Ever feel like throwing everything in the bin?

Not in a melodramatic life-changing sense (although I suppose a therapist might have another opinion!) but does anyone else look around at some of the “Stuff” they’ve accumulated over the years and feel like it would be a lot more relaxing/uncluttered/simple to just do a big tip-run and launch anything that they don’t actually “need”?

I think it’s partly because I haven’t moved house for a long time, but there’s plenty of stuff that’s been put on the side/in a cupboard because I don’t want to throw it away or it might be useful one day but sometimes it really annoys me/stops me from relaxing…

Is this why some peoples houses look like they don’t live in it? I’m sure there’s a sensible middle ground, but like a lot of things moderation is difficult. Maybe I need to just start putting anything that annoys me on eBay and see where I end up! Most of it probably isn’t worth anything to sell is the problem, especially by the time I’ve bothered to list and then post it.

Or is everyone else normal?

Marie Kondo made a career out of this.

If you have several people in the house and each one keeps things that may be useful to them, then you end up with a whole load of crap of which you really don’t need

I did but I have reasons to declutter/throw stuff out due to spms, everything I own could fit in the back of my brothers caddy van with plenty space left over (except essential furniture), one pair of trainers, 3 pairs of joggers/3 t-shirts etc..etc.

I didn’t want my mum/bro to deal with my stuff when I decide I’ve had enough

Yes. Especially if you buy quality stuff that lasts but you get bored with it so replace it but because there is nothing wrong with the original you don’t throw it away or sell it second hand/ donate to charity

I horde stuff because it might be useful.

Some times it has been, which has made it harder to bin stuff

My wife is worse for the above than me. Our house is slowly filling. I want to bin stuff, but then won’t because it might be useful.

No solution here

I hang on to stuff that I really should get rid of, for various reasons.
It often seems like a real waste to throw something out, and there is the off-chance that it might come in useful some day.

Sometimes I decide to get rid of stuff  via ebay or some other sales route, but the reality is that I never find the time to put it up for sale, or I put it up for sale & it doesn’t go. So, it just stays where it was.

I do sometimes wish that someone could come in and actually make the hard decisions for me. I find myself making a determined effort to get rid of junk and then an hour later I’ve picked up a load of stuff, wrestled with the prospect of getting rid of it and the put virtually all of it back, for another day.

we are a clutter free household.

do a bit of a sweep every 6 months. stuff no wanted/used goes to the charity shop.

i dont even have a bike spares box nowadays.

My ex used to and still does just buy random shite to fill a gap somewhere. The only stuff i do keep hold of are offcuts of wood which I do find uses for.

but there’s plenty of stuff that’s been put on the side/in a cupboard because I don’t want to throw it away or it might be useful one day

A couple of plastic containers with snap lids is useful for left-overs, washing out and stacking in a cupboard every take out tray ‘just in case’ is hoarding. Personally I have a one in one out policy for pretty much everything, that and a a house with limited amounts of storage space. You do sometimes need to be ruthless though.

Swedish Death Cleaning

i dont even have a bike spares box nowadays.

The internet is my spares box…

I want to bin stuff, but then won’t because it might be useful.

My Mum’s house is like this. Full of stuff that is, on the face of it, useful (or with the potential to be useful) but which basically just sits there. She’ll sometimes have very half-hearted efforts to clean things up or she’ll get absolutely fixated on one issue (usually the one thing that is actually not in the way!) before it all becomes too much effort for her (she’s very frail) and she leaves it for another day which means stuff just never gets done. Or, worse still, it gets started but never finished so there’s a pile of “stuff that needs to be thrown out” but it’s mixed up with normal stuff cos she never got around to the “throwing it out” part.

Problem is that some of the stuff is trinkets handed down so any attempt to throw out a load of old glassware for example is met with “oh but they belonged to my grandma”. Apparently the answer that “yes, they might have done but they’ve not been used since 1995” is still not a reason to bang them all in the glass recycling.

All the time, at some point I decided to collect retro computers. I now have a house full of them. I don’t even like them anymore 🙁

7 years ago I put my entire life in the bin and started again. Best thing I ever did.

But here we are, 7 years later. I have a house full of crap and incredibly itchy feet.

When we moved two years ago we took the opportunity to get rid of a bunch of stuff. Since then my approach has been to pre-emptively solve the problem by not bringing more things into the house wherever possible. Replacing worn out objects/consumables is acceptable, but anything new needs serious consideration over days or possibly weeks before purchase.

The flaw in my plan is my MiL and her obvious joy in buying a seemingly infinite amount of stuffed toys for my daughters…

Not in a melodramatic life-changing sense

I mean – you could be quite melodramatic about it if you like

Twenty years and an epoch ago, Michael Landy destroyed his worldly goods, all 7,227 of them, in the just-closed flagship branch of C&A on Oxford Street in London. It was a wildly theatrical event. The mise en scène involved a snaking conveyor belt bearing tubs full of carefully catalogued objects, with a team of blue-boilersuit-clad “operatives” painstakingly disassembling each item, and the artist himself standing atop a high platform flinging items into great bins according to their material, prior to their long funereal journey to recycling or landfill.

Swedish Death Cleaning

Good song, good band 😉

I horde stuff because it might be useful.

Some times it has been, which has made it harder to bin stuff

That’s me that is! In the case of one old odd bit of wood it took about 30 years for me to find the perfect use for it and of course that justifies me keeping everything now!

All the time, at some point I decided to collect retro computers. I now have a house full of them. I don’t even like them anymore 🙁

If you want to shift them, I know a couple of people who might like first refusals.

I don’t keep anything I don’t use – my friends envy my minimalism.

My wife is a congenital hoarder who likes to cover every available surface with trinkets. Every cupboard in the house is full to the point where anything therein is pretty much inaccessible. Hoovering and dusting any given room takes twice as long as it should, due to the need to clear the floorspace and surfaces of accumulated shite. As of Saturday there were 10 hydroflask-style water bottles in this, a household of 3 people. Want to guess what she bought on Sunday?

Mind that scene in The Bourne Identity where he comes home to that huge, empty, anonymous Paris apartment? THERE. I WANT TO LIVE THERE. Or maybe an empty aircraft hanger.

In short, yes, all the time.

Yes the device that I’m using to type this reply

My wife is a congenital hoarder who likes to cover every available surface with trinkets.

Be careful what you wish for.  I have the opposite problem.  My partner is a serial putter-away-of-things which is great in theory but in practice is borderline sociopathic.  Like, I’ll want a drink so I’ll get a glass out of the cupboard, go take a bottle of Coke out of the fridge, come back to the counter and the glass has already disappeared into the washing up.

It’s fantastic that we have a tidy house because I’m terrible for leaving stuff to deal with later where “later” is a very broad variable, so I love her dearly for that, but you cannot let go of anything anywhere near a flat surface or it will immediately vanish (with a side order of denial) only to turn up weeks later inside the food mixer or something.

“Why are my socks in the oven?”

“Well, I haven’t put them there.”

I’m anal about things having homes, I arrange my spice rack in alphabetical order for god’s sake.  Who’s the most likely culprit here?  Spoiler, it’s unlikely to be the one of us who gets a twitch on if the dill is behind the basil.

I’ve occasionally wondered what it would be like to have a devastating house fire. One where everything was burnt to a crisp (not people, obviously). I have far too much stuff and only occasionally manage to bin/sell/give away some of it.

We too have stuff everywhere. Hubby won’t part with his books, I won’t part with a few ornaments of sentimental value. But, next year when I’ve more time, there’s going to be a massive clear out. Items will be thrifted, taken to charity shop and the rest to the tip.

We even have old videos sitting on window ledges, on the floor, on shelves around the house, it drives me bonkers.

The only thing I do hoard is bone china, but these bits and pieces are slowly going to my sil.

But we do keep our clothes as we still wear things from decades ago.

Well at least it’s not just me…!

To be honest the total sum of it all could probably fit in a single bathtub sized box and just tucked out of sight, but whenever I think that I also just wonder whether I might as well bin it rather than put it away never to be seen & used anyway!

I do tend to “buy right, buy once” which is generally a good thing, but it does mean that I then look at some of these things and think it would be even more wasteful than it would be to bin something cheap and crap as someone could probably make more use of it.

All the damn time.

Moons many ago, I used to move house a lot (rooms in shared houses etc etc) and piling everything into a car boot load or two to change house was all it took. Happy days.

The household would need 3 bloody artics and a luton now.

Amen. Both me and the wife seem to collect shite/clutter and it drives me mad TBH, Feel like hiring a big old skip and filling it.

Mother in law died last year and was living in rural France so we had little ability to bring anything but the very basic stuff back to UK… maybe obvious to some but made me realise that everything* will one day end up in landfill, its just a matter of time; an item may have some relative sentimental value that gives it a reprieve for a generation but by the time it’s passed to my kids, itll be going to landfill.

*caveat being a piece of art/furniture/etc with actual value

Yes. My ex has just moved out and I am recovering stuff from storage to try and fill out what is essentially a shell of a house. I brought back a van-load and a lot of it is garbage. I’ll recycle or skip it. I do still need some things to make it a livable place, but I’ll try and avoid much of the random crap I/we gathered.

If you want to shift them, I know a couple of people who might like first refusals.

If they are near central belt scotland and searching for stuff I may be able to help 😀 (I hate dealing with postal system/couriers).

Me and Mrs F are at opposite ends of the spectrum with this. She will keep everything and I’m attached to nothing and will gladly get rid of anything that hasn’t been used for a bit. A Kindle, decent speakers and a comfortable chair are all I need beyond the essentials. It’s got to the point where being at home stresses me out. Just shit everywhere!

‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or, believe to be beautiful’ – William Morris.

I have a load of stuff that I intend to sell. I just seem to busy to get around to selling it. There’s an Arai Quantum F helmet in the cupboard in the spare room. Only used a hand full of times. Reckon I sold my motorbike over 13 years ago.

As my dad used to say to my gran

” It’s going in a skip when you are dead Mum”

Which while true, I thought was a bit harsh

With the exception of books I’m pretty good at getting rid of stuff. My wife is the opposite, she even hoards empty cardboard boxes for everything she’s ever bought, just in case it needs to be sent back….

i dont even have a bike spares box nowadays.

Sadist

All these retro MTB’s on facebook marketplace for £20 are playing havoc with my clutter issues…

We’re not too bad otherwise, loft hatch is screwed shut to prevent temptation

Apart from 60 houseplants and an addiction to maps, of which I have around 300, I’m not too bad. But it is a very small house so not really any opportunity to acquire too much junk and I’m quite adept at ebaying or giving away surplus stuff.