Wow! It is easy to see that this subject has hit home with a lot of folks. I'm one of them! Last year I helped my sister pack up the house she had lived in for 35 years. She and her husband were world travelers and art lovers. They were moving to a second home in Florida that they had already owned (and fully furnished) for 25 years. Talk about a need to downsize!! It was a real eye-opener for me. In spite of giving away thousands and thousands of dollars worth of furniture, art, china, and crystal to their kids they STILL had thousands donated to charity and still more to the dumpster. And still an unbelievable amount of STUFF got shipped to Florida.
I came home determined to not let that happen to me. Of course it has been a year and I still haven't dealt with it but this thread has certainly got me fired up again. That and the fact that I know that in the next year or so I will also be downsizing and have been looking at prospective homes. I've already started developing a plan.
1) Photograph china, crystal, and valuable collectibles and locate a dealer that will purchase them.
2) Decide what furniture I will keep and what will go. It is hard to sell used furniture so the discards will probably be donated.
3) Find an organizer that can help me identify what papers I need to keep and which ones can be discarded - then box up the discards and find a professional shredding machine.
4) I'm retiring this year so most office type clothing will go straight to Goodwill.
5) My stash is manageable but I will have to determine how to handle workspace in my new digs.
6) I'm going to go back and read all of the individual posts in detail for any other ideas I can dredge up.
