Eliminating “Stuff”

My husband and I still occupy the house where we raised our children. It’s rather larger than we need these days but the location is ideal and we renovated it a few years ago to suit our needs as we grow older. The two bedrooms upstairs can be shut off and not heated or cooled when not in use, but they’re handy to have when the kids and grandkids visit.

It’s also far too handy to use those two rooms to store extra things. I hate clutter but I do have pack-rat tendencies, so I need a place to store all that extra stuff, out of sight, but handy should I find a use for the stored items.

I’m getting older and eventually I’ll have to down-size. I’m also aware of feeling burdened by maintaining everything. I hate to think that I’ll be leaving my kids a huge mess of stuff to deal with when I’m gone. It’s time to clean out pretty drastically. I have too much “stuff.” Way too much. Much more than I need, so a lot of things need to go.

I’m trying to start with books. I’ve got a library in those two upstairs room, and the truth is I’ll never read most of them again. Heck, I don’t even read paper books much at all anymore because my eyesight is poor. My Kindle lets me turn any book into a large-print edition, making it much easier to read. So why is it so darn hard to part with all those books, the fruit of some forty years of collecting them?

Then there are all those dishes, glasses, and serving pieces. Many of them belonged to my grandmother, mother, and mother-in-law. I’m hoping to pass them onto my own two daughters and daughter-in-law some day.  But will they even want them? They have a lot of things of their own already.

Clothing is another thing I struggle to cut back on. I have so many things that I’ve worn only a few times. I keep a lot of them mostly because I’m insecure about my fashion sense and I’m sure that as soon as I get rid of something it will turn out to be the perfect thing to wear to some special event.

I’ve tried several tricks to make myself get rid of things. I’ve used that system where I ask myself about how much joy an object gives me. Unfortunately I can find the joy in way too many things. I tried the clothing thing where you turn the hangers around and get rid of anything you haven’t turned around in the season. The only things I didn’t turn around were a couple of shirts I’m sure I’ll need at some time in the future.

A few things have helped. I’ve started a routine of making myself get rid of one piece of clothing for each new one I get so at least I don’t increase the problem. I’m also in the habit of getting rid of one thing a day. Obviously that’s the slow way to eliminate stuff, so I’m still working on how to beat my inner packrat and clear out bunches of stuff.

Another technique I can sometimes make work is to take a class of items – say a shelf of books or a stack of pads and notebooks – and tell myself I have to get rid of at least of half of this batch. Sometimes that works. Sometimes not so much.

I’m open to listening to any and all ideas for eliminating stuff - especially when you’re someone with packrat instincts.