I’ve watched quite a few YouTube videos and even asked AI what the best way is to de-clutter my house and while the info has helped, it still seems to be taking a lot longer than I had hoped.
With our kids now adults and our daughter announcing that she did not want to manage our home when we moved abroad when we retire, we made the decision to start getting rid of things now rather than wait. We’ll likely end up turning our primary residence into another rental property and rent it out while we’re gone.
The difficult part really isn’t decluttering, it’s the emotional attachment to things that once meant something to us but have no real meaning to anyone else other than functional utility of an item.
I have been tempted to simply trash everything but many items still have good use. We just got rid of a large wooden armoire by essentially giving it away.
So the system we’re using is the four box method:
- Box 1 – Keep
- Box 2 – Donate
- Box 3 – Trash / Recycle
- Box 4 – Relocate
Box 2 & 3 are easy however Box 1 and 4 are more complicated because we’re not entirely sure where to keep and relocate some stuff. With our daughter bailing on living in our house while we’re away, it’s impractical to leave stuff around and rent the home out.
We have thought about storage rental unit but without the ability to periodically check on the items to ensure they’re not being damaged or stolen, I’m not sure it is practical or cost effective.
What about relatives?
Despite the fact that we have tons of family in the city we live in, that’s not practical either. Most of my brother and sister-in-laws and siblings plan on moving somewhere when they retire and no one wants to house someone else’s stuff.
My own mother has a ton of stuff she is trying to declutter herself after her sister died recently, decluttering 70+ years of accumulated stuff was difficult and time consuming.
The last resort is to take the stuff with us in a shipping container but I really don’t want to be hauling stuff all over the world if we decide to move from one country to another.
It also got me thinking about the 60 million baby boomers that all have houses, condos and apartments full of “stuff” lying around everywhere. I can only image the level of trash that will be inbound to landfills at some point and it’s a scary prospect.
There will be a follow up post on this topic once we figure it out.
Share The Wealth
Have you had to declutter recently? How did you make it work? Let me know in the comments below.