What State Is Your Loft In?

Uff

It's a filthy day out there so I decided to remind myself what was up there and to sort it out. I've only lived here for just under 8 years and all the stuff is my junk because when my husband died most of his was either given or thrown away. 

I haven't put Christmas decorations up seriously since I moved in so they are going, either charity shop or perhaps a neighbour. Fifteen good jigsaw puzzles, charity shop. Kitchen chair pads to be used for garden kneeling pads, 2 stair gates to keep Wee Uff from going where he shouldn't when he was a pup. The list goes on but I'm determined to get rid. 

Fess up, how often do you have a clear out?

MikeOxgreen

After last weekend 'Well insulated' is one description to give it. The others are much less glamorous.

Plantminded

I've never put anything in my loft @Uff because it's not boarded and likely to invite a calamity!  Don't mention the garage or space under the house though!  I've still got five boxes still not unpacked from my last move 9 years ago, thinking I'll wait until I move again to unpack them!

Uff

Ah both replies are very reassuring. It's not just me then.

I've started on my mobile phone now! I'm having a new one shortly and I'm determined not to transfer rubbish when I set it up. Lord know how many photos there are from 2 phones ago. 

didyw

Nothing in our loft as it is very shallow, the bedrooms being practically in the eves.

But we have two outhouses... There are still a couple of boxes in one of them full of ornaments and other nicknacks that there wasn't room for in this house when we moved here 20 years ago.  And a tea-chest full of obsolete teaching materials we still seem to be storing for my daughter.  And a drum kit. And some lovely yarn and other crafting materials leftover from when I closed my shop (4 years ago) waiting to be photographed and put on ebay.  And loads of lovely silk flowers, inherited from my ma-in-law.  Don't know what to do with them.  And old pots of paint, a large unframed mirror, all the gardening stuff of course, tools, a broken 5mx5m gazebo... All tidily arranged, easily accessible and cobweb free.  Not!

JennyJ

Our loft is full of stuff. OH is worse than I am at chucking things out!

Dovefromabove

Our loft is empty. When we moved here my very sensible OH said he wasn’t going to put anything up there. We’d had stuff in the attics at our last two places and never used it .., so we built some proper storage shelves in the garage for things we're likely to use (even if once a year at C*mas) and we got rid of the rest. Marvellous! 😊 

Fairygirl

I don't have much in mine - it's small, and the old water tank from the old boiler takes up a fair bit of the available room. It's mainly the cardboard boxes from moving, which I did many times in the space of a few years.
Other than that, just an old suitcase and the box with the little mementoes from when the girls were wee. 
I don't hang on to stuff though. Moving certainly gets you into that habit, but having had to clear out my parents' loft, and dispose of the original kitchen which was around forty years old, it focuses your priorities a bit!

pansyface

Coincidentally, we have just had a clear out of things in our loft. Not without some difficulty.  We have about eight charity shops nearby and thought (wrongly) that they would be keen to take stuff. After all, they have cards in the window saying “We need stuff”. But not our stuff. No.

One shop did at least suggest that we take our stuff to their shop in Chesterfield. Twenty miles each way. Luckily, we had to go to Chesterfield hospital, so we loaded up the car and, after the hospital, headed off to a huge, rambling, god forsaken industrial estate somewhere on the outskirts of town. 

We had been told to take the stuff to Unit 9. But when we got there, unit nine was a cafe. A bloke in unit 9 told us to drive round the corner to Unit 12 and give the stuff to them. The bloke in unit 12 only wanted two of the things, shouted loudly and rudely at us for having dared to set foot inside his warehouse without permission and told us to take the rest of the stuff “over the road” to the “Donations Centre”. We went “over the road” and searched in vain for anything resembling a donations centre, turned round, went back into the industrial estate and found yet another unit, number 3, which was known locally as “the donations centre”. The bloke there took a couple of things and referred us to unit 10 for the rest of the stuff. At that point I released an expletive and asked my OH to drive me home please.

So we still have three, double bed sized, hand made, American style, quilts. “We don’t take bedding” is the universal refrain. Even when you explain that they aren’t really bedding, they don’t have to be, they could be seen more as wall hangings.

“We don’t take bedding.”

Enough already.

Woodgreen

Empty lofts here too, but 'stuff' elsewhere that hasn't been used since the last declutter so it really ought to go.

To make space in a barn for firewood after last year's storm I dealt with boxes that hadn't been opened since we moved here in 1993.
Be prepared @didyw and @Plantminded -- there'll be a lot of "Why on earth did we bring that?" or even "What on earth IS that?"

KT53

Our loft has 34 years of accumulated 'stuff', much of which probably shouldn't have gone up there in the first place and certainly shouldn't still be there now.  The problem is that if I do try to clear it out 'her indoors' will keep grabbing stuff because she likes it.  She doesn't like it enough to have actually used it in decades, but it's more than my life is worth to mention that.  It's only a couple of years since I managed to get rid of a big frame tent which had never been used since we moved in here.  That only went because I did it when she was at work.  The original reason given for keeping it was that her sister and the kids might want to use it.  As her sister doesn't have a car, and doesn't drive, I have to wonder how it might have been used.  There must be at least 20 large boxes of Christmas decorations up there too, as she buys new every year but 'might want to use them again'.  I feel better for getting that off my chest.