When DH and I were married, we were combining two more-than-full homes. The first thing was to brutally cut and send literally a house-full of furniture to a local charity that sets homeless people up in their own apartments and small houses. I like to think our stuff helped several families. Next came the kitchens -- everything went but what we absolutely could not live without. We ended up buying new cookware/glassware/silverware. The old stuff was OLD and not lamented. Bed linens, etc were donated to a thrift shop.
We thought we had given away a lot of books, but after we moved, we ended up practically endowing the local library rather than buy more shelves.
The best advice you have received is to be brutal, brutal, brutal. Give away (or sell if you have the time) everything but what you can't live without. We have all probably been in an older person's down-sided place and found it so crammed with stuff -- chairs, sofas and cabinets line all the walls and make it impossible to simply walk through some rooms. I don't want to end up like that. Make someone else happy with your stuff -- give it away. As my DH said of his former stuff, "It's fully amortized."