I worked through this exact thing recently. I have, for all of my life, held onto too many material things, so much so that I developed a reputation in my social circle as a hoarder. I didn't have mountains of stuff all over the place, but there's always been a storage unit in some dusty industrial area filled with all my treasures -- obviously I held onto things for much longer than necessary. I would go through little bursts of clearing things out, but for the most part there was almost a paralysis around letting things go. Clearly there was a reason behind this. Eventually I realised that it was the "holding on" that was ultimately driving my storage woes; as a child I couldn't rely on the people in my life, so I attached to *things* because they were so much more reliable and consistent. And because I didn't really know who I was, some of these *things* bolstered my identity. So *things* became hard to *let go* of because they represented something more than the sum of their parts. For me the key to following through with getting the excess stuff out of my life was this figuring out of *why* I was holding onto it in the first place -- what it really meant to me, and what I was really afraid of being if I truly let it go. If I get rid of this wrench, does that mean I'll no longer be someone who is able to fix things? If I get rid of this old birthday card, does that mean I'm erasing the memory of the person who wrote it? Who will I be without this collection of things from my past? Who will I be if I let go of the safety of these familiar items? But, almost like magic, when I went through this process and got rid of the stuff, it made space for new things in my life. And by things I mean people (new and old), opportunities, and mental clarity. I'm not sure if this long-winded reply is relevant in any way to you, but it might be to somebody 🙂