unclutter | Entries tagged with moving

Not nearly as productive a decluttering month as May, but still got a few things done. Most of my efforts this month went toward managing a big project, the upstairs renovation. Still, made a bit of progress on the decluttering front.

• Sold my riding lawnmower to a neighbor. That was serendipitous. I had never planned on moving the mower (an icky lawnmower in with my furniture and clothing, ugh!) and will have a lawn service do the mowing until I move.
• Have amassed a small pile of things to go – the last of my Star Wars collectibles, some drapes & curtain rods, ignored new cat toys, unused office supplies – but haven’t actually gotten around to listing them as yet
• Also took a look around the basement and decided that all the leftover materials from various home improvement projects can also go, but again, have not done anything further than identify the items
• I have accumulated a lot of excess toiletries over time, so am currently trying to use them up. Have managed to clear out a couple of small bottles of things so far.

Will try selling things if possible, to recoup a little money, but if not, it will all get donated.

Current Mood: tired

vysila

Big BIG doings this month! My decluttering motivation went into overdrive, mostly due to home renovation and shortened timeline for moving.

My bedroom is empty except for my bed, the (empty) hope chest my sister and brother-in-law hand made for me when I was in my teens, and a bureau that was originally part of my parents’ bedroom set. My closet (i.e., wardrobe) has been downsized and neatly organized.

The guest bedroom contains only a bed, an empty chest of drawers (also part of my parents’ bedroom set), a computer desk & chair. The closet is completely empty.

The smallest bedroom was used as a home office/library but now is completely empty, as is the closet in that room. I am using it now as a staging area for packing boxes as I gear up for the future move.

The upstairs, which includes a large family/rec room, a full bathroom, a large bedroom, 3 walk-in closets plus some floored attic space – IS COMPLETELY EMPTY! That space is currently being renovated to make the house more saleable.

• Finished rehoming ALL of my fanzines, nearly 200 in total
• Decluttered a bunch of other fandom treasures and memorabilia – three big boxes
• Gave away my son’s old children’s books, all his art supplies, games and puzzles to neighbors with young children (my son didn’t want any of it) – two boxes worth
• Gave away the last of my jewelry to a niece
• Donated slightly more than 400 books to my local library
• Donated old purses and wallets, kept two purses and one wallet
• Donated/rehomed small decorative household items – four boxes
• Flattened and took a lot of old cardboard boxes to the recycle bin
• Took a nonfunctional old printer to the electronic recycle bin
• Small closet purge – donated four knit tops and two sweaters
• Donated one set of bedroom drapes with matching tiebacks

This was a huge, busy and very successful decluttering month, but there is still more to do, absurd as it seems.

This is such a kind and encouraging community and I am grateful to have a place like this to report on what is – and will continue to be – a physically difficult and emotionally challenging project. And I do hope that my progress might serve as a beacon of hope to everyone who struggles with clutter and downsizing, to see that through baby steps, it totally is possible to reduce your excess possessions down to whatever level is comfortable to you.

Current Mood: jubilant

vysila

I finally made the hard decision that it is time to sell my house and move closer to my son. Part of the prep is serious decluttering for a big downsize. Don’t know yet where I’ll be living after the move, but it will definitely be smaller.

Right now I am concentrating on two rather emotional tasks: curating thousands of family photos and also sorting through all my fanzines to see which are keepers and which can be released. Hope to scan a few of my favorite zines but doing it large scale won’t happen (I have maybe 150 zines).

Today I worked on the photo project and started a trash bag of discarded photos. It seems like taking photos goes in spurts and so many photos are of the same occasion and are nearly duplicates.

I also finagled my little old desktop scanner to work with Windows 11 and managed to scan one zine for posterity. At some point I’ll try to find the discards a new fannish home.

Oh, this is going to be such a long and tedious process. But at least it is very good motivation for clearing out a lot of stuff!

Current Mood: tired

venturous

Dear intrepid Unclutterers:

I am facing an impending move, end of October!
I downsized radically two years ago, so there is much less to deal with. But I am also a bit less mobile due to knee pain. I cant power through like I used to .

Planning is required. Here's where I could really benefit from suggestions.

The way I used to approach it:

clipboard + sharpie
1 page per room or closet
pitch/give away/keep

This time, I'm actually starting with a minimum basic list of KEEP. I'm hoping to pare it down even further. that means a lot of what came with me will need to be released.

STORAGE ugh
I know what happens with storage - I have friends who have struggled to pay for storage for years and never done anything with their stuff. or worse. but.....

ART STUDIO That is the part of life its always been a struggle to afford, and is dearest to my heart. I have several big peices (the flat file is the most precious, followed by an enamel top table, then a sturdy canvas storage shelf built of plywood, and a tall metal cabinet - things useful and expensive to replace)

all ideas and encouragement accepted!
BOOKS I reduced my library by 70% last move, and still have 16 liquor boxes (the best for books - small & sturdy!) of art books.

Current Location: home office
Current Music: OK, go

kalloway

I want to thank everyone who has mentioned Unfuck Your Habitat on here. It's changed my life.

