I started last week, as I am due to leave in about four weeks for the UK. I decided to get rid of everything. It’s just easier. I thought I’d be devastated. I’m not. They’re just things I feel lighter. Of course there are moments of sadness. But they just feel like burdens and holders of the past. I’m looking forward to a new life now. With new memories and things :).

I can’t speak for you, @janbb. I can only answer for myself.

Getting rid of some things after the break up of my marriage and over the course of several moves brought up exactly the same mixed emotions you’re mentioning.

I felt liberated and sad simultaneously. I think it’s natural. I had to get rid of objects that had great sentimental value. I was devastated to sell my grandmother’s old rocking chair, because I could not afford to move it from Hawai`i to the mainland. It pains me still to think about it.

There were other things that I didn’t think twice about. I had an antique dining room sideboard that was really beautiful, but it had no significance for me. There were no long-term memories wrapped up in it.

When I’m overwhelmed by emotions, I like to use a form of guided meditation. I sit and take myself through a long list of steps that end up at what I call my happy place. It’s a spot where it’s always sunny and the grass is warm on my bare feet. Flowers bloom, birds sing, and a brook babbles. It’s peaceful and calming for me.

I wish you the best of luck with your de-cluttering.

De-cluttering is good. You know you have to move on and it’s “inevitability in your own terms.” Thinking there are millions of other people out there doing the same thing could help. Some are aware, some are not, but they are de-cluttering…one way or another.

I love to de-clutter at least once a month. I don’t like having a lot of stuff because it just makes things complicated.

I’m very sentimental so it makes me feel horrible. I even have bad feelings, still to this day, about the stuff that was gotten rid of from my childhood, like our awesome set of mid-century stoneware dishes, my grandfather’s milkglass coffee cups, my grandma’s fish motif tumblers, my Little Kiddles dolls, an ashtray that my mom made when she was in grade school, a lot of my childhood books, and a blow up Ringo doll. Lately, I’ve been trying to find images of all this stuff and I’ve been posting them on FB for my relatives, who’ve been quite appreciative.

On the other hand, I’m also quite organized and love to help other people go through their stuff. Been doing that the last few weeks for a friend who had 2 deaths in the family.

I just wish I knew where to start. After years of collecting I am ready to get rid of everything, I just wish I knew where to start. If I try to start in the basement, I look and just feel like crying, because I just don’t know where to start. If I try to start in the garage, I throw my hands up, because I just don’t know where to start. Then there’s the attic. The sad part of all this is I went back to work so that I wouldn’t have to think about where to start..sad!

@AmWiser I start somewhere and during first pass, just get rid of everything I know I well miss or use again. If the garage or attic are too big, just pick a small area to work on or do something like kitchen cupboards first. It is very satisfying when you do eliminate things.

After my divorce I had to sell the house and I asked the kids to come over to help me clear out the junk that had accumulated over 20 years. It was very painful and very sad. We kept the things that were of most significant sentimental value and now I don’t miss the rest.

My next day off is Tuesday and thanks to this post (really like all the answers) I am going to start somewhere. The kitchen might be a good start…too many extra dishes, pots, pans, and utensils. Thanks @janbb.

@AmWiser I feel you on the extra dishes and what not. I used to have a mountain of tupperware containers and random lids that didn’t even match. It felt wonderful to get rid of it all and condense the collection down to things that actually paired together.

I have done it several times through my life, and only once missed anything. Someone stole a box of Christmas ornaments during a house sale, and it wasn’t for sale. It contained hand made ornaments from my grandmother, my mom, and my oldest son.

My ex wife took all my stuff.
And I don’t miss most of it
Problem solved

I’m about to be doing this, getting ready to move. I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff in the last 9 years of living here. It’s actually pretty exciting for me to get rid of stuff that we don’t need. I hope to have a garage sale pretty soon for a lot of purses and shoes, plus a ton of household items.

Thrilled. Each year there is less and less of it that I want.

I have single handedly torn my house apart the last 2 weeks and am downsizing to a new, microscopic space. I let go of stuff easily, am not overly sentimental and after the first few weeks of stress with my changing life circumstance I have sold and given away ¾ of my possessions. Plants, furniture, artwork. I have dismantled 7 years of my life in this house and whittled it all down to my nice bed, a handful of my favorite art, a few tables and my 2 cats.
Once I accept the changes life throws at me, I let go easily.
Bits of sadness arise, but I have learned the importance of not suffering through attachment.
I will miss the sound of the frogs in the pond and my darling geese more than any-thing I have.

