Generally, I think you can slip bags and boxes of useless junk out with the trash on trash day, as long as your spouse doesn't take out the trash. In that case, DON"T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. I have boxed it in secret and had son in law remove it when DH was not around. I hope to remove another load in the next couple of weeks and that will pretty well finish us up. Except for 2 PA Systems, amplifiers, videos, speakers, note changers hundreds of outdated connection cords. That will have to wait a while because he might want to see them. They are all outdated but to him they are valuable. OH, IT DOES FEEL SOOOO GOOD TO HAVE EMPTY SPACES.
Great idea, Imhor. I'm copying a couple of my posts from other threads. Any suggestions would be welcome.
My husband not only keeps tool because we might need them. He keeps absolutely everything because he might need it. He has always kept a lot of stuff, but he's gone way beyond that now. The clutter is pretty much restricted to the basement and garage, but it's driving me nuts anyway. And, I'm afraid that at some point some of it will be dangerous to him. You can barely walk through the basement.
Anyone have any hints for getting rid of things - like the six empty aquariums in the garage. They won't hold water, but he says he's going to fix them. Some are ones other people were throwing out. I even suggested we buy a nice new one and get rid of the old ones. Now he wants a new one, but he's not willing to get rid of the old ones. By the way, there is not room in our house for all of them. I've been gradually throwing some stuff out when he isn't around, but I can't do that with anything big. Any ideas?
We lived in the same house for 31 years. We had a HUGE unfinished section in our basement. We became known as the "keepers of the dead relatives junk." In addition, as I am sure all of you know, basement junk breeds by itself. Yes it does. Let's see, we had my grandmas's stuff (she died in 1969); my mother's stuff (she died in 1970); Auntie Nettie's stuff (she died in 1960 something); Aunt Esther's stuff (she died in 1990 something); my MIL's stuff (she died in 2004). Sid had a very short marriage in 1968 - lasted about 8 months. We still had presents from that wedding in our basement. We had all of my report cards; my son's report cards; the "congratulations on the new baby" cards -the ones sent to my parents when I was born; tons and tons of broken electronic equipment. Countless old computers and monitors. Oh, I've only just started the list. Then we decided to move to Florida. Cleaning out that basement was the worst task I have ever taken on. It was a nightmare. A nightmare.
One suggestion - an E-Bay company opened up in our town just before we moved. They came and took our stuff, categorized it, priced it, listed it on E-Bay, and shipped it for a commission. We sold a tiny fraction of what we had, but at least it made a little bitty dent. We cleaned, chucked, sold, and finally, in the end, had to PAY to have the stuff hauled away. And we still had stuff in huge storage containers in a moving/storage facility -we had to pay for that until we moved. Now I have a garage full of stuff, but at least there's no basement in this house.
My husband is in very early stages, but he has always been a packrat. We are moving this summer and currently trying to declutter our house to put it on the market. He complains I am pushing him too hard, but he has weeded out several bags of trash and giveaways and given away one collection of books (maybe 10% of his total, but it was about 8 boxes). I'm hoping that when he unpacks things after we move he will get rid of more. But in any case he has three rooms on the lower level of the new house and all his stuff is going to stay down there. The main level is my space. This is my radical solution to the fact that as I have tried to declutter over the last year, when I clear a space he piles his stuff there.
Good idea Pam - to give him his own space for junk. In our new house here in Florida, we have 2 extra bedrooms besides the master. The plan was to make one a guestroom, and one for my office. But then I started to think - where will his junk go? All over the kitchen and den, no doubt. So I gave up a separate guest room, and gave him one of the bedrooms for what he calls his "office." The door stays closed and all of his mess is confined in one room. My office has a queen size futon in it, and that is where the guests sleep.
This house has a basement because we never had one, and getting to the pipes, etc. was always a problem. But, we had several large buildings to keep stuff in. Anyway, my Mom always had the neatest basement and I vowed to try and simulate that. When dh outdated electronic equipment is cleared out the remainder of things will fit on the shelves we had installed. There should ONLY be handicap items down there other than the enclosed shelf area and just empty space. Love the empty space. A waste but love it.
Joan, I have my Mom's stuff and that is off limits. When she moved in with us she kept what she wanted, I chose what I wanted and our 3 kids divided the rest - down to the garden hoe's. What I have left of hers - the kids already have decided how to divide it. Nothing valuable - just sentimental junk and they love it as do I.
I'm getting rid of a 1978 encyclopedia set with 12 yearbooks. Don't want to put them all out on the curb so every day I leave one in the trash outside Tim Horton's. For what we spend on coffee the kids there can put them in the dumpster. Pam, I've been reading your blog ... well done.
I've been meaning to mention this, and here seems the perfect place.
