We've lived in our house over 20 years. One of the things we loved when we bought the house was the attic. It's the space above the 2 car attached garage. Easy access from the upstairs hallway. We even changed the half height door to a full height door so we could store an extra double bed in there. But then the problem was that we had such easy access and SOME members of the family started saving everything. My husband is one of those guys who saves every box, just in case. I have to admit, when he sells an electronic on eBay, the original box and packing material is very handy. But he saved far too much. Over the years the attic became so disorganized and jam packed full that there was no longer space to put your feet down or move to a spot to look for something. Last year I started a job and needed my Social Security card and spent 2 hours trying to find the right box in the attic and gave up. It was easier and less dangerous to go spend a half day at the Social Security office and get a new one.
Our city has been slowly moving to standardized trash containers. Once your neighborhood gets the new can, you have to have all your trash in the new can, nothing can be left outside, except for appliances and they have a special pickup. We were one of the last areas who still hadn't gotten the new cans, but I knew it was coming soon. So last December we tackled the attic. We all had a week off at the same time and we used the Keep, Toss, or Sell method from the TLC "Clean Sweep" TV show. We kept about 10 % of the stuff and tossed about 90%. We had practically nothing to sell as we had had a few garage sales over the years and my husband sells stuff on eBay. This took us about 4 days, bringing everything down from the attic and sorting in the living room and dining room. We made multiple trips in the truck to Goodwill and used contractor bags (heavy duty large trash bags) to bag up the rest.
Trash day came and the scrap guys came and took anything metal and the city took the rest. What a wonderful cleansing experience!! We all felt a sigh of relief and now anyone who needs to store something has plenty of space. But we learned our lesson. Don't let it get that bad again. We don't need to keep everything, it becomes a burden.
