Why is clearing out so difficult - am I too sentimental?

[SadieContrary]

With the New Year approaching, I’m always keen to start off the next 12 months on a more organised footing. I’m also aware that we are moving house in the summer - either downsizing or moving home. In the 10 years we’ve been expats I cannot believe what we’ve accrued.
I’m in the spare room today ploughing through boxes upon boxes of stuff such as engagement/wedding/new baby/ Christmas cards etc. many from loved ones no longer with us. I’m worried if I get rid of them I’ll regret it but it’s just not feasible to keep all this stuff.
There’s even a hard hat from when my DH worked on the oil rigs before we even moved here - he’s office based and has been for many, many years. Just two examples but you get the idea.
Where do we draw the line? AIBU (far too sentimental) or not?

Have you tried Marie Kondo?

I probably would keep the cards (it can’t be that many boxes surely??) but not the hard hat. If you can’t keep the cards though you could photograph them all (front and inside) and have a digital album of them?

@Haus1234 there's at least a suitcase of cards but that’s just an example.
2 bookshelves of DVDs that I don’t want to throw because I’ll feel guilty about adding to landfill. Clothes. Books. Etc.
I like the idea of photographing the cards though. May sit one night with a bottle of wine and do that. Thanks

I heard that Marie Kondo now lives in clutter since having children!

i have a similar downsizing process to go through and I also find it hard to get rid of stuff. I try and sell things on eBay or take to a charity shop so at least I hope someone else can make use of it.

I think you have to be really objective about things, and try and see them as having served their purpose so you can now let them go. Your husband’s hard hat jogs a memory of a particular time, but you don’t need the actual manky old object to remember - a photo might help in this case.
Also, it is ok to keep some things and you should accept that you can. We collectively have museums and preserve old buildings after all.

I read something on here years about about decluttering and the landfill guilt. It was worded very well but boiled down to not treating your home as a landfill location -so if you don’t really want to own something anymore, can’t find anyone else who wants it, but are only keeping it to avoid it going into landfill, then that’s just geography and your house is becoming the landfill.

for DVDs there is companies like music magpie who might use them, you can contact charity shops and see if they want them, after that take to a recycling centre as they might be able to recycle them. If not, putting them in the bin is no worse that your spare room being the bin.

Will you ever read the cards? Even now sorting them out, did you sit down and read them?

I’m an expert de-clutterer, but I do keep cards from my husband and kids. I love to look back on the lovely, heartfelt words.

I have awful Landfill guilt 😔

Cards can be recycled....do people truly keep them and look at them again?

@MagpiePi if I were back in the UK I’d defo be ebaying. Doesn’t exist here and 2nd hand selling is laborious through FB groups etc. and then people coming to your house and trying to barter for ridiculous prices or not showing up as promised.
I definitely won’t bin things that are of good use, I’d rather give them away.
Now found a small box of my daughter’s first baby clothes and shoes. There’s not a great deal of them but I couldn’t bear to part with them. Oh, I am useless.

@LimeCheesecake - you’ve hit the nail on the head, I’ve got a spare room that’s pretty much landfill. I needed to read this.

For all those asking about the cards… yep, I go through them all every time I try to bin them and get engrossed in the memories of either the occasion or equally the thoughts of those no longer with us.

I do keep some cards, but I suspect you could thin the suitcase full of them.

Sort them into piles by who sent them to you, and keep the ones with a particularly meaningful handwritten message in them, and bin the ones which just say "happy birthday from Nan" (or hang onto one per sender if they're all like that and the sender has passed away).

The hard hat really does need to go. It's probably not up to modern safety regs and it's just clutter.

Where you have items which have useful life left in them but aren't really sellable / suitable for charity shop donation, there's a really good app called Olio where you can give stuff away to someone who will use it.

I've recently given away things like unused car oil (I changed my car and the new one needed different oil), a tatty bookcase ("upcycling project") and some leftover wallpaper and paint sample pots (for crafting). It's very much a "one man's trash is another man's treasure". But if no one wants it on Olio then it does have to go in the bin.

When I moved, I came across several boxes of drawings etc from my children. I spent a marvellous couple of hours looking through and selected some favourite pieces to put into a scrapbook. It’s much more honouring of the memories to have a selection on show than boxes shoved in the loft.