What did you declutter today? Part II

[disneysteve]

Squeezed in a little cleaning out of our hall closet, some expired meds and a couple of other things. I have to check with DW. There are 5 bottles of sunscreen in there. Only one is dated so I'm not sure which is the newest. She may not know either. I think I'll suggest trashing them all and buying a new bottle next season.

[marvholly]

Snafu
Some of DD1 stuff is rather private & I do not want to go thru it in order to tell her what it is. Some is books and she is both a reader, rereader, some is crafts she made & forgot about. Almost all is stuff she ‘promised’ to come by & get b/4 she bought her current house in 2004. As for DD2, I will go over the stuff and decide w/her about next actions.
RE file cabinets:
1. I need to go thru & clear out no needs
2. I WANT them next to my desk to hold things I HAVE determined/NEED to keep
3. they are small, light as only 2 drawer.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by marvholly

RE file cabinets:
1. I need to go thru & clear out no needs
2. I WANT them next to my desk to hold things I HAVE determined/NEED to keep

I agree. My goal, too, is to clear the clutter out of storage areas like file cabinets, bookshelves, closets, basement and garage so that we can then better organize the stuff that we do need and want to keep. I've already accomplished some of that with the decluttering I've done so far. I've started a couple of new files in my office desk drawer and I've freed up space in my home desk drawers, making it easier to file and retrieve papers that I need to have.

[snafu]

Good going all! You're doing a rattling good job of reducing clutter. It takes discipline and determination to reduce clutter so I hope you're giving yourselves a reward. If you find it difficult to part with an item, ask yourself Why? Then ask yourself "what's the worst thing that could happen if the item was gone". If it's a memory or link to someone special, taking a photo for a memory box is a good alternative.

Great idea to move or re-purpose items so you have what you need, where you need it, when you need it.

[Aleta]

About the most that I could do yesterday was to delete 50 emails from one of my email accounts. Each email account is for specific purposes. I also have my son visiting me and I came back from my trip not feeling very well. It's amazing what lying down on a couch in the office and looking at the wall of shelves does to see a new prospective. I've decided that I definitely have to get rid of or hide some of the items that are exposed.

I also got rid of 71 expired coupons today. I am so encouraged by the ideas that I see here.

[My English Castle]

Even though I spent half the day home with a sick kid, I took a quick gander at my office shelves. Most of my teaching materials live there, and I found instructor manuals for books I haven't used for years--six of them! And the owner's manual for a scanner we got rid of years ago. My recycling bin is now very, very, very, full. This has become a good habit.

[marvholly]

English
this is the first week since we started this journey that I did not fill my recycling bin.
NOTE: my town suppies a real full size trash bin not those little street box totes.

[disneysteve]

We almost always fill our recycling bin and it is one of those huge wheeled things. We have RecycleBank in my town (recyclebank.com) so we earn rewards based on how much we recycle. Since starting the decluttering, I've definitely had the bin packed more than usual and I'm sure the average weight has gone up.

[My English Castle]

CTObay--your post seems to be in the wrong forum.
If you're looking for advice, you might want to try one of the other forums.

[disneysteve]

Got home last night and got a few things out of my trunk before I went into the house. I actually found a couple of business cards from my old practice which I left in February 2000. I thought that might be it for the day, but I ended up going to the basement. I went down mainly to take down some stuff from our weekend retreat and put it away but ended up staying down there for about 20 minutes and went through some stuff on the shelves.

I've now cleared off about 3-4 shelves between 2 shelving units. We have an old sofa down there that has had stuff piled on it for ages. My wife would love for me to get rid of that sofa so I think my next step will be to move the stuff that we want to keep off of the sofa and onto the newly emptied shelves. Once I do that, I can start breaking down the sofa. It is really not in a condition worth selling and honestly, I really don't care. I'll just put it in the trash piece by piece until I get to the frame and then try to get a couple of friends to help me haul that upstairs and out to the curb.

[marvholly]

Steve
My town/area does not have recycle bank. Wish they did.

All I did on Sunday was go over 2 old magazines, clip several recipes and actually make one (it was pretty good). I had planned a salad plate for lunch but the pasta, garlic & broccoli sounded MUCH better and I had a big side salad. This is actually the 2nd recipe cut/printed from the net that I have made in the last 2 weeks.

Monday
Gathered up some nice suits, jackets and shirts of late DH to take into the consignment shop(s) on Tue = Total of around 50 items and I have not even ½ emptied the 2 closets he filled let alone the boxes of sport clothes, sweaters, out of season stuff……...
Finished the Sun paper & recycled

No New
Sunday paper coupons are clipped, sorted and filed. Reviewed ads, made shopping list and added to recycle.

Today I am determined to clean out my fridge. Door bins are already emptied and the dishwasher.

[marvholly]

Question I forgot to ask:

I have a lot (3+ large cartons) of medical supplies left from various home care nursing late DH had over the last 7 years of his life. All is in sealed packages. I would MUCH rather donate this material than dump it.

Any ideas where?
I would MUCH prefer NOT to have the expense of shipping it. I live in metro Chicago.

[disneysteve]

FYI, it turns out that I'm the one who deleted the original thread accidentally, of course. I was doing the moderator thing and wiping out a bunch of spam and somehow clicked on the whole thread rather than just the spam posts.

Nate sent me a link to the Google cache of the first page of the old thread and I thought I'd repost it here so anyone new to this conversation can understand what started it, so here it is:


This thread, Any minimalists here?, especially post #9, has inspired me to get serious about cleaning the house of all of the stuff that I hang onto because I might need it someday or because it has monetary value beyond what I'd get as a tax deduction if I gave it away. Some of the longtime regulars here may recall that I was posting decluttering updates on my blog quite some time ago. Needless to say, the process fizzled out and we are just as cluttered as always.

gambler2075 said this,

I am fortunate that at this point I am in a place where I am somewhat financially stable, and if I were to try to, say, sell a book on Ebay, the amount of time it would take was just not worth it. I could just work another shift, or some more hours, and that would be a better use of my time. So, I just dump the stuff off at Goodwill.

I also thought about it some more, and realized that being a cluttered person, and hoarding (which I probably had a mild case of) was really a matter of indecision... I mean, if I kept this knickknack around, maybe I could use it next Christmas, or maybe I could sell it at the garage sale I kept postponing... blah blah blah...

and then I thought about it a bit more, and realized, "You know, my job requires decisiveness, and I feel proud of my ability to do my job... so why am I being so indecisive (by not getting rid of something) in this area of my life?"... that helped me get rid of some stuff.
That is what really struck me because it is a perfect description of me. I have boxes and boxes of stuff I'm saving to sell on ebay and a garage full of stuff I'm saving for the next yard sale. We had one this spring and sold a lot but barely made a dent in all the stuff set aside for that purpose.

My wife and I are constantly saying that we hate the clutter and for short bursts, we'll get on a cleaning kick but then we go back to the same old thing.

So here's the plan, and the purpose for this thread. If you want to join me in a serious change to declutter your house and your life, come here every day and post something that you got rid of that you've been keeping for no good reason. It might be something seemingly insignificant like a scrap of paper on your bedside table that has sat there for weeks or that stack of old magazines in the corner of the family room or it might be something major like a piece of furniture or that broken down car that has sat in your driveway for months. The goal is to eliminate at least one item from your life every day.

My thread so I'll start. For months (over a year really), every time I've gotten an unsolicited credit card offer in the mail, I've saved the fake sample card that comes with it. You know, the little cardboard replica of the card they are pushing. The reason I've saved them was with the intent to sell a stack of them on ebay to card collectors. Little by little, those cards grew to be a pile about 2" high on my dresser. This morning, I quickly flipped through the pile to separate the paper cards from the plastic ones (AmEx usually sends plastic). The paper ones went in the recycling bin and the plastic ones went in the trash. Yay! May not sound like much, but that pile has been there for ages and now it isn't.

So join in and let's support each other in regaining our lives and our space.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by marvholly

I have a lot (3+ large cartons) of medical supplies left from various home care nursing late DH had over the last 7 years of his life. All is in sealed packages. I would MUCH rather donate this material than dump it.

Any ideas where?

Try calling the company that did his home care. They might be able to use it. Try a travel doctor org like Doctors without Borders. Ask your family doctor. Check at your house of worship. The staff may know of a congregant currently in need of such stuff. A local recruiting office or National Guard post might be collecting supplies to ship to troops overseas.

[gambler2075]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

FYI, it turns out that I'm the one who deleted the original thread accidentally, of course.

I KNEW IT WAS YOU!!! hehehehe

I had thought it was some kind of abuse of moderator power because this thread was taking over the forums due to it's extreme popularity, and the website would have to be renamed "declutteringadvice.com"

But I digress. Glad we found the real culprit

g

p.s. As an aside, the private messaging system needs to be revamped. Other sites I have been on have had a popup come up if someone had a new PM... this site has a tiny number in the right hand corner of the screen, so it is easy to miss. <ahem, COUGH COUGH>

[My English Castle]

Ah Steve, you weren't decluttering us, were you?

[disneysteve]

Will be out very late tonight so I took some time at lunch and cleared out some more stuff from my desk drawer at work. So much nicer to not have it crammed full anymore and actually be able to open it and find what I need quickly and easily.

[snafu]

mholly: good on you for seeking a placement for sealed medical supplies. Charity shops generally accept non electrical items like bath rails, seats, crutches, etc. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Morman] operate an International Humanitarian Aid Program and accept sealed supplies/products, likewise Direct Relief USA which may be in your region.

[your northern neighbor] enjoyed Thanksgiving family celebration yesterday which seems to be the signal to store outdoor furniture/equipment, corral garden/hand tools & supplies in a bin for the shed or garage. When the trees are bare we can soak the tree roots, spray the deck one last time, figure 8 the hoses in an old, decrepit laundry basket, turn off the external water supplies & drain the lines.

[disneysteve]

Got home earlier than expected last night. Spent a few minutes emptying out a few folders in one desk drawer. One folder was all of the paperwork for when I did work for a company that provided doctors on call to local hotels, something I stopped doing about 8 years ago. I only saved one page from the whole file - the medical report for a patient I saw on 9/11. She had been attending a conference at the Marriott at the base of the World Trade Center when the attack occurred and had managed to get out of NYC and made it as far as Philadelphia. She had debris in her eyes and was a nervous wreck, understandably. Treating her was my one direct connection to the day's events. Certainly, I don't need that paper either, but I'm keeping it for the personal value - something to show my grandkids in the future LOL.

Everything else went into the recycling bin or the scrap paper file.

[marvholly]

Steve
I think I figgured out why you fill your recycle bin EVERY week & I do not:
3 person household-I am a 1 person household
teenager in household -none here
teenager has friends-none here (soda cans/bottles, cardboard from pizza, milk/juice cartons...)
newspapers/magazines/catalogs received- you ?/?/?, me 1/2/0