On 5/21/2014 Puppy Lips said: On 5/21/2014 Beccaboone2 said: I am an experienced mover, both long distance and local. I'm preparing for a long distance move right now (this weekend actually!).
The longest I have lived in one place was 12 years, where the bulk of my son's childhood was spent. Moving from there was awful - my worst move ever - and a real eye opener. I don't keep everything, I am organized, neat, etc., but I found I STILL had way too much "stuff" after 12 years. I donated a ton of stuff to Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, etc., I also rented a large dumpster and I was pretty ruthless. Every move since then I have purged and shed more stuff...it is a lot of work - A LOT!!! - but you may be surprised to find it brings a feeling of relief in a sense.
When my son was growing up, I had one of those plastic flip-top bins for every year of school for him, and I saved EVERYTHING. Before my last move, I went through every single bin (took hours a week for several weeks) and heavily purged. I saved a few things from each school year, awards, certificates, etc. and put it all together in one large bin. ONE. There is no way my son would have wanted EVERYTHING I had saved, and this way he still has important stuff to share with his kids someday. That was hard but cathartic at the same time.
I've also become much better about getting rid of shoes, clothes, etc. that don't fit well or are uncomfortable. My advice is to start now...it's a big job but you will be happy you start now, and your children will be happy you did it, too. I just didn't want my "stuff" to become my son's nightmare at some point, as I see all too often. Good Luck.
OMG, I thought I was the only one crazy enough to save every single school paper. I have 3 boys. 2 are out of college and one is in High School. I have every paper, test, booklet, etc. they ever worked on. My husband thinks I am nuts and he shares this insight with others, I think in hopes I will wake up and purge. When we had our current home built, we made the garage a bit bigger to store all the bins, and yes, 1 for each child for each year. They don't want this stuff, so it will be my chore someday to go through it all. Don't even want to think about that.
I'm sure there is a support group for us somewhere. I, too saved every paper and project from my son's school years. He went to a very challenging private school, and they did much more in the arts and academic areas than any public school I've seen, so I have soooo much stuff. I started last year clearing some of it out. Much of it I saved as reference material for him to use later. We found (and I figured ahead of time) that once he transfer to public high school, it wouldn't be as challenging and he could use some of his old work as refresher/reference material, and expand on some of the big projects he did. And I'm glad I didn't dump everything at the end of each school year, because some of it was helpful and used.
With him being a senior next year, my big purge on theses things will happen this summer, and my goal is to be down to one tub. We had some friends move to England, and they really had to purge the kids school work and projects, so they photographed most and tossed it. Sad, yes, but liberating as well.
My mom handed me a folder with my grade cards, a few class pictures, and one or two papers/projects. Glad she saved them, but just as glad she didn't hand me tubs and tubs of stuff. Less is more (more appreciated anyway).
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