To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season….

I agree with @Shippy….a little sad, a lot liberating.
I’ve done this before too, and stuff is just stuff. I even threw away old family pictures,not all of them, but quite a few. How many photos of dead relatives do I need to lug around for eternity? lol

I love decluttering. We’ve lived in the same house for forty years. My family’s stuff is everywhere. It’s definitely a burden on my life. It drives me crazy! I can’t wait to get out of the house – not because I’m desperate to get away from my parents, just because I’m desperate to get away from their stuff!

I can relate. I went through a very poor period in my life and barely had anything. When my partner came into my life that changed. She had money and wanted to get me stuff. I remember walking into a Card/Gift Shop…and walking out with two shopping carts full of stuffed animals. That’s how crazy it was. At the time, I was just giddy with excitement. I had never been showered with so many things in my life.

When we had moved her out of her apartment, into mine, I could not believe the hoarding going on there. She had shopping bags of brand new items everywhere. She had 3 new vacuums, in boxes still. The reason? She couldn’t get to the first one. So, clearly, the reasonable option was to buy a new one…then it happened again. There was, literally, a walking trail through her place. Over the next few years, she bought me everything I could want – most of it being stuff I did not need. Plus, on top of this, I was very sick. So, it was very easy for her to keep buying things for me. From all this extra spending (after going through real money), she acquired a large amount of credit card debt that we finally paid off, slowly, before moving into our house.

We had so much stuff that we had to store much of it in the basement of a house her parents owned in our city. By the time we moved out, into our first house (about 3.5 years ago)...we had accumulated enough to open our own small store. For the first year, our garage and basement housed all these things. Then, after convincing her, we had a couple garage sales. We sold about 3 quarters of the stuff. About half of the stuff we went through, we didn’t even recall buying (or why we would have bought it). We had absolutely no remorse over getting rid of it. It was time. We were both tired of this junk smothering us.

The hardest stuff to get rid of is the higher priced collectables. We still have most of it here, in boxes and bags. I wanted to sell them on Ebay. They mainly consist of Boyds Bear collections (figurines and stuffed animals), Quarry Critters (stone animals), Russ/Gund/TY/Disney stuffed animals and Disney figurines. All of these things are brand new. The stuffed animals are all jammed into our spare bedroom closet. Seriously, opening it would cause a stuffy avalanche. The breakable items are all in boxes, in that same room. The reason we still have them is that I’ve been too wimpy to try to sell them on-line. I am so scared of doing something wrong and making someone upset or dealing with returns…etc. But I really want to gain some of the money back that we so frivolously spent. We had so many stuffed animals that we donated several bulging large garbage bags of them to charity (the ones that weren’t as collectable). We’ve donated a lot brand new clothing and shoes as well.

I’m done with this insane accumulation of stuff. My partner, I’m working on. She has gotten so much better. However, from time to time, she will bring something home that she shouldn’t. Most of what she buys are sale items that she keeps for possible gifts. This drives my batty. We are working on it though. Her mother is a hoarder… the woman has a closet full of toilet paper. She has 20 brand new ceiling fans… because they were on sale. No one can visit their house because it is too packed with stuff. My partner can not tell her mother when we get rid of things because she gets very upset that we “wasted” the items. Her mother tries to get her to take things home with her. She finally stopped doing so when my partner told her we’d get rid of anything she tried pawning off on us. It has been, and is, a difficult process.

How we started sifting through it all? We went from box to box… bag to bag… making sections of the different items. You really do need some space to do this in. Every 6 months, I go through the stuffed animals we want to keep, which are also in that closet. I always end up adding more to the “go” pile. The reason we have held on to some of these things? Simply because they are cute and squishy. It seems silly, I know.

One really has to be ready to get rid of the stuff. We were ashamed and embarrassed at the amount of money wasted on these things. It is hard to get over, but teaches you a lot.

