Getting rid of stuff, downsizing time advice appreciated.

[madcat]

Over the years people here have posted about the process of downsizing their belongings to fit their life on a boat.

We are stuck in a house which is way too big for us and are cluttered up beyond sense and sanity . Moving is not on the cards but a massive de clutter is .

 

Most of the things are too good to fast track to the tip,and there in lies the problem . Dumping stuff on children / relatives isn't an option.

 

I've not reached hoarder status but I don't want to either . Advice gratefully recieved .

 

I will list stuff on here if it's up for give away . Collect from Halesowen or Worcester.

 

It's going to be a two stage process with household and craft items likely to be first on the to go .

[Catrin]

Madcat, I know that you don't like Facebook, but most towns have some kind of Facebook page for recycling/ freecycling (the difference being that freecycling is given away without charge). This is probably your easiest way of getting rid of stuff (sorry, I know that you don't want to be told that).

 

Other than that if if is anything to do with household (especially furniture) there are increasingly charity shops that will take donations. Local to us are furniture shops for: the local hospice , Emmaus (helping homeless people), British Heart Foundation and YMCA. Obviously, all of these places, also have a presence of FB.

 

If it is craft stuff - put it up here first!

Edited March 10, 2015 by Catrin

[Lmcgrath87]

FREECYCLE! We got rid of nearly all our furniture using that. It feels good to give to people who really want it to - I wasn't fussed about selling it, and having people come taking it away makes life so much easier.

 

I did a room at a time, and even now I feel I have to de-clutter a little more before we move aboard, but we've got a month or so all being well.

[Keeping Up]

When a friend of mine moved on to a boat, she rented a container at Big Yellow storage for 12 months and put everything in it. Then whenever she needed something she fetched it from the container. During the 12 months one or two items that were high value and easily sold went on eBay, and at the end of the year anything that was left in the container was simply taken to the tip.

[MoominPapa]

Consider the possibility of selling on Ebay. You won't sell everything, but you'll be amazed at what you do sell. The first couple

of sessions are a bit of work, until you've worked out the logistics of photography, pricing postage and actually packing stuff, but

that gets easier. The Moomins are about £700 up on Ebaying "too good for the tip" stuff this winter.

 

 

MP.

[mattlad]

Do you have a local auction house? Stourbridge are fussy about what they take but Kiddy handles all sorts of bric-a-brac.

[Titus]

As someone else as put try freecycle.org , we're trying to downsize and have recently been on this site and it works a dream, the only thing I couldn't get rid off were VHS videos.

[sueb]

Freecycle or charity shops. I hate stuff going to the tip

[Ray T]

Madcat, have you considered the site where Alnwick http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showuser=2389 works? or something similar?

 

http://www.sueryder.org/Shop-with-us/High-Street-shopping/Find-your-nearest-shop/All-Shops/Leamington-Spa-Reuse-centre

 

Is Leamington Spa too far away?

Edited March 10, 2015 by Ray T

[keble]

Yes, freecycle or freegle. Basically the same but there was a split/falling out some time ago.

Occasionally you'll get someone who doesn't turn up to collect, and sometimes you'll get someone who seems to be a dealer, but it does work on the whole.

We had a famous actor (heartbeat) turn up to get a ladder!

[bizzard]

We've got a TV personality here at the mo. Billy the Dagenham council drain cleaning erm technician, known as DCT's, he was on ''A life of grime''.

[bizzard]

More name dropping. We've also had Mike Myers here, the song writer, not the actor, he wrote ''I'm in the mood for dancing'' for the Nolan sisters.

A tree branch sticking out nearly knocked his head off, he was bleeding. I was bringing his lady friend's boat and him back here from Stansted Abbots overnight, the boat was a banger, no headlight, nothing. I know these rivers pretty well so wasn't too bothered about the headlight, but I didn't see the branch that clouted him sticking out.

[jollymoggy]

Over the years people here have posted about the process of downsizing their belongings to fit their life on a boat.

We are stuck in a house which is way too big for us and are cluttered up beyond sense and sanity . Moving is not on the cards but a massive de clutter is .

 

Most of the things are too good to fast track to the tip,and there in lies the problem . Dumping stuff on children / relatives isn't an option.

 

I've not reached hoarder status but I don't want to either . Advice gratefully recieved .

