if I take every single one of these sodding ornaments to the charity shop on Monday?

[WhatFreshHellIsThis]

We just moved house. Down to the last few boxes of unpacking, so done all the big stuff - clothes, shoes, toiletries, toys etc.

Now I'm faced with the crud you accumulate in 35 years of being alive - you know the sort of thing, bowls people give you that are no use for eating out of, strange little china things that serve no useful purpose, pewter tankards, candle holders, pots that are only any use for accumulating odd coins and receipts and bits of string in.

I honestly can't stand any of it, please can I just take all the boxes to the charity shop and be done with it?

They are worth money

Sometimes think my ideal job would be a de-clutterer
Getting paid to clear out
Although slightly less satisfying with other people's stuff rather than your own

Actually you can have a lot of fun here. Go to parcel4you.com invest £10 and courier a box or two to someone you loathe - remember to put a false sender address on the box. Include a note that says 'you have inherited these items from Uncle George. When I pass on (and it won't be long now) the rest will come but you must keep these safe to benefit from the rest of the estate'.

They said that pockomon cards and beenies were worth money too..........

Hello Whatfreshhellis this. In my 35 (or so) years I seem to have accumulated quite a few coins and bits of string.

Please can I borrow one of your bowls

Oh absolutely. I should do this; a small skip should suffice.

I can remember dutifully having a plate on the wall (I don't even like plates on walls) for ages that was a souvenir from mil's holiday. We'd never even been there!

I once went to a mad woman's housev(in States0 who had huge shop counter affair (prob. 12 foot long) in her living room full of 100s of those beany things.
Ineffingsane.

whomovedmychocolate that is the one of the best ideas I have ever heard.

whomovedmychocolate - you have just provided me with all the fun I'm going to have in the next three months.

Helped friends move and they had half a van full of boxed knicknacks that went straight from one attic to another - why?

YANBU and will be liberating

Darrellrivers you can come and declutter us any day. the DDs have started putting boxes of things they do not want now but might some day in the future, in the attic along with the boxes of ornaments, bowls etc that I put there. Clearly this squirrelling habit runs in families. Slightly hijacking the thread, WHAT can be done with boxes and boxes of unwanted soft toys??

Blimey, now there was a thread I really didn't anticipate turning filthy!

Trouble is, many of these dreadful items have some meaning or other to DP's family. We already have a box in the loft marked Ugly Ornaments and Crap, thanks to a relative of his who believed in collecting those things from the back of Sunday supplements in the deluded belief that they would be worth something one day.

Saw a v minimalist style interior designer's shop bang next door to an old junk shop once. Me and friend thought they were owned by the same person - get houseowner to take on new minimalist style (and charge them mucho £££ for designing them a big empty space) and casually suggest that any surplus furniture, ornaments and other stuff they own could be sold to a second hand shop. Then just sit back and watch them pop in next door on their way home, buy loads of stuff off them at a pittance and flog it on to other homeowners at vast markup as shabby chic!

yanbu. less stuff for dust to settle on.

Spacehoppa of course you can! Do you want the ugly papier mache one, or the ugly wooden one? Or the nice one that got smashed and lovingly reglued by DP but is now no use for liquids or hot items, and has a sizeable chip on the glaze?

And the owner might even run between the two shops adding comedey moustache/wig/spectacles as a disguise

i have a box of crap in the attic - I also have 'wedding gifts' in a cabinet in the lounge, I want to get rid of them because they are mostly tatt gathering dust and nobody gives a stuff so would it be ok to charity shop them?

That's funny Jammy.

I did the decluttering thing yesterday, we are moving house in two weeks, I am NOT taking all the crap we have accumulated over the last 15 years.

I have one box left of glass I do like, the rest has gone!

Biggest declutter was my desk tho, all those discs full of photos, work stuff, god knows what. Scanned all the archived files, etc from mindees in fact everything has been put onto 5 8gb memory cards, and the discs and hard copies where shredded and dumped!

I am resigned to some of it having to stay, but tomorrow the local charity shop is going to benefit from a generous donation of crapola. And then I will do some deep breathing.

no no NO
why does some get a reprieve?

Do it, you will feel so much better.

We moved two years ago and I have three boxes of unpacked ornaments and you have galvanized me into action.
As soon as I stop MNing finish my work I am going to find them and put them in the car so they can go to the charity shop.

I am always envious of skills people have that I do not possess. Such as decluttering.

Yes, defo get rid of your crapola.

Can I just have a little look first, to see if there's anything I'd like?

Get the whole bloody lot to the charity shop and have the readymade excuse if anyone asks "where is such and such piece of crap item"..."oh I think we lost it in the move, it was so chaotic!"

I feel your pain. My dad died last year, and unfortunately he was a hoarder. He had a two bedroomed flat which was stacked to the roof with newspapers ( he was a journalist) and loads of other crap, he threw nothing out. We found twenty year old newspapers, a letter dated 1974 about connecting the phone in his previous house, over £500 in change, untold amount of photos of people we didn't know and hundreds of ornaments and knick knacks. We threw most of it out, but there are about ten boxes of stuff left which are now sitting in my spare room. I haven't got the heart to throw it out, or sort it out either. But I have enough crap of my own! He's been dead a year now, I really am going to have to sort out what bits I really want to keep, and get rid of the rest. But its hard, because it was his life, IYKWIM?