Why do I have so much stuff

[Ideasplease322]

How do people love minimalist lifestyles.

I am clearing out because I hope to move in the new year. There is just so much bloody stuff.

I am not a hoarder, or a big shopper, I live alone in the three bedroom house, but there just seems to be so much stuff - junk drawer stuff, papers that I probably should keep, clothes, cleaning stuff, toiletries, shoes, books.

I have done three dump runs. I have cleared away all my summer clothes into the loft. But I am still stuck with boxes of crap. My forelegs love in these slick, tidy houses.

Is it just that I am not organised enough? How does everyone else keep control of the stuff? Should I just dump everything?

I wonder about this too. Do people literally chuck anything in the bin that is not relevant in that moment? I was brought up to keep stuff for next year / just in case / for posterity etc etc. Some in laws of mine have drawers that are empty in their living room. I mean if I have a drawers, something will go in it. Until it's full.

I cannot help you - knee-deep in crap here (mostly belonging to kids & DH, but still) - I just wanted to repeat this poetry
My forelegs love in these slick, tidy houses.

But seriously- chuck 50% more and you won’t miss it or regret it.

I'm doing the same! I think it just creeps up on you.

Over the last few years I have shopped less and with lockdown I am not shopping at all. It really helps as I am letting go of things and the space is not being filled with anything else!

Please sell or give to the charity or freecycle. Don't just dump it all otherwise it will go to landfill.

I have LOTS of stuff. I am incapable of saying 'no' if anyone is throwing something out and asks me if I want it. Last month someone gave us a piano. No one in the family plays. I''ve got an upright piano in my kitchen because....

My forelegs love in these slick, tidy houses.

This caught my eye too. Please tell me what it’s meant to say!

My friends live?

Grab a random box of crap and tell us what’s in there

Living by yourself in a 3 bed you've got a shed load of space to fill!

If I have a huge handbag I'll fill it with seemingly essential shit. Use a small one I don't miss any of the essential shit in the big bag.

Tell us more about your forelegs...

I know just what you mean, OP. I seem constantly to be trying to get rid of stuff. But, essentially, yes, if too much stuff is oppressing you then you need to get rid of some of it. That's easier said than done at the moment though with charity shops closed and some restricting donation because they don't have space/time for it. But, a person living alone in a three bedroom house that is full suggests you have too much.

Get rid of clothes and shoes that you haven't worn in the past year, even if you think you still like them and might wear them one day. (You won't.) Toiletries unless they're recent can go as well - they go off so if they're old, they're probably useless.

What sort of other stuff do you have? Books - are you going to read/refer to them again? If not, no need to keep them. So, for instance, keep a favourite recipe book that you use, but no need to keep most novels. Maybe a cabinet for recent papers that you need to keep. Just get rid of old stuff.

I have the same problem. I clear one kitchen drawer and Lo and behold it's filled up with bloody stuff again!!!!!

I've done this as we are downsizing. It just creeps up on you as stuff keeps coming in but not going out. I've been ruthless though. Anything I don't like, wear, use or have too much off has gone. I've donated to charity, given stuff to friends, put stuff outside during the nice weather (which people did take), hired three skips for rubbish, given stuff away on Facebook marketplace and thrown away (out of date tins and jars for goodness sake!). I have kept some keepsakes and photographs. It has taken absolutely months however, I am determined that when we move it will be with 20 medium sized boxes or less for both of us. You can do it!

The secret to minimalism (I am one and my DM was one so I have lived with it always) is to CONSTANTLY review what you have and clear out - a minimalist will declutter every season.

What do you have? Do you really need all that paper? I keep one year of bank stuff and clear out annually. I keep one paper per contract (electricity, gas, house insurance etc) and the rest online.

I would recommend Marie Kondo for a once off declutter - be ruthless. The only thing I would say is keep all the stuff you need (ie kitchen utensils / ski wear / Christmas decorations / a few spare light bulbs / rain coats, rain boots ) we well as the stuff you love.

Then do a clear out twice per year to keep on top of it all.

@LucyWarlowsRightHand

My forelegs love in these slick, tidy houses.

This caught my eye too. Please tell me what it’s meant to say!

My friends live?

