Decluttering with a view to downsize House.

[Andy W]

Early 60s and wish to downsize.  Yesterday wife and I had a frank discussion about what to get rid of. We both hit a wall of lack of inertia.  I really don't want to get to 70 plus and be rattling around in a house full of stuff  and eventually it becomes a problem for our kids. Bloody drowning in stuff. Currently not on Facebook,  but might sign up if only to sell or give stuff away.  Help!

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

eBay? I'd rather sign up to eBay than Facebook any day of the week.  There is also Gumtree which I once tried but with total lack of success, you can't even give some stuff away..

[fruitcake]

Here's a plan, which happens to be what I do. Please feel free to adapt it to suit your needs.

Invest in a set of standard boxes that will stack. The box I chose has a 40cm x 30cm footprint, in thick cardboard. It's crucial that all the boxes have the same size footprint so they stack. You may need 50 or more of these. Clear some space in the least used room of the house and stack the boxes against the wall. You'll also need labels for the boxes.

Whenever you come across something in the house that you think you probably do not need to keep, box it and label the box. If you subsequently need the item, you can find it by checking the labels, and retrieve it. But you'll find that most of the stuff you've boxed is not needed and can indeed be given away (or sold).

After a while, you'll have a stack of stuff you wish to dispose of. You can then decide which charity shop to take it to - I choose the ones that demonstrate the loudest appreciation for the items I take there. Every bag of stuff taken to the charity shop is a victory. Keep your boxes. (I used to use ebay but I find it increasingly time consuming, and it becomes a chore in itself, which is counterproductive. I've also used Freecycle and Gumtree, but found that no-show customers were a drain on resources and counter-productive.)

Disposal of the items in your stack frees up all your boxes and then the process can begin again.

As I say, please adapt this plan to suit your needs, but this is working well for me. The advantage of doing it this way is that I'm dealing with just one item at a time on a daily basis, and it has become integrated with every day life at home.

The final part of the plan is this:
Do not put anything into the loft from now on. Instead empty your loft and dispose of everything there. You're doing this on the grounds that the stuff in there is not used sufficiently often to warrant space in the house. Lofts are not meant for storage. Just to prove this, once the loft is empty, top up the loft insulation. This will be a financial investment since it will save on heating bills.

[rafletcher]

There’s also Freecycle, or house clearance outfits like the charity Emmaus.

[Andy W]

I've been emptying the loft over the last year.  Forcing our kids to take boxes of text books,  exercise books etc . I did manage to give away a pair of bunkbeds that had been in the loft for 20 years,  so some small wins. +1 for Ebay and Free cycle On some things wife and I at loggerheads.  My sons reckon we've done what 99% of people have done.  Doesn't make it right though.

[Pickled Onion]

Yesterday wife and I had a frank discussion about what to get rid of. We both hit a wall of lack of inertia.

This is the hardest part. I like fruitcake's suggestion a lot, and would suggest the label also includes the date.

I've been doing a variation of this:

I'm dealing with just one item at a time on a daily basis, and it has become integrated with every day life at home.

I have a plan to "throw away three things every day". Where throw away can include give away. It starts off easy, but stopping at three things means you don't spend ages agonising about anything, get exhausted by the whole thing and give up. As time goes on it gets easier to decide to throw something you would have kept at the beginning.

I used to keep loads of things on the basis they'll come in useful one day. And often they do, I feel great when I need a thing and happen to have one carefully stashed away years ago, which appears to vindicate the hoarding. But looked at logically, I've kept dozens or hundreds of things for every one that comes in handy, it would have been easier to have thrown all those things out and bought a new one of the thing I needed.

[Pingu]

We use Freegle.

[Blodwyn Pig]

Boot fairs!  Win Win, I did the decluttering thing for over a month at boot fairs, but ended up buying other stuff, BUT it led me to become a junk/retro/antique?  dealer for about 5 years,great fun and profitable.  hey ho!

[Mrs Pingu]

What Pickled Onion said. If it's been stored unused/unworn for years you don't need it and it can go. We still had stuff in boxes from the previous house move 16 years ago FFS! And if you're serious about moving house (and by that I mean if decluttering has made you hit the wall, how will you do with the pain of house moving?) then you need to get quite brutal.
I got rid a load of clothes that were actually quite nice but I never wore.

As Pingu said Freegle was good for us - all sorts of stuff from a climbing rope which was too old for climbing, boxes of unused glassware (think 20 years of 2 people's beer festival glasses), cafetirere,even a bag full of assorted nail polish!
(Only this morning I got rid of a bag of bubble wrap). This has the advantage that people will come and get it from you.
I did take a car load of stuff to a local charity place but it was a bit of a pain in the arse and it was when everyone else was getting rid of their crap post lockdown too so I didn't want to overload anywhere. If you have the room you could maybe do a 'garage sale'?
It did feel good having a purge though!

