I am trying desperately to clear out loads of, well, shit. I am becoming a hoarder, mostly as I am scared of just throwing things out. So, I put things in piles to do things with them. For the last two days, I have determined to be ruthless and stop pretending for example I am going to ebay some clothes for the sake of possibly £20, as I am never actually going to do it (not time), so I have bagged up all the clothes, materials etc that keep getting circulated again again into the washing piles - 7 bin bags full! - it's going to the local place that buys clothing by weight, and I have two boxes of clothes to go to a friend as it's in good condition (the other stuff is all old and tatty).
But. I also have 2 boxes of clothes that I worry about throwing out - clothes that mean something to me, from when I was young, from when the children were young. I also have a box of material from my wedding, it's not fab, got mucky, but it has lovely memories, except, when I look at them, I just feel anxious about getting rid of them, which I think I need to do, rather than look at them wistfully.
Then, I also have piles of paperwork. I am getting better at chucking most of the irrelevant stuff out, but I get stressed about things like chucking out old colouring books with a few pages still able to be coloured in, sticker books that are scruffy and old but have a few stickers in still, and, the worst possible culprit is:
what do I do with all their drawings, the ones that are a bit crap, but their very first 'person' or 'dog' or 'letter', I get actual panicky at the prospect of throwing any of them away. I have a memory box (or few) for the children and for me, and try to be selective, and then go through them every now and again and revise my decisions, but I still have lots of exercise books and doodle books filled with some lovely things and lots and lots of just scribble and mess.
And then finally. I have bags and boxes of Crap. pens, batteries, allen keys, birthday badges, screws, little trinkets from this and that, belonging to the children (old birthday candles etc), and one part of me says 'you have not opened that bag for a year, chuck it out' and then I look inside and see something I think I might need, and then struggle to chuck any of it away, saying 'i'll go through it properly later', and never do.
How do you manage to declutter personal things, do you ever regret throwing things away? How do you get the balance of keeping things minimal and not being callus and chucking it all out. I don't have space to keep everything, and it's just over-running us at the moment.
Should I just chuck the lot of it all, the trinkets, the material, the scrappy drawings (obviously keep the lovely ones)?
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How to manage sentimental feelings when decluttering
40 replies
PavlovtheCat · 25/08/2014 23:12
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