Oh, this strikes a note since we are also planning a move to smaller apartment in the city. Most people comment on how clean and minimal my house looks, but obviously they have never looked behind those closet doors and in the basement storage cupboards.
I agree that it's appalling to think of all the stuff that we accumulate and squirrel away in the nooks and crannies of our house. Pulling it all out in the open really is a sobering exercise. I think we've managed to sell, donate, and otherwise get rid of about 50% of what lay behind those doors and I love sense of liberation I feel when I see a half empty closet.
The best part of the whole exercise, though, was what happened at the end of our yard sale. I had put out a huge, flat box filled with all my good crystal--goblets, wine glasses, stemmed dessert dishes--that I hadn't used for decades. The box sat there all day, even with a $40 price tag on it, and no one evidenced the least bit of interest. At the very end of the day, a young woman and her mother stopped by and started checking out some of the plastic food storage containers that were left. The young woman kept looking at the crystal, while her mother admonished her that, with young children, she didn't need anything so fancy and to stick with what was practical. I offered to lower the price, but, after looking at her mother, she regretfully shook her head, saying it would be so nice to own lovely things, but that she'd have to wait until her kids were older. They bought a few pieces of plastic, and when they left, I handed her the box of crystal and told her to let her kids drink their milk from those goblets because it would be cheaper than buying glasses at Target. She carefully carried the box to her car telling me that she had never expected to be able to own anything so nice. My unloved and used crystal had found a good home!
