To just get rid of it all?

[Hoardernomore]

So far this week I’ve got rid of 18 bags of rubbish / recycling / stuff for charity shop from our average sized house. I’m still going.
I’ve got rid of christening cards, scan photos, wedding cards, thanks you cards, Mother’s Day cards, baby memory boxes, new baby stuff and momentoes. All gone. Drawings by the kids, photos, hand made stuff from school and nursery.
Also gone are all my books and cds, toys my children don’t use, random stuff we’ve accumulated like wires that I have no idea of their purpose anymore.
My gran died last year and she’d kept so much, and we had to chuck most of it. I’ve concluded it is all just stuff, at some point it has to be thrown away and actually it’s easier for me to do it than my children once I’m dead.

My friend thought I’d lost the plot when I told her everything had gone. Aibu? I just think it’s stuff. It’s all pointless really.

Brilliant! - well done OP. What do people do with old cards or even photos really? Although I couldn't throw photos. Tbh though you usually look at them when sorting them out have a bit of laugh/cry then they're put back to take up space till the next time! A friend of mine put some cards in a frame that she esp likes of a particular occasion (first home) which was a good idea but apart fron that... Must be very liberating. Wish I could be that ruthless.

You've done it so it doesn't matter now. My dm kept practically nothing-I rescued our birthday cards we'd given her when she said 'we don't really need these, do we?' I regret a lot of the stuff she threw out cos Id have liked to see them, we only have photo albums and the cards I rescued

When we realised most of our storage was taken up with crap we would never need or use and we were struggling with where to put the day to day stuff we got rid of absolutely loads. House functions much better now.

But it is not true that you have the memories without the things! You might now, but in twenty years time? don't you think it would be nice to come across those cards or drawings and be reminded of your, say, five year old walking in to give you the card?

and your kids, they certainly won't remember!

no, sorry, still don't get it. Get rid of old things by all means, clutter is not good, but how much space do a few birthday or Mother's Day cards and selected drawings take? a couple of boxes?

Absolutely nailed it, IMHO.

I also agree that you aren't just throwing away your own memories - things relating to your children before their births and in their early years could not have been kept and saved by the children themselves, so it was up to their parents to do it. They may want to keep the lot or they may end up binning 95% of it (although possibly being very interested in seeing it once before chucking it) - but you don't know WHICH 5% they might treasure and want to keep forever and then show to their own children, who might treasure it and want to keep it forever.

I had to laugh because the not keeping too many photos has extended to her iPad and iPhone

Now, I don't think that's odd at all - I think that was very wise and forward-thinking of her and it's likely to become more and more of an issue for the next generation and future ones.

If you have thirty big boxes full of every pre-digital photo you ever took - including all of the unidentifiable blurry ones, the ones where you took a dozen of the same thing and eleven of them are OK, but not a patch on the best one that you actually spend time looking at, ones where you had your fingers over the lens, ones that you took to use up the film, because you desperately wanted to get it processed to see the earlier ones in the roll (I feel SO old saying that and leaving younger MNers scratching their heads in utter bewilderment!!). The result is that you might have tens of thousands of photos taking up shedloads of physical space obscuring and making it more difficult to find and enjoy the few hundred that genuinely mean anything to anybody among the vast majority of rubbish ones.

Do the same with all of your digital photos and keep every single one (including all of the burst shots as well) and they physically take up no more space than a tablet - and you could even save them all on a card the size of your thumbnail and get rid of the device. Yet, the above paragraph is still every bit as true, apart from the small part in bold. Then, when you are gone, you leave your children no physical clutter whatsoever, but a huge amount of emotional/mental digital clutter for them to have to sort through and feel guilty deleting - even more so because they don't have the justification that 'however much we might want to, there just isn't room to keep absolutely everything' - because, with digital, there always is.

We should all do this. You never know what will happen. I am doing this right now sorting photos, keepsakes. It needs to be stuff you actually want not stored like junk just hidden taking space in cupboards. I’ve even been ruthless in my wardrobe. Stuff I’ve had for years I’ve now no idea why I kept. It’s also very therapeutic.

Some of you talk about making memories to pass on to your children - but unless the stuff is stored properly, the memory is inaccessible.

E.g. GF was a Royal Engineer in WW1. When we closed up DM's house after she died, we found a set of those commemorative teaspoons, all with Belgian place names. We could work out that GF must have bought them for his then fiancee (GM) as an easy to carry keepsake.
They would have been nice put in a case and on display, instead of stuffed in a box and moved around garages and attics. Similarly I found a report he'd written about the battle of Morchies - that's its own grim record and I have kept. But what is the story behind the set of Royal Flying Corps tunic buttons? The RFC grew out of the Royal Engineers but why did he have them? He never talked about the War so we don't know. If they had been found a good deal sooner, i.e. 50 years, we might have been able to ask him and tease out the story if there was one. It might simply have been he swapped buttons with a mate - we just don't know.

With digital there isn’t actually. Stiff has to be kept and backed up. It’s worth reducing it down if you have the time and keeping the best stuff as having so much to look through is totally off putting.

