Onebyone

DH and I have already said we will not move furniture when we move. We will save enough to buy new by not using movers. And we certainly aren't going to rent a truck and move it ourselves. We are too old for that.

Butterfli19

When I moved into my first apartment everything I loved fit into the back of my Chevy, lol. My last move took a large moving van and two burly men. When my kids are out and settled and I sell this house, I hope to fit what I need in the back of whatever car I have. Well, maybe a few car trips. Once you realize how much stuff you have and go through it, and keep what's important, necessary, and sentimental, what you keep becomes more cherishable and the rest ends up being plain old stuff.

I too, put things out for free. Amazing how they disappear. Last summer I put out an old child's desk, a wooden microwave cart, and an old but working gas grill, with gas in the tank. My kids thought I was nuts - "Mom, no one is going to take that!" Wrong. Each at separate times and gone within two days. Love it!

sparkys_mom

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.

mhollifiel

Cricket,
Most of my huge fabric stash is used up in piecing tops for Project Linus quilts. Others in our guild do the quilting, binding, labeling, etc. I make between 100 and 150 tops each year. Every January, I go through my considerable stash, organize, and separate stuff I didn't see a future quilt in for me or my family. Then I go to work using up the "charity stuff" some of which was really great fabric just not "us" anymore.

So what happened? I began concentrating on sewing up the pulled-for-PL fabrics exclusively in my piecing. I ended up only doing quilts to keep for myself IF I did a mystery or took a class! That meant that the stuff I "LOVED" was waiting patiently on the shelf, and waiting and waiting, while I worked almost exclusively on "What was I thinking?" fabric that I didn't care much for or even disliked!

The steps I have taken to combat this dilemma are to begin sending backs with my pieced top PL donations and outright fabric donations to our Project Linus efforts. I don't take anymore scraps. I can make more faster from my stash without all the effort of prepping others' scraps. I send orphans and little odd stacks of piecing to another Carolina "QB sister" who has charity uses for these so I'll keep sending to her as I accumulate. There are plenty of people with limited resources just aching to help in efforts like we support with little or no means to do so. Find them locally or on the QB and PURGE in that direction. Your homeless can have more help sooner by your doing so.

I'd send this category TOTALLY out to others! Think of how you can use the unused charity fabric moving money to start your charity stash in your new home! Personally, I'd even get the WIPs in that purge. I'd start with all new stuff in my charity efforts in my new home. I have a GO and I love it but rarely use it. It can make you think that scraps can be handled effortlessly but the time it takes to get them pressed and ready for it can negate it's timesaving aspect.

Mousie

I am in the process of weeding out some of my fabrics bc i have used up so much room and like you, won't use them all.
It will be difficult, but I'll pull out family projects first, THIS IS THE KEEP PILE (mountain, lol),
then I'll have a mt-pile that are for me, hubby, gifts and just my favorites.
I'll choose what to purge from what is left...however, I will not let go of any solids, backing fabrics,...you know, anything highly useful in various ways.
I haven't started and i don't think it will be easy.
I'll probaby "over-keep", but at least i will have made a big dent and that's a good place to start.
My m sewed most of her adult life and then in later years became visually impaired.
They moved and she got rid of all her sewing stuff.
Then she went to blind school.
Yup, she is sewing again and misses her stuff.
I will be giving her...shhh! she doesn't know, a good portion of the "purges", but this has taught me to never-say-never.
However, I am finding cleaning, and reorganizing the same things over and over is exhausting and getting silly, as well as annoying

cricket_iscute

What a great idea! Thanks, citruscountryquilter!

LynnVT

What a great thread! I am also a keeper - memories, things, family photos, and of course lots of fabric and sewing stuff. I've been making Linus quilts with some of the "dead women's fabric" that I've been given, but I love having plenty to choose from when I have an idea to make something different.
I also watched Peter Walsh's shows, but I do not agree with arbitrary things like throwing out anything you don't use in a year or 6 months. Christmas only comes once a year, and there have been years we went away and didn't do a tree, but I'm not about to toss and rebuy things like that. I make it a point to use things like all my dishes by entertaining now and then. If I invite company I'm not going to put a paper plate on the table unless it's a picnic in the yard. So I can do a farewell party for a church member and serve 20 or 30 people on a variety of nice china with real cups and mugs or glasses. I enjoy having the leisure to be a hostess, so I'll wait some years before emptying everything out. But there were some great ideas here, like the favorites line.
We redecorated our living room and office about 6 years ago and put all our 33 r.p.m. records in a dumpster after checking that there was no reasonable way to sell them around here. I figured we could get CDs of the old music, and we have gotten some, but not much of it is still available. We both really feel bad that we lost so much of our favorite Christmas music which is not around any more, and I miss those 1960s albums of Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio, Harry Belefonte, and so forth. Now I see you can buy a unit that will play the album and record it to create a CD or save the files on your iTunes account, but we didn't know about those at the time. But of course, it is just stuff, and some day we'll have to get rid of lots of it.
Good luck in your move. It's hard to let go, but I'm sure it's freeing to set off to a new future.

jaly3162

I asked my in-laws if they regretted moving from their home to an apartment and then into one of their daughters home that had an in-lW suite, and they say "yes". They found themselves watching too much TV.

mummyismean

We upsized last August but got rid of heaps. 27 years. It was easier to dispose of things closer to the moving date. Early on though tears and indecision. Old house tiny and 90 years old. New house bigger and 9 months old when we move in. Some things don't "fit" in the new property. Luckily most of our furniture did. Regrets for disposing of some things only those that we were ripped of by a dealer posing as a buyer at a garage sale. Modern housing doesn't allow for displaying I.e no mantle pieces etc.
9 months on sorting out some more things to go that don't "fit"
Sewing stuff lots of things given away or sold, miss none of it. Kept patchwork stuff and glad I did. (Husband not so glad lol)
Rattling around nicely in the new house but not liking the suburb much. Quiet means no one is neighbourly (gave up trying after being told we keep to ourselves here) getting use to social activities are all out of area. Both groups I joined "found" me after a fruitless search (who thinks of that when buying out of area where you currently live)

ccthomas

I think it is about stages of life, happiness, grieving, time of our life, health. Retirement is looming. As a teacher, I have started "pitching' as there are so much "paper, books, magazines, involved to stay current as an instructor." It has been a huge lift and brings happiness to let go this area. At home, I had started the downsizing, visualizing a smaller, one story house, when son 2, wife, and baby moved home. Daughter and grand-daughter may also move in. So it is hard to make plans. I donate to Good will, church and college sales, libraries, charities. I am living "day to day" and "getting ready" for "changes." No answers for anyone. I identify with topic. I thought "war" was "fearful, but "cancer" has been such a wakeup.