How to manage sentimental feelings when decluttering

[PavlovtheCat]

I am trying desperately to clear out loads of, well, shit. I am becoming a hoarder, mostly as I am scared of just throwing things out. So, I put things in piles to do things with them. For the last two days, I have determined to be ruthless and stop pretending for example I am going to ebay some clothes for the sake of possibly £20, as I am never actually going to do it (not time), so I have bagged up all the clothes, materials etc that keep getting circulated again again into the washing piles - 7 bin bags full! - it's going to the local place that buys clothing by weight, and I have two boxes of clothes to go to a friend as it's in good condition (the other stuff is all old and tatty).

But. I also have 2 boxes of clothes that I worry about throwing out - clothes that mean something to me, from when I was young, from when the children were young. I also have a box of material from my wedding, it's not fab, got mucky, but it has lovely memories, except, when I look at them, I just feel anxious about getting rid of them, which I think I need to do, rather than look at them wistfully.

Then, I also have piles of paperwork. I am getting better at chucking most of the irrelevant stuff out, but I get stressed about things like chucking out old colouring books with a few pages still able to be coloured in, sticker books that are scruffy and old but have a few stickers in still, and, the worst possible culprit is:

what do I do with all their drawings, the ones that are a bit crap, but their very first 'person' or 'dog' or 'letter', I get actual panicky at the prospect of throwing any of them away. I have a memory box (or few) for the children and for me, and try to be selective, and then go through them every now and again and revise my decisions, but I still have lots of exercise books and doodle books filled with some lovely things and lots and lots of just scribble and mess.

And then finally. I have bags and boxes of Crap. pens, batteries, allen keys, birthday badges, screws, little trinkets from this and that, belonging to the children (old birthday candles etc), and one part of me says 'you have not opened that bag for a year, chuck it out' and then I look inside and see something I think I might need, and then struggle to chuck any of it away, saying 'i'll go through it properly later', and never do.

How do you manage to declutter personal things, do you ever regret throwing things away? How do you get the balance of keeping things minimal and not being callus and chucking it all out. I don't have space to keep everything, and it's just over-running us at the moment.

Should I just chuck the lot of it all, the trinkets, the material, the scrappy drawings (obviously keep the lovely ones)?

Jemster In DC's room. That way stuff can just get tucked into them. I wouldn't mind them running to two boxes. They are smart and compact. They just look like storage. Much better than bulging bags of half wanted, half forgotten stuff gathering attic dust.

Special LOL at 'you never will' - so true!

Don't chuck it all. Yes some of it can go without compunction but you may regret some of the things.

Never do it arbitrarily. That's my best advice. I grew up with a tiny bedroom and a mother obsessed with making me chuck everything away all the time, and I often just did it without thought to what I actually felt about it. Then my sister left home and I went into her much larger bedroom, and found the stunt double of every item I had thrown away, since we were toddlers - she had kept it all because she could.

That made me very upset. I realised my mother was weird and so I stopped throwing things away. I have a mental block about it - I found I no longer have the ability to decide, as that was taken from me when I was a child.

So I keep things in case I regret it. But I have found certain things help: When things are broken, mouldy or just no use to man or beast, I feel fine about chucking them away.

If I can give thins to charity or someone who will use them, I feel almost fine about it.

if I can ebay things occasionally, I feel Ok about that, but I hate selling on ebay generally as it's hard work and unpredictable and can be a nightmare.

So do chuck things if you feel Ok about it. But definitely don't do it without thought and consideration. It's alright to keep stuff. As long as it doesn't interfere too much with living in the moment.

I approve of storage facilities and attics if only because they make you realise how little you miss the stuff, and enable you to either bin it eventually, or to get on with life while it sits in a box out of the way.

My Grandmother kept everything and I have half of it stashed in my house now, but I wouldn't be without it, even just to look through, process mentally, and then give away - it's her life story and now I feel I know her a little better than I did when she was alive. My Mother would have binned the lot. There is no right or wrong in this.

About the piles of crap, this is what I have done: put it all in a box or bin bag, seal it and write the date on top (or stick a label). Only open it if you need something from it. If you haven't opened it in 2 months, chuck the whole thing in the bin, unopened. For clothes I'm unsure of, I do the same, but give it 6 months at most.

Honestly, I have never never regretted throwing something away. With small items, well, I can afford to buy a new pen or some batteries if I need them. With large, more expensive items, I acknowledge the use/fun I got from them, and let them go. Even better if they are still in good nick and can be useful for someone else, a charity etc. Sentimental items, I keep some - but I choose the best, most meaningful (1-2 out of 70 teddies, for example), and take photos of the rest, as already mentioned.

