If you’re social and into games, keeping card tables and folding chairs not a bad idea — if you have the storage room. Storage cabinets worth keeping. Lawn equipment if you’re masochistic enough to do your own lawn. Forget the furniture, the knickknacks, the mildly sentimental stuff. As was said, take pictures. Digitalize everything you can and leave the rest behind.

From the title I thought this thread was about an eating disorder. :D

My wife regrets getting rid of a lot of stuff, especially all the kitchen stuff that she NEVER used or would never have used. Oh yea, there was one pillow, her favorite. No sure how she "forgot" that. 2 years later she is still whining about it ...... but I still love her after 50 years & 9 months. That counts for something. :D

Bring the card table! It stores easy and you’ll need it for the games you are going to learn to play or the parties you will host for the neighborhood! The only other things I wished we hadn’t given away are the rakes, a shovel, and tree saw and pruner. Ended up replacing them all. Welcome to The Villages!

After going through 3 moves with my wife’s career after I retired; we had gotten rid of a lot of stuff so other than winter stuff, we didn’t have that much to get rid of moving here.

We're getting rid of *most* of the crystal we collected throughout our marriage, including wedding gifts. They sat on shelves in a corner hutch in our condo, and then in our house (we've had two homes total in our almost-28 years of marriage). The only time we even really looked at them was once every few years when I'd open the glass doors and windex them all, and put them back dust-free and shiny again. We'll be having a couple of MASSIVE tag sales starting in April, and hopefully will get rid of most of our stuff. And hopefully get enough from the sales to buy a new bedroom furniture set. We have a couple of antiques which are coming with us but nothing for the bedroom. Except for the bed and frame, it's a SleepNumber and deflates into a small enough box it'll fit on the passenger seat of my car.

My snowblower. Not easy to find one down here.

Thanks everyone! My kids don’t want much, so it is going to be painful getting rid of all the stuff I kept from wedding, 25th anniversary, etc. also have in-laws stuff and my parents stuff. I am going to let both sides of families to ‘come and get it’. Christmas China that I had to have, Christmas Village collection that took years to collect- just keep saying I enjoyed it while I had it and it’s time to move on. I hate the idea of re-buying stuff I already had.

Brought my Christmas in the city, it lives in the linen closet. Sewing machine and material. Lots of knitting and cross stitch.

Our master closet has 10’ ceilings, and had custom shelves installed. Everything fits well. I do have lots of kitchen stuff and have built in storage in garage when not in use. Find I use everything I brought down.

My wine glass collection is extensive, they have a sideboard to keep them safe.

We still have our homes up north so we bring things down as we want them. Only things we have not brought was pictures.

Our tractor and lawn stuff will remain north.

I'm with you. We purged carefully, but I still miss some things. We brought all of our furniture and only replaced the dining room furniture for something better. So many books I had to let go of, but I knew there would be no room.


But I'm glad we brought all the furniture and cooking supplies and don't regret that at all. We lived in a condo in a marina at Lake Michigan, so our furniture was light and airy anyway; fits well in Florida.


It's the dark stuff that feels too heavy when you bring it down.

We somehow brought the dogs bed and comforter and gave away or lost track of an expensive Goose Down Comforter that we had for years.

We got rid of almost all our winter gear. We wish that we would have kept our North Face Jackets and Vests. All the heavy duty gear can go. Every once in a while we

do have a chilly day here so prepare as needed. My wife is cold when it hits about 70 degrees. We wish we kept our GrandFather Clock and I wish I had have kept some

of my tools. All errors we made were easily replaced except for the Down Comforter. Good Luck. We used a Storage Unit Similar to a POD it makes you make tough

decisions.

Got rid of 3/4 of all we owned and the other 1/4 ended up in the consignment shops down here with everyone else's stuff that they brought down. All the stuff that looks so very good up north will look not so great down here. It's hard...a lifetime of beautiful and often expensive stuff with memories connected to it all but in the end it's just stuff. You will find new stuff down here that you'll like much better in your new home. I wish we would have listened to others and just left it all...live and learn.

Ha, your post reminded of George Carlin's classic routine called . . . STUFF. So true and hilarious - one of his best in my opinion:

George Carlin Talks About "Stuff" - YouTube

Enjoy!

We moved ourselves, bringing a small trailer-load at a time over four visits. By slowly filling it in, we could pretty easily see what was going to work and what probably wouldn't. We left a lot more back in NC for an estate sale that I'd originally expected. On the final move, we had to be out by a particular time for the estate sale people to come in and I was just exhausted from packing so there are a handful of tools that didn't make it that I've since had to replace. Really though, we didn't leave behind anything that I really regret.

We did pretty well, but I could have gotten rid of some china. I brought it all down thinking we would entertain more. We do, but it is impromptu, and most of the dishes have never left their cabinet.

DH misses his bucket of bolts. It came with a lake cabin we bought, a decades old collection of random hardware. You could rummage through it and almost always find a suitable washer or nut. Now we have to go to the store.

My personal feeling on this is bring what you really love and just cannot leave behind. I left dishes because I thought I was never going to cook again!, have had to replace them. Also, when you first arrive the temperature is super different and winter clothing feels unnecessary. When you have lived here a few years you acclimatize to the temps and start to feel cold at 70 degrees, so I wish I had brought a couple of wintry type jackets. Also I left some mid-weight blankets, wish I had them now in January and February, hate spending the money to replace stuff I gave away. I also disagree on dark furniture. We had some really good dark wood antique end tables that we brought with us, and I got rid of two beautiful living room sets and ended up buying almost the same thing when I got down here. So, bring what you love and donate to Salvation Army if you make a mistake. Relax and enjoy because moving is ultra stressful without adding to it.