Decluttering - how can I make it feel less sad?

[Darker]

Prompted by putting away the Christmas stuff and chucking out stuff I don’t use any more. But I have the same feeling every time I try to get on top of the ‘stuff’. Crippling feelings of grief.

I could understand if it was stuff that belonged to people who had recently died or stuff with sentimental significance but it’s not really that. I just want to clear stuff out but I find it so emotionally exhausting.

Kids are grown up and left home but not really settled yet. I think to some extent I’m hung up on not chucking stuff ‘in case’ they want it later. I have not been very successful in getting them to help sort things out, but that’s definitely only part of the problem.

Has anyone else experienced this? How do I make it less painful?

I am a sentimental declutterer (if that's not a complete contradiction in terms!). I can't bear mess and clutter but also attach a lot of emotion to things and hate throwing things away.

My top tips are:

1.Let yourself be sentimental - but limit it to just a small number of items. So, for example, I've kept the outfit each of my DC came home in from hospital as newborns, and a favourite outfit or two from each of their babyhoods, but not whole bagfuls of baby stuff. Same with toys/books etc. Keep a handful of favourites in a nice memory box, and sell or donate the rest.

2.Actually chuck away (as in put into landfill) as little as possible - it's too heartbreaking. Sell, donate or at the very least recycle components of as much as you possibly can.

3.Use the internet for selling - ebay, Vinted, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace - whatever easiest. I have sold all sorts of items on Vinted, I get a genuine buzz from knowing that someone else is going to get use out of something I don't need any more. And it's amazing how the sales money builds up when you sell lots of bits and pieces for a few £ each.

-4.Be creative in donating stuff - think outside the box a bit. So not just the charity shop, but animal shelters, local schools, nurseries, youth groups, community or daycare centres. Budgets are so squeezed everywhere - you may well find that people are grateful and will get excellent use out of stuff you no longer need.

-5 Go slowly - no need to do a huge chunk at once. Pick one cupboard or box or bag of stuff and sort it. Little and often can really help.

As PP have said, there are those who are naturally happier to hold onto things and others who are happier getting rid. At the end of the day, you can't change who you fundamentally are. But there are ways to declutter and still be gentle on yourself.

Please know you are not alone. i've been trying to declutter for over 3 years ! yes 3 years..have done a lot but not finished. Reading old letters has such an emotional affect for example.. difficult job but just keep at it gradually 👍

Lego, for years I have struggled to let Lego go, might have DGC one day.....however the realisation DGC will want some new stuff of their own....and actually too much unsorted Lego makes building sets painfully slow and not much fun.

I am in the process for trying to sort and move on some of my older sons Lego.
He knows what he wants to keep and knows what he wants to sell on.

It will be money in his bank account.

You need to give yourself permission to let things go. Your upbringing was for another era. It only works to keep things if you don't replace them. You can be thrifty and sustainable going forward after you deal with the problem.

Like on Sort your Life Out, what worked for me pre downsizing was to choose what to keep, not what to throw. Pick out a sufficient number of the nicest towels, bedding, baking trays, knives , whatever, for your new home. Then look at the rest and say, these can go , guilt free, because only a stupid person is keeping things they will Never Ever Use. Even if they were sentimental or expensive, they didn't make the cut, so out they go.

You can have a small collection of genuine mementoes but keep it to what you can store.

It's also easier to sell or give away organised bundles of things like bedding, kitchenware, DIY stuff etc.

I would say it's not the time for you to do this if it's causing you grief. Get better storage for now and address your feelings first. I really regret throwing out sentimental items and have wasted a lot of time and money searching for similar items on eBay to try and ease the pain in the early hours of the morning.

I know how you feel op. Are there some items that are easier than others that you can start with? I'm fine with getting rid of clothes and bedding. I'm even ok with books. It's hard to get rid of gifts and children's artwork because it makes me feel sad and I can't face our filing system because I hate dealing with tedious paperwork.

Kids art, I take photos before I ditch.

Partly because of a MN thread, the jist of it was the MIL took a box of the DHs childhood art and gave it to the Op or it landed in the Ops house.
Reality nobody wants kids art.

Thinking of it as ‘Decluttering’ can be stressful as we’re conditioned to think we need to get rid of things from an industry based on guilt. It’s only clutter if we assign it that label, think of it as a tidying and sorting with no time frame or agenda attached to it. Be gentle with yourself letting things go can evoke different emotions for everyone so go at your pace and what feels good.

Get rid of anything that makes your heart sink. Even nice things or expensive things. If dealing with it makes your heart sink then get it out of your house.

