The pleasures of getting rid of 'stuff'

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m the type of person who has always tended to accumulate stuff. The tools for an old hobby linger long past my interest in the hobby, every book I ever bought (well, nearly) fill bookcases – there are eight just in my bedroom!), cooking gadgets that I bought on whim and found didn’t fit into my cooking routines cram my kitchen drawers and boxes stowed in the basement, seasonal decorations that I didn’t like well enough to put out even the second year…just stuff.

I have too much stuff.

And I’m getting on to the point that I vividly realize that some poor person will have to deal with it all someday and curse my memory. And probably wonder why the hell a woman who never drew a single picture or took an art class in her entire life owned at least three expensive never used sets of dozens of colored pencils each??? (Answer: look up ‘aspirational clutter.’)

I have in fact decluttered a ton of stuff in the past, but there’s always more stuff arriving. I’ve made grand plans to Kondo the entire damn house, and they’ve always petered out. But six months ago I started a new habit that actually seems to be working for me on a continuing basis. Just a baby step thing. Instead of tackling the problem in a grand manner, or coming up with a ‘logical plan’ like tackling the job for X minutes every week or clean out one particular area properly, I set myself a baby step goal of simply getting rid of five things every day.

That’s it. What the kind of things are doesn’t matter, if they’re donated or given to friends or tossed in the trash or sold doesn’t matter. I just don’t let myself go to bed unless I’ve gotten five of my things permanently out of the house.

Even what ‘a thing’ is doesn’t matter. If I’m low on ambition or time, well, five old magazines from the coffee table meet the quota. Or an item might be the complete set of china for eight I inherited but never liked or used. Often I just open a random drawer and pull out the first five things I see that I don’t really care about owning, you know, the souvenirs shoved in the back corner, reminders of some place or event you barely remember anyway?

So that’s roughly 900 things gone so far. It’s been pain and stress free, and even though there’s much to be dealt with still, it’s made quite a difference in how the house looks and lives. There aren’t stacks of books piled on top of my bookcases! Like, there’s room in some drawers! I can put away a sweater without having to cram it into the drawer. And needed items don’t hide themselves away from me in obscuring clutter nearly as often. And honestly, so far I’ve only regretted one thing I’ve disposed of.

I sometimes think about upping my quota, but why mess with success? All I have to do now is live a few more years and all my clutter will have gone away!

2

I kinda hate you. :blush:or my puny hoarder heart does

3

I think that’s wonderful.

I’ve been doing slow decluttering too. I have ADHD and one of my biggest pieces of advice for people with ADHD struggling with housework is to get rid of as much stuff as possible. It has helped me a lot. It now takes me less than five minutes to clean my bedroom.

The other piece of this is figuring out a lifestyle that reduces the amount of stuff you bring in on a regular basis. Because if you don’t change that part, you’ll be back to cluttered soon enough.

4

I remember a conversation with my father, which I did not understand at the time.

He and my mother had lived in the same house for about 20 years, and one day he said to me: I wish I could walk out of the door, close it, and not look back.

I was about 18 myself, we had lived there all my life and all the things I had grown up with were there; it was a constant in my life. I couldn’t imagine it not being there or what he was talking about.

As an older person, I get it. We accumulate junk. Most of it is not really valuable and is just ‘stuff’.
It is probably a good idea to move house at least once every 10 years to have a clear out.

5

Oh man, I love getting rid of stuff. The only rule is, it has to be recycled in some way, I can’t just put it in the trash.
My husband likes to keep stuff “just in case”, although he’s not up to hoarder status yet. Sometimes I look around at all his tools and wonder what I’ll do with it all if he dies first. Probably just tell people to take it for free.

6

My parents have lived in their house for 50 years now, it’s full. They’re new rule is “anything brought in to the house must be edible”.

7

I threw away newspapers.

Hey,:see_no_evil:

8

I like acquiring things but even more, I like moving things I don’t use out of my life. Buy Nothing groups on FB, craigslist, NextDoor, are all excellent vehicles for this. Since I draw, mend, quilt, write, garden, sing, decorate, have horses, goats, dogs, chickens, make cheese, and that’s just this year’s activities, I tend to have tools, materials, and books up the wazoo. Nevertheless I am always getting rid of stuff. Almost never to landfill unless it really is garbage.

My husband is the opposite. Strenuously avoids buying tools and materials unless he must, but will never throw away as much as a rusty nail. We have very separate work spaces for that reason. I must have everything tidy in order to work. He doesn’t ‘see’ chaos and clutter.

9

I know a guy, an accomplished artist who decided to sell the house and go rv’ing.

All his possessions he gave away, all of it, his art, fancy bicycles, tools, household goods books clothing all for free. No strings attached. For one weekend he had the use of an empty storefront near our local skid row area. You’d think it’d be a mad dash free for all but the “
shoppers” were deliberate in their
choices. He claimed he was the happiest he had ever been once he made up his mind to do it.

10

For me it’s “I wish I had a random house fire.”

11

I love that story!

