2019 Decluttering Thread

[corn18]

Wow, have we decluttered this year. Movers are here packing up the house and they just asked me why they scheduled 3 days for packing. I told them they did the initial walkthrough 2 months ago and we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff since then. 15 trips to Goodwill, 2 17' U-Haul truckloads to the kids and the packers are taking a sofa and home gym. While we were purging, I asked my wife if we should just get rid of everything and start over. I'm a miser now and would definitely throttle the spending. She said no for that reason.

We are moving into a bigger house, so there will be a lot of unused space. We bought it for resale, so that's ok. Won't be in it more than 2 years and might only be in it 2 months. Should have rented. But if we have to move again, the company covers all the transaction costs (including any loss on sale), so it's just the inconvenience of moving twice. But we will probably purge even more if we do move again, so that is good. Less is better at this stage of our lives.

[creditcardfree]

Wow, have we decluttered this year. Movers are here packing up the house and they just asked me why they scheduled 3 days for packing. I told them they did the initial walkthrough 2 months ago and we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff since then. 15 trips to Goodwill, 2 17' U-Haul truckloads to the kids and the packers are taking a sofa and home gym. While we were purging, I asked my wife if we should just get rid of everything and start over. I'm a miser now and would definitely throttle the spending. She said no for that reason.

We are moving into a bigger house, so there will be a lot of unused space. We bought it for resale, so that's ok. Won't be in it more than 2 years and might only be in it 2 months. Should have rented. But if we have to move again, the company covers all the transaction costs (including any loss on sale), so it's just the inconvenience of moving twice. But we will probably purge even more if we do move again, so that is good. Less is better at this stage of our lives.

We decluttered a ton in 2018 as well due to a move. We moved from 2800 sq ft to 1700 sq ft. Fewer rooms, so less furniture needed. Our movers originally quoted 2 days for packing, but during the walk through one month out I pointed out the items I knew would not go...in the end too women packed us in 6 hours. It was breeze for them! We are also likely less...don't miss anything we let go of.

[Thrif-t]

We decluttered a ton in 2018 as well due to a move. We moved from 2800 sq ft to 1700 sq ft. Fewer rooms, so less furniture needed. Our movers originally quoted 2 days for packing, but during the walk through one month out I pointed out the items I knew would not go...in the end too women packed us in 6 hours. It was breeze for them! We are also likely less...don't miss anything we let go of.

They packed up your whole house in 6 hours?? 2800 sq ft?? Man I am amazed, I can't imagine!

[disneysteve]

We discovered several months ago that our Wii no longer worked. I did all of the troubleshooting I could with online info and it is just shot. Of course, months later, it was still sitting on our family room floor. Tonight after dinner, I finally gathered it all together, cables and all. The broken unit will go in the trash this week. The controllers and a couple of other accessories that still work will go to Goodwill.

Then we watched the first episode of Marie Kondo's show. We really enjoyed that. I was a little surprised how impactful the little greeting ceremony at the beginning was for me. I love the idea of taking a moment to thank our house and aim to take better care of it.

Of course, after watching the show, we turned to each other and said now we wanted to clean - so we did. We went up to the bedroom. I took all of my long sleeve dress shirts out of the closet and piled them on the bed. I went through them one by one, tried on several I wasn't sure about, and decided which to keep and which not to. The result was I got rid of 9 shirts. Five will go to Goodwill; four went in the trash as they are stained or worn out. My wife did more organizing than decluttering, getting her sweaters folded the new way so that she can see them all nicely in her drawers. She said that tomorrow she may do the Marie Kondo thing in her closet because she has noticed there are a number of things in there she hasn't worn for a long time and doesn't need anymore. Then she said she could go in there right now and pull out some things she doesn't want, so I told her to do that. Get rid of that stuff first, then she could do the deeper dive tomorrow. She quickly got 5 dresses onto the Goodwill pile. Just a first step but a good one.

I think watching this show is going to help motivate us to keep at it. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend doing so. If you have, or even if you haven't, I also highly recommend watching the show.