On the no-shows, Freegle has a scoring system, so if someone contacts you you can see how long they've been on Freegle, how far away they are (I prefer to give to people close by due to emissions and likelihood of turning up quickly), how many thumbs up or thumbs down they have, how many things they've collected and response time to messages etc. You can then decide what to do with that information.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

For years we have a policy of never bringing anything back from holiday or outing bigger than a fridge magnet. Now we have too many magnets it’s been downgraded to ballpoint pens which can be binned when empty.

[cygnet]

I've been emptying the loft over the last year.  Forcing our kids to take boxes of text books,  exercise books etc . I did manage to give away a pair of bunkbeds that had been in the loft for 20 years,  so some small wins. +1 for Ebay and Free cycle On some things wife and I at loggerheads.  My sons reckon we've done what 99% of people have done.  Doesn't make it right though.

Hahaha. My parents did just that a couple of years ago when I found my own place.

Every single one of those items I had put into the throw away pile when my mum moved house, 10 years previously.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

When I sold our French place it was a massive task to clear out, tout seule. I did two small van loads back to York. Of the rest, I sold as much as possible mostly to the neighbours, for peanuts, also gave stuff away to neighbours. A lot went to the tip and I left some good stuff for the new owners. A good wheelbarrow, left in the garden, mysteriously vanished. In the end the rest went on the bonfire.  You get into an 'all must go' mindset.

[yoav]

Three and a half years ago, we were in the same position as you. 60 years old, children left home and retirement looming. We put the house on the market.

It sold within a week. There's nothing like that to spur you on to declutter. By the time we exchanged contracts, we had six months. What followed was intense period of selling stuff, giving it away, throwing it away. We used eBay, Facebook, local auctioneers, small ads, whatever.
After six months, as we hadn't bought a house, we moved into a rented house with all the stuff we hadn't been able to shift.

We bought a house three months later but as it was smaller than our old house (which was the point), we underwent a second period of decluttering using the above methods. It was hard work but finally we were ale to move into our new house year after selling the old house on the market with much less stuff.

Phew!

I have several retired friends who have remained in their old, cluttered large houses because they couldn't be bothered to get their act together to move. This will catch up on them  eventually.

[mrcharly-YHT]

We have so much accumulated crap.

What terrifies me about disposing of a lot of it is that it feels like preparing to die.

Maybe when I reach old age I should move back onto a boat and that would force me to get rid of most of it.

[Keef66]

I think old age and living on a boat eventually become mutually exclusive.  Well it has become so for my brother-in-law anyway.  Getting him off the boat and into an affordable land based rental property is however a lot more difficult than it should be...

I think we're going to leave all our accumulated crap to the kids to sort out.  They'll be a lot less sentimental about the stuff, and spurred on by a powerful urge to clear and sell the house!

[L CC]

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dostadning.html?id=_cenDwAAQBAJ&

[quixoticgeek]

Here's a plan, which happens to be what I do. Please feel free to adapt it to suit your needs.

Invest in a set of standard boxes that will stack. The box I chose has a 40cm x 30cm footprint, in thick cardboard. It's crucial that all the boxes have the same size footprint so they stack. You may need 50 or more of these. Clear some space in the least used room of the house and stack the boxes against the wall. You'll also need labels for the boxes.

Whenever you come across something in the house that you think you probably do not need to keep, box it and label the box. If you subsequently need the item, you can find it by checking the labels, and retrieve it. But you'll find that most of the stuff you've boxed is not needed and can indeed be given away (or sold).

After a while, you'll have a stack of stuff you wish to dispose of. You can then decide which charity shop to take it to - I choose the ones that demonstrate the loudest appreciation for the items I take there. Every bag of stuff taken to the charity shop is a victory. Keep your boxes. (I used to use ebay but I find it increasingly time consuming, and it becomes a chore in itself, which is counterproductive. I've also used Freecycle and Gumtree, but found that no-show customers were a drain on resources and counter-productive.)

Disposal of the items in your stack frees up all your boxes and then the process can begin again.

As I say, please adapt this plan to suit your needs, but this is working well for me. The advantage of doing it this way is that I'm dealing with just one item at a time on a daily basis, and it has become integrated with every day life at home.

The final part of the plan is this:
Do not put anything into the loft from now on. Instead empty your loft and dispose of everything there. You're doing this on the grounds that the stuff in there is not used sufficiently often to warrant space in the house. Lofts are not meant for storage. Just to prove this, once the loft is empty, top up the loft insulation. This will be a financial investment since it will save on heating bills.

An alternative method if you don't have the space for the boxes. Get a pack of small coloured stickers. Think blue circles that are about 8mm diameter (size, shape, colour, doesn't actually matter). Attach one to everything, except the first aid kit, and the fire extinguisher.

