Make a clean sweep of your move
space in your head because you are seeing the stuff and you’re having to acknowledge it in a subconscious way.
“If you get down to just what you need it is really liberating.”
That’s all very well but when it comes to sorting through boxes of photographs and just keeping the best (Aggie suggests framing them and throwing the others away) few of us can do it. And what about keeping things in case they come in handy? “Ask yourself do I need it, do I love it, will I use it?” she advises. “People have this idea that if they let it go the next week they’ll need it but the chances are you won’t. “If you find you do suddenly need something you haven’t used for five years, borrow or hire one.” The online auction site eBay estimates the average home has a small fortune in unwanted items and claims that books and toys sell well, in particular old Lego sets, that may be worth more than the original price. But Aggie’s top tip is to get somebody to help who won’t be emotionally attached to your possessions, and that’s exactly what McCarthy & Stone (mccarthyandstone.co.uk) offers to those buying their retirement apartments. Its Smooth Move service helps customers with estate agent and recommended solicitors fees plus a specialist removal service to take away things you don’t want. Removals company House To Home UK (housetohomeuk.com) helps customers get rid of things charities won’t take, such as old sofas and mattresses. “We send out a sticker system pack to the customer and they go through their homes putting stickers on items,” explains managing director David Winter.
“We then send a surveyor round to go through these items and take those the customer doesn’t want to our warehouse so the charities can come and get what they want. The rest we take to landfill.”
AT Liberty House, McCarthy & Stone’s assisted living retirement apartments near Wimbledon, South-west London, several of the new residents have used this service.
Mitsuyo Ogino left a three-bedroom house for her one-bedroom flat and says: “I had to get rid of a lot of things but I got help from McCarthy & Stone.” Two months after moving in Mitsuyo, 74, still had boxes to unpack, but she says: “I got rid of a lot of furniture but now I am getting new furniture because until you move in you really don’t know what you need, or the size of furniture that will fit.”
Similarly Anja Fitzgerald-Barron, 84, says her house was too big but her two-bedroom flat with two balconies and the communal garden is perfect.
“Some of my things my son will sell and some I have thrown out,” she says.
Nobody at the contemporary-style flats, with comfortable lounge, restaurant and wellbeing suite said they regretted getting rid of things.
But in case you need to declutter and are considering a storage company, Aggie has just one word: “Don’t.” She adds: “You think ‘I’ll sort it out later’, but you never do. It’s such a waste of money.”