Do you have a lot of extras in your house?

[HollyS]

It's been 18mos since my last major purge. (Of household goods.) And it felt so good, I'll do it again. And again.

We bought an 1850 sq. ft. house, and we do NOT intend to fill every closet and every room to capacity. Ever.

'Stuff' is insideous. It takes over. A&E's Hoarders show makes me hyperventilate just by watching these people buried by their 'stuff' and trash. Yikes!

 

[packrat]

*I* do not have a lot of extras. My *husband* does. He keeps all his magazines, swearing over and over that someone will buy them. HOW they will buy them when they've been sitting in the attic in 2 of those ginormous wheeled tubs for 5 years is beyond me. If I were a mean wife, I would take pictures of his garage, which is just shy of a 3 car-that you can't even WALK in. Seriously. You step over and around what you can and good luck finding anything. My mind won't function in that type of environment. He accumulates things at an unbelievable rate and it needs to stop.

Most of our stuff gets taken to the Goodwill. We've had a couple garage sales and made a few hundred dollars.

 

[Cehrabehra]

Here in China? No I don't... and back in the states I do a little bit with one exception. Okay so I have a lot of extras but it's just because I haven't yet gone through my mom's entire life in boxes since she died... never mind she died in 1999

 

[soocool]

I forgot about my parents' stuff. After mom died my dad moved into an assisted living facility. Almost all their stuff went into storage.
Luckily my sister and I can use some of this stuff in our vacation home. We will have to move everything this coming spring and I guess at that time we will decide what stays and what goes unless my dad gets a say so. I am hoping that he'll forget about most of it so that we can get rid of the storage unit.

 

[luv2sparkle]

We have too much stuff as well. We have a 3300 sq foot house with a 4 car garage and we still have a storage unit! Most of the
stuff is extra furniture that I inherited when my mom passed. I was going to save some for my kids. We are going through
it and are going to get rid of as much as possible. I tend to just donate stuff, because I can't stand yard sales. I can't stand the
people that want a $50 dollar item for .10 cents and argue with you about it.

My hubby is a saver and I am a pitcher. We also tend to save boxes from stuff until we are sure it works or we like it or whatever.
I have to keep on top of that and get rid of it.

When we lived in the mountains we have under-the house-storage and no trash pick up, so a lot of stuff was just saved. We moved
a lot with us, but it is time for it to go.

I wish I was better at the ebay thing, but it just all seems like a big 'ol hassle to me.

We do park one car in the garage. It is a four car stacked and it is really clean. 'We would probable get two in. I read my post
and realized it sounded like we are stuffed to the ceiling but that is not really true-but still way to much for my taste.
My 14 year old likes to hang out with his friends in it.

 

[elrohwen]

We have a 1400sqft townhouse and for the most part it's the perfect size - the only thing I would add is a room to function as a "library" to hold our books and give me a place to go when DH plays video games. I don't like that we only have one living room so if he wants to play games or watch a bball game I don't have anywhere to go.

I feel the same way. Our condo is the same size as your townhouse, and for the most part, it works. We only have 2 bedrooms though and they're both pretty small. Our guest room currently has a large couch and a full size bed. There's no room for much else, which frustrates me. I'd get rid of the couch and that would free up some space, but I hope to have a place with a 3rd bedroom someday and the extra couch will go in there. That will become my husband's game room. I hate that the only place he plays XBox is in the living room. I'm always in one of the bedrooms if I want to get away, and I don't like to hang out in the bedroom. So yes, more functional space would be AWESOME.

Yep, we're the same! Two bedrooms, but the guest room is totally filled by a queen sized bed (which friends and family use fairly often). I really like having only one tv, so I'm fine with DH playing in the living room - I just need my own quiet room to relax with a book or my computer.

And I agree about not hanging out in the bedrooms. To me, he upstairs is for sleeping, not hanging out - for whatever reason I like to do all of my hanging out on the first floor. We've seen some houses with huge "bonus rooms" on the second floor and DH and I agree we would never use them if we had to walk upstairs to get to them.

 

[zoebartlett]

El -- If we had an upstairs bonus room, we'd definitely turn it into huge closet and storage space. Otherwise, I'd consider it a waste of space. In theory I like them, but practically speaking, bonus rooms wouldn't get much use.

 

[swimmer]

Zoe, for school stuff I have been scanning cool stuff I find that I can't just recreate and saving all the stuff I type up on a thumb drive and an online backup site that is free. My goal is to be able to not have the 4 rubbermaid tubs of school resources that live in my basement. 2 of them I keep because who knows if I will ever teach US history again, but the others are world, law, psych, sociology, and a host of other electives, my plan is to just keep adding to the pile electronically and recycle the tubs this summer. I think to myself if I had to move to another country could all my teaching resources be on this thumbdrive? googledocs for editing and sharing ppts is the bomb. I hope you are enjoying the snowday! What are your tips for battling the invasion of school stuff?

We live in 1400sq feet and feel like it is a ton of room for 2 people and a baby, but the baby has so much stuff! To move I recently donated over 50 feet of books -the library took a lot and gotbooks came and picked up the rest to pulp them. My rule was that I had to have used the book in the last 6 years for it to make the cut. I still have over 400 linear feet of books, but as soon as google books scans more of them, I can donate more. Yes, I love books as much as the next person, but they do pile up and I'm very allergic to dust.

