Yep, packing the physical contents of your life into cardboard boxes is a fantastic way to declutter your life significantly when you are downsizing for retirement. All trivial trinkets and junk you’ve collected over the years when you only have limited space in the removal lorry and a tiny house does help to focus the mind. Why do you need two ironing boards, three kettles, ten saucepans and a partridge in a pear tree when there are only two of you? Plus, bone china tea services are no longer in vogue when posh afternoon tea parties with salmon and cucumber sandwiches with crusts removed. Or why eighty of the one hundred mismatched plastic storage containers no longer have lids. And shoes … fifty pairs of shoes. Seriously? And so much more.
And that’s before you’ve ventured up into the attic or in the garage! Be ruthless becomes your new mantra. If you can’t upcycle, move on it to someone who can. At the moment, we have a great system here. Whatever we don’t want, we take to our local rubbish bins, put it to one side and usually, within hours, someone rehomes it.
Which leads me to the question: Are we a consumer-driven society?
My new mantra is to recycle and upcycle rather than buy new.
Creative Ideas: Upcycling Plastic Crates to a Garden Cloche
Recycling Project: Creating a Mosaic Table
Piglet in Portugal 
Moving is certainly the best way to declutter, but stressful too.
Luckily we have a lot of op-shops (second hand shops) and we have “Buy Nothing” facebook groups for every suburb, so I first put the stuff I want to give on Buy Nothing, if no takers I take it to the op-shops. I’ve decided to give away 3 or 4 things every week, so we can start downsizing and maybe move to a smaller house in 2 or 3 years. But it’s not easy for sure, I get attached to a lot of sentimental stuff!
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I love the idea of that FB group! And giving away only 3-4 things a week must be less painful.
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Yes, it does help to move house! Entertaining people also helps to clear the decks.
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That is true And Springclean!
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I dread it but maybe I can find a warm home for dreary winters and just leave my summer stuff there. I dread moving because of keeping too many sentimental things.
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Sentimental things are the hardest things to part with.
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Truly the worst.
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