Have begun the grand declutter....

[ampere]

Must be Spring

We have been in the house 2 years though the garage and attic shout 'a lifetime'...TBF, as with most people, there is a story; in our case, one of emigrating to the UK 8 years ago with nothing; renting for 6 years and amassing stuff, selling up abroad and bringing shipping container loads of stuff to the UK and finding 2 into one won't go. I have been fairly brutal but the fact remains, this is a reasonably sizeable house which allows clutter to build but The Time Has Come. I am starting with the attic.

I shall Charity shop, Dump, give away, eBay- and should car boot but I'm funny about them. I go to them now and then but I can't see myself selling at one which is, of course, stupid. My excuse is I give such stuff to the charity shops so they can sell them.

Currently I am being Mrs Rational. why keep a 5/6 complete set of cheap crockery when a new, complete one costs £10 in Asda? Why keep the boxes of things that if we were to move, you'd chuck in a normal box, and have gone way out of warranty, or are obsolete, anyway?? (DH??). Why keep a large box of Xmas decorations that are old, ratty, tatty -when you have 2 boxes of nicer stuff?

I am hoping this Grand Clean Out will elevate me to a Zen like state of being.

How do you rate my chances??!

Be completely brutal - and for preference do when DH and dc can't see what's going on and make up stories about sentimental attachments to the crappy Xmas decos of years gone by!

You can use Freecycle or Freegle to off-load stuff that isn't suitable for the charity shop, although I have found this particularly annoying recently with people not turning up, leaving notes through my neighbours' doors thinking it's my house, etc. Freecycling is, however, better than just dumping things like a 5/6 set of crockery, which would be perfectly fine for a student or whatever.

Remember, Zen has first to be won and then maintained. Go for it!

i like to give my stuff to the local asylum-seekers' drop in session - people given leave to remain have literally nothing and cannot afford to be choosy - stuff that wouldn't be sold by a charity shop will be gratefully accepted.

i saw someone looking really pleased with our old highchair once, and someone looking similarly delighted with an old (still fine though) shirt of DP's.

not sure how you'd find them though... ours takes place in a local church, but i know about it through word of mouth.

I rate your chances as pretty high to be honest! You clearly have the right frame of mind ruthless and sound organised.
I Don't have much practical advice I'm afraid, but please an I join you?
We are moving in 2 weeks and I haven't sorted through or packed a single thing! we are lucky though that we don't need to be out of our current house for a while so we can move stuff over gradually! We just seem to have amassed ridiculous amounts of stuff since we've been here (there's only me, DH and a dog!) and we don't need or want most of it! So like you, I will be tipping, ebaying and charity shopping for the next few weeks!

I'm quite excited about the project, actually! I will get stuck in tomorrow for a while (need to dodge around the DSs a bit), DH is off drinking beer and walking, then, on Tuesday (day off) I will go to the dump and the charity shops, at least.

The ishoo with my local charity shops is inaccessibility with boxes. One is up a set of spiral steps, the other opens onto a well-traffic wardened High St. I may give them a call and see if they have a back carpark I can use to unload boxes. Guess it'd be good to alert them to a big donation, too?

I decided that this year was going to be the year of the big declutter ( we have been her nearly 20 years!!!) and istarted six weeks ago .
I have been ruthless and have freecycled, ebayed and sold on buy and sell pages on Facebook and of course trips to the dump and charity shops. Last week i sold £200 worth stuff on Ebay ,but now my living room resembles the local sorting office!

Once you are in the right frame of mood it can be done.

Happy sorting.

Thanks!

Day 2 in the attic- 3 boxes to bin, two for charity, one for eBay- I think!

Ask the Charity Shop if they will collect - at least two shops I know will, our hospice and a homeless. Others might, I haven't asked them.