 

I will list stuff on here if it's up for give away . Collect from Halesowen or Worcester.

 

It's going to be a two stage process with household and craft items likely to be first on the to go .

When we moved to our boat we gave a lot of our stuff away locally to neighbours etc. Anything worth selling went on gumtree.

[bizzard]

And more. Well, only a local personality this time. ''Mrs Tetley or Teabag Lil'' we called her. She just wandered in here one day chatting and doing the round of boats for cups tea.

[madcat]

Thanks for the replies , I've signed up for free cycle for when I get to any big bits .

 

I've always been a fan of donating to charity shops and passed on a lot of stuff to our local Green group including a walnut tree!

 

I'm starting with my craft stash first and also throwing out any absolute rubbish and broken stuff .

 

Anybody any tips on making the emotional detachment needed to part with stuff that's been around for so long . I think I collected so much because of worrying and having a load of things made me feel I had all eventualities covered.

 

I used to be able to,pack my life into a VW van, it's never going to be that simple again but I'm sure I don't need half the stuff I've got and somebody else just might.

 

Boris just wants other people to enjoy and appreciate his books now he cannot read them any more but I will start a seperate thread for them later if the person who expressed interest changed their mind.

 

Edit to add : all encouragement gratefully recieved.

Edited March 11, 2015 by madcat

[grannykins]

Books are difficult. I am emotionally attached to my huge book collection, despite having around 800 books on my kindle. They are like family.

 

Most of mine will be going to relatives - the others will be charity shopped - but it is hard

[Lmcgrath87]

I got rid of nearly all my books, except for my Terry Pratchett collection and my Alice In Wonderland copies (yes, more than one!)

 

The rest I have donated, it was difficult though!

[Peter X]

Having moved house quite often over the years, the last occasion being a downsize from a big 5-bedroom detached to a 3-bedroom terrace, I'd agree it can be quite painful working out what isn't needed and letting go of it, but as people often say on this forum, you have to get drastic to downsize onto a narrowboat. You don't want to end up paying for storage of things you won't use; a major source of profit for these storage companies is people doing just that and not finding the will to clear it out so they can cease paying for the unit.

 

I've found it important to make lists, preferably on a computer so you can edit them, ideally a laptop you can take to each room where your stuff is. Excel is good because every item can have columns for where it is now and where it's going to (boat, storage, friends/relatives, eBay, charity, dump), and you can sort on either. When moving house I used a code letter for each room, and as far as possible packed for the move in boxes with those letters on, so everything ended up in the right place.

 

When I moved to my present house five years ago it was very crowded with stuff, and I've only made slow progress since, chipping away at it all. As my long term aim is to buy a boat, keeping the house but renting most of it out while retaining a bedroom for my use, I'll be expecting to retain some space here to store things, so downsizing won't be so hard for me.

[madcat]

Thanks all, the books are mostly text books allthough I do have a few Terry Pratchett books .

 

The thing at the moment is just about getting unused stuff to people who need it more and making the house safer and easier for a partially sighted person. Also as we have in the past done a lot of different things we need to give up on the least productive or fun activities.

 

Peter X seems to be further along the road I will probably take . I'd like to live on a boat again but there's some things that just wouldn't fit easily on board.

 

At the moment it's operation " ditch the utter rubbish " and slowly start identifying what needs to go and move it on. It's taken us nearly 20 years to silt our lives up with this lot so it's not going to vanish in a week.

 

There's an idea in the knitting world of "stash beyond all life expectancy" or SABLE . In other words more yarn than you can knit up in the rest of your life .

[tree monkey]

Thanks all, the books are mostly text books allthough I do have a few Terry Pratchett books .

 

The thing at the moment is just about getting unused stuff to people who need it more and making the house safer and easier for a partially sighted person. Also as we have in the past done a lot of different things we need to give up on the least productive or fun activities.

 

Peter X seems to be further along the road I will probably take . I'd like to live on a boat again but there's some things that just wouldn't fit easily on board.

 

At the moment it's operation " ditch the utter rubbish " and slowly start identifying what needs to go and move it on. It's taken us nearly 20 years to silt our lives up with this lot so it's not going to vanish in a week.