Then when ever you use something remove the sticker. After 3 months. Look at what does and does not have a sticker.

This gives you a very easy visual guide of what you have used. And what you didn't.

J

[Paul H]

eventually it becomes a problem for our kids.

It needn't be, make it obvious to your offspring that you don't care what happens to the stuff when you're dead and they can simply call in the house clearers.
First step to less clutter is of course to stop adding to it.  I know that's too obvious to write, yet many people do have a habit of re-cluttering.

[L CC]

I always think these 'not used for 3 months' things sound great, except that 3 months doesn't include Christmas. Or a summer holiday. Or a decent pear harvest. Or an extended period off work ill.

Your clutter may vary.

[quixoticgeek]

I always think these 'not used for 3 months' things sound great, except that 3 months doesn't include Christmas. Or a summer holiday. Or a decent pear harvest. Or an extended period off work ill.

Your clutter may vary.

Agreed. There's total hypocrisy here. I have things I know I haven't used in 5 years. But I'm not getting rid of them as they have value to me. The 3 months was an arbitrary number. Pick 12 months? Pick 18. The idea I was trying to convey was a marking of used Vs unused, so you can see what you actually use, and not what you think you do.

J

[L CC]

I have no legs to stand on here- I have boxes of 'stuff' that's moved several houses with me.
My parents downsized from a 4 bed 3 floors house to a 3 bed 1.5 floors house- but it has a barn so the hoards remain. They just get dustier now.

I dread having to clean it out- despite 2 sisters I am the UK offspring. It's not getting rid of it that bothers me, it's that I will want to keep some of it 

My ex MIL was a terrible hoarder and I loved visiting her because the STUFF made me feel claustrophobic so I would go home and have a declutter. My folk's stuff is better organised (and I suppose, I have more affection for it) so never has the same effect.

[telstarbox]

eBay? I'd rather sign up to eBay than Facebook any day of the week.  There is also Gumtree which I once tried but with total lack of success, you can't even give some stuff away..

Facebook Marketplace has the biggest reach of the three. It's good if your priority is getting rid rather than making money, in which case eBay is better for more valuable stuff.

[gibbo]

Early 60s and wish to downsize.  Yesterday wife and I had a frank discussion about what to get rid of. We both hit a wall of lack of inertia.  I really don't want to get to 70 plus and be rattling around in a house full of stuff  and eventually it becomes a problem for our kids. Bloody drowning in stuff. Currently not on Facebook,  but might sign up if only to sell or give stuff away.  Help!

I wish my in-laws would contemplate this! They have a loft, x2 medium sheds, x2 spare bedrooms and a double garage full of crap stuff that's not seen the light of day for decades. All stuff is boxed and labelled but I'm dreading the day we have to sort it out. We did try and do this many years ago to no avail and it's the only time I saw my MIL get angry with my better half. There were tears and tantrums and the stuff was put back in its place. It didn't even get sorted when they moved, it just got transferred to the new house.

My wife is the polar opposite (no surprises, perhaps?) and is quite brutal about not keeping/ getting rid of items at ours so we have very few items stored apart from Lego, we have something like 120 sets in the loft.

[Wowbagger]

This applies to us very much.

We are both in our 70th year and we are living in a house that used to accommodate 7 or 8. We use the space pretty well - I have a grand piano which dominates one room, and one of our bedrooms is Jan's "Craft Room". But we have teetering piles of crap, quite a lot of it belonging to dead people.

The most poignant example of this, I think, is my granddad's writing case. It's a cheap cardboard affair, and was presented to him in 1910 for some reason or another. I think that was the year before he married my grandmother. It had been one of Aunt Phyllis's possessions before she moved in with us, and it clearly meant a great deal to her. Quite apart from the fact that it has examples of his handwriting in it, it also has some sheets of blotting paper with the mirror images of his daughters' former addresses on them.

I never met either of my grandfathers. They were both long dead when I was born. But I find it impossible to chuck it out.

[sojournermike]

I always think these 'not used for 3 months' things sound great, except that 3 months doesn't include Christmas. Or a summer holiday. Or a decent pear harvest. Or an extended period off work ill.

Your clutter may vary.

Agreed. There's total hypocrisy here. I have things I know I haven't used in 5 years. But I'm not getting rid of them as they have value to me. The 3 months was an arbitrary number. Pick 12 months? Pick 18. The idea I was trying to convey was a marking of used Vs unused, so you can see what you actually use, and not what you think you do.

J

If you left it till you were ‘gone’ it would serve as a warning to your descendants:)

I did well this week to take a broken printer to the top - the fact that the spare part that it may need was 400 and that there is no support for it since 2019 helped the decision. On the other hand, both girls are now at Uni so we are having a bit of a go at ridding stuff and making the house a bit more useful - without throwing their beds away I hasten to add…