horder - decluttering
Comments
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Glennie- I agree with Divine that you should find a place for it. Having a hard time parting with something means it should stay with you. I also like Divine's idea of just putting it on a spare bed or in a little corner somewhere.
By the way, I have my Barbie dolls from when I was young. Came across them when we cleaned out the house awhile back also. I know they may be worth something and been told by people to EBay them, but I don't want to. They remain with me.
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I guess I just have the mindset of de-cluttering things I don't use. Right now she is sitting on a chair (that I need to reupholster one day) and hanging out in the living room ! Thanks for the advice!
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jazzy - how in the world have you found a consignment store that will take all these kitchen & china items? Everyone tells me my Lenox dishes with the gold rim are not worth trying to sell since millennials want to toss everything in the dishwasher. It's the same story with the silver plate bowls & pitchers. Of course they'll take sterling, but I can sell that for the value of the metal when I'm ready.
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Minustwo- I don't take any china, crystal or silver to these places for all the reasons you say. The things of my moms I am taking are more serving platters, bowls, plates and things. Glass and stone wear things. Sometimes they don't want them either, but often if they are things that can be put in the dishwasher and work into the modern times, they will take them. Before I take anything to consignment stores (home or clothing), I visit them first to get a sense of the types of things they do have there so I won't bring things they don't like. They have taken most everything in the past, just sent away a few items they say will not sell in their shop.
Some antique stores will take the crystal, china or silver but very few. I have some of those dishes of my great grandmothers with the gold trim I still have in boxes. I need to get in to those this week and decide what to do with those one way or another. They have been boxed since 2005 and take up a lot of room I need out in the garage for storage.
The challenge in this consignment store is to not spend all the money I make there. They have LOVELY things!
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More work today on purging things from my mothers home that I took 12 years ago. After going through the cabinets a few weeks ago, I decided to tackle a couple large boxes I still had stored apart to examine the items inside so I could make some final decisions on what to keep and what to finally let go of. Lots of glass pieces, misc. pieces of old china (maybe my great grandmothers?), some silver, etc. What I found is that a lot of it is incomplete or things missing (saucers without cups, etc.) So I put aside some of the nicer things and things that brought back some nice memories (or that I will still use) and everything is going back in the boxes to drop off at the thrift store I found last week. That store I discovered just seemed like the right place to take these things (saw many similar type things there) and they were very nice there and grateful for the donations. By doing this, I cleared out a whole shelf and a half in my garage that I will now have space to store other things I do need here.
We know old things have memories and going through the boxes today brought back nice memories of the way my mother always made such an effort to have a lovely table for holiday meals, parties, and special events. The part that was the not good memory was just the whole ordeal of having to go through a house she and my father lived in for 50 plus years and trying to decide relatively quickly what to take or let go of. That was one of the hardest things I ever have done (including the fact I lived 2000 miles away from my childhood home). Not staring at those moving boxes and that reminder of that really difficult time is the thing I really won't miss.
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Oh wow, Jazzy, you have made some good progress through that stuff. I'm glad you had fond memories as you went along. Speaking of which, it is nice to move along and really, it is necessary. Holding onto items from the past do not bring those times back. I am glad the moving boxes have been cleared. It seems like that allows you to move forward.
I do find that time helps loosen the emotional hold I have on some things. So if I am torn, I just keep whatever it is. I have plenty of space to store stuff, I just don't want to pass everything to my son when dh and I are gone and he ends up with all those moving boxes filled with emotional strongholds from the past!
Today I went through some photos. I am taking the ones in albums out and putting them in the photo boxes I already have. Much easier to store and takes up less space. Throwing out many scenery pics, blurry ones, ect. I even divvied up the pictures of my son into three boxes, one up to 2nd grade, then to high school, and then beyond. They get less as we went into the digital age. No order in the boxes, doesn't need it, but now I can more easily find what I am looking for. I also pulled out photos of my mother in law and put them in their own envelope because she is almost 89 and you never know........
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the ultimate challenge in de-cluttering is coming! If all goes well,, I'm buying a small house! It is smaller than my current townhome, so there will definitely need to be de-cluttering happening. Fewer closets, and smaller too. But I am excited to have a fenced in yard for the dog! Gotta reread Marie Kondo's book and remind myself of how to keep what I love.
