[taylor111947]

How do you decide what to take and what to get rid of? I'd appreciate suggestions on what you might have trashed and then regretted and what you saved that you now wonder why.
My boys are all out of the house, but not settled down enough to want anything I have - including the trunk I have for each that contains pictures, report cards, tropheys, etc. At some point in time I think their children (assuming I become a grandmother someday) might enjoy looking through them, but they do take up space.
And what about my memories - love letters, pictures, diaries, etc. Somehow getting rid of those feels like I'm throwing away a part of my life. I'm trying to be practical, but I'm really struggling.

[rjm1cc]

I guess part of the decision is where would you store the stuff if you keep it. If you are getting a 3 bedroom home you might convert the 3rd bedroom to a storage room and that would let you avoid the decision for now.
Maybe look back at want you would have like to keep from your parents and your childhood? Probably only a few things.
I think I would keep pictures and things you can use as decorations in your new home. For example I have a child's rocking chair that sites on the hearth with a stuff toy that my daughter had. It fits in for decorations. If it did not, probably no need to save it in a box.

[kb8tpw]

It is a tough proposition. Just finished going thru that process and to some extent it continues. I tended to bring all of the things you reference. There are a few things I pitched which I now regret, but not too many. We downsized considerably in square footage on our villages home, so passed on many antique family heirlooms - for that we're satisfied with our decisions, and I might add Southern Lifestyles is probably pretty happy too as we needed some furniture items we hadn't thought would be an issue. I'm slowly going thru what we brought and splitting it up to the two kids for eventual disposition and that's been fun going thru each and every photo, report card, anniversary and birthday car as well as things they made in school. We were a military family so revisiting travels around the world was also a treat as we sorted thru photos. I said that to say this - my major recommendation would be to compare your current and projected square footage, realize what you had in storage previously may not be a candidate for storage here as Florida attics are pretty unforgiving due to the heat and crawling occupants.
We have decided that we may have downsized too much when picking our house, but we're making lemonade out of lemons and thankful for what we have and mostly where we are. You may make some mistakes - we did - but you are obviously giving it serious consideration and that is the best you can do. Good Luck on your move...... Being in the villages tends to mitigate some errors in judgement.

[Mikitv]

One thing we brought were a few yard tools, regular tools. I got rid of my fine china since I hadn't used it in about 4 years and didn't have room for it here. We did bring our dining room set because I couldn't sell it for what it's worth and it actually worked out fine here. Dressers were we will bring and if we need to get rid of we will. Glad we did because great for storage. We got rid of a lot of extensive Christmas decorations because our last house was much large. Downsized tools we don't really use like car repair tools. It's hard deciding what to keep and not but in the long run we are glad we got rid of so much stuff because we don't need it here and we have been storing it for the last 40 some years. Good Luck.

[elevatorman]

I got rid of my lawnmower and weedwacker. I used to hate cutting the grass. I was paying $45 a month for 20 min of work a week here. So I bought a lawnmower and string trimmer and now I do it myself. I think the reason I did not like the up north cutting was it was after 10 hrs. of work, and a bit more land. I can cut and trim our yard in under 30 min. and I get a bit of exercise.

[Sparky-30]

My wife decided to take scrapbooking lessons and joined a club to put all those things into several different albums for each kid.

[JenAjd]

Personal preference would be my answer of what to keep. We downsized considerably and got rid of ALOT of "stuff". I had to put all that in perspective....need vs want and how much of it was actually stored in our previous home. If it wasn't a true need it went into a rejection pile. We sorted the plethora of photos/albums and such. Each kid got a box of all that which was divided. I told them it would save them the job after we're gone to have to do it. They had fun looking through it all actually. Our house here is alot smaller and we'd furnished it from this end. We let our kids take what they wanted/needed on the other end and the rest either got sold in a garage sale, given away or donated. There were things we "thought" we'd have to have on this end and once here weeded through and found space was an issue so sold, gave away or donated all that as well. We did keep a minimal amount of items that we had "attachments" to.
We also kept some tool and yard-tool items. It's actually a "freeing" thing to purge!!! I always kept the motto in mind that we "never" see a U-haul behind a hearse.

[iandwk]

One thing I think most if us have found after moving here is that we still have way too much stuff. We donated several truckloads of good stuff to a battered woman's thrift store in our home town and were very pleased with ourselves for all of the downsizing we did. We got here and still had to have a garage sale with a garage full of stuff that we decided we can do without. From talking to others in TV, this is not an uncommon occurrence.

The nice thing about it is that every step for us was enjoyable. Unless you're a hoarder you'll be fine.