12

My ex-wife was a major hoarder. We had appliances in the garage that hadn’t worked for 20 years. I wasn’t “allowed” to throw out anything (part of the reason she’s an ex-wife). When she was forced to finally downsize to a smaller home, the kids hired a large skip, took it to her house, and forbade her to be there while they sorted and tossed.

My present wife is on the lower end of hoarding, but does still get pretty anal about things. I really have no understanding of this affliction. It makes no sense to me whatsoever, other than in a vague, pollution sense. My mother was merciless when it came to keeping “stuff”, and I’m pretty much the same way. But it’s an uphill battle, I can tell you.

13

This is true, of course. Well, various health problems for me and hubby have cut down on travel and other ‘outside’ activities, so the in-flow has reduced itself naturally.

14

I lean that way, too, But I’ve found a couple unusual ways of ‘recycling’ over this.

First, I had a rock ‘collection’ since I was a child. Collection being far too grand a term for it, it was more like the ‘treasure’ box kids have, where they put ‘neat stuff’ they find. But it included all sorts of rocks and seashells I collected on various trips, plus some fossils and geodes and other souvenir/treasures I got, plus tons of polished random stones – I just loved their smoothness when I held them, you know? But, seriously, kid’s stuff that I should have outgrown decades ago, but couldn’t ever bring myself to trash. But there’s a stone fence along part of our yard. Not the neatly built squared off kind, the ransom tumbled rocks from when some farmer was turning this into a field and needed to put the rocks somewhere. Anyway, I took my collection out there one day and walked along, tucking my treasures into nooks and gaps, inconspicuous but not completely out of sight. It amuses me to imagine some future child coming across one of them at some future date and being all excited over the wonder he has found.

Anyway, adding rocks to a rock wall is recycling, yes?

And I met a woman who was an elementary school teacher, and eventually we got to her complaining about budget cuts and how the schools couldn’t really afford to supply the variety of art supplies they used to offer. I asked her if they’d have any use for big sets of colored pencils, oh, and opened packages of construction paper, and glue, and ribbons, and other artsy-craftsy stuff left over from projects? And she said they’d LOVE things like that. So for the next couple of weeks I concentrated on clearing out that kind of stuff and dropped about four grocery bags of such things on her. When I ran into her at another church meeting a month later she told me that all the teachers at the school had acted like it was Christmas, and virtually everything was claimed for various classes before a week was up!

So if any of you are looking for a way to recycle art/craft leftovers, give your local kindergarden/elementary school a try.

P.S. I used to be able to stick multiple replies in one message, but now that isn’t an option any longer?

15

I had to reform my lifelong hoarding ways when we sold the family house.
Most of my toys, books, and other items that were touchstones from my childhood, and that I used to love taking out of storage to gaze at, had to be given to the Salvation Army.
What really helped was taking photos of those things. That way I could still look at them anytime. But now I don’t even need or want to look at the photos.

16

I had some time at home during the last couple of months, so I decided to declutter and empty out my closet. It helps that I lost weight recently so many of the clothes in the closet were too large. So I made multiple trips to the local Goodwill donation site. I gave them many clothes (embarrassingly, some were literally new but never worn), some kitchen stuff (also some new, never used stuff), household stuff and electronics (some, while not new, may still have had value). I hope whoever went through it valued it properly and that they got as much money as possible out of it. I also took about thirty or forty pounds of old paper records to the shredder bin at the Staples store and threw out a bunch of other stuff. I still have way too much stuff but the closet has a lot more space and there’s actually some empty dresser drawers.

17

My wife is just nearing the end of getting rid of stuff for 2 major hobbies - violin making and Rev War re-enacting. It takes a major effort to decide you are not going to be participating in something you enjoyed for a long time (see “giving up something you love” thread), but once you do, and follow through by disgorging the associated stuff, it feels great.

One of our kids referred to us as engaging in “death cleaning”, but we prefer to think of it as “life cleaning.” In our early 60s, we want to be surrounded by the things we want to use and enjoy for the final couple of decades we have left.

We favor the Arts and Crafts saying, “Have nothing you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I keep telling my wife it is fortuitous that I meet BOTH criteria! Useful AS WELL AS ornamental! :smiley:

18

Seriously?! That’s amazing!!! Sounds like you are REALLY sticking to your new habit!

19

As I get older I’ve come to realize how good it feels to get rid of crap.

One of my first projects after retiring was to go through a four-drawer file cabinet and shred a very substantial amount of old bank statements, utility bills, etc., some dating back 10+ years. I shredded so much I began to fear for the health of my shredder.

Often, on garbage pick-up morning, I will wander the house in search of something that can be tossed in the trash or recycle bin.

mmm

20

That’s my gf’s attitude.

That’s me!

During COVID, when everyone was baking bread, I decided to get back into bread baking. I looked for my bread machine and couldn’t find it. Eventually my gf realized she’d donated it to a charity sale the previous year. Her intentions were good. When I moved in she had two bread makers and I had one. More than we needed. She apparently gave all three away.