[kork13]

Thanks for the recommendation on Marie Kondo, I'll check out her book/Netflix when I have an opportunity.

[creditcardfree]

They packed up your whole house in 6 hours?? 2800 sq ft?? Man I am amazed, I can't imagine!

Packed up the things that need to go in boxes. Moving everything on to the truck was another 6-7 hours the next day. Yep, we didn't have things packed in...compared to most Americans we are minimalists, yet don't think we don't have things, we do! And remember those two ladies packing were professionals, they were flying! I'm sure if I packed it all up, it would have taken four times as long.

[creditcardfree]

Then we watched the first episode of Marie Kondo's show. We really enjoyed that. I was a little surprised how impactful the little greeting ceremony at the beginning was for me. I love the idea of taking a moment to thank our house and aim to take better care of it.

Of course, after watching the show, we turned to each other and said now we wanted to clean - so we did. We went up to the bedroom. I took all of my long sleeve dress shirts out of the closet and piled them on the bed. I went through them one by one, tried on several I wasn't sure about, and decided which to keep and which not to. The result was I got rid of 9 shirts. Five will go to Goodwill; four went in the trash as they are stained or worn out. My wife did more organizing than decluttering, getting her sweaters folded the new way so that she can see them all nicely in her drawers. She said that tomorrow she may do the Marie Kondo thing in her closet because she has noticed there are a number of things in there she hasn't worn for a long time and doesn't need anymore. Then she said she could go in there right now and pull out some things she doesn't want, so I told her to do that. Get rid of that stuff first, then she could do the deeper dive tomorrow. She quickly got 5 dresses onto the Goodwill pile. Just a first step but a good one.

Yes, I was touched by that ceremony too. She mentions that in one or both of her books I think, too. Our new home is base housing and while it's okay, it's not the level of nice I'm used to. I've been working really hard to appreciate where we are and what this new space is providing.

These types of shows are great for motivation, even Hoarders shows, can inspire me to clean.

[disneysteve]

I know Marie Kondo's method focuses more on categories of items than location (declutter ALL of your clothes at the same time, not just one closet) but she also has the Miscellaneous category and notes that we have a ton of miscellaneous in our lives. I attacked some of the miscellaneous today in our bedroom closet.

I got rid of:
1 broken scale
6 shirts
3 pairs of shorts
2 tote bags
1 watch
1 pair of beach shoes
2 wooden hangars
3 craft books and
a bag of unfinished craft projects from a craft I no longer do

and a few other things that I didn't record.

It also gave me an opportunity to vacuum in there. We had some killer dust bunnies residing on the floor.

I also came across something that I've been meaning to deal with for years. When I was younger, like still living with my parents (I left home at 18 and I'm now 54), I used to collect (or perhaps hoard) change. Nothing special or collectible. Just regular every day pocket change. I used to roll it and stack it in a cabinet in my room. I had cashed in all of it years ago except I never cashed in the half dollars. I have a plastic tube about 2 feet long that is a giant stack of half dollars. It's probably about $150 worth of coins. I took out $30 worth and will cash them in at the Coinstar machine tomorrow when I go shopping. I feel strange going there with the whole tube at once but I pass that machine every week so I'll make it a ritual each week until I've cashed them all in. That money will get added to our Amazon account for future purchases.

[james.hendrickson]

I know Marie Kondo's method focuses more on categories of items than location (declutter ALL of your clothes at the same time, not just one closet) but she also has the Miscellaneous category and notes that we have a ton of miscellaneous in our lives. I attacked some of the miscellaneous today in our bedroom closet.

I got rid of:
1 broken scale
6 shirts
3 pairs of shorts
2 tote bags
1 watch
1 pair of beach shoes
2 wooden hangars
3 craft books and
a bag of unfinished craft projects from a craft I no longer do

and a few other things that I didn't record.

It also gave me an opportunity to vacuum in there. We had some killer dust bunnies residing on the floor.