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Sounds pretty exciting, glennie!
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Thanks Teka! I also like the one "when you have lost something, start cleaning....."
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I think I'm going the wrong direction. I brought home a foster cat who is ensconced in my tiny study/painting room. Tonight trying to go in without letting him out, I knocked a couple of things off my desk. One was a very pretty glass vase that leaks. I kept it because the glass was pretty. Now I'm thinking, why am I keeping a leaky vase because it's pretty. I have other vases which are not leaky and also pretty. I think a lot of my stuff could go to Goodwill and I would never miss it.
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Mission accomplished ladies. Old bike has been traded in and got $150 in credit toward this new bike!
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Good looking bike!
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Wren- thanks! Also, I have the same thoughts about keeping cracked stuff. I found a bunch of cracked things when I went through my moms stuff. It is good to let go of broken things......
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Well I started small but it's mushroomed. All I wanted to do was copy numbers into a new address book. The old one that lives in the drawer by my old land line phone is virtually illegible after 20 years & lots of changes. But that led to finding business cards from the last 50 years - which were in three different rooms depending on their original origin. Now 90% are in the trash. In the mean time, I found coin wrappers in three different rooms. So I dumped out the 'junk' drawer. That led to the desk, which had some duplicate stuff. The junk drawer contained such interesting things as: a roller skate key from 1950 - metal for the skates that you tightened on to your saddle shoes; match books from restaurants I really want to re-visit from Washington, DC to Hawaii (yes i googled & many are now closed); a gold crown; a 2BG flash drive - never opened; a collection of small rocks from Colorado in 1978;...well I could go on, but you get the idea. And this does not even cover all the articles & tips that I have clipped from newspapers & magazines - REALLY important stuff ladies!!! Ninety percent is gone. I'm down to 3 cups full of pens (who knows how many work). Then the top desk drawer with more pens & a batch of rubber bands that will probably snap when I try to use them.
Just little things, but LOTS of them. I started at 8am and it's now 5pm, with only time out for a quick sandwich. Maybe this will encourage me to start on some of the serious stacks of papers that have accumulated since my BC diagnosis in 2008.
This was a lovely break just whining. Back to the pens & rubber bands.
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I am trying to clean off my desk. I got a foster cat, supposedly a hospice case, and the window is prime territory. If I can get the desk cleaned off I can use it for art and let the *#&*%^ cats have the window. Of course, the desk is where everything gets dropped when it enters my room. We picked up the foster a little over a week ago and things are still being worked out about who is boss. My cat is jealous and I think the foster will try to dominate him, so we're trying to keep special things for him.
I'm with you on pens and rubber bands. Not to mention enough paper clips to start a store. At one point I made lists in little notebooks and I have dozens of them, both used and empty. I'm starting to think DS is right. He says if we die, he will come and get the photos, dropping a match on his way out.
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This got started because I walked around the corner Saturday to a garage sale at a neighbors. The two grown daughters were trying to clean out the house after their Mom died in January. I did a rough count - there were 53 NEW notebooks in all different sizes. I bought two rolls of Christmas wrapping paper for $0.50 - but that was all. THis was their 2nd weekend to hold a sale. The younger daughter says they didn't even begin to clear out much, but they have to go back to their own homes out of town. The husband/father won't do one thing after the girls leave.
Yup Wren - I'm thinking the match might work.
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Your clearing of clutter is inspiring, MinusTwo. Speaking of Christmas wrap, I have a long skinny room where I store mine, with gift bags, ribbon , ect. It is in order, but I must practice restraint in not buying any more. For probably at least two years. I see pretty little bags and wrap on sale after Christmas and think, oh, its just a dollar or two. But I truly have plenty, and must stop adding to the collection.
Wrenn, good luck with the kitty situation. We have an outdoor cat, lovely little thing, who's in and out of the house during winter. She and my indoor cat tolerate each other as long as they avoid each other!
My town has a city wide garage sale in May. It is the weekend before clean up week when the sanitation dept will take anything you put out for trash pick up. Its been years since I had a garage sale, but I will do it this year one last time. I have enough piddly stuff and the city advertises the list of people in town who choose to participate, so its a good time to do it. At Christmas, I boxed up all Christmas decor I no longer used and will set that out at the g.s. A box of picture frames, 25 cents each. A wooden glider and bench. Sell, sell, sell.
