I love this thread. It's inspiring me to deal with my own "stuff." Thank you, everyone, for sharing your stories and journeys. I hope to share mine soon.
The idea that everything you have/use can be something you actually like--not just something you happen to have--is like a revelation. You mean all those coffee mugs we've accumulated, I don't HAVE to keep? I could actually have every cup in the house be *pleasing*??
One issue for me is visual clutter--we don't have places to put things away, so everything is out all the time, which I am starting to realize makes me feel stressed.
I've dealt with clothing a lot in the past, and I can manage that fairly well now--I still sometimes feel like I have a full closet and nothing to wear, but I'm able to take some rational steps when that happens.
A big thing for me right now is non-clothing stuff and things that I didn't ever choose, I just happened to end up with, and that are now tangled in a web of emotions. Furniture from my parents that I never really liked, but didn't want to part with because it was *theirs*, oh and it's good quality so I don't feel right about donating it, but it's in the way and not pleasing me. Other stuff from parents and even grandparents that got packed in a box and sent to me fairly randomly. I've been used as a repository for stuff no one else wanted. Kondo says in her book that younger sisters often end up with lots of stuff they don't like because they get so many hand-me-downs--that's definitely the case in my family, just with things instead of clothes.
We have a dining room with a lovely table and chairs (which we use every night), a sideboard or two, and THREE pieces of furniture we just ended up with, which are just standing around taking up space. One is a cart that we no longer need in the kitchen because we installed a cabinet. My husband wants to keep it there because he likes looking at it, even though it's useless where it is. He's just as bad as I am. WTF.