I can relate. I went through a very poor period in my life and barely had anything. When my partner came into my life that changed. She had money and wanted to get me stuff. I remember walking into a Card/Gift Shop…and walking out with two shopping carts full of stuffed animals. That’s how crazy it was. At the time, I was just giddy with excitement. I had never been showered with so many things in my life.
When we had moved her out of her apartment, into mine, I could not believe the hoarding going on there. She had shopping bags of brand new items everywhere. She had 3 new vacuums, in boxes still. The reason? She couldn’t get to the first one. So, clearly, the reasonable option was to buy a new one…then it happened again. There was, literally, a walking trail through her place. Over the next few years, she bought me everything I could want – most of it being stuff I did not need. Plus, on top of this, I was very sick. So, it was very easy for her to keep buying things for me. From all this extra spending (after going through real money), she acquired a large amount of credit card debt that we finally paid off, slowly, before moving into our house.
We had so much stuff that we had to store much of it in the basement of a house her parents owned in our city. By the time we moved out, into our first house (about 3.5 years ago)...we had accumulated enough to open our own small store. For the first year, our garage and basement housed all these things. Then, after convincing her, we had a couple garage sales. We sold about 3 quarters of the stuff. About half of the stuff we went through, we didn’t even recall buying (or why we would have bought it). We had absolutely no remorse over getting rid of it. It was time. We were both tired of this junk smothering us.
The hardest stuff to get rid of is the higher priced collectables. We still have most of it here, in boxes and bags. I wanted to sell them on Ebay. They mainly consist of Boyds Bear collections (figurines and stuffed animals), Quarry Critters (stone animals), Russ/Gund/TY/Disney stuffed animals and Disney figurines. All of these things are brand new. The stuffed animals are all jammed into our spare bedroom closet. Seriously, opening it would cause a stuffy avalanche. The breakable items are all in boxes, in that same room. The reason we still have them is that I’ve been too wimpy to try to sell them on-line. I am so scared of doing something wrong and making someone upset or dealing with returns…etc. But I really want to gain some of the money back that we so frivolously spent. We had so many stuffed animals that we donated several bulging large garbage bags of them to charity (the ones that weren’t as collectable). We’ve donated a lot brand new clothing and shoes as well.
I’m done with this insane accumulation of stuff. My partner, I’m working on. She has gotten so much better. However, from time to time, she will bring something home that she shouldn’t. Most of what she buys are sale items that she keeps for possible gifts. This drives my batty. We are working on it though. Her mother is a hoarder… the woman has a closet full of toilet paper. She has 20 brand new ceiling fans… because they were on sale. No one can visit their house because it is too packed with stuff. My partner can not tell her mother when we get rid of things because she gets very upset that we “wasted” the items. Her mother tries to get her to take things home with her. She finally stopped doing so when my partner told her we’d get rid of anything she tried pawning off on us. It has been, and is, a difficult process.
How we started sifting through it all? We went from box to box… bag to bag… making sections of the different items. You really do need some space to do this in. Every 6 months, I go through the stuffed animals we want to keep, which are also in that closet. I always end up adding more to the “go” pile. The reason we have held on to some of these things? Simply because they are cute and squishy. It seems silly, I know.
One really has to be ready to get rid of the stuff. We were ashamed and embarrassed at the amount of money wasted on these things. It is hard to get over, but teaches you a lot.
As for sentimental/personal things… such as old gifts, greeting cards, grade school items…I’m working on it. I think I treasured anything heartfelt given to me when I was younger, because of the lack of love in our home growing up. Any little positive thing…was like greatest treasure to me. Awards from grade school…I still have them. Notes about me from teachers…still have them. I don’t know; these things give me something, other than the abuse, to remember and relate to from my childhood. I can’t see myself getting rid of the school items ever. However, that may change…who knows really.