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I have been doing remodeling for about one year and my goal is to have a clean, simple, and comfortable home.  I have de-cluttered quite a bit and most likely had way less clutter than the average home for starters.

Still, I find that I have too much stuff.  My home is a little over 1200 square feet which was an average size home for a family in 1953 when it was built.  I live there with my 2 rescued dogs and 2 rescued cats.  So, 1200 and something square feet should be plenty of space.

Interesting enough is that I only actually use about half of my house — the kitchen, the bathroom, and my bedroom.  In reality, I only need about 600 sq feet.  The rest of the house mainly houses my stuff. 

The de-cluttering I have done has been the easy stuff and some of the hard stuff.  The easy stuff is what you don’t use or have used up and needs to be thrown away, I actually enjoy de-cluttering this stuff.  Then there is the harder stuff: gifts, things you had as a child, memorable items, that sort of clutter.  This is when it gets hard to de-clutter.

I have tried to be strong and remember that if I keep these items, I will only put them in a box and leave them there to deteriorate. That is a waste and a cop-out.  By keeping items that I know I’ll never use doesn’t help me with my goal of clean and simple.  

For instance, my mother gave me a set of beautiful china about 15 years ago that she bought at an estate sale.  I love this set, but I have never used it and it has been in a box for about 15 years.  Why would I keep this?  My solution is to take pictures of it and then rehome it.  This is the type of “stuff” that I find heart wrenching to re-home. 

However, a box of fragile china is not going to make my home simple or comfortable, so out the dishes go!! 

Next challenge——-my toys from when I was a child!!  Now this is going to be a hard one!

How do you stand up to the challenge of getting rid of items that are dear to your heart???