I am 8 days into the Attic Purge. After my first post, I had a day I am not proud of. As my family watched the World Cup, I screamed at them as I was lugging bag after bag of junk from the upstairs attics. I took a break and decided to do some self care by Googling “affordable dumpster rental near me.” For $350 I have a 15 cubic foot dumpster to fill completely up with all of our attic junk. The only downside? I only have this precious gift for 14 days. Today means I only have her for 6 more days before we head out of town for our holiday Florida trip. I am proud to report that the 2 big attics and 5 smaller attics have all been cleaned out. I have about 1 day of getting the last attic junk either to the Swap Shop or dumpster, then I will head to the crawl space under the house (less of a priority but if space in my dumpster girl, more junk will be added).
What I have learned so far:
My entire family hoards. Somehow I modeled for my children to just toss what they don’t need into any attic space.
Cleaning out for me is best done when family members are not around. I do not begrudge them for not helping better that way.
Seeing an empty attic is the most glorious thing ever.
I will never, ever collect anything again. And I am sticking to that promise. First example: I bought new exercise shoes. After I tried them on, I put the old pair in the box the new ones came in and took straight to the Swap Shop. The official new motto is, when something comes into the house, something has to leave the house.
Fingers crossed I can make a dent in the crawl space and under deck with my new friend the dumpster. Worse case scenario is one haul from 1800 Got Junk.
A friend of mine recently moved out of her home she had lived in for about the same amount of time we have been in our house. I remember her posting that cleaning out a home you have lived for over 20 years is one of the hardest things she has ever done. And this is a friend that does hard things all of the time. I am right there with you Kate Kennedy. And thanks for being my sounding board during this horrible, terrible, no good, very bad task.