2017 Decluttering thread

[snafu]

Outdated Food: DH has been teasing me as I justified buying an expensive roast to use up 'Kashi' [grain side dish] and some frozen vegetables, recently at expiry. We're rarely eating red meat and while I planned to ask neighbours for dinner, my timing was off. Would have been more cost effective to throw out expired items. How much leeway do you give expiry dates?

With holidays approaching, is this a good time to offer used items, in good condition, for sale on local FB sell pages?

[disneysteve]

How much leeway do you give expiry dates?

I'm pretty generous, especially with canned goods which I know are good way beyond their dates. Dry goods not so much, especially since we have some water issues in our basement.

The stuff I tossed over the weekend was stuff that was way, way past date as well as being stuff that we simply weren't likely to ever use.

[Thrif-t]

So today I took the day off work and since we had our first snow flurries of the season and 29 degree temps, I figured it was a good day to get out my winter clothes.

In doing so I purged a big trash bag of summer and winter clothes! I still have too much, like 24 turtle necks!! But I told myself I'm going to keep track of what turtle necks I wear this winter and then the rest are going when I get the summer clothes back out.

[snafu]

Thrif-t, good on you releasing a large bag of clothes in change of season closet refresh.

Have you heard of...looked at www.Vivienne Files? [I couldn't get the link to work on my cranky laptop]

It's a more intricate, detailed, fresher outlook on the Capsule Wardrobe concept meant to initially be shopped in your own closet. Flipping through her site offers lots of color combinations based on your preferences.

In October when I transferred to winter wardrobe, I her copied her idea of outfit 'groupings' rather than by category. It made the change-out process fun rather than a chore. I notice it has inexplicably reduced the volume of laundry and discovered I 'need' the open style cardigan I'd admired in a shop several weeks ago.

[msomnipotent]

I've done nothing. My daughter and I have been sick since the last time I posted about decluttering and we are just getting back on track. I did try to declutter my pantry and just wound up spreading food all over the kitchen, leaving it there for a few days because I was too tired to finish, and then shoving stuff back in because the in-laws came over. I can say I got 1/5th of the pantry done. But before anyone thinks, "She really can't just take a minute to clean out a pantry???", know that my pantry is 7'x5' and has shelves right up to the 9ft ceiling. It is stuffed.

[disneysteve]

msomipotent ,I hope you and your daughter are both feeling better.

Yesterday, I spent a few minutes cleaning out our basement freezer. There actually wasn't as much bad stuff in there as I had expected so it turned out to be more reorganizing than cleaning out.

Today, I went through 2 big containers of paperwork from a retreat we used to run from our temple. We haven't done it since 2011 but still had a ton of stuff related to it. We are hoping to revive it at some point but even if we do, we won't need all of what we've been saving. I was able to condense it down to one bin and recycle all of the rest.

I just did 1-1/2 bags of shredding. I'm going to set a goal of shredding one bagful per week and try to stick to that schedule. Especially with the end of the year approaching, the bag of stuff waiting to be shredded is going to be filling up again. I put a post-it note on the shredder with today's date so I remember when I last did it.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Snafu, I followed your link to a salad dressing website!

But I found this http://www.theviviennefiles.com/2012...-wardrobe.html
That might not be the page you had in mind, but I think it's the website you meant.

[Bluebird]

Hello all! I've been decluttering all year and plan on making a major effort through the end of the year. This morning I decluttered and cleaned the pantry shelves and 3 shelves in the basement. I have 2 bags to drop off to Goodwill this week and hope to come up with another one today. I'll be dropping off boys clothes to the neighbor today 😀

[SavingSteve]

Since we moved in August the hall closet had turned into a mountain of stuff we couldn't even walk in there. Yesterday I went to HD, got some adjustable wire shelves and installed them in the back wall. This along with throwing out 25% of the stuff created so much space it looks absolutely fantastic. We have room for suitcases and large Costco size paper products too!

[snafu]

SavingSteve, what a wonderful result! Stuff not used, not needed gone, space for luggage, paper supplies eliminates yet another frustration. Good on you.

[Bluebird]

I finished up the day with 2 more bags for Goodwill and 2 bags for a coworker! I also reorganized 3 more basement shelves and threw out 2 bags of stuff!

[Thrif-t]

Well today I tackled the basement and threw away some junk and took 2 big boxes of "stuff" to good will. It feels good to have the basement back to being orderly. We also had so many shipping boxes down there and I got all those out and to the recycle.

We have a 3 in one table down there, ping pong, air hockey, table tennis; and I use that to wrap my holiday presents on but you couldn't even see the top of it for all the junk.

I still have more to get rid of but sometimes I stop myself because I'm afraid I might need something but for now it's all straightened up with everything in its place.

[JoeP]

Took advantage of our county's ecopark again: https://www.monroecounty.gov/ecopark/

Dropped off a bunch of cardboard boxes and old statements that I was planning on either burning or shredding (don't have a shredder).

We're very fortunate to have this service. Here is a video of the complex, and you can see the stations laid out for drive-up convenience. https://www.monroecounty.gov/ecopark/video5years.php

[disneysteve]

We got home from a 3-day trip yesterday. As usual, coming home from a few days in a clean, uncluttered hotel room made me want to attack clutter at home. I cleared a number of items off my dresser. I added a few items from our home office to the Goodwill pile. And I put away a couple of other assorted things.

Today, I shredded a bag full of papers in the shredding stack.

I also just sold another of DD's textbooks on Amazon and will ship that tomorrow.

I'm home alone tonight so I'll probably do a little more decluttering.

[JoeP]

Another trip to the ecopark to dispose of old statements and shredded paper.

Our basement storage is a potpourri of varying sized boxes and bins, loose stuff, and no real thought into what goes where. Findings stuff is often difficult, which sometimes results in buying it again. And the plastic bins we have get brittle and do not stack well.

While we are purging, a lot of what remains we want to keep. I'd love to buy a dozen of these: Distribution container with hinged lid