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Prior to our last move, we spent a lot of time decluttering. Here are some of the items we parted with:
Gold jewelry that has not been used in years – you can go to local jewelers and they will give you cash for it!
Some old novels and textbooks from courses I took in university. I have not opened them since before I graduated. I kept a few that I actually enjoyed for keepsakes and donated the rest.
My husband collected quite a stack of maps and travel books over the years, but many of these were outdated and would just be more excess weight to pack. These items had not been looked at in years. He still has the memories of those trips!
I received a free low quality cutlery set a number of years ago, and I used to use a few pieces of it on picnics. I’ve only been on a few picnics in the past few years and did not particularly like the set, so I donated it to the kitchen in my office.
Clothing. When we lived in a small apartment and had the rest of our stuff in storage, I put a bunch of clothes into storage since they would not all fit into our small, shared bedroom closet. As you can imagine, when I looked at those clothes months later, I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did when I first put them into storage. I ended up donating many of them.
Items from my childhood and teenage years. This one has always been difficult for me – I am really sentimental about stuff from my past. I was able to get rid of some items, however. Some of the items I decluttered reminded me of a sad time in my life (when my parents divorced). There is no point in hanging onto items that make you sad. It took me a long time to learn that! My mom purged some of the stuff from my childhood when she moved a few years ago and I’m glad I did not have to do it. I’m lucky I don’t have too much left! I am content with keeping a number of favorite items.
Photos. Luckily I don’t have a lot of printed photos since I’ve had a digital camera/cell phone for many years. I did have some old photos in a really old, worn photo album. Like the above item, some of those photos held bad memories so I just got rid of them. I still have enough photos of happy memories from my childhood that I don’t regret chucking the ones I did!
Random office stuff from old jobs. My husband has kept various items from jobs he’s held throughout the years. Everything from lanyards and gifts with the company name to old ID cards. Luckily, he decided to purge most of this collection and only keep the items that really meant something to him. I also went through my stuff and only kept a few key items (such as my name tag from the job I held while I was in university).
Random cables and other electronic accessories. We had a box of all sorts of electronic stuff that had not seen the light of day in years. We were able to get rid of most of it.
Old socks. For some reason, I have trouble parting with socks. I have so many cute socks and when they get worn out or holey, I don’t like to get rid of them. I had a self-proclaimed sock graveyard where I kept all my old socks. Seriously. My husband was finally able to convince me to be reasonable so one day I sorted through the graveyard as well as my drawer of “living” socks and did a big purge. Even though I was a little sad at the time, I soon felt relieved. I admit that I did rescue a few old socks from the graveyard that I am still keeping, but now it’s only a few “dead” socks instead of 50+ dead socks. And yes, I am weird.
I haven’t regularly used CDs in years. My husband and I both have a lot of CDs. We decided to buy this storage binder for them to save space – I highly recommend it. We still want to keep them in case something goes wrong with iTunes/the computer, but at least they aren’t taking up a lot of space anymore. Jewel cases – gone!
DVDs we won’t watch again.
My old metal and glass desk was in a number of pieces in storage for a really long time. I kept it until I finally realized that it would be madness to move it again. If the glass panels survived, we’d surely be missing some of the hardware or other parts. If I really need another inexpensive glass desk, I am sure I can buy another one.
You can read more of my articles on decluttering here.
What have you decluttered lately?
