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De-crapification in effect.

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filigree_shadow

Entry posted by filigree_shadow ·

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Hubby and I have too much stuff. It's taking over our house. I am something of a packrat (if by "something of a" you might mean "HUGE")... I have:

 

- bright fuschia-colored socks that were in style for about a minute in 1986. They don't have holes and are still kinda cushiony (probably because I've worn them twice), so I never got rid of them. With the exception of a few pairs, most of my socks can be dated to the early- or mid-90s.

- underwear that I bought 10 years ago. If it still fits and doesn't have any holes, I still have it. Those account for, and I'm not kidding, at least 40% of my underwear drawer.

- any piece of paper that hasn't been written on. If there's 2 pages left in the pad of paper, I keep it. This includes spiral notebooks from college (which was 15 years ago).

- casette tapes I've had since college. I had a vast tape collection before CDs. I meant to replace them with CDs, and I did, for most of the ones I listened to most frequently. And now we're in the age where even CDs are being phased out... and yet I still have casette tapes.

- VHS tapes. Same thing. I haven't looked at a VHS tape since we moved into this house 4.5 years ago. But I still have every VHS tape I ever bought.

- clothing. I keep everything I've ever bought unless it is too worn to wear. I have sizes from 5 to 18, small to 2X. Some of them still have tags. And let's not talk about concert/band t-shirts.

- and just plain crap. Half a cross-stitch thing I never finished. Half a bottle of shampoo I stopped using in 1998. A metric ton of various candle holders I never use. Junk I bought on various vacations. Books I read half of and will never pick up again. CDs I bought 12 years ago and are still in plastic.

 

This crap has got to go. We have a four-bedroom house with a basement, and it's FULL. We are two people. This is no way to live.

 

My sister (a single mom, she and her son live in a house they share with my mother) is currently unemployed and is wondering how she's going to make her car payment. I take one look around my house and see the answer. This is a great incentive for de-crapifying my house. It would benefit my sister.

 

So I called her up the other night and said, "Hey, if I give you a bunch of stuff, would you be willing to sell it on eBay and keep the money for yourself?" She said sure. I told her I'd come over next weekend or the one after with the stuff. I bet she has no idea that my Subaru Outback will be FULL of boxes of clothes, DVDs, CDs, and books. She's in for a surprise.

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maproot

WOW-congrats on the decrapifying!That sounds like a terrific solution with the ebay selling and the money making and the clearing out-kinda like a decrapificationlooza!

what an event!

 

Moving is always one way of decrapifying,but um I moved and I still have unpacked boxes.In an effort to decrapify,I looked at some posters I hadnt framed,and went to ikea in search of frames,and found the reasons the posters have remained unframed and rolled up in a tube-they werent standard sizes-!!!

 

BTW_I once cleared a house after my aunt had lived there for 35 years-it took a long,long time,so um-do what you can now-and keep us posted!

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filigree_shadow

WOW-congrats on the decrapifying!That sounds like a terrific solution with the ebay selling and the money making and the clearing out-kinda like a decrapificationlooza!

what an event!

 

Moving is always one way of decrapifying,but um I moved and I still have unpacked boxes.In an effort to decrapify,I looked at some posters I hadnt framed,and went to ikea in search of frames,and found the reasons the posters have remained unframed and rolled up in a tube-they werent standard sizes-!!!

 

BTW_I once cleared a house after my aunt had lived there for 35 years-it took a long,long time,so um-do what you can now-and keep us posted!

 

One of my favorite things to say is, "You never know how much stuff you have until you have to move." I always start the moving process with the best intentions of getting rid of things, but I give up and start throwing things in boxes.

 

I also have a couple of poster tubes, but mine lean more toward the kind of posters I hung on my dorm wall. Because, yeah, I'm really going to need that Depeche Mode poster from 1987 with the corners ripped off. (I bet there is some 22 year-old out there somewhere who thinks Depeche Mode is the coolest band ever and would pay dearly for one of their early-ish posters.) (I can wish, right?)

 

We're making some progress, though. So far we have two U-Haul boxes full just with books and DVDs. But we're starting to do that thing where we hold up a DVD we bought 3 years ago and never watched and say, "Ohhh, but I really did want to watch this one, maybe we should keep it for a while longer..." THAT's what got us into this pickle!

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Ah Xia

Ah, this blog thing is very handy! And since you graciously (and shockingly!) came to read my blog, I find myself here.

 

I completely emphathize with your goal to de-stash! I have moved so much in the past few years that most of my excess is passed on to other places but I still have 5 huge tubs full of yarn that I probably have no intention of knitting (because I always buy new yarn, it seems) and we have an excess of dinnerware because my husband is obsessed with having the "right" glass for the right drink.

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ivyandpeony

I am in the process of doing this too - although I did get rid of all the fuschia socks from the Limited circa 1986 a while back. (I had scrunchy socks to match every sweater I bought there, but they bled dye in the laundry like wounded whales every time I washed them! They were the scourge of my entire floor in my dorm - once we all got together and made up one big laundry load of nothing but those evil socks. But I digress.)

 

I have hit a bit of a wall - cleaned out most everything but my own clothes and shoes, and I am having the worst time getting rid of things. Let me know if you come up with any tricks that work for you, and congrats on the home detox ;)

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