Grab a random box of crap and tell us what’s in there

😂😂. Sorry weird predictive typing. Yes it’s my friends live in ....

I watch a season of hoarders then I throw out EVERYTHING so currently the house is clear for the most part. But I dont have things like Christmas decs, seasonal items and now all my books get donated once read etc.

I grew up in a house full of stuff. I hated it. Fast forward 30 years, and I lived in a 4 bedroom house. Minimalist (or so I thought). Damn I was proud of myself.

Except now DH and I have just downsized to a 3 bed apartment and I am swimming in stuff. Drowning. I had no idea I had so much, and I'm someone who takes full bin bags to charity shops every month.

I counted 4 tape measures, 2 staplers, 2 printers, 2 vacuum cleaners, 2 sieves, 3 colanders, 11 mugs, 7 cake tins, and more baking trays than I could ever reasonably hope to use unless I was in training for Bake Off. 3 tool boxes. All full. 2 laundry baskets. So many things where I only need one of each. Jugs - small ones, big ones, medium sized ones - tons of the damn things. Tupperware - everywhere.

So much money wasted - and yes, I am giving it away to be re-used etc but why did I buy so much in the first place?

Watching Tidying up with Marie Kondo on Netflix helped me realise how much stuff I had that I just didn't need and also how to organise what I did.

The thing is most of it isn’t worth selling.

I have taken bags and bags of clothes to charity shops. I have thrown out worn shoes, I took three crates of books to be recycled.

I have just been ruthless and filled a bin bag of old electrical leads and chargers - I am not 100% sure what they are for, so I might regret it!!

I have tonnes of bank statements etc and paperwork that I need to sort through and create folders of stuff I absolutely need, then shred the rest.

I have loads of old kitchen stuff - mountains- I just need to get rid of the stuff I don’t need.

Then the toiletries and cleaning products😂. I have detergents for carpet cleansers I hired ten years ago. So many medicine and over the counter painkillers that must be out of date. Loads of bits and prices for doing on holiday.

Over the years I have amassed little boxes of crap - costume jewellery, souvenirs for holidays, dozens of hand creams, tape measures, mini sewing kits, ten pairs of scissors, nails files, plasters (dozens and dozens), scarfs, odd gloves, umbrellas etc etc

I am just looking at it all and feeling overwhelmed

I thought I was a minimalist until I moved house last week. I don’t have clutter or ornaments or things on display and so I have no idea where half the stuff I was packing or throwing away came from. It’s like Imelda Marcos and the New York City Public Library secretly used my house as storage, just endless shoes and books I didn’t know I had.

Now that I’ve properly whittled everything down in the move, my goal is simply not to store anything. It’s far too easy to chuck things in the loft or garage and think “this might be useful one day.” I’m not doing that again. Parking the car in the garage and barricading the loft.

My DP is a hoarder. Well, not excessively so, but we live in a small house with very little storage and I think that makes it look worse than it is. Slowly but surely over the course of lockdown, we've cleared things out, as we hope to have the whole place decorated next year - kitchen and garden have been done this year.

He seems to be oddly emotionally attached to various things, as if the memories are held in the objects rather than in his mind.

He also likes to keep things that might be useful, like he attempted to keep an empty aftershave bottle the other day to use as a water sprayer for his hair in the morning (when he already has one of those that will almost certainly last the rest of his life if it needs to!) I persuaded him that it would be very, very happy in the bin.

He has a massive book collection, as he was an avid reader in his 20s and 30s, but now barely reads as he prefers to play computer games or do his other hobby. So we have three bookshelves of mostly his books that will never get read again, and he claims that he couldn't possibly get rid of any of them. We'll see about that.

Oh, OP, pop over to housekeeping on here - there is loads of support from women doing one item a day (I love that thread).

So you just clear one item a day - or just sort one box per day - set aside an hour or a half hour, do that box, then the next day do another.

Don't try to do it all at once, it really is overwhelming. And you have started so that is amazing. I am sure you can already see a huge difference. Start with the easy stuff to get it done quickly. Leave the hard stuff until near the end when you have a system in place.

Honestly @Ideasplease322 what is in the tonnes of paperwork and bank statements that you need to keep? I have noting on paper. Nothing apart from a passport and birth / marriage certificates.

I don't believe here will be anything in there that you need to keep.

