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There is a lot of information out there about "downsizing", decluttering, cleaning your closets, tidying your world.  The three best books I have ever read on the topic are, The life changing magic of cleaning up by Marie Kondo, Clutter Control: Putting your home on a diet by Jeff Campbell and the Clean Team, and ____________.

The first books talks about only keeping things that bring you joy, and focuses on what you keep not what you get rid of.  The Clean Team book is one of the first I read about decluttering and it set me on the path of decluttering my life so that I didn't spend so much time looking for things. And the third discussed ways to organize that are not traditional, it was focused on the truly chronic "clutteree" and has some really good out of the box ideas for storage that works for people when ordinary files, drawers, and closets don't.

I am beginning to feel like an expert, having just moved twice in less than a year and sold one of the houses we moved from after 24 years.

Two of the most important things I learned are, first, unless it is personally created or an heirloom nearly everything can be replaced, and second, we had a lot of stuff that took more energy to store than we took pleasure in. Hard as it was to go through our vast amounts of stuff, going through it was like taking huge boulders off of our shoulders. It seems trite to say that but it really is true.

One other observation is that sooner or later this has to be done, and I frankly don't really want to go through my parents stuff, so I therefore don't want my kids to have to go through all of my things.  It is inevitable that we will have to go through my parents garage and home, as my kids will have to go through our home and garage, but I swear by all that is holy when my kids go through my life they won't say, "what in the heck did she save this for"?! They may say that about their dad's stuff, but that isn't my concern today.

When I have gone through and continue to go through my things and household items, the first question I ask myself, what is it? The second is, when did I last use it or wear it or look at it? Third, when do I think I'll use it, wear it look at it again? Fourth, do I plan to do anything of those things again? Fifth, does it make me smile? And finally, do I really want to keep it?

Those steps taken one at a time make the process easy for me, because I actually don't have to get rid of anything and when I look at it that way letting go is worth it!