Real Real accepts some higher end china, even incomplete sets.
My favorite time of year, annual church rummage sale. Had to use the old minivan to get all the donations to church. Will probably buy a few things that will all fit in my purse Now feeling inspired to gather more from the cabinets and closets for next yearās donations.
@kiddie, Maybe make the person whoās buying part of the set a deal to good to pass up to take the rest of it?
I once put an ad On a work bulletin board to get rid of a bike trailer. Iām guessing I put it in for $100. When the couple and their little girl got here, i told them they could have the trailer if theyād take a bunch of other stuff too. They were ecstatic with the stuff, and I was happy to reclaim some garage space.
Those of you who are decluttering now are really being so unselfish and caring for your children down the road. You are not leaving them with the mess I am dealing with right now. H and I have been cleaning out MILās apartment after she died. The things she saved!! Old calendars (she got calendars from every charity organization that like to prey on old people), greeting cards, including the free ones she got from the charities, books and more books (I took a binful to Goodwill) and clothes that hadnāt been worn in 30 years! Also piles of bedding, which Goodwill wonāt take. We havenāt even started on the knicknacks yet. Ai, yi, yi.
This is all a lot of work for H and I. Days and days and days and we still are not done. And this was a small apartment. Luckily she had pared down stuff from moving, but itās still a lot of stuff.
I have vowed that I will not leave my kids with such a job. Iād rather live like a monk than make such work for them.
@TatinG You are SO right! Iām still spending weekends traveling to my parentās house to declutter in preparation for a sale. When Iām don with theirs, Iāll start on another round of mine so my kids have less to do.
Offered the buyer more of the pieces. She just wants dinner and desert china plates for her wedding. So no go on that.
I have 2 carloads heading out later this week. One is a bunch of boxes of items for our electronics recycling center (including a microwave I bought ~6 months ago.) 
The other is a carload of household goods, glassware, clothes, etc.
The more I declutter the less I want to buy. Iām determined not to leave my children a mess to clean up after I die and Iām starting to resent the time straightening up all this stuff takes from time I could spend with family, so Iām being pretty ruthless. I was going to try to sell some of it, but I think thatās the mental block thatās prevented me from going through it. If my stuff brings someone else joy, great. Once I let that go, the stuff started flying out of the closets.
" I was going to try to sell some of it, but I think thatās the mental block thatās prevented me from going through it. If my stuff brings someone else joy, great."
This.
I know in the past Iāve been thrilled to find items that I couldnāt believe someone donated. Time to pay forward!
I know Iāll be super happy to live in a clutter free environment. Then Iāll have space to keep the items I truly DO want to save.
But before you throw everything out to save your kids the troubleā¦my dad (96) had his old college yearbooks ready to toss. To him it was trash (old history to him), to me it was treasure (old history OF him.).
@gouf78 - the only thing I wanted from my parents house ( besides a painting) were my dads HS yearbooks. Thankfully found them before my mom tossed them. I also wanted my paternal grandmothers yearbooks from the 1920ās but those were gone. ( fun fact - we all attended the same HS).
Good point about the family history, @gouf78. Iāve told my children that the family records are probably something theyāll want someday but they should feel free to toss whateverās left.
I try to store the family records in one area so theyāre easier to find. Most of it is paper ā genealogy records, yearbooks, photos (that Iām in the process of labeling), letters my uncle sent from Europe during WW2, etc. ā so it doesnāt take up much space. But I have a few family heirlooms that arenāt paper, so Iāve started to label them so the children know what they are and where they came from (my great-grandmotherās jewelry, my grandmotherās silver, etc). At least then theyāll know what theyāre dealing with.
Iāll probably do what my parents did. They passed those things down to us before they died. It made things so much easier for us when they did die, and we had the pleasure of using the items while they were still here to enjoy them with us.
I want to live more minimally. Seeing the mountain of trashed furniture, clothing, toys, etc at just our Goodwill is sickening. The plastic straws are nothing compared to this. Where does it all go?
Google Good Will recycling. Iām sure it varies by area as to how many programs your local GW may participate in but the opportunities to recycle are enormous. Even non-working Christmas lights can be recycled for the copper wire (mentioned on the GW site).
I never used to donate my husbands old work jeans because no one would want them when heās done with them. then I learned that GW recycles them into insulation - the same blown insulation that I have in my cottage.
Good news: my ex took some high-value (sentimental or financial) items from the house yesterday, more than two years after our divorce was finalized. Bad news: he continues to state that there is no need for me to get a dumpster for disposing of junk because he believes that no junk remains here; either he doesnāt see things such as the huge pieces of moldy carpet remnants, old lumber from never-completed projects, and weather-damaged furniture or he thinks those things arenāt junk. But Iām trying to see the glass as half full, given that the house is now more empty.
The great thing about being divorced is that you no longer need to get his agreement to rent a dumpster and fill it up with trash, right?
That is true. It was just frustrating that when I was chatting with him about the stuff, he kept saying, āyou donāt need a dumpsterā and āthereās nothing to put in a dumpster.ā I continue to feel some resentment that he is a low-level hoarder and left me with the junk when he walked out several years ago. I do appreciate that he later admitted, half jokingly, half seriously, that he is a hoarder.
@rosered55: Get the dumpster. Youāll feel good after you do.
Ditto.
I also give you permission to get the dumpster and toss that stuff out. In addition to it being YOUR space that you deserve to have clean and uncluttered, consider it a step towards not enabling your exās hoarder tendencies.
Do any of you who live with or used to live with āaccumulatorsā feel as though theyāre in alternative universes? I truly wonder what my ex sees when he looks in the basement and sees unusable furniture, a gigantic rolled-up carpet remnant, and mouse-dropping-covered shelves and says there is nothing left to be thrown away.