Re eBay I am a bit nervous of doing a large scale sell though it makes more sense to hit it all at once as I did one once ages ago and recall getting myself in a bit of a tangle over who'd paid, who'd bought multiple items etc etc! The confusion was between user names, actual names, reference numbers and descriptions, mine and theirs! Paypal has made that easier because back then I had bankers drafts, cheques and actual cash to juggle and wait to clear etc.

And then there's the issue of packaging, in needing to make sure every item has suitable, correctly priced packets/boxes.

I ought to do 20 per week, maybe?!

And yes to charity shop vans collecting. It's worth a go. We get the bag through the door routine every day but they are very specific about what they'll collect.

I had 22 Ebay listings that ended last week, that was more than enough to cope with, so pleased i didn't list all mine in one go!

Think that'd be my limit, too! Whilst it will take longer to sell in 20s, I think that's preferable to the nervous breakdown I'd otherwise have- esp seeing this burst of Sorting energy makes me more acutely aware of clutter than I'd normally be and like NK34, my living room would look like a jumble sale.

Anyway, been to the dump and to the charity shop with in the end five boxes! The volunteer's smile was becoming increasingly 'fixed' as I kept reappearing with more stuff

I feel sure they'll be happy enough when they open the boxes, though- it's all good stuff in good condition so if they can make some money out of it, win/win!

Well, someone's coming to take the trampoline away today! The space it occupies also contains a box of toys- which DS2 insists he wants to play with again...! I give him one month. It also holds a large box with eBay written on it! So later I am taking the toy box to DS2's room, the eBay box up to the spare room, and I am moving the camping trailer into the now vacant spot, thus we might be able to walk through the garage again!

I'm quite excited about that.

It's quite cathartic isn't it? I'm decluttering for moving and I've sold a fair bit on eBay so far. Plus Facebook selling pages too.

I'm quite enjoying the trips to the bins. It will be good when everything is packed away and I know what I'm unpacking the other end will be essential and useful stuff only.

Yes, it's a good feeling.

I have been trying, in latter years, to guard against keeping stuff too long as the trouble is, in one's mind, it attains 'value' purely through 'age'. I have in a tin trunk in my mother's attic all my old secondary school exercise books, or at least, a load of them! They have been 'useful' to pull out now and then to show the DSs who are now Y8 and 6 what I was doing at their age at school (though it's probably of way more interest to me than them!); but I also have dozens and dozens of old letters, esp from my old school friend when we'd while away hours of boring school hols writing to each other, pages and pages, some in cartoon form, some like diary entries....(bear in mind we are talking back when 'computers' meant binary in 2nd Form maths and phone calls were expensive/get off that phone right now!). I ought to read and chuck them really! Have lost contact with that friend, sadly, anyway. Wonder if she kept mine??!

I have a locked box which I lost the key to over ten years ago. I know all that's in it is a few letters from friends and one or two love letters from an ex but I've carted it around because I can't bare to part with it!

I'm so sentimental at times. Still, I am being brutal at them moment so maybe the tide has turned :)

Excitement alert!

Just found another box of defunct children's books in the garage! 3 or 4 are worth eBaying, half a dozen to a friend with the right aged DC- the rest, Oxfam here I come!

Setback: DSs have (re)discovered their Micromachines. Drat.

You sound as though you're doing really well! I have been de-cluttering since we moved to a smaller house last year, but I'm finding it really hard to keep going after the first couple of months when I got rid of a lot of stuff.

Once thing I've just started doing is scanning documents that I want to keep but don't need a paper copy of - I've been doing all my old university assignments as I hardly ever look at them, but want to keep them for sentimental reasons. This way I still have a copy showing all the comments from the lecturers and my grades, but I've cleared a bit of space on my shelves. Maybe you could do that for your old letters?

Damn good idea, actually, Ellie! I should have thought of that, really, as I am a great believer in digitally photographing the DC's 'art' work from YR, 1, 2, 3 etc then binning the original! Why should my old stuff be more precious than theirs?!

So far I am on a roll and nothing shall be spared. I am here awaiting an (enthusiastic) freecycler's response regarding exact collection time for a lot of my stuff!