Getting it out of your house is your first and highest priority. Thoughtful recycling/repurposing/giving to the perfect person is very much secondary, and a mere bonus. If even thinking about all this makes your heart sink, get rid of it in the most expedient way possible.

My mum moved from a big house to a small one following divorce. It was fucking torturous and the stress hurt us all. Everything induced decision paralysis and she insisted on micro managing even tiny or worthless objects ('don't get rid of those ancient spectacles, there's a scheme to send them to Africa' etc) and in the end we had to do much of it behind her back.

Take inspiration from the Nike advert: just do it.

@MorrisZapp i think you have hit the nail on the head. It’s anxiety about doing the ‘right’ thing. I rarely regret anything once it’s gone.

My big blocks include the children’s books. I’m keeping a few picture books for when small people visit but I have boxes and boxes of teen and YA paperbacks. I feel the kids should decide but they are equally frozen!

Everything induced decision paralysis and she insisted on micro managing even tiny or worthless objects ('don't get rid of those ancient spectacles, there's a scheme to send them to Africa' etc)

👀😬

That’s exactly what I would say. Because Specsavers are on every high street and they do repurpose glasses for people who can’t afford them so I would feel extremely selfish just chucking them and not sticking them in a recycling box in the opticians next time I’m in town.
Couldn’t give a monkeys about passing on old teen novels of my DC though. It’s OK to prioritise different things to pass on slowly, just not to prioritise everything like that.

I consider the books etc to be the property of the kids but they are being noncommittal. I think I need to be a bit more assertive!

I have to admit I haven't done anything about my daughter's books - she's 23 and lives in a rented flat. She still has her bedroom at our house although this is now also a studio/office for me and it's no problem having her books here on a bookshelf. They'll probably stay until we move or she gets her own house. She's always very happy to see her books when she stays with us.

We just have So Many books… they won’t fit in a bookshelf out of the way. I have 3 adult kids so actually ownership is ambiguous.

Tricky. Could you get them all over and tell them to take the ones they want and give the rest to a charity shop? It does feel sad because you're drawing a line under such a huge part of your life. Maybe you could keep a few that remind you of particularly happy times.

When they are back next get them to edit. My DM threw out all my treasured childhood books and kept ones I didn't care about so much about. Ive been rebuying them ever since!

There's a saying something like "once you figure out why you can't let go, you can let go"

What I mean is, you might not be ready and that's OK.

It certainly can be so emotional and we all have our weak spots and things we can't get enough of (that we don't need)

I am fairly ruthless generally but certain items I am just not ready to do. Wedding cards (I am divorced) is a prime example. I have a box of them - maybe 100 cards.

Even thinking about that job makes me tearful. I've dealt with a lot or almost all of the rest of our shared lived but so far I've had to draw the line at that box.

Do you have a local museum op? They would probably take your spinster friends photos and documents for local social history if not you could sell them on ebay to a collector. Like pp I have bought things again that I had previously donated and miss things that I gave away years ago. Currently struggling with sorting out my pj drawer I don't want to keep them but don't want to get rid of them. It's difficult, sending you 💐

I wasn’t the poster with the box of documents…. But good shout!

I have a box of memorabilia which I’ll hold on to for the kids. All their school projects. Our summer scrapbooks. I have a memory box for each of my parents.

And I keep a box of family stuff such as birth marriage and death certificates. They don’t take up space and I feel I can’t throw them out.

I got my adult kids to put everything they didn't want to keep in a pile on their beds and then I got rid of it. It was much easier that they made the decision of what to keep. They were much more ruthless than I would have been

We gave several crates of really good books to a local secondary school. They were really pleased to have them. They were mostly A level reading.

Books, I'd look for the classics that are likely to be relevant in a generation and move the rest on.
Your kids aren't going to reread them.
They may or may not have kids who in turn may or may not read them so move them on to charity shop or whatever.

You definitely need to be more assertive with your kids. Send photos or whatever on a group chat and say I’m getting rid, come and collect anything you want to keep before it goes. My parents had so much of my old stuff stored in their attic and when they finally had a clear out and dumped it all at mine, I got rid of most of it as I didn’t want it! If your kids really do want something they’ll make sure they retrieve it.

I used to save a lot more stuff that I do now. I like everything to have a place, hate mess and clutter. In recent years I’ve sent so many books and ornaments to charity and never regretted it. Now I’m always clearing out. I spend my days working my way round the house, then back to the beginning again!

Interesting dilemma re your friend's parents certificates/documents. Could you try a local history museum/archive, either where they came from or where your friend lived. It would be a shame to destroy them, but can see why you wouldn't be able to keep them indefinitely.

Also if you have Ancestry could you do a quick search for distant relatives.