Clearing Out Years of Stuff: How We Did It

“…an old No Fear ad campaign says, ‘the one who dies with the most toys still dies.’ But instead of heeding this simple wisdom, we continue filling our pockets with rocks and walking, quite happily, into ever deeper water.” –Edward Readicker-Henderson, How to Get Rid of Stuff

We did it! We emptied our entire attic. We have not seen it this way since we moved into the house nearly 30 years ago.

If we’d wanted to keep living in our 1875 home with poor insulation and no chance of upgrading to a more eco-friendly heating and cooling system, we had to do it. Everything had to go.

As motivated as we were to clear out the space, however, let’s just say this was no easy task. Our attic (shown in photo above) is a royal pain to get into. It has one of those pull-down staircases, and really low rafters, so getting up there to retrieve anything, or move things around, or even just see what what you have squirreled up there, is a huge production.

Like opening an Egyptian tomb, the job was going to take time, be messy, and require care, thought, and attention. It would also prove to deliver many pleasant, and not-so-pleasant surprises.

If you’re curious to know what we did exactly to empty the space, process the stuff, and reduce the overwhelm, keep reading. In this post I will outline what we did in the best way I know how: via the Spacious Way.

And PS, the system we used applies to any cluttered space you are dealing with – be it an attic, basement, garage, closet, or any other overstuffed, funky, or neglected area of your home.**

Useful tools to get started

First, to make the process as quick and efficient as possible, it was helpful to have a few things on hand:

• a broom
• a large heavy-duty trash barrel
• a recycling container for paper
• clear plastic stackable containers
• large post-its and markers to label boxes
• a camera

Set manageable goals

To ease the impact on our relatively clean and clear living spaces, it was helpful to have an outdoor space we could drag the dusty old crates, boxes, and trunks out to. Our back patio became our dedicated processing center.

To manage overwhelm and fatigue, we set doable goals and expectations: work in short stints with smaller batches, drink lots of water, stop when we start to feel maxed-out, drained, or gross.

Work with Piles

We had a system: my husband would haul the stuff down and bring it outdoors where I could process it using my trusty four-pile method: Stay, Go, Throw, Don’t Know.**

The throws were easy. As soon as the boxes came down I would sweep off the cobwebs and layers of dust, discarding extraneous plastic and debris as I went. Stained containers and stinky cardboard boxes long past their useful life were set aside to either discard or collapse and place into the recycling bin.

We moved some of the nicer go items out to our curb – like artwork and furniture I’d saved from my early years as a teacher. Most of these goodies got scooped up the same day by early birds who love free stuff. Anything that didn’t get taken, we drove over and donated to our local Goodwill.

For more meaningful, sentimental items that we were no longer keeping (like this sweater that had been made with love by a friend), I would set them aside to photograph later (before they too were blessed and released to Goodwill).

Once culled, all the stays and a few don’t knows went into the clear, labeled, stackable plastic bins, to be put into our temporary storage: our dining room. My husband’s things went into one corner, mine into another, some of our daughter’s things we are storing in a third. (We weren’t sure all would fit, but they did!)

We will have to live with some chaos (and no dining room) for a while until the attic is ready. It’s not ideal, but it’s cheaper than paying for storage.

And finally, when the time comes, we have promised ourselves that ONLY what is absolutely essential will go back up into the attic – useful things like suitcases, seasonal clothes, and a few keepsakes that don’t fit into our 1875 closets.

Your turn

Is there something that could use some fluffing up, or freeing from the dark recesses of your home?  Let us know in the comment thread. Just naming it builds the energy, gets the ball rolling, and lightens the load for everyone.

Happy clearing!

Want more?

**For other ways to apply the the Spacious Way method, visit these posts:

Books: Taming of the Shelf

Purse: What’s In Your wallet?

Drawer: Beautify a Drawer

Clothes: Taming the Clothes