As for sentimental/personal things… such as old gifts, greeting cards, grade school items…I’m working on it. I think I treasured anything heartfelt given to me when I was younger, because of the lack of love in our home growing up. Any little positive thing…was like greatest treasure to me. Awards from grade school…I still have them. Notes about me from teachers…still have them. I don’t know; these things give me something, other than the abuse, to remember and relate to from my childhood. I can’t see myself getting rid of the school items ever. However, that may change…who knows really.

I feel…overwhelmed. The enormity of the job just gets to me, and I end up doing nothing. Sigh.

Let’s just say that the Salvation Army store in my town loves me. I’m regularly bringing them bags of stuff.

I qualified as a level 2 hoarder when I was in Minnesota. I had one room that was ceiling full of boxes, things scattered through the house, as well as a 3½ car garage full of things. I had become emotionally attached to objects, especially books and arts/crafts items, but I also had so many other random stuff. I feel like my life became something I couldn’t recognize or handle, so having visual representations of memories, things with potential (crafts) and not throwing anything away had made me feel secure.

But… when I decided to move to Colorado, I knew the largest Uhaul wouldn’t fit everything. Not even close. So, I had to go through everything. I did nothing else for 4 weeks—the time crunch didn’t allow me to really process emotions. I had to be practical and efficient. I sent at least 4 van-fulls of things to Goodwill, gave a lot away, left a lot on the curb, had a successful yard sale, threw away and recycled a lot. While I went through that, my emotions ran the full gamut—I got really angry about the number of possessions, felt strangulated by them, became deeply heartbroken over some memories, felt a huge loss, felt empty, was flooded with regrets, felt a sense of satisfaction with each trip to Goodwill, convinced myself I was making room in my life for new memories, got excited about the progress, was angry, sad, happy, excited, depressed, anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, and ultimately relieved and thrilled.

The final test was whether everything fit into the 24-foot Uhaul and no… it didn’t. I left behind a number of things in a 5×10 storage unit. BUT… even with getting the storage unit, I had reduced all my possessions to mostly fit into the truck—a huge accomplishment!!

I went to bring that stuff back, but they didn’t all fit in my van, so I went through another purging right there—what I couldn’t replace went with me, the rest got donated. Then, many more things got donated as soon as I got to Colorado—just didn’t fit into my new life. It was amazing (duh moment) to learn how my lifestyle and possessions were intertwined—my life and mindset does define what I buy, keep and toss.

I’m getting ready to go through everything again. Truth be told, I dread the emotional process, but I no longer can accept being smothered or controlled by my possessions. That’s what it had become for me, so getting rid of things is part of a healing process.

@janbb Best wishes on your process!!

Hoarders, especially @Plucky, unless you consider dusting an important aerobic exercise, think of the energy you are saving for more entertaining activities.

I started with a list of what I was going to store and what I was going to keep and then started a thrift store pile as well.
I do not want to pay high storage fees for the next year or two and because I am so creative I have no doubt that I will be able to redecorate with ease in the future.
I decided that everything I have enjoyed here has more than served it’s purpose and also, my daughter bought many of my nicer items to enjoy in her home.
I took an SUV full of stuff to the thrift store last week, and more yesterday.

All in all I really don’t have THAT much stuff, but when you start to collect everything and get organized it always seems like more.
I suggest making a list of the “must keep” items and then start separating everything else into thrift and throw away piles.
I am not a hoarder at all, and once I am on a roll it is easy to let go.

@Coloma i wasn’t really looking for how-to ideas; I’m pretty good on the methodology. It was more an exploration of the feelings involved; nice that you are so on top of yours.

@janbb Just rambling, I’m known to do that at times. haha
I have a friend who is struggling with this issue now and we were talking about it yesterday while hanging out over here. Everyone has a different approach and set of challenges for sure. :-)

I apologize @janbb for rambling on. I can take awhile to get to my point sometimes. My brain is weird that way.

The feelings I go through:

Shame
Loss
Disappointment in myself.
Disgust
Overwhelmed
Frustration
Burdened
Relief
Freedom

It is interesting because I never feel anything but relief and freedom after getting rid of the stuff. The rest comes before and during the purging. I never miss anything we get rid of.

@Plucky No apology necessary. Your remarks were on target.

I’ve learned to feel good about getting rid of stuff I no longer use or need. But it has taken me several decades. Now I appreciate simplicity.

Anyone who wants to drive to my house with a U Haul, just give me some lead time. My stuff is your stuff.