So...

[i_kender]

buddleia  and I are moving next Saturday from a large four bedroom house to a small but nice two-person flat. Having lived here for the last four and a half years (and not paying rent, but that's a whole other story), and not having a house-where-my-parents-live-and-where-most-of-my-old-junk-is-stored-at-least-not-in-this-country-anyway-and-besides-my-room-in-Bahrain-no-longer-exists-and-god-only-knows-what's-happened-to-all-the-things-I-used-to-own-in-my-childhood-but-don't-get-me-started-on-THAT, I understandably have lots of stuff. The stuff I've collected in the four and a half years of living here, the stuff from my university (and after) years in Brighton - say seven or eight years - and the few straggly remnants of my two years in bore-ding school many lifetimes ago.

This stuff... it accretes, you know.

And now I have less than a week to sort through it all and put it into piles and boxes... the stuff I'm packing and taking with me, the stuff I'm packing and maybe taking along later if I have room for it, the stuff I'm definitely leaving behind in this house but might have to come back for and move into storage or something if my parents sell or rent the place out, the stuff I'm throwing away outright, and the stuff for the charity shop.

Less than a week. Aii-ee.

And I keep coming across more stuff. Like my ancient collection of music on audio cassettes, and ditto with old VHS tapes - what do I do with all that? My obsolete but still perfectly functional X-box first generation and attached games - you can't even trade those in anymore, trust me I've tried. My spare monitor, speakers and keyboard. My old computer games. Boxes of photos.

What do you do with the stuff you want to keep but maybe can't take with you where you're moving? And how do you know - after so many years and yous have passed - what to hold on to, and when to let go?

Comments

[thedoorsgirl.livejournal.com]

The hardest thing about moving is dealing with all of the STUFF. I know from personal experience. In our last move I got rid of so much. I basically said that if we hadn't used something in a year and it wasn't necessary for taxes or record-keeping that it was going to be throw away. Anything not used in 6 months would be seriously considered as possible trash. I got rid of tons and still felt like we had a lot. But it was nice to rid myself of some of the clutter. My husband is more inclined to want to keep things around than I am. He had a harder time with it.

If there is stuff you don't want to part with and you don't have the room maybe consider storage. I have a small storage space mainly for baby stuff, because baby stuff takes up a lot of space. You can pack a lot into a pretty small space.

[blankbadge.livejournal.com]

Great news that you're finally moving. Are you going to be more in central London now?
Still it's always hard to get used to less space like that, you'll have to be quite ruthless getting rid of stuff.

[apple-crumble.livejournal.com]

Everytime James and I have moved we've had a big ol' purge. The first time I did it, moving from York to Kirby Moorside, we threw away so much junk and convinced ourselves we'd been so harsh on ourselves. A few months later when I was moving to Dublin heralded in yet another purge which turfed out even more "essential" stuff. Months later when James moved to Pickering *even* more got binned...

[nightxade.livejournal.com]

Touch each thing and see what memory is attached.

I've kept important VHS tapse (like 80s cartoons and movies!@!!!) even though I have no VCR. I'd suggest selling the XBox on eBay or something, but I recall selling my old systems and then having nostalgia moments that required a re-acquiring. Spare computer parts though? I don't know that they are necessary, but I'm not computer savvy. What purpose would they serve?

Photos always stay. Notes. Cards.

Can you condense at least? Get protective plastic containers and sort and stores.

Definitely make distinct piles for all your sorting. Perhaps watch a few episodes of Clean Sweep for advice? :)

To be honest, I have many things that I keep, but I'm not a horder. I spent $250 on our move getting rid of junk. Some of it could have been kept, sure, but it was unnecessary. I sort and organize and store safely. Of course, I have not had the need to move to a smaller place and been forced to give up a lot :(

Good luck.

[lisekit.livejournal.com]

I moved from one house in Cambrdge to another house in Cambridge, and got rid of a dozen bin-bags of STUFF - clothes I no longer wore, items I couldn't even remember owning, you know the like. So how it was that, a mere year later when I moved to London, my world was still full of STUFF I was totally unable to comprehend.

Jettisoning another six bin bags, I moed to New Cross to a one-room bedsit; then somehow, when we moved to a one-bed flat with, like, different rooms 'n' ting, there was still more STUFF than the space could handle and we chucked half of it up the attic.

Don't even ask me how much STUFF we had to lose in order to move to Finsbury Park, where we have a much bigger kitchen and front room and a WHOLE OTHE BEDROOM and it STILL wouldn't all fit.

And that's with moving to a bigger place. You have my mega-sympathies.