DB lost a lot of stuff recently in a fire. It has made him realise which things did matter, and which were junk. Do you really need to keep suitcases with broken locks, or the broken chairs, which you might fix one day, but know you won't because you are not handy? If he'd junked the rubbish first, he could have stored the other stuff properly somewhere safe.

My DF kept a huge file of paper from his RAF days in WW2 - all sorts of things like eg drinks bills nd other random bits of paper. My (adult) DS now treasures them not only as a memento of GRandpa but as a fascinating insight into a snapshot of wartime life.

I know I have tons of paper in our loft, including all my gce papers from the ‘60s and would love to scan it all and bin the hard copies but I can’t manage to get into the life and DH never gets round to it!

How is your DS storing the RAF stuff though? Neatly so that he can look at it and enjoy, or stuffed in random boxes in the attic/garage/shed?

You remind me - I kept my GCE papers for years, but after 30 binned the lot. They did not make me happy - they reminded me how miserable I was for most of my secondary school years, and I haven't given them a second thought until right now. Keeping the certificates with the results on yes, was necessary, because they come in useful when changing jobs.

I'm in the process of doing this. I've kept photos and one or two books, and I keep my kids creative writing books from school. And I'm really trying to encourage them to do their drawings in notebooks so I don't have sheets of paper everywhere. And you can always take photos of paintings and store them digitally instead of keeping the originals.

I'm doing this. I'm not a hoarder but very sentimental over certain stuff. In recent months I've cleared away lots of things including books, clothes etc. My son has had a good clear out too. The loft used to have loads of things in it but we have been systematically sorting it. It's very cathartic!

Peregrina - all the RAF stuff is in one big plastic wallet so not hard to store.

YANBU.I have always loved a good clear out,DH needs persuading to part with anything.But when we moved house we got rid of all sorts of stuff we never used and didn't cherish. It felt very liberating and now if something isn't worn or used for at least a couple of years it goes generally. We still have a homely home,with some lovely items in it.An elderly relative we keep an eye on made me cross recently when declaring ' you're going to have a lot if fun sorting through all my stuff when I'm gone,the attics full' When we suggested making a start on decluttering with her help it was a firm no.A friend is currently wading through her mum's house sorting through vast amounts of accumulated stuff and it's going to take weeks to sort it.Idon't want to leave that hassle for my DCs .

YABVU for getting ride of books or cds. For me personally a house has no souls with no books. I agree with you on papers but I'm thinking of printing a lot of the photos I have taken along the years for my DS as it is so much nicer to look at a photo album that to scroll on a laptop.

When I divorced my adulterous, abusive exDH I filled two skips with my former life. OMG it felt so good. Never looked back.

I had kept a baby box for DD, a lot of her drawings, favourite books, nursery and early school stuff and lost it all due to a burst pipe.
I haven't kept any of that stuff for DS as I felt it was unfair that one child would have all these things and the older sibling had nothing.
We have a load of photos that I back up online and make a photo book for every year. Any big awards/certificates or art work from school are scanned/photographed and put into a photo album, that way I have a digital copy as well as everything fitting neatly into the photo books/albums.

All I have from my childhood are photographs and I am more than happy with that.
My DGM on the other hand has kept everything and I mean everything, it is now at the point where her home is over run with sentimental things and it is too difficult for her to keep on top off.
We have offered to help sort through some of it and even offered to pay for a storage unit but she doesn't want to throw any of her memories away or have them leave her home.
My DM is dreading clearing her home out when the time comes.

Impressive! This is my dream!!

I have done quite a bit of clearing recently , both dc's were avid readers and then studied English at University so our house is stacked with books, some will be kept for them but most are going to Charity shops - if they will take them...we are planning to move in a couple of years and dont want to haul all the accumulated gubbins from 35 years together to the far end of the country.
I am filling a 'treasures' box each for the kids but culling lots...it feels immensely freeing.

Stop worrying about being a considerate dead person and go and enjoy life.

Remember jenny Joseph's Poem, "Warning".

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

When you are getting rid of that stuff rather than just junk, then it might be time to pause and think whether this is about tidying/simplifying or just repressing painful emotions.

Why? Isn't keeping them more likely to be about repressing the emotions around these objects (shutting them in a box?), but getting rid can be about letting go of difficult emotions. People who do this seem to feel liberated and ready to move on with their lives, rather than tied to the past, and hoarding is known to be often triggered by painful experiences and difficulties dealing with these.

I am not surprised that lots of people hang on to sentimental things, but I am quite shocked by how prescriptive and judgemental some people are about the OP. A lot of the comments are not just that posters wouldn't do this themselves, they are actually saying "you should keep these things, you'll regret it, you're being mean to your children", when they cannot possibly know that this is/will be the case - they're just projecting their own feelings onto the OP. If she feels fine with getting rid of things, and maybe actually feels liberated by it, then surely that's good - for her and her family.

Lived in one house for a good number of years. When moving discovered all the stuff that basically had been considered too precious to throw away. I realised that if anything happened to me my kids would not be thankful at having to sort out my rubbish and they would not have the same sentimentality attached as I did. I did though keep baby books, first pair of shoes and soft toy. Also wedding photo album. Was quite therapeutic clearing out all the toys etc.

I fear my P45 may have fallen foul to my decluttering 🙁

I did this after I lost my dad. It’s very freeing for want of a better word x