2025 Decluttering Thread

[disneysteve]

He thinks we should have more food than we can eat in 2 weeks or 2 months stored since we are 1 trip from costco. It frustrates me. He talks about "inventory management" of food. we'll this year I am making a concerted effort to not stockpile anything. Everything should only have 1 backup and that's it.

I think that makes sense. We all have this neanderthal part of our brain that tells us to stockpile stuff for lean times, but we live in an age of ridiculous abundance. There is no such thing as lean times. We've got a dozen supermarkets within 10 minutes of our house. If we run out of something, we can get more in minutes. Just today, we decided to make pizza for dinner but we were out of sauce, so we hopped in the car and went over to Trader Joe's. We did buy 3 jars because we rarely go there so I prefer having some extras to limit the frequency of trips, but being out of sauce wasn't some big catastrophe.

As for how old stuff should be, I think it's different if you're talking about homemade items. If I make a pot of meatballs or soup, I'll portion it off and freeze it all and it will take us months to use it up, but we like having it ready to go when we want it. It's much easier to make a big batch once than to make smaller batches more frequently.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I took 3 bags and 2 boxes of stuff to goodwill. I emptied two dressers from the kids and am giving it away. Our house is a nightmare mostly because before things get better it gets worse kwim? But seriously I have 6 boxes of stuff to the consignment already in the minivan. I am going to donate, throw away and save a few more boxes.

On another win, last week when we got back from a trip I pulled out like 7 items from the pantry and said we are going to eat it. We ate 3 of them. The rest is on the island and I am working on eating it this week. I also pulled out stuff from the freezer and we are eating it. We have an extra freezer/Fridge and it's almost empty. I can honestly say that the freezer is empty and the fridge is only full of drinks in our garage it's pretty impressive and our normal freezer is half empty. My goal is to empty it this summer.

DH keeps and always makes comments about how we do not turnover our food fast enough. He thinks we should have more food than we can eat in 2 weeks or 2 months stored since we are 1 trip from costco. It frustrates me. He talks about "inventory management" of food. we'll this year I am making a concerted effort to not stockpile anything. Everything should only have 1 backup and that's