What To Do With Your Childhood Belongings When You Move Out Of Home

Here is a guide as to what to do with your old possessions from when you were a kid:

When you move out of home, you will be thinking about budgeting, your parents, your new life and a million other things besides your old kids stuff. Your toys, action figures, Lego and teddy bears. Wait a second, that stuff matters right? There may be a lot of it, you may care what happens to it or seriously not care, either way it’s better to do something about it so it’s not just cluttering your parent’s home.

Sort It Into These Categories

You need to know what to do with which stuff. Some of your kids stuff you might want to take with you, some you might want to give away, some you might want to leave at home and some you might want to discard entirely.

How you should go about this is: look for all the places where you might have your kids stuff stored. At this stage in your life it is probably packed away in several niches around the house. The basement, cellar, attic, cupboards, garage, rumpus room, etc.

Put them into piles where you have space. A pile each for:

• Things to take with you.
• Things to leave at home.
• Things to put into storage.
• Things to sell and give away.
• Things to throw away.

How do you decide which kids item goes into each category? We go through some helpful tips below.

Things To Take With You

This category should be quite limited for a two reasons: You don’t want extra baggage. This takes time, money and space. You should be using this opportunity as one of the rare chances to declutter your life and get a fresh start.

You don’t want to be stuck in the past. This is more of a loose suggestion than a definitive point. But for personal symbolic and appearance-based reasons, it may be better to abandon most of your childhood belongings. You will probably not need them for any functional reasons, and your sentimental reasons may keep you in the past, so this is probably a time, as wrenching as it may be, to start afresh.

So you should try to take as little as possible with you. Tips for doing this are coming up in a sec. Some of the things that you should take with you are: Phone, wallet, clothes, laptop. Other ‘duh’ things as well as a spare key to your old home.

Things To Leave At Home

You will want to travel as light as possible, so that the travel itself is easier and so that your new home isn’t cluttered with all your old stuff. Then again, this category doesn’t include things that are so unnecessary that you should just chuck them out or give them away. You want to keep them. Here are some suggestions of what to keep:

• Big, bulky and heavy things that you value. E.g. an exercise bike that you won’t have room for in your new place.
• Things that you can only use at your old house. E.g. a pool basketball hoop, if your new house doesn’t have a pool.
• Things that your parents want to keep. E.g. a framed image of your christening.
• Things that you no longer need but havn’t been able to give away or sell yet. E.g. a large box of Lego that is obviously quite valuable that you havn’t been able to sell on eBay yet and also can’t fit in your new accommodation.

Things To Put Into Storage

Storage is often a good option for those things which you want to keep extra safe and secure and also things for which your old nor your new house has place to store. We at Sydney Mobile Storage recommend putting your things into a Sydney Mobile Storage center if they:

Are moderately valuable or sentimental and especially if they are easily damaged or weathered. Sydney Mobile Storage’s facilities are fully weather-proof and have 24/7 security to protect your possessions against any threat.

Don’t fit into your new or old place. E.g. furniture, speciality equipment. Sydney Mobile Storage is happy to take these off your hands until you need them again, it can do wonders for how spacious your living conditions feel.

Things To Sell And Give Away

Some things will not be needed by you anymore, but they still have value to others. If this is the case, the first option you have is to sell them. The second is to give them away.

How do I choose whether to sell something or give it away?

The rule that I go by is: does this thing have more value to someone that I know and love than to a stranger?

If it does: then you may choose to give it away, and do a favour for one of your friends or relatives.

If it doesn’t: if it has about the same value or less to the people you know than to a buyer then you should probably sell it and earn some cash that is rightfully yours.