2016 Decluttering Thread

[dawnwes]

When I say glasses, I'm including a wide range of things such as shot glasses, wine glasses including those gathered from winery visits, champagne flutes, beer mugs, martini and margarita glasses, etc. We had stuff dating back to wedding presents (1992) and stuff inherited when my aunt died years ago. Also a bunch of souvenir glasses from cruises and other destinations (Vegas, Hersheypark, etc.).

Just one more advantage to not drinking alcohol! HAHA! The other being cost.....can't believe what some of our friends spend on alcohol. We order a soda or water or coffee and save a bomb of $$.

[creditcardfree]

Do SA participants actually use souvenir mugs, glasses, pillows, coasters etc? We see these at all the community yard sales, no one seems to buys them. I can count on DH to buy socks as his fav souvenir as they wear out and get trashed.

We don't buy souvenirs that could be considered by some as clutter. Generally, we buy tshirts IF we feel the need for a souvenir. I personally like photos of events the best!

[disneysteve]

Do SA participants actually use souvenir mugs, glasses, pillows, coasters etc?

We used to. Hey, when you're young and broke, those things are a cheap way to furnish your first apartment. You don't care if your glasses match or if your coffee mug has the name of a tourist attraction on it. You also welcome hand-me-downs from relatives and we got plenty of those.

As you get older and more sophisticated, you start wanting to have matching glasses and decent looking stuff for yourself and for when you entertain so you go out and have to actually buy stuff, but you have the means to do that.

Now we just need to purge ourselves of all of the cheap and mismatched stuff and just keep the stuff we actually want. That's what we did yesterday.

[disneysteve]

We have one shelf in our home office filled with boxes and packages of note cards and paper. They're all very pretty except for one tiny detail - we never use any of it. I can't remember the last time any of us used any of those beautiful cards or paper to send a hand-written message to anyone.

I cleared off the shelf today, put several boxes of paper into the recycling bin. I gathered a bunch of religious holiday cards together and will donate them to our synagogue's rummage sale later this year.

I put some of the simple (plain design) notepaper into my desk drawer. I always include a hand-written note when I sell anything on ebay or half.com and this paper is nicer than what I've been using.

The shelf is much better now, but I need to go through it a second time, maybe with DW, because there is still way more there than we will every realistically use.

ETA: I took a second pass through that shelf. I got rid of some other things and condensed a few packets together. Still, I know we don't need it all but at least what's left is all nice stuff that we might actually use when the need arises and it occupies a lot less space.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Hubby says we have 10 if you include the ones in storage! LOL!.... I have very bad RA and getting up each morning to prepare orders to go out and listing more product is occupational therapy for me.

Gailete, your whole post here was just so interesting! I'd never heard of a giraffe piano, so I looked up some images. Cool. Well, doesn't that string arrangement make sense!?...And I have looked at your patterns sales in the past even though I don't really sew. Yes, interesting.

[creditcardfree]

Dropped two large bags of donations at Goodwill today. I have a donate bin in my closet and noticed it was overflowing! It feels good to pass it on. The gentleman working was so very kind and appreciative!

[dawnwes]

Going through the basement storage area (aka: kitchen items and camping items). Lots pulled out to toss, sell, or donate.

Oldest became an Eagle Scout last week and ages out next week! Middle son has his eagle project finished and will get Eagle around April. Neither wish to continue things like week long backpacking trips......so we will sell a lot of their extra equipment that either they won't use or we have upgraded and kept the old as back ups. Youngest will keep the best items he wants.

Also boxed up a bunch of kitchen items that were extras down there......do I NEED 7 pyrex 9x13 pans? Nope! Off the excess goes. bags with rips or old......gone.

Now to take pics and list in some of the for sale items tomorrow.

Dawn

[disneysteve]

Also boxed up a bunch of kitchen items that were extras down there......do I NEED 7 pyrex 9x13 pans? Nope!

It really does make a lot of sense to gather all like items in one place to see what you've got and decide what you actually need. That's what we did with the glassware the other day. It's what I did with my pants and my t-shirts. It's what we did with our water bottles and travel mugs. We'll do it someday soon with kitchen utensils as the drawers and countertop holder really need decluttering. Dump it all out on the table at once and sort it out.

It's much more effective that way than trying to declutter one drawer or one cabinet at a time because you end up finding like items in multiple places and not really condensing them optimally.

[dawnwes]

Yes.

I am afraid I may get to crunch time and just box everything up at that point.

Right now my goal is one room per week. This week it is the basement storage area. Next week the office. THAT room is a disaster.

I am not at the boxing up point yet. I am doing cleaning and cleaning OUT first, then will go through and ruthlessly box things up (2-4 rooms per week probably). But at least things will be better organized and ready for me to box up.

My friend assured me last night that she boxed up her entire 4 bedroom, 2,800 sq. ft. house in 3 weeks completely on her own, with a baby and a small child, by doing it 3 hours per night for 3 weeks. And she said that was with being careful to label, etc....

If I have 3 teens and a husband, we can certainly get it done faster IF necessary.

I need to figure out when to get a storage unit.

[disneysteve]

Sold another of DD's textbooks.

[disneysteve]

I am afraid I may get to crunch time and just box everything up at that point.

Even if that does happen, at least it will be only after you have already done all of the work you're doing now so it won't be nearly as bad. But you're not listing the house until April. You've got over 2 months to declutter. Plenty of time.

[dawnwes]

Both large trash cans are filled to the brim and trash day isn't until Monday. Guess everything else will end up in a bag for next week's trash.

May spend my weekend taking pictures so that I can continue listing items for sale. We have homeschooled for years, so I have a lot of stuff to sell/donate, etc...

Dawn

[disneysteve]

Today's target was kitchen utensils. Just as we did last week with the glassware, we cleared off the kitchen table. Then we emptied out the two kitchen drawers, the utensil holder on the counter, and a couple of bags of utensils stored in the basement.

I'm going to post photos but let me explain why we had so many utensils in the first place. We are Jewish and observe Passover each year. For many years, we were more strict in our observance and totally changed over the kitchen for the holiday so we had duplicates of everything to be used only during Passover. Not only that, but we also separated meat and dairy, so we actually had 4 sets of everything: meat and dairy utensils for every day and meat and dairy utensils for Passover.

In recent years, we've become less strict and no longer change everything over like that. We pretty much stick with one good quality set of items, but we still have the rest.

So here are the pictures. First is the "before" picture. Second is the "giveaway" stuff. Third is the "after" picture. A few items also went into the trash. I'm sure that the "after" picture will still look like a lot of stuff to some people but both of us do a lot of cooking and baking and we only kept items that we actually use on a regular basis.

[disneysteve]

I realized that I never posted a photo last week after we cleared out the glassware. Here is all of the stuff that will be sold/donated.

[dawnwes]

Extra kitchen items that are being donated are now OUT of the house! Along with 4 sleeping bags. (dishes, pots and pans, silverware)

Next up for the refugee donation: towels and sheets. We have too many.

I am hoping to get to those tomorrow as I see the woman who works with the refugees tomorrow evening. I want to give them to her and get them OUT.