This thread has me wondering about parents...my folks gave us some furniture recently as they decided to pare down. I would hate to leave my kid with a house full of stuff to deal with, I wonder what elderly people can do to have their stuff be less of a burden for their kids.

 

[Octavia]

I hate all the extra crap we have bit am too lazy to do anything about it. We have a storage unit full of stuff that I could probably get to nil if I actually spent some time on it.

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Haha, exactly the same situation here! Some days at work, I resolve to start purging when I get home...then get sucked in by Netflix or something, and wind up doing nothing at all. It's stupid stuff, too, but I have a mental block about it. We only have about 700 square feet and I really want to declutter it (well, when I'm not home to actually start the process, I do) but it usually entails just hauling stuff to the storage unit, basically putting it off till later. Sigh.

 

[MonkeyPie]

We have a lot of stuff. I hate it, intensely. I always see these houses online that are small spaces with very little clutter and perfectly organized shelves, and I wish desperately that our house looked like that.

We have two issues that keep it from looking that way. My husband is a packrat, and we have a 9 month old. Baby stuff takes up SO much space, and now after Christmas it is just insane. And my husband refuses to throw away any boxes from things we have bought, for who knows what reason. It drives me nuts and I often just chuck them when he isn't looking. He never notices, and I feel so much better.

When we start packing up for our move in April, a bunch of this crap is OUT OF HERE.

 

[asscherisme]

NO!

I hate clutter, and I can't live happily in it. We live in a 1300 sq ft single family home with three small bedrooms and a one-car garage. Our house has very little storage, and a crawl space that can't be used to store things. (This was a major selling point for me, by the way.)

DH was 38 when we married, and he had been living in his condo alone for ten years. He had a lot of stuff.
I can't be happy in a cluttered home, so we went through all that stuff together and made sure that not one extra thing made the move to our home. We do have a lot of books, but they line the shelves along our walls and thus become the most beautiful decoration I can imagine having in any home.

I just can't be happy living in clutter. I need a space that feels calm and warm and cozy enough so I can create. I can't create amidst clutter. I know some people are just the opposite, but that's me.

We give the house what we call a "deep clean" every six to eight weeks, and the first step of that deep clean is to purge anything that we don't use.

We have shelves lining two walls of our garage, and a large shed in our backyard. That is where we store the things we don't use regularly. Our closets in our home are very clean and only hold things we use on a regular basis. The only things we store in the garage and shed are equipment for maintaining our yard and cars, extra paint and other things for the house (trim, batteries, light bulbs, etc.) and out of season clothing and decor.

Our home isn't sparse, it's definitely cozy. It is decorated with things that we think are beautiful or inspiring, such as books, artwork, small pieces from our travels, handmade ceramic pieces, and large wicker baskets filled with throw blankets.

My motto is: When in doubt, throw it out! (by "throw" I mean recycle, of course. It just doesn't sound as good.)

ETA:
I was raised in a very cluttered home and hated it. I wonder if that has something to do with my aversion to it as an adult.

Ditto to your ETA. I was raised in a super super cluttered home and hated it. I am really minimalist in my decorating. I love clean open spaces. Hate clutter. I just finished with my kids purging their rooms. We go through and make donate bags and trash bags and it always feels so good after. The kids love the clean feeling too. That what is in their space is stuff they like. I purge often and donate lots and recycle what I can too. I do think my home environment contributed to me being the opposite.

I am super organized too. Everything needs a space.

 

[pennquaker09]

I would hope that at the age of 26 that I'm not hoarding stuff. We have a pretty big house, and odds are that our next place is going to be bigger, but our current place is not full.

With clothes, one of the things that I do is go through everything every so many months and get rid of the stuff that I notice I don't wear. I do the same with Nate's clothes and he never even notices that I get rid of stuff.

We don't like clutter and Nate really doesn't like toys everywhere. And, as the kids get older, I'm going to explain to them that for every new toy, they have to give away something they already have. It'll serve two purposes: one less toys accumulating and, two, they'll learn to give to others.

I admit that I have a thing for antiques and furniture, but I haven't purchased a lot of stuff. I kind of buy with my dream home in mind.

It's good that we park our cars in the garage.

 

[mrscushion]

Not at all. We made a clean cut last time we moved and threw out everything we hadn't used in a year. I hate "stuff" that just lies around. One of the best things of e-readers for me is that I no longer need to buy books that have to be stored on shelves...

 

[MichelleCarmen]

My husband turned on Hoarders last night. I have mini-paranoia and thought that he was turning it on once a week to subletly hint that I should organize the legos and the pantry, but then after 10 mintues he freaked out at the show and said he couldn't watch it any more. The one last night was nuts. The woman had tons of stuff she collected out of GARBAGE!

There is a tremendous difference between having a lot and not being able to enter a room b/c of all the crap.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

We don't like clutter and Nate really doesn't like toys everywhere. And, as the kids get older, I'm going to explain to them that for every new toy, they have to give away something they already have. It'll serve two purposes: one less toys accumulating and, two, they'll learn to give to others.

.

Penn - For my kids, we do a major toy clean out before birthdays and christmas. My kids have received MANY legos over the years and I've sold a lot what they've outgrown. Sounds a bit crazy to sell them, but they've been given thousands of dollars worth. Once christmas alone, they got six $100 sets, not to mention b-days and "just because" sets. I've sold them on CL by the pound and used the $ to buy book cases, etc, for their rooms. I sell pretty much anything that can be sold b/c my kids are in school and I'm home during the day and like the extra cash.