Three weeks ago there was a fire in my apartment building, in the unit next to mine. I didn't actually lose much at all, for which I'm thankful for. My neighbors whose unit the fire was in lost absolutely everything. Good firewalls, I guess. We did have smoke and water damage, and thankfully, renter's insurance, so a restoration company took all our stuff, cleaned it, then brought it back to our new apartment (they have to gut and redo the whole building.) In unpacking again (we just moved 6 months ago) I'm finding things I can easily part with. It's a good feeling, even though I've been uncluttering for the past 3 years.
Example - I tried a stint at cake baking/decorating and bought a ton of supplies for that hobby. It didn't last long, and I've been meaning to sell my supplies for about 6 months. I realized if I haven't sold them yet, I'm probably not going to put the effort into listing them somewhere, so I boxed them up and am taking it all to a Goodwill-like charity nearby. All in all I have 9 boxes of stuff I'm donating (though I must say 4 of them are hangers - the restoration company told me initially the hangers weren't salvageable, so I bough new ones, then they returned them anyway. so I'm donating the old ones...and my new ones all match!)
I've read the series from the programmer who had a fire in 2008, and have planned somewhat for emergency events, but going through it really opened my eyes. I didn't have a fireproof safe, but will be buying one when I get paid this week. I didn't have an inventory of my stuff, but one positive to this is the restoration company inventoried everything, so I'll just have to transfer their spreadsheet to a workable system of my own (and add values), making that task easier.
My fiance and I also got rid of 2 FULL trashbags of clothes. When we had to wash everything we own, we found there was a lot we didn't like enough to bother folding all at once.
And the restoration company also said we were the easiest job they've ever worked, that our stuff is so organized and well cared for. I thank this website for that. Though we still have too many books and DVDs, but I doubt my dear fiance will part with any DVDs, and I already have a plan for some of my books to force myself to part with them.