( cut for length )

haruka

The last time I was here back in January, I was talking about maybe moving and had started to clear stuff out to have the place ready, but we weren't really going at it with a lot of drive. Last month, we finally signed with a realtor, and in about a month's time, we've cleaned out most of our house so that it's completely clutter-free (no, seriously. We had a stager come in, and by the time she left there were only the bare essentials left. Makes it a lot easier to dust ....)

We're downsizing from a two-storey semi to a mini home, so once we go through the stuff we've got stored in our 10 x 10 containment unit, we'll be getting rid of even more stuff that we really don't need anymore. I like the house clutter-free now that I've had a chance to live this way for a bit, and I'm hoping to maintain that even after we move.

haruka

We hadn't made much progress over the last week or so due to a death in the family, but I think today we made up for it. We managed to Freecycle:

- Eight puzzles
- Two Zip drives and 17 Zip disks
- 100 floppy diskettes
- Four computer keyboards
- Several VHS movies
- A Sega Genesis system and about 10 games
- USB hub
- A CPU
- Home theatre system

We also have several bags of garbage to go out, including one filled with old pillows and another with old clothes (not good enough to donate.)

syntheid

So I suppose this is an introduction, since I haven't actually posted here at all yet, so hello. I'm trying to declutter as much as possible in preparation for a cross-country move in June. Organization is my big downfall-- I have decluttered quite a bit over the past couple years, but there always ends up the dregs that I'm not sure how to organize in a useful manner (I have ADD, and so it's a bit of a struggle sometimes between wanting things to look nice/clean/clear and knowing that if I put it out of sight, I won't remember I own it or where it is and this causes problems). One of my goals for this year is figuring out how to organize these things so I can keep my bathroom, computer desk, endtable, and dining table from getting overwhelmed.

The second issue I'm having is books. I love books, and I love having a physical library of them, but good lord they are a pain to move. And as I expect to be moving at least a couple more times before I settle into a place for a good length, I'd kind of like to travel as light as possible (plus the housing where I am planning to move is more expensive for less square footage than I have been used to where I am at, so I will need to make things space-effective anyhow). I've actually already been through my library several times and eliminated a lot, but I still have approximately three bookcases (small ones-- 3 shelves each) worth of books-- artbooks and language reference with fiction and a few odds and ends. The fiction is mostly what I am struggling to part with, since it's pretty much impossible to replace the reference and artbooks with digital copies, but the goal is to clear out at least one case to pare down to really essential things, so probably more fiction must go.

Third goal is that I actually need to go through and sort and toss most of what is being stored at my parents' place, because they may be moving in the relatively near future as well, and aren't happy with me leaving so much at their place. And if I leave them to deal with it, I'll end up with most of what is important being tossed, which is very not okay, so I will have to get that sorted before I leave.

I don't really do well with the one-in-one-out method, because it's hard for me to really keep track (and make sure I actually do get the "out" thing out of my house and don't just set it aside) at this point since it ends up stressing me out more than it helps. Hoping as I get things cleared more, it'll be easier to do a literal 1-to-1 thing, but for now my mentality is mostly "Get rid of as much as possible and buy as little as possible" until I get to a manageable state, and I'm not going to worry too much about a solid tally.

( On that note, here's my approximate tally for the month thus far: )

And a question for you all: What do you do to get rid of hangers? Apparently the thrift stores won't take them, but I have two of those pant-rack hangers that I find I never use, and I'm not sure what to do with them. Would rather not put them in the trash, but I don't think I can put them in the recycle bin either?

haruka

I haven't posted for a while because there have been changes regarding the move my wife and I were going to make. Financially, after talking to the bank and the realtors, it isn't where I want it to be in order to get top price for our house at this time, so we're going to put off listing right now. However, we don't want to lose the momentum we started in clearing out the junk, and we do still WANT to move later in the year, after we're better able to afford the improvements necessary to increase the house value (unless we end up improving it to the point where we change our minds and stay. XD)

Regardless, we ARE going to keep getting rid of stuff we're not using/needing, I'm just not sure if I should keep the 'moving' tag on here or not.

Recent stuff brought in: Japanese screen, bamboo plant, new smaller sofa, new set of dishes.
Recent stuff (given away): Old sofa, a loveseat, old dishes. (thrown out): window block (for high winds), a tray, a drawer full of kitchen utensils.

haruka

So far today we gave away:

A full set of dishes (50 pieces)
A toaster oven
Over 30 videotapes

And there are between 100-150 books in the car waiting to go to the second-hand store.

It's amazing how, even with all the stuff we've been able to unload lately, that my house still looks like a disaster area.

haruka

Ever since we got the idea to move, my wife and I have thrown out a ton of stuff already (starting with eight garbage bags, a sink, a toilet seat, two gerbil cages, two hanging file holders, and God knows how much else.) We're also lucky to have a local freecycle mailing list, and managed to give away over 600 videotapes. However, there is still more to come!

For a while, we'll be getting rid of more than one thing a day, as is the nature of moving, but once we get into our new place, I'll try to keep up the habit of throwing something out every day.

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uncluttering one day and one thing at a time

Entries tagged with moving

June Progress

May Uncluttering Progress Report

Decluttering While Preparing to Move

Impending Move - YIKES

An update~

It's been a while

Catching up

probably need to pare down my post too...

Second thoughts

Today's list so far

Moving means throwing stuff out

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July 2025

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