This past week, I took an entire SUV load of items over to a really great charity shop.
I've been dealing with major anxiety since then as I keep thinking I've made a terrible mistake (I come from a family of hoarders).
I got rid of several dust catchers that likely are worth a tiny bit of money and should have tried to sell, but I just didn't want to. And also a few things that were from my grandparents that had sentimental attachment or at least I was supposed to keep forever... but I got rid of because they're long gone and the stuff isn't necessary to remember them.
Still feeling a bit panicky tho.
I hope you feel better soon! I am just recently getting better at letting go of things given to me by my grandparents (deceased). Maybe it could help to spend some time thinking about all the happy ways you can remember them? I have kept some high-quality, hand-made gifts from them, which helps me to let go gifts they purchased from a store as a Christmas present, etc.
I'm logically good, been doing the panick-y declutter thing so long, been there, done that, got the teeshirt. Then donated it. And panicked about it. :)
And the really hilarious thing is, I barely spent any time with the grandparents, and while they were basically nice to me when we did see them, I have no real deep, meaningful attachments to them. They sent me $5 in a birthday card, we saw them at x-mas for a few hours and I helped out my grandmother for a week or so during my 20s when she needed surgery and no one else could do it. People in my family just don't make strong, loving bonds, and it's all about the physical crap you fill your house with apparently.
After my dad died and we had to hire a crew to dig the house out, it's just... so fraught with everything stupid emotional when I cart off things I've owned literally my whole life because my family insisted everything - especially gifts or things given as gifts - are valuable. Material things are more important than people really as far as they were concerned.
A cruel twist of irony but the fact that I won't have any kids to pass this shit on to has made it easier to shut up the panic pony-go-round whenever the music starts up about
"oh, no, this is important, this is valuable, you can't get rid of this, must keep it forever, be buried with it, or at least make sure to sell it someday at the astronomical price it has to be worth to justify it taking up space in my house..."People are such silly, irrational things sometimes.
Husband has a few large bins of toys that are going out next week. Star Wars/Transformers. Originals. In played with, but somewhat decent shape with all parts included. Jabba playset, Darth's Imperial TIE Fighter. Can pop batteries into them and the lights and sound still work on a few. Even has things like a working Mickey Mouse phone. We both know if we painstakingly clean, pose, photograph and then hit up the sales sites with carefully priced sales, we'd likely get a few bucks out of the lot. Sounds TERRIBLE to us, so he's going to go to a local comic store that offers pennies on the dollar and take whatever they might offer just to be done with it.
Oh! A win for me was finally donating two large bags of clothing. I lost an entire person's amount of weight and had saved some of the really good quality clothing items from my fat days. It's been 4 years. I loaded them up to get rid of, and then the crazy brain started rationalizing keeping them - because I will regain the weight, I am a failure and will backslide and how stupid will I feel if I get rid of all those beautiful(fat) clothes.
I feel so relieved that they are gone. I kept telling myself that in the event that I do fuck up for long enough to regain the ENORMOUS amount of weight to have fit back into those items - like 8 sizes too large for me now - then I bloody well know where to buy new ones. Or go thrift store shopping for new to me ones. And how freaking depressing is it that I was keeping them on the chance I was going to fail? That's like... a giant black hole bin of negative energy every time I would see that storage container in my closet. I'd subconsciously be registering "yup, there's my fat clothes, just in case I'm a giant failure I got them handy" and how freaking stupid is that?
Topic: Continued: Getting rid of stuff / Clearing out clutter! PART 2 (Read 1436763 times)