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Good afternoon friends- finally took the two big boxes with the residual mother things to the thrift shop. Whew, that was a big deal to let go of. I love this thrift store and found a couple things for my gardens this last visit. Free at last!
Going to consignment this week to drop off spring clothes. The purge continues.....
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Jazzy - you continue to amaze me. I wish I could be so strong with all my parents & grandparents things. Sigh. Well my son has no emotional ties so it will be easy for him to toss everything.
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Hi - mind if I join in? I'm in something of a 'clutter sandwich' in that not only have I started thinking about paring down our household but now I'm tasked with emptying my late father's home. The latter chore is entirely up to my spouse and I - my sister lives too far away and my brothers are useless.
We're donating a lot of the furniture and household goods to a community warehouse. However, there are still a lot of family heirlooms, his papers (some of which are pretty historically interesting), books and sentimental items, as well as works of art the family collected. It's hard to let some of these items go and some really shouldn't - but I don't want to fill my home with family items, either. And then there's my attachment to some of the furniture that's very nice but we simply have no place for.
I guess I'm not so much looking for solutions or advice (although those are welcome) but mostly support as I struggle with this. At this point I just want it done so that I can have my weekends back AND avoid the emotional turmoil this project creates. Thanks for anything!
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Jazzy, you do a good job with continuing to tackle your stuff and send it on its way.
MinusTwo, your son may not feel anything now, but when you are gone and he realizes your things are all he has left of you, he may feel some twinges in letting the stuff go.
Hopeful, may I ask when your father passed? In the late 90s, within four years, my grandmother, an aunt, my mother and father passed. They each had a home filled with stuff (mom had an apt.) that I and my six siblings had to deal with. With their passing, that generation of our family was gone.
I don't think it is possible to avoid the emotional turmoil part, so try to work thru it. If you have things you have mixed feelings about parting with and you have room to store them tucked away for awhile in your home, that's what I'd do. Some things get easier to part with after some time has passed. Smaller pieces of furniture and art work might easily store. I also brought home numerous large black trash bags of my aunt's papers. She was a mild hoarder with that stuff, and mixed in with stuff like her paid electric bills and old birthday cards were some treasured photos and a few other family things that are dear to me. So I sorted thru them at my house a little at a time, sometimes as I watched tv.
Give yourself the time and space to deal with your dad's things and his departing. Many hugs to you. You will eventually get thru it all and move forward, but it is okay to take the necessary time to address your father's belongings. Sometimes society makes it seem like we should be doing more important things but this is important to you on a personal level as it should be,
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A cousin contacted me today about wanting to pass along a family heirloom. She had mentioned it to me before and offered it to another cousin, but he is unable to retrieve it. She is getting ready to downsize and asked me again and said I have no room (and have too much of my own family items at this point), but directed her to other family members and also our home town historical society who I know would love it.
I wanted to suggest that to any of you who may have older antiques that family members have indicated they are not interested in and when selling them does not feel right. If you live in a place with more history (my historical society is in CT), it is worth checking to see if they may want your items for any rooms they may have. My hometown was settled in the 1600s during some of the very earliest colonial days. I may donate some of mine to them as well some day (but live far away so not sure about getting them back there.....)
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MrsM - great post for Hopeful.
Oh I expect my son might want a few of my things, but he's made it very clear that they don't want 'stuff'. He lived on a boat for several years and got out of the habit of having "things" around. They don't even really want me to send Christmas presents anymore. And they're not having children, so there's no sentimental reason to pass the 'stuff' along. That said, he got a number of family things from my brother's house and my parent's when they died. It was easier to give it to him then than to ship the stuff to TX and then back to CA (where he lives). And I don't see him enough to mourn the fact that many of those things has long since gone away.
Hopeful - I was stuck as the only one who would sort my folks stuff, which included a lot of their folks stuff because they had folded it into their big house in CA many years ago. I was also the only one who went to deal with my brother's house & stuff when he died in Hawaii. Those were both challenges that couldn't be tackled on the weekends since I live in TX. I don't even remember how I managed it since I was working full time. My DS mentioned above helped quite a bit or I could never have let stuff go.
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Jazzy - sorry, we were cross posting. But that's a great idea. I donated most of my parents books to their local library.