 

There's an idea in the knitting world of "stash beyond all life expectancy" or SABLE . In other words more yarn than you can knit up in the rest of your life .

i was at one point able to fit all my stuff, including my dog into a Mini, then i settled down a bit, due to one of those unpleasant thing life likes to throw at you from time to time i had to shift a lot of my stuff.

i honestly thought it was going to be hard and in some ways it was but you know what? it was liberating, i kept boxes of books in my sisters loft but even those i passed on eventually, i hadn't looked at them for years so i thought whats the point and off they went too.

i dont think i will ever get back to the filling a Mini again but stuff is just stuff, whats important is the peeps you know and the life you live.

 

Good luck

[boathunter]

Thanks for the replies , I've signed up for free cycle for when I get to any big bits .

 

I've always been a fan of donating to charity shops and passed on a lot of stuff to our local Green group including a walnut tree!

 

I'm starting with my craft stash first and also throwing out any absolute rubbish and broken stuff .

 

Anybody any tips on making the emotional detachment needed to part with stuff that's been around for so long . I think I collected so much because of worrying and having a load of things made me feel I had all eventualities covered.

 

I used to be able to,pack my life into a VW van, it's never going to be that simple again but I'm sure I don't need half the stuff I've got and somebody else just might.

 

Boris just wants other people to enjoy and appreciate his books now he cannot read them any more but I will start a seperate thread for them later if the person who expressed interest changed their mind.

 

Edit to add : all encouragement gratefully recieved.

Same here and I was proud of the fact. I don't know what happened!

 

I'm downsizing from a double fronted 4 bed house with cellars to an old VW van as we speak and I intend to be able to camp in the van without unloading it. Bonfires are good.

Our house was packed to the rafters with things that were "too good to throw away" but in reality were next worthless junk. Having an antique stall didn't help - although the idea was the opposite, somehow it encouraged more and more stuff into the house. After 10-15 years not being allowed to clear this hoarded stuff it's only happening now because we got divorced! 4 years and counting of constant decluttering. You're doing the right thing. The space you'll gain is more valuable than the stuff you kept "just in case". My house is now lovely and useable again, it's a shame it's just to sell it.

[Ange]

Hey Madcat

 

I found it an incredibly difficult process. We're natural hoarders- we had engagement and wedding presents dating from 1984 and 1986 we'd never used which we moved from loft to loft whenever we moved house. When we last moved we packed over 100 boxes, mostly of stuff we'd never needed.

 

We did try eBay, but found the stuff we wanted to sell didn't shift. We did a boot fair which was a soul destroying experience where folk try to barter your possessions down from 50p to 20p. We ended up giving most of our stuff to charity shops - there's a feel good factor in that plus it's so easy.

 

It is incredibly liberating ridding yourself of unneeded stuff, but it's also very difficult.

 

We have phase two coming up this summer. We put a load of books and stuff that we couldn't bear to part with in storage in a lorry body at my in laws house. We've set aside a week in July to revisit this stuff with our new attitude to possessions.

 

Best of luck!

[Lady Muck]

I looked up my books as ebooks and downloaded them. That got rid of about three feet of shelving worth of books. I've used my ipad to photograph my paperwork and its now all digitally stored in dropbox. Google instruction books (you can find most as pdfs online) . If you've too many clothes then check out 33 things.

If you're attached to things - take a photo of it for the memory and get rid.

 

http://theproject333.com/getting-started/

 

Use boatmail for your post, go for the scanning option, I now have a file in my gmail. No paper.

 

There are loads of decluttering books available. Read some, they are motivating. i recommend Stuffocation http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stuffocation-Living-More-With-Less/dp/0241971543 if you havent got one, get some kind of tablet. One with lots of storage. Academic papers and texts can be downloaded from the library genesis database. Google it. My ipad has the equivalent of a couple of cabins of books on it.

Edited March 12, 2015 by Lady Muck

[Ange]

I only get to buy a pair of shoes when I ditch one. My shoe box mountain when I lived in a house was the stuff of legends.

 

Now sadly all gone - that was harsh!

[Lady Muck]

I dont miss any of it now. I buy good quality and a lot, lot less. Its freeing.

 

i found freecycle really rewarding, my craft things ( saved for to use in spare time that I never have) are all being used by teachers in local schools.

Edited March 12, 2015 by Lady Muck