Get one one of those burners from homebase and torch the lot. Over in minutes.

Depends what's in the boxes. Three bedroom house for one person is rakes of space though, but you have to be pretty ruthless. Often having loads of space actually makes it harder because you don't "need" to cut down, you just want to. You should only keep things you genuinely need/want- most people tend to keep stuff because they think "well, I have space for it so I might as well keep it", which leads to keeping loads of stuff you really don't need to! I'm a huge fan of the Marie Kondo method (take it with a pinch of salt, I ignore the woo!)

Key things from memory are

• sort by category not by room e.g gather all of your clothes in one place and sort through them all together; put all of your T-shirts together, jumpers, jeans etc so you can actually see how much you have and then see what to keep. Same with paper work, books, kitchen items etc
• if you are keeping something for sentimental reasons or just because it's nice, think about how you might display it. Books for example take up loads of room in boxes/cabinets but look great displayed on shelves stacked in order of colour for example! Photos could be put in an album and left on a coffee table etc
• think about what you can digitise to minimise stacks and stacks of paper work. Apps like CamScanner let you scan documents and save them as PDFs. The documents that you need to keep paper copies of (birth certs, house deeds etc) should be fairly minimal.
• make sure EVERYTHING has a specific space where it belongs and put it back in its own place after using it. (This one genuinely made a huge difference to me. I had an awful habit of just putting things wherever i could find space on any given day and it meant that often sometimes I would just leave stuff on the counter etc. meaning the place looked cluttered and messy) Decide where something will go before you buy anything new!

-use smaller baskets etc to keep things organised so if you have 2-3 drawers of miscellaneous crap, use cheap plastic baskets/cutlery dividers to divide the drawers so you don't have to dig through to find stuff (batteries, pens, paper clips yada yada yada).

Once you get down to an amount that you are happy with you then need to think about a "one in one out" system, so if you have 10 jumpers then you need to get rid of one before buying a new one! (Within reason obviously )

Thank you all😊

I am going to finish the kitchen today. I had cleared all he food cupboards at the start of lockdown, but I need to stop keeping the Tupperware in case the lid turns up! I also need to throw out all the out of date medication (local chemist disposed of all).

Under the stairs if dull of badminton rackets and shoes and lots and lots of plastic bags😊.

I am finding this amazing, a colleague’s wife is a hoarder and I have advised him on clearing out. Used my many trips to the recycle centre and to charity Shops as examples.

I am such a hypocrite

dh and me are in the same boat as you op and hoping to down size in new year. we are doing the swedish death clearing system and it really works, sold loads of ebay over the years too and it's covering our legal fees and probably half of the estate agents too. certainly worth doing it.
plus when we kick off the perch the dc won't have so much stuff to skip.
win, win situation. the dc have thanked us for clearing it out and they know we won't replace anything non essential.

I have the same problem. I have a house full of history right back to my Great Grandmother.

First stop buying anything else

Then take a section a day to deal with - do you really need all the books? I just got a kindle and have kept very few books

Clothes - obviously you can’t dump them all - but regularly go through each drawer and the wardrobe and charity shop/recycle anything you haven’t worn in a long time or anything worn out - same goes for shoes

Go through the kitchen and get rid of those tubberwares with no lids - think about how many pita and pans plates bowls, cups you need - Get rid of excess

It’s just me and my husband we have only 4 of each thing in the kitchen - Cutlery, bowls plates etc - but we rarely have more THan 2 guests over

• if you entertain more people than us then you need more

Stop buying cleaning products use what you have - then think about what you need and only have that - I just have a small box under my sink with a few cleaning products and sponges - doesn’t take up much space

I also ensure everything I own has a place - can’t find a place for something then I have too much and i find something to get rid of

Once you have the place organised once it’s easier to stay on top of

I always think that minimalist houses have a locked room that visitors/guests NEVER see.
A dirty secret they are anxious to hide.
It's the room containing all their junk...
Whenever they have some bits & bobs that don't fit in with the decor but they don't want to get rid of, they unlock the junk room door, chuck the bits & bobs in there, without looking at the mess there within, and shut & lock the door as quickly as possible.
Clutter disposed of, they can smooth their ruffled feathers and enjoy the clean, sleek lines once more.