I’m signing tonight for the sale of my condo and downsizing.
Now I’m freaking out because I am somewhat of a pack rat and I’m going from 1100 square foot to 800. There are so many things I’ll have to get rid of, it’s insane. And the place I’m looking at has a full wall of glass, which makes my storage space even smaller.
I think I feel like the people on Hoarders, on the verge of a panic attack at getting rid of stuff (including my over 1000 movie collection, it takes up a lot of space)!!!
OK, I’m going to go back to work now and try to breath and stay calm!
From one packrat to another, nothing like moving a few times to make you decide what’s really important to you. Besides, for about a hundred bucks, most of those movies’ll fit on a 2 TB drive. Good luck!
Fantastic! This is an outstanding opportunity to remove things from your life that are hold you down and sapping your energy and clarity of mind without your even realizing it.
The question to ask yourself as you sort through your stuff is “Is this something that is useful or beautiful to me?” Also, is it truly necessary or could you replace it easily if you found you really did need it? If it were to suddenly disappear, how long would it take you to notice? Would you ever remember it at all? Get rid of all the things that don’t pass the test.
I’m working on doing this in my own home, slowly at times but surely, and while getting rid of Stuff has been rewarding in itself, a great side effect is that it’s made me much more critical of bringing new Stuff into the house. I seem to be able to look at shiny things now and thing about the long term: where will it go? What function will it serve? When will it be discarded, and how much work will it mean for me until it gets to that point?
I don’t know if any of this is useful advice, because I’m assuming you already thought of it all
get a small storage unit for $10-20 a month to keep some leftover stuff.
As far as your DVD collection, just keep the DVDs and put the cases somewhere else (maybe in a storage unit or somewhere else). Or as recommended, converted them to MP4 or AVI and save them on a hard drive.
Use shelves, storage under the bed and various other methods.
How small a storage unit do you get for $10-$20 a month? The smallest “Self Storage” units around here go for about $80 a month.
For $10-$20, I think you could get maybe four or five of those plastic storage boxes like they use to haul mail around at the post office – if that’s what you mean by “storage unit”.
ETA: To the OP: But yeah, if you run out of time and the day comes when you need to move NOW NOW NOW and you aren’t ready, you could rent a self-storage unit for all your STUFF. Then work through it a box at a time at your leisure after you move.
Bonne chance. I’m in the same boat. I’m thinking of calling one of those Got Junk type dealers and asking for a dumpster or something.
(Still coming to Tulip Fest?)
I’m at a stage in life when I’m trying to divest myself of “stuff”. It certainly isn’t easy. I’ve also been volunteering at a Habitat For Humanity charity shop which is enjoyable but also sadly for me, not a wise place to be. Every day I see something which I must have.
So while I’ve been getting rid of “stuff” out the back door, I have also been bringing in new acquisitions through the front door.
However the central lesson I have learnt is that clearing away possessions is liberating and a positive move. So the process will continue and there is a certain sense of relief as the living space becomes uncluttered. Do not be afraid.
We’re doing a bit of the same thing in anticipation of having to move in a few months and knowing we’ll probably have to downsize in similar proportions. One thing that has helped us with this is thinking about how much we’ve used something and how much it’d cost to get it again if it became absolutely necessary to repurchase. You would be surprised at how much stuff a person can acquire that they don’t want or need per se-- we’ve got our DVDs in those CD/DVD binders you can get, and now that we’ve got e-readers and extra books stored on our computers, we’re much more comfortable with going paperless with most books.
I’ve got to go through our kitchen stuff and give away the extras, as we’re also realizing that, when we do have enough folks over to make it necessary to break out the stuff that doesn’t match, we’re usually using disposable plates, so it doesn’t really get used. Whatever we can’t give away to friends, we’re donating to charities that’ll take it.
BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed I hadn’t thought of that, it’s a great idea. I have to get a new laptop (as I stepped on mine… not a good thing:rolleyes:)
Senegoid I’ll probably have to look into a storage unit, hopefully I can find one relatively cheap and dry to store some stuff that I’m not ready to get rid of but I don’t really want it (since I don’t use them or decorate with them but they have a sentimental value).
Leaffan I will call Got Junk for whatever my friend (who bought the condo) doesn’t want and that I can’t take with me. I’ve dealt with them before, it’s a great service! And yes I still intend to show up for tulipfest, at worst you and I will get shitfaced if nobody else shows up
Mrs. nightfall1 and I go through the house about 3 times a year. Everything has to tell us why we should keep it. We started doing this when we had to clear our mothers houses to sell them. It’s quite liberating to give stuff away to friends or the Salvation Army.
I KNEW I was in the right frame of mind when I saw my HS yearbooks on the shelf and out they went. I hadn’t opened them in 25 years. The next week my wife said to get rid of hers too.
The older we get the less stuff we want. I buy books now and give them to friends when I’m done reading them. I had kept EVERY freaking book I read for 30 years. When we had to move them to paint the room was the day I thought it was time to get rid of them. We love having a clean, neat house now.
I’m preparing to move halfway across the country. Anything that won’t fit into my car is getting trashed. I’ve pared down to one carload of belongings several times in my life, and it’s a good thing. Although I do miss my saxophone.
Funny timing for me to be reading this post: I’m moving in four days, and was JUST looking at the bookcase in this room and thinking that I really don’t need all of my college and HS yearbooks anymore.
I’ll keep the college one from the year that I graduated (1993), and the HS one from the year before I graduated (1988; I loaned my 1989 yearbook to a friend almost 20 years ago and he immediately lost it), but I have no attachment to the others.
So I’m not quite ready to ditch all of them, but I’m about to go from 7 yearbooks down to 2.
It is amazingly liberating! Not that we’ve done the downsizing, but we’ve certainly gotten rid of stuff we don’t need any more.
Movies: as someone else said, put the DVDs themselves into a denser storage medium (e.g. CD envelopes in a box). Better yet: look through them long and hard and think if you will really ever want to watch such-and-such again.
Books: ditto. A Kindle or Nook takes up almost zero space. Keep only those books that are truly well-loved, are useful for quick reference (e.g. a dictionary), or otherwise tell you they need to remain in paper form.
If there’s anything you haven’t used in a year, GET RID OF IT. Obviously, unless it’s something that has very real sentimental value, or is an emergency supply, or something like that. For example you might not have used that fire extinguisher in a year or more but keep it, ditto great-grandma’s sterling flatware.
Hey, I am always up for a pint or two! I was going to bump our thread this week. I figured everyone would know their May plans by now! May 11th still good?
Anyway, I feel your moving pain. A storage space is an option … but you need to be brutal with the stuff in there once you get moved. Don’t plan on keeping it forever, just as a temporary measure until you get moved. Of course the one time I did that I was upsizing (and trying to sell a small, cluttered place is much harder than one with lots of “clean, open spaces”!) You need to set an “expiry date” for your storage and really stick with getting it empty by then.
Good Luck! Change is hard but great once it is done.
Instead of starting with the stuff you DO have, why not start with your new space and what you’d LIKE to fill it with? Then anything left over can be put in storage or you could assess whether it’s worth keeping.
When I moved 8 years ago from an apartment to a condo, I pitched my HS yearbooks in the apartment dumpster, only to find out that the weirdo on the first floor fished them out and took them. I wonder if he pretends he graduated from my high school? Creepy. I wish I had known about classmates dot com.
