Heather Large: Perfect time to have a good clear out

I sorted through dusty bank statements, diaries from my school days and old university essays in order streamline my belongings.

But, while I was quite ruthless with some of my stuff like my overflowing wardrobe and shoe collection, I deferred a lot of the decision making until later after getting overwhelmed.

It was the nostalgic items that slowed me down the most along with a fear that I might one day regret throwing something away.

It was much easier to decide the fate of a t-shirt I hadn't worn for 10 years than it was some of the more personal momentos that I'd collected over the decades.

Even though I hadn't looked at many of the items such as theatre programmes, ticket stubs and endless birthday cards for a long time it was still hard to part with them.

Yet I know that, as nice as it is to take a trip down memory lane, to keep everything is unrealistic and unnecessary - but that doesn't make it any easier.

Now the time has finally come to pick up where I left off as we're getting ready to buy a house together and I want to get my belongings in order before we move.

So I've started reopening the boxes I couldn't face last time and so far the process seems to be going much better. At the same time my mum has also been sorting out her loft meaning I've also got to face some of my childhood toys and books so what started as a big job, is now a huge job.

But it definitely makes sense to deal with everything in one go.

It would be so easy (and very tempting) to simply move the boxes from one loft to another and deal with the problem another time but I know deep down that I will regret that one day.

In a similar way I regretted not going through my uni essays 15 years earlier. Most of them I couldn't remember writing in the first place though so it wasn't too bad in the end and it was good to see my dissertation again which went on the 'to keep' pile.

And the truth is I haven’t really thought about them since the last time I took then out and quickly put them back in again because I couldn’t face dealing with them.

For many people this process would be a lot simpler and maybe they wouldn’t have even collected the items in the first place and so going through sentimental items wouldn't been such an issue.

But now is the time to finally do something about it and hopefully make it easier to see those items that are really important to me.

Anything that can be recycled has been put aside to reduce how much of it is going to landfill and many bags have already made their way to charity shops with more to follow soon I'm sure.

Rather than items just sat in a box getting dusty I'd much rather it was used by somebody.

There is still some work to do before I've whittled it all down to just the essentials but at least I feel like I'm finally making progress with it.

I plan to still have a couple of small boxes containing sentimental items such as the medals from my dance competition days and my Brownie badges because I'm sure I will enjoy looking at these and reminiscing in the future.

But when they are lost among a sea of other items it's hard to appreciate them and they don't feel as special. Limiting the space they can be stored in will hopefully ensure they are looked at more frequently and that I only keep what's truly important to me.

While I don't buy into the minimalist ideas of the likes of Marie Kondo I can see the benefits of having a good clear out and now seems the perfect time to do it.

Although I might need reminding of that by the time I get to the last few boxes!