Good luck!

And you don't need to even print out the photos - just put them on the Cloud thingy

I'm decluttering at the moment and have found that I have to do it in small bursts otherwise I lose my nerve for throwing out and start storing things. Tiredness=hoarding

following!

Something I need when we had to put things into storage because we were going travelling and had boxes and boxes of random small bits: my son and I tipped a box of stuff out into a bigger box/onto a sheet. Then we set the timer for 10 minutes. We went through and took out things that were important/useful and belonged somewhere else e.g. parts of games. When the timer went that was it. Everything else went straight in the bin. We knew we'd got the stuff we needed and both felt happy - it was mostly children's stuff but with batteries, stationery, paperwork etc scattered though it. We were on a tight timeframe so had to keep going otherwise I might have just done a box or two a day. When we had emptied a box all the kept bits were put back where they should have been.

horopu what did you do with the bits that belonged elsewhere, such as bits for games etc, while then locating those games? I find I will go through and find bits I need to keep, but they all belong in different locations, so i just end up putting them back into the box until I 'get around' to taking them to their relevant places (i.e. the games boxes they belong in) and that means going to a million different locations unorganised I guess that's what I have to do, if I have, for example, the balls for hungry hippo in a pot in a Box of Doom, I need to physically go to the hungry hippo box and put it back in there, then the spare playing card, into the deck of cards in it's location, and the screwdriver that I lost back into the toolbox. Oh I am tired just thinking about it.

I want to be Mary Poppins and just sing it all back to their rightful places!

Sorry not to reply before Pavlov.
I have a box for bits that need to go back into a game but I can't face doing it right now. Then every so often I go through that box, gather all the bits together and put them away in the correct game. It used to be quite a big box but is pretty small now. Does this make sense or are there now too many boxes?

No no no what you do is this.

Sit down and take a box of random stuff at a time.

Obviously boxes with loads of tiny bits of toy etc will take an hour or two, but the ones with larger things in, you can sometimes be done in ten minutes. Sorry for my grammar, I am still asleep really

Anyway what you do is have a collection of smallish boxes or carrier bags (strong ones are best at standing open) around you, and you take stuff from the box, and put it into the relevnt bag for its category or room.

So with toys, you might have a 'games bits' or 'jigsaw pieces' or 'fuzzy felt' or 'lego', and one for other stuff that hasn't got a category, and as you go through you chuck or put each bit into its right bag or box.

Then you can redistribute as you wish, to the proper place, or whatever.

If it's general household stuff then you have a bag for papers (any and every bit of paper, whether it's bills or drawings or photos) and a bag for eachroom, so kitchen, living room, bedroom 1, bedroom 2, bathroom etc etc.

Everything that you know belongs in those rooms, put in the bag, and then when you have done the box, take the bags to their rooms and do a further more accurate sort and put them away.

Anything without a home, leave in a separate box to decide about later - but hopefully it will be a far smaller amount by now.

HTH - it's a form of filtering I suppose, and delegation, and a bit of procrastination thrown in! Never try and take each object back to its place individually, you will be knackered in ten minutes.

x posts! Sorry.

Oh and you go through the papers later, as well, and put in the right places. Papers I find take a lot more thought and concentration as you have to read some of them. So set aside a time for just papers.

Often you can chuck a great load of it into the recycling afterwards, which feels wonderful.

And to get your random boxes of clutter, you just go round a room putting everything that's in the wrong place, or mixed up, into a box. It's as simple as that. Clear surfaces and cupboards and floors, and loads of stuff in a box ready to sort out.

You only need to put puzzle pieces, game pieces etc back into their boxes when you need them.

So you have a pretty box labeled "Belongs elsewhere" and you keep it somewhere accessible (mine is a wicker basket on the living room bookshelf). Then all those little bits and pieces get chucked in there. When hungry hippo comes out and you notice you're missing bits, you check the box.

This way you gradually return things to their homes and never have to go on a tiresome putting-away journey.

I use my box to store things that belong to other people as well, or bits that I've accidentally stolen from the toy library, or Tupperware that I need to ask friends to identify.

Coughle that 'belongs elsewhere' box idea is genius. I'm going to adopt it.

I'm a very sentimental person and a keen declutterer. I can honestly say I have never regretted throwing something out. I have taken photos of things that were really sentimental so that I can always remember the item but I can then pass it on to a charity shop. I like thinking that someone will come along and find that my thing is just what they're looking for and that the object will be loved by someone else too.