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I also had things that my two daughters had no interest in. But now that one daughter is getting married in her early thirties, the sterling silver and good dishes that I have from my sister and mother are of great interest. I am glad I did not dispose of them and told my daughter that when she is settled, I will let her pick the china she wants and send her my sister's set of sterling silver cutlery and waterford crystal. The lesson here is to hold onto a few of the things that may become sentimental at a different stage in your child's life.
But don't worry--I still have a zillion things to de clutter....I take a bag of books to a thrift shop every week (that is my goal because I have too many books)....so at least one bag must go out every week.....and there is a thrift shop not that far from my house that has a book room where they sell gentled used books to needy people for next to nothing (25 cents per book) and any proceeds go to the thrift shop which provides jobs for newly released from prison workers. So get to help twice.
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Mandy, how nice that some of the things passed on to you will now be used by your daughter. I agree about holding on to a few things just in case......
I only have one child, and as he grew up, it was hard to get rid of the things he grew out of. I tucked a lot of stuff into several unused rooms over the years. I finally pared some of these things down when he was about 18, with my goal being to store only what would fit in one room. It was easier at this time to toss out the Halloween costumes I'd made him when he was little, and downsize all the books I'd to read him and just keep the really special ones.
One beneift was the two other rooms I emptied (one very tiny) became one large room when we knocked out the wall between them, and dh has a nice exercise room that he uses all the time.
Every couple years, I sort of reanalyze what is stored and find i can let go of a few more things, like an old desk of ds that wasn't in good shape but I could not bear to part with before. And a skinny old pantry that's been sitting unused for almost 10 years will get repurposed this spring when I paint it for the music room to store dh's odds and ends. And I plan to go thru the books again and get rid of a few more.
Will have a garage sale in May.
What was nice is my son needed his ski pants this weekend, hasn't used them in four years, and I knew right where they were because of the ongoing decluttering I've done.
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MrsM - what is even nicer is that the ski pants still fit him.
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When my parents died, we took things we wanted for sentimental reasons or could use and had an auction for the rest. The auctioneer said not to throw away anything because we would be surprised at what people will buy. None of the family members lived in the same town, so that worked best for us.
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I've finally got my photos organized. They used to be all over the house. I divided the photos, putting all the ones with ds from newborn up to 2nd grade in a photo box. It is filled. The next box has ds from 2nd grade to present (college grad). Less photos printed as digital came about, tho I still print some. The box also has miscellaneous photos of others. The third box is all archival such as me and dh when we were little, our parents, grandparents, ect. I also took all pictures out of about 8 albums, tossing the albums, (sparing only two that had been nicely assembled) and added those pictures to the appropriate box. So much easier to store.
Along the way, I pulled out many pictures of dh from over our marriage and made a box that sort of chronologically told the story of our almost 28 years together. At least 500 pics, all in one box. I gave it to him for his birthday. Pulled out about 100 pictures of my niece who is 15, made her an album for her birthday. Another 100 pics of my grown stepson, putting them in an album for him as well.
Did this over many months, a little at a tme. It feels great to have it done. Ridiculous that I took so many pictures but nice, too.
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Camille, thank you for your very, very thoughtful and helpful post. I can't begin to tell you how much it means.
My dad died last year but we've been using his home as overflow for some family visits and deciding whether we wanted to use it as a rental or sell it, whether to have an estate sale, etc. Now we have a buyer AND, even without that, I simply want the weight (and sorrow) of this lifted from my life. Because there are items that will go as gifts to far-flung family and some that will go to (distant) historical societies, etc., I've come to the conclusion that, much as I hate to, we'll simply have to move some of it into our home, where at least I can whittle away at it on site, rather than making a trip to a storage unit or his house or whatever. I'm not happy, though, at adding stuff to our home. A lot of it falls into the "it should stay in the family but I don't have space for it" category and, since theoretically DH and I do have space, it falls on us. It makes me wish we had a handful of offspring to share it with - or at least a vacation home in which to use it!
Your approach of chipping away at things, making multiple passes through your son's belongings, etc., is, I think, much more feasible (and comfortable) than going full-speed ahead and trying to do it all in one go. I think that's where a lot of organizers (and their books) fall short - most of us just aren't wired to be comfortable doing that.
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