Are You One To Keep Or Toss?

[daycare]

Right now I have a rather small house for my family size. We never planned to stay in it this long, but do to the economy, we are still here in it.

I feel like I am always trying to keep a budget and therefore I keep a lot of stuff. I am good at organization, but it seems like I keep running out of space.

like i have a halloween box that is now two boxes. My husband said, do you really need to keep the kids buckets, they are big and bulky and you can just buy more next year. BUT I don't want to. I want to keep them and NOT buy anymore until they don't work anymore. We currently have 4 of them.

So question is are you a keeper or a tosser?

If you are a keeper how do you keep it all, so that it does not become cluttered??

[cheerfuldom]

TOSS, I love minimalism. I wouldn't even buy the halloween buckets, we would use tote bags or something else around the house.

[daycare]

TOSS, I love minimalism. I wouldn't even buy the halloween buckets, we would use tote bags or something else around the house.

I hear ya on that. Maybe I should toss them and not debate it with my honey any longer.

[MarinaVanessa]

TOSS, I love minimalism. I wouldn't even buy the halloween buckets, we would use tote bags or something else around the house.

Yep, thais is what I do. The tote bags are relatively inexpensive and you can just fold them or roll them up and they take up almost no space.

[daycare]

with everything....if its normally a one time use thing do you rid of it??

[kathiemarie]

At Halloween we use pillow cases. Im a tosser. Really, Im not a buyer. I dont buy lots of things I will only use once a year.

[Childminder]

Traditionally I have been a keeper. Sentimental reasons stemming back from childhood and being without, not that I new we were poor till in middle school. Then my parents died and I got a lot of their stuff, I got a divorce and moved from a huge farm house to a 700ft home while storing a lot. Then I remarried so we had double stuff, moved to a small ranch and then his parents died and he was the executor so we got all their crap. Children moved out and left most of their stuff and our basement was PACKED. So was the rest of our house.

About four years ago I had an Aha! moment and started purging. Had the mother of all garage sales, gave to charities, put stuff on craigslist, another garage sale, used an online auction site called repocast.com ands gave more away to charities.

Finally my home is clear, upstairs very open, basement is daycare and very organized. A place for everything and everything is labeled. Long time coming!!!!

[Hunni Bee]

I'm a mix.

I've gone on tossing rampages and thrown away money, important papers, clothes, etc by accident. My main enemy is paper. I can't believe the amount of paper that we have to come in contact with daily. At restaurants, they give you up to four receipts. Bills are 5 or 6 pages long, bank statements 8 pages all with your whole account number printed on each (so you have to shred it!!)... But thats a whole 'nother thread.

On the other hand, I keep all shopping bags, plastic food tubs, bottle caps, etc for re-use.

Basically if it can be used on a reasonable time table, I keep it. If it's broken, ugly, useless, doesn't fit, reminds me of bad things.....I toss it.

[wdmmom]

I'm a little bit of both.

When it comes to stuff like Halloween buckets, Easter baskets, etc, I say toss them, sell them at a garage sale or donate them to the Goodwill. They can use a Walmart sack for trick or treating or those "green" grocery bags work great too! Easter baskets are the same. They come out 1 day a year. I just leave the stuff in piles for the kids. They can figure out who's is who's by whats in the pile.

Other things I collect...like DVDs. We have a collection of about 300 movies. I don't want to get rid of them. Some were gifts, others we bought and we love closeouts...like Blockbuster is going out of business. We just bought 12 there for $3 each!

I am all about getting rid of stuff we don't need/use. We have a garage sale each year and when I go spring cleaning, I go through what I think will sell and what won't. Some gets tossed in the trash, the rest goes on the garage sale. Whatever is left after the garage sale goes to the Goodwill. I refuse to bring it back in the house!

Just remember, if you can donate it, do it! It's a tax deduction!

[Meyou]

I'm a keeper but I'm organized. All of my holiday decorations are sorted by holiday and neatly labelled in stacked totes. I just need to grab the one I need and go. It also makes it easy if I pick up things on sale to put them away right away.

My biggest thing is everything has a home and everything needs to live in its home all the time. That way I can have the things I want to have but the house doesn't feel cluttered.

[SunshineMama]

I am reading an excellent book called "It's all too much!"

It's about how things have taken over our lives and affect the quality of our life. Inspired by the book- I started tossing- beginning with my closet. I tossed 3 garbage bags of clothes, shoes and handbags- all things that have not been worn in the past 2 years. It felt SOOOOO good!

The premise is that you toss everything you dont regularly use, and if it is something that is special and you dont want to toss it, you have to place it in a place of importance in your house, not in a box. Halloween decorations, if used every year, would get their own storage box-but you have to consolidate and only have 1 box.

I am working on the kitchen today. Tossing is empowering, and my home belongs to me again, not my things!

Just a little personal story, since I started tossing last week

[Lianne]

I'm an extreme minimalist in my personal life. I have one personal photo out in my home of my late father and no other sentimental items. I do have a small box of things in storage that I want to keep however just last week I gave away my childhood doll collection (original Cabbage Patch Kids) because I won't be having children of my own to pass them on to.

When it comes to daycare, though, it's a different story! I'm still practical about what I keep or get rid of but I do keep a lot of things. So much so that I had to rent a storage unit to store the extra stuff. Granted, it was more for the big, bulky, awkward things but the unit has come in handy for all sorts of storage

In November I decided to downsize a bit and sold 3/4 of my puzzles, games and manipulatives. I sold them on a local swap n shop group on Facebook and made $700. I kept my favorite items which still equaled two pantries and two bookshelves but it was freeing to unload all the rest. It's also made life a lot easier as I pack to move at the end of the month.

[Blackcat31]

I am a tosser AND a keeper. Depends on my mood. I would like to be more of a tosser but it never works out that way.

I recently came a cross an article while at the dentist about how Americans do everything over sized including their homes and the things we feel we need to survive on a daily basis.

I also watch a lot of House Hunters International on HGTV as I LOVE seeing how other countries live and the one thing I have learned from that show is we are all about BIG in America.

I am amazed at the sizes of home other cultures and countries have that they consider big. We are definitely extreme if you base American lifestyles on other places around the world.

[daycare]

I am a tosser AND a keeper. Depends on my mood. I would like to be more of a tosser but it never works out that way.

I recently came a cross an article while at the dentist about how Americans do everything over sized including their homes and the things we feel we need to survive on a daily basis.

I also watch a lot of House Hunters International on HGTV as I LOVE seeing how other countries live and the one thing I have learned from that show is we are all about BIG in America.

I am amazed at the sizes of home other cultures and countries have that they consider big. We are definitely extreme if you base American lifestyles on other places around the world.

I would have to agree with you on how big everything is here.

No disrespect to anyone, but when I came here I am so shocked at the size of the people. Then the size of the freeways and roads, they are HUGE. Especially in LA. SOme of the freeways have 5 lanes.

I think that maybe this could be my problem. When I was a child we had our needs met, but most of our rewards came in the form of family time with my mom. We got to bake cakes or sew new clothes.

In the city I grew up in there were also not many options of places to shop and a lot of our purchased came from street vendors at open markets. Sometimes they were there and sometimes they were not.

I think I need to relook into how I am buying things. I know my husband buys a lot too, but he buys really expensive things here and there, where I buy those on sale.