A De-cluttering Question...

I have gotten pretty ruthless with the de-cluttering lately. I've always gotten rid of things on a pretty regular basis but recently my standards for the items we keep is even higher than it has been in the past. I'm getting tired of having all of this *stuff* around that we don't really need. I don't like having to find places to store everything.

When we realized that we wanted move back to Illinois it really kicked my Spring cleaning up a notch. We have so much junk that is just not worth moving across state lines. So basically unless it is something that I think I will use frequently over the next couple of years - it goes. Why continue storing something for another two years when I can just get rid of it now?

I figure we will also get rid of a lot more stuff this way. Every time we go through an area we find something else that we are willing to let go of. So if we waited and only went through things when it is time to move, we would end up keeping way more stuff.

There is still one item that I have been going back and forth about for awhile now....the wedding dress:

(just so you know - the weird lines in the photo above are

from defective film not something wrong with the dress)

I have kept my wedding dress around for the obvious sentimental reasons but the last few times that we have moved or cleaned out the storage area I have considered selling it. You see, I have very strict standards for keepsakes. It has to be something that I might display at some point (why keep it around if you are never going to look at it) or something really small that doesn't waste a bunch of space or something that I might hand down to my son. My wedding dress doesn't meet any of this criteria.

I'm never going to display it. In fact, I never even look at it. It has been cleaned and put in one of those preserving boxes that has the little window where you can only get a peek of it. It's not exactly what I would consider small by my normal standards (We each have one plastic storage box our keepsakes and only keep what will fit in that box) but it is small enough that I have kept it around anyway. And the final criteria: it is not something that I will hand down to my son. Even if I had a daughter instead of a son its pretty unlikely that she would have wanted to wear it and it is even more unlikely that my future daughter-in-law will have any interest in it.

To sum things up, it is not something that would normally qualify as a "keeper" but it has stuck around for six years anyway. Usually if I don't plan to keep something like that around, I just take a picture of it and keep the photo instead of the actual item. With the wedding dress though I guess I just feel like it is something that I *should* keep.

So here are my questions:

Did you keep your wedding dress? Have you thought about getting rid of it but kept it around because that is what you are supposed to do? If you have gotten rid of it, did you ever regret it? What did your husband think about it?

I'm just curious to know if I am the only one who has thought about this.