Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

I think I need to hire a professional organizer. I need to have someone come into my home. I'd have to leave, take the husband and kids with me, and have this organizer just go through my place, top to bottom and get rid of things. I'm sure there's about 80% of my stuff I'd never miss. And about 90% of my kids stuff that they'd never miss.

So, the question is, knowing this, why is it so difficult to throw this stuff away myself? Is it sentimentality? Is it the fact when I'm cleaning out the kids toy closet that they beg and plead with me to keep something they haven't seen in about 2 years. I just need someone else to go through this. I think its along the same lines of ripping off a bandaid. For some reason I can't do it myself, unless I do it the slow, torturous way.... it still hurts, it probably hurts more, but I just can't make myself take it off quickly. I just can't make myself throw things out (I'm talking about books that no one is going to read, old clothes, old dishes-stuff). Case in point.. I have a spice rack, with no spices in it. Its in good shape but I'm never going to use it. yet it still sits in my kitchen. Why? I don't know. I hate to throw it away.

Okay, so now you know one of my secrets (that wouldn't be a secret if you saw my house). I'm a pack rat of massive porportions. And so are my kids.

So I think I'm going to have to go with that professional organizer.