We have nineteen floor-to-ceiling bookcases (about 3' wide each, 5 or 6 shelves) in our two-story plus basement house. This does not include what's in the attic or what's in our daughter's room. A few of these have a shelf or two of storage of paper, etc, but conservatively speaking we probably have at least 100 shelf feet of books. These are mostly not textbooks, either. Quite a collection of Sherlock Holmesiania, Rockwell Kentiania, Monhegan books, cookbooks, and most of all mathematics books. My husband not only read the things, he wrote one book and many articles, and he collected memoirs of mathematicians, not as rare an item as you might think!
SO: what to do with them? Some of them really are valuable, though whether they could be sold in this economy I don't know. I was trying to figure out how to catalog them so I could say what I had. I found this site: http://www.bookhound.net/
You download a program for free (pc OR mac) and when you run it, you simply sit by your books and type in their isbn number (coded bar-code number, or on the page behind the title page). If you're connected wirelessly to the internet (have a router) you immediately get name, publisher, etc; you add in a few special things like edition if needed. If you're not connected you can simply type in all the isbn numbers, into a notepad type program, one to a line then feed them into the bookhound and collect the info all at once. This is for "bookstores" - it has a way to keep inventory, records of customers, etc etc, but it also will work to give you a list to give to a used bookseller. A seller of used books, I mean.
I'm just starting, but it seems to work fine. NOwadays, ebay doesn't seem to be popular with people doing the things Joan had done a few years ago (you hit it right, J.) and it's never been great with books, but I can basically be my own "bookstore" to be searched through Amazon, etc. if I pay for it. And IF I have the energy to do it!
Briegull-- I'm finding it satisfying to give away groups of books to people who will appreciate them (I'm cutting way back on mine to fit in the smaller house). The aerospace history books went to a graduate student at Georgia Tech. The women's literature went to an English graduate student. The books on healing from childhood abuse went to the local Rape Crisis Center, who said they would like them for their library. Today I took two boxes of art books to our local arts center. I'm hoping my church will have a free book sale, starting with my spirituality books and miscellaneous novels. I'm hoping the local Montessori school will take my husband's National Geographics, which he has agreed to part with.
Oh, yes, I've contacted the math societies to see if they have any holes in their journal collections (a leak in an attic, would you believe, and they DO need some; and any of the math books that the Brown U. library wants will be given to them for free, but I'll take a tax deduction on them. I unload 2-3 boxes of books each year to the local library for their book sale. But more and more people just aren't buying books even at book sales. If you collect books, abandoning them is rather like dropping a favorite pup off at the pound.
briegull sounds like a good if ambitious project. I have sold some things over the Internet but by the time I spent packaging them and mailing it does get to be quite a job. I don't know how much interest there are in used books. I used to buy them but decided I didn't want to store them so now I borrow from our Library. I have a few I thought I would keep - but I don't know why. I have a bunch of videos and asked our local library. They said they accept all free donations. I think I will take those to the library. I had already donated a bunch of hardbacks I was unable to sell online. They will give you a receipt to use if you itimize on your Income tax. Like pam said, it gives you pleasure to donate to someone who will use them. I recently gave a large bag of misc. sewing items to a lady I know who sews and does alterations. Her smile was priceless.
A friend brought me a few boxes of nice clothes that didn't sell in a garage sale. I chose a couple things I could use and my 2 daughters did the same. I am then passing the box to another friend and what she can't use she takes to some people at her Church who wear the sizes we have. Collections were nice while I was doing them but now is the time to rid myself of those that no longer give me pleasure. If someone else appreciates them it will give me pleasure. However, I do not have valuable things.
Next to go is my dh collection of Louie LaMore westerns in paperback. They are so old they are falling apart so I imagine they will have to go in recycle.
All this talk of clutter and junk reminds me how my wife's brain must feel the same way to her....all that accumulated stuff filling all the brain cells, thinking how valuable it all is, but unable to figure out how to deal with so much junk...My garage is much the same way, but I also think that the eoad has had the same effect on my wife.....who knows what surprises are lurking amoung all the unused and unwanted stuff that has accumulated....
When we moved to a townhouse 4 years ago I got rid of what I could, lots of junk. Now some of the junk we kept is still in the containers. It is time to get rid of it. Also, we need to donate the clothes we have outgrown. Hope springs eternal.
Ah, getting rid of STUFF! When I married Hank his house looked like library stacks. His deceased spouse had 10,000 books! Many had never been read. We sold as many as we could to the used book store, gave to the library, and kept enough to fill our one library corner. Then when we decided to live full time in the RV we could only keep about a dozen books. All those college textbooks from the early 50's were only good to remove the hardback and put in the recyle bin. When you look at what remains and have to decide on your favorite 12 you are making the hard choices. Whatever, I could see the handwriting on the wall about tools for someone with Alzheimer's, so not having any but a few necessities for our new lifestyle solved that. Also, no guns, since we wanted to travel to Canada. Now, Hank has died, and I am so content to have so little. I feel free of my collections and it is pretty easy to decide which dress when I want to wear one since I only have two! One has to work for both weddings and funerals and if too many come close together I have to stay out of the pictures! I know this isn't for everyone, but it works for me!