2020 Decluttering Thread

[disneysteve]

It's a new year and time for a new thread for us all to chronicle our efforts and progress (and challenges) in ridding our homes and our lives of excess stuff. Feel free to post your successes and your failures, your solutions and any problems you're facing. Post pictures too, if you'd like. Before and after ones are always fun.

I started my decluttering right on January 1. I spent some time last evening clearing accumulated stuff off of my dresser. That's always a problem area where miscellaneous papers, receipts, coupons, and more tend to land.

I put away 3 duffel bags that we had used on recent trips that were still piled on the floor next to my dresser.

I also put away what I think was the last of the gift bags and tissue paper from holiday presents. We have a cabinet in our bedroom where all of that stuff is stored.

[JoeP]

Here are my plans, to be started this month (January):
1. Complete my DVD/CD purge
2. Reduce mental clutter by digitizing remaining photo prints (partly for redundancy and partly to have digital and analog all in the digital space)
3. Likewise for the same reasons, digitize all our camcorder videos
4. Purge old clothes from all family members

[comicguy]

I am looking to declutter at least 500 items this year!

I have been puttering away a bit this week before I go back to the work, completing some random projects (which uses up stuff that is on hand) and just getting rid of some of the nonsense stuff hanging around.

[disneysteve]

3. Likewise for the same reasons, digitize all our camcorder videos

Do you have a service in mind for doing that? I had a couple of old movies digitized by Legacybox but even with a Groupon (which is a great deal), it's still pretty costly if you have a lot to transfer.

[JoeP]

Do you have a service in mind for doing that? I had a couple of old movies digitized by Legacybox but even with a Groupon (which is a great deal), it's still pretty costly if you have a lot to transfer.

No, I have some Amazon cards and was looking into a USB capture device. Problem is, regardless of cost or name recognition, the ratings are all over the place. I suppose if I am going to roll the dice, I'd rather roll on a $25 set than a $60 set.

[ua_guy]

I have a 1 foot tall stack of papers that came out of our filing cabinet during the annual purge.
That's always a sore spot, though. The stack sits on the floor because it needs to be shredded and will probably be another month before I get the gumption to find a place to shred it around here.

[rennigade]

Over our xmas break, wife digitized all of her grandparents/parents old photos. They were small slides in this circular carousel. They took up a lot of space. Probably 30 carousels in total. All went to the dump after converted to digital.

Got rid of 2 coffee tables and 3 end tables. They were taking up a lot of space in the garage attic. Gave them to a friend for free. Was happy he could use them.

[disneysteve]

Over our xmas break, wife digitized all of her grandparents/parents old photos. They were small slides in this circular carousel.

How did you digitize the slides?

[rennigade]

How did you digitize the slides?

We bought one of those slide converters. Its similar to this but not exact, this one is actually fancier than the one we have: https://www.amazon.com/FS-3-Converte...%2C159&sr=8-15

Its nice because you insert the SD card into the device, and all the pictures save to that. You stick a slide in, press a button and within 2 seconds it saves the image..rinse/repeat. Ours were all in those individual cardboard pieces, so it took some time, but it goes quicker than you think. Once finished, stick the SD card in a computer and transfer them over.

[disneysteve]

I guess this kind of qualifies as decluttering. I've had a lot of pairs of socks in my drawers that I really don't like. To quote Marie Kondo, they didn't bring me joy, but I held onto them as back ups, to just wear around the house, or when my "good" socks were all in the wash. I finally decided to get rid of them. I got a couple of packs of new socks that I like and tossed all of the ones I don't like. It sounds so simple but it was actually quite satisfying to do that.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Oh, I've created myself a problem since autumn. A new hobby: I began a plan to purchase a certain collection of 400+ vintage books without first making sure I had shelves for them. I figured it would take me years to find all these books, but so far it has been much easier than I thought! I'm looking around the house trying to figure where I can put the shelves. In the mean time, I read some of the books on gutenberg.org and decided not to even buy a few of them, so that will help a tad.

[disneysteve]

Oh, I've created myself a problem since autumn. A new hobby: I began a plan to purchase a certain collection of 400+ vintage books without first making sure I had shelves for them. I figured it would take me years to find all these books, but so far it has been much easier than I thought! I'm looking around the house trying to figure where I can put the shelves. In the mean time, I read some of the books on gutenberg.org and decided not to even buy a few of them, so that will help a tad.

That's A LOT of books. We decluttered our books early in our Marie Kondo process and got rid of over 100 I think. To be honest, I really don't even care about most of the ones that remain so we might need to go through them again at some point.

[disneysteve]

The best cure for clutter is avoiding it in the first place. We were at a local farmer's market yesterday where they have stores selling all types of merchandise. My wife was about to walk into one store that sells all sorts of decorative items but stopped herself and said, "We don't need more stuff". I agreed and we moved on. The only things we bought in the whole place was a box of coffee K cups and a box of Pop Tarts, so both consumable items.

[Thrif-t]

Last week when I put the Christmas decorations away, I again went through the items I did not use this year and took them to goodwill.

I also took back some Christmas gifts that my DH bought. He refuses to only get me one gift, so will buy a lot of little nothings that I don't really want or need just so I have stuff to open. Luckily, he bought the items at Kohls so I was able to take them back without a receipt by having them look them up on our charge. He won't even know that I took the stuff back, the games we play.

[scfr]

Today I:

• Took 2 bags of shredded paper to the transfer station for recycling
• Returned an accidental purchase (not sure if this qualifies as decluttering)
• Put a book that I'm going to donate to the library in my library book bag (I know they won't add it to their collection, but they can sell it at their semi-annual book sale for a buck)