I also came across something that I've been meaning to deal with for years. When I was younger, like still living with my parents (I left home at 18 and I'm now 54), I used to collect (or perhaps hoard) change. Nothing special or collectible. Just regular every day pocket change. I used to roll it and stack it in a cabinet in my room. I had cashed in all of it years ago except I never cashed in the half dollars. I have a plastic tube about 2 feet long that is a giant stack of half dollars. It's probably about $150 worth of coins. I took out $30 worth and will cash them in at the Coinstar machine tomorrow when I go shopping. I feel strange going there with the whole tube at once but I pass that machine every week so I'll make it a ritual each week until I've cashed them all in. That money will get added to our Amazon account for future purchases.

Coinstar charges a relatively high percentage rate..the figure of 7 or 8 percent comes to mind. It might be worth going to a local bank with a coin counting machine instead.

[disneysteve]

Coinstar charges a relatively high percentage rate..the figure of 7 or 8 percent comes to mind. It might be worth going to a local bank with a coin counting machine instead.

Coinstar is free if you get the money as a gift card. I'll take it as a credit to our Amazon account.

[SavingBucks]

Love to hear the decluttering stories. We started the process with a bang! It was precipitatied by carpet replacement in the office/bedroom. EVERYTHING had to go out and not everything is going back in! We moved to this house 6 years ago which is DH's childhood home. So not only our stuff but much of in-laws stuff is still here. DH will part with his Dad's dresser which will go to the curb shortly. I have taken boxes to the local women's shelter as well as Goodwill. I know some teachers and donated several boxes of school supplies. Shredded 4-5 boxes of old paperwork. This month there is a donation drive for animal shelters for towels, linens, etc. Items can be ripped, etc. as long as they are clean. Another fundraiser popular here is Clothes for the Cause. Groups are paid by the pound and accept textile items, belts, shoes, etc. which are stained, etc. as long as clean and not wet. Items are sorted for use, and stained items are bundled for rags.... Our track team made $1500 one year from this event. This is a great way to keep items out of the landfill...........

[disneysteve]

Another fundraiser popular here is Clothes for the Cause. Groups are paid by the pound and accept textile items, belts, shoes, etc. which are stained, etc. as long as clean and not wet. Items are sorted for use, and stained items are bundled for rags.... Our track team made $1500 one year from this event. This is a great way to keep items out of the landfill...........

I love that. I'm going to look it up and see if they do anything in my area.

[disneysteve]

My wife is trying to reorganize some of the sewing supplies and asked if I could clean out a cabinet at the base of a bookcase in our living room so she could use it to store fabric. After dinner, I took everything out of there. It was filled with items from our Disney collection. I found a couple of items that I was able to fit onto our display shelves since I've been working on cleaning those off in recent months and there was some empty space. Several more items were added to the box to donate for a Disney charity auction coming up this summer. A few things seem to be selling well on ebay so I put those in the basement with my sales stock. A number of little things went in the trash. A couple of things in the Goodwill box. I'm left with 3 bags of collectible pins and buttons that I'm not quite sure where to put but I'll get them into a box or container and store them in the garage with other collectibles that aren't currently on display.

So the cabinet is empty, or at least it was until she moved her fabric into it.

While I was doing that, she was in the bedroom getting rid of some shirts and more items from her closet. She didn't do the whole Marie Kondo thing yet but did get rid of quite a few more items. She's still planning to empty it out and go through it item by item sometime soon.

[disneysteve]

I took a trash bag of clothes, a box of small assorted items, a large tote bag, and an old jewelry box to Goodwill today. I also went grocery shopping and cashed in $30 worth of half dollars for an Amazon voucher.

My wife has continued working on her sewing supplies and has gotten rid of a lot of bits and scraps of material she was keeping "just in case" that she knows she won't ever use.

We also watched the 2nd episode of Marie Kondo's show. That couple almost bordered on hoarding except everything was clean and there was no trash or bugs crawling around. Still, motivating to watch them deal with it all.

[disneysteve]

Today's haul:

5 tote bags
1 fanny pack
2 garment bags from suitcases we don't even have anymore
1 camera flash
1 pair of pants
1 shirt
Some other assorted trash

The top shelf of my bedroom closet on my side is now empty except for the box from our humidifier and my tuxedo accessories.