How exciting! Less stuff and less space means less maintenance, less expense and more freedom.
I used to collect little porcelain boxes. Limoges, Wedgwood, etc.- now what do I do with them? eBay hardly seems worth the hassle when you think of the shipping cost. Ditto with Lladros and even some crystal.
We have a crate of records that I was going to take to a resale shop and declutter. We do t have a record player and have zero intent on getting one (we don’t even have a sound system of any sort - I listen to my music on my iPhone or iPad). There is nothing valuable but H still wants to keep them. Really? What good is your Sgt Pepper or Eagles Greatest Hits or The Stranger or Rumours or Beach Boys Endless Summer or every other mass record that was bought by millions of people? The music I want is all on my iTunes. It’s not like they are going to appreciate in value. Why not just get a few bucks and declutter? Argh! You should have heard us. “That Go-Gos album is mine, not yours!” “You can sell the Beatles red and blue compilations but not the White Album!”
We sold the remainder of our old records about 5 years ago. Vinyl is making a comeback with the young crowd. It’s exciting but I also pity the fools! Who wants to haul around that heavy stuff and store it? So nice to get rid of it even if we only got $1/album for most of them.
Actually, the shop I sold them to gets a lot of calls for Rumors. It was popular back in the day but most people got rid of their album and quite a few want one back. You might get $3 for that one!
@intparent: I’ll take the sterling off your hands. 
Between that and the first Boston album, I’m going to be rich! Rich, I tell you!
^ I would buy that Boston album from you, but I’m pretty sure H has one just like it in our basement 
Pizzagirl - Our husbands must be kindred spirits. Not only does DH have vinyl albums, but he also has some on cassette, and all on CD, flash drive, and iPod. The amount of redundancy is mind-boggling, but I can’t get him to consider getting rid of anything other than maybe the cassettes. And he buys more CDs because he likes having the entire album.
We’ve bought a turntable that will convert the albums into digital music files. Now to find the time to figure it out and do it! DH is a classical musician, so we have loads of classical multi-record pieces (particularly operas). We’re also both Broadway fans, so there are a lot of original cast albums no longer available on vinyl or digital.
Once they’re recorded (ha!), onto eBay they go.
I love the idea of a CC exchange, perhaps a private FB page, like the community garage sale ones 
^ I would be happy to have someone take the stuff off my hands, but I don’t want anything in exchange.
Same here @fallgirl. I just want to reduce what I have.
I looked at dd trophies and some of the name plaques are blank.
I was hoping to remove them and put them in a frame.
The trophies take up so much space.
I still have a binder of every award and report card dd received in elementary and middle school.
I’m thinking I’ve kept it long enough. Don’t know why I keep holding on to them.
Had to look up Limoges. I don’t know if its something the next generation would like to have.
As far as a cc exchange we all live so spread out that the only way to exchange would be to ship the items.
FYI, you can set up your eBay items so that the buyer pays the shipping - which totally makes it worthwhile! My H has sold hundreds of items on eBay and pays no shipping - he has a way of figuring shipping and that is what the buyer pays on top of the item purchase price - sometimes you might even make a little $$ off the shipping since it is estimated.
When I think of my mom’s home - a 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement, even though she doesn’t have a lot of stuff there is very little that I would want to keep. Her taste, not my taste. Only a few things really have sentimental value. Nothing furniture wise.
Our attic is FULL (full attic, FULL of stuff!) of old furniture that my H bought intending to refinish and sell. Old dressers, dozens of old chairs, side tables, rockers, etc. This was a hobby when we were younger that his parents got him into - refinishing antiques - he has the stories of going with his parents to old abandoned barns and picking up round oak tables for a $20 bill - maybe less! Well, in the 80’s we could refinish this stuff (H would remove all paint, sand, do any repairs and I would seal/varnish and resell it. Oak this, oak that. Today? I keep trying to tell him - “honey, no one wants this stuff! If they do want it, they are going to take it home and throw 3 more coats of paint on it!” He doesn’t get that that stuff - that has been sitting in the attic for years - is not in demand. UGH. Gets my blood pressure up just thinking about it! I keep telling him that if anything happens to him, I’m marching up to that attic and putting it all at the curb - and will probably break my back in the process!!
(By the way, that was what his eBay selling was suppose to do - clean out and make a little $$ off of “too much stuff” in the house. Unfortunately now that he has the knack at selling, I’m catching him going to estate sales and stuff again and BUYING STUFF TO SELL. God help me!!!)
@intparent wrote
In my sculpture class we’re doing lost wax casting right now. If I still had my grandmother’s sterling (it was stolen by the movers in one of the moves-we didn’t notice until a few years later because we never used it), I’d melt it down and make something very cool with it.
I want to do something with my wedding dress (I should have consigned it the day after the wedding instead of carrying it with me everywhere for the last 23 years), like repurpose it into an art piece, but my husband is appalled by the idea of me cutting it up. We compromised by me agreeing to cut up a goodwill dress first and then if it comes out as awesome as I think it will, I can do mine. :D.
(this goes along the lines of me not getting to touch the kids’ old matchbox cars, either-he’s much more of a hoarder than I am).
…forgot to add-there’s a website called The Minimalists (I follow them on FB), who advocate living a minimalist lifestyle and give a lot of tips on how to start.
A word of warning, though; like any evangelical movement, this one goes way overboard. If you follow their “throw one thing away on day one, throw/recycle/goodwill two things on day two” for the entire month, by day 31 you’ll be living in a cardboard box turning your inside-out underwear back to front…
We can start a CC auction – I’d also like to see the Danish Modern stuff that thumper turned down!
@MotherOfDragons: I just spit my coffee all over the keyboard!
@doschicos nope…the inlaws are not giving us the signed Danish modern stuff. that they are selling when they die. Go figure . I do not want it at all…but my son really wants their couch…and they flatly refuse to even consider selling it to him. Isn’t it weird…? They have given us all sorts of junque we have no interest in owning…but the ONE thing someone in our family likes…answer is NO.
PG…I have vinyl Rumors…and that Boston album. And believe it or not…some vintage 1960’s Beatles.
How can they sell it “when they die”? They’ll be dead!
@thumper1 That is strange. You’d think they would want it to stay in the family. And why would they care once they died whether it was sold or stayed in the family??
My kids got pissed at me when they realized I gave my record albums away 20 years ago before a cross country move. I’ve wish I’d kept them as well, especially the bootleg Bowie albums.