Advice From A Reformed Hoarder Part II: Tackling Large Collections

Today was another work on purging stuff so I can fit into a tiny house someday day. Did I toss bags and bags of things into the trash? No. Because I really am a reformed hoarder (see my first post about this here: https://steemit.com/downsizing/@phoenixwren/downsize-and-declutter-advice-from-a-reformed-hoarder ). So while I am not super fast at it, I AM really good at getting into the ring with my psychological demons and chipping away at it.

So today I tackled cassette tapes!

Now before you check your flux capacitor to see what year it is, understand literal hoarding and that I'm 39, so yes, cassette tapes were a part of my childhood/coming of age, and I had a lot of them. At its height, my collection was pushing 500 tapes. A lot, a lot.

I do actually listen to them in my kitchen radio, but prior to starting this category of collection purge, many of them were scattered about and stuffed in boxes, so like many things when you are a hoarder, you HAVE things you LIKE but you can't really access them. And here is where the advice part comes in!

Step One: gather all items in a category together.

If you have to, start broad here. When I first began this process, I had "craft supplies" in approximately 5,879 places, so Step One was compiling them all in the hall closet. Any time I was clearing out a box or bag and found any kind of craft item, into the closet it went. I didn't worry about purging it (unless it was an easy toss for some reason), I just put it all in the same place.

The hall closet (Tetris'd with NOT craft supplies in this photo)

Step two: divide into sub-categories.

For craft supplies, that could be yarn, scrapbooking, fabric, notions, paint, canvas ...etc. For media (another huge category for me), movies (VHS and DVDs were stored together for me), cassettes, CDs, records, books. You get the idea.

part of the movie purge

Step three: Start purging one category at a time.

First I took ALL the movies down off the cube tower o' movies. It used to be full all the way to the ceiling.

Yuan takes out the top stack at 1:43

I pulled a bunch out that I wasn't interested in/likely to watch again. Some of them I had fond memories of, but I was a TMNT nerd when I was 14, not 34; I wasn't going to watch those cartoons anymore. I threw a whole big paper bag full of VHS that was just stuff I had recorded off the TV right in the trash. Then I listed the whole list of VHS and DVDs on Facebook that I was giving away and asked friends if they wanted them. I gave the whole Friends series to a friend who loved them, as well as a boxfull of others. I mailed two boxes to a friend with kids. I gave my Smallville seasons to my aunt who had borrowed them from me years before. What was left, I put in the bag in the above photo, posted on NextDoor, and left on the porch of my apartment building for two days with a note that said "free." After two days, I had a half dozen left and put them in Little Free Libraries, where they were taken in a week or two.

CDs, I took all the myriad stacks of and fit into two binders. Records, I began selling online (still have some left). I haven't had a working record player since that wore out and got purged, but I hung onto the records for years after.

Cassettes though, I didn't start tackling until recently.

It's a slow process doing it in a way that my anxiety doesn't murder me for, but it works, and breaking it down helps.

Step four: find good homes.

I got into this idea with the movie purge story above, but I totally get it when the thought is, "this is perfectly good stuff that someone will enjoy!"

books that got delivered to Little Free Libraries

Again, if it doesn't stress you to just haul everything to an ARC donation bin and go, godspeed with your Buddhist detachment self. But if, like me, that makes it harder, you can take the time to list things on NextDoor or Freecycle (have given away things on both) or get to know all the LFLs in your neighborhood or go to a clothes swap with the intention of giving away a whole cartload and only coming home with three items (did that twice). Once you have whittled down the giveaway pile and don't know what to do with the rest, THAT can go to the ARC bin.

It was so weird to me to give away jeans, because jeans get worn out. But I shrunk six sizes, so I wasn't wearing these anymore. I found a lady who collects for a clothing bank and jeans are always in demand, so off they went to new homes!

So after two bouts of Cassette Tapes Round One purging, I tossed a whole bag of tapes and broken cases in the trash the first bout, then today a small pile of broken cases went in the trash and 30 more tapes stashed in a bag for a local artist who put out a request for them on NextDoor, awaiting their response. All my tapes are now neat and organized, and I can listen to old favorites again! Maybe tomorrow I'll wash the dishes (you do not want to see a photo of what my kitchen counter looks like right now). 😅

Are you struggling to overcome your hoarder or packrat ways? Or have you always been minimalist and find it easy to let go? I promise, if you're like me, it does start to feel good eventually! I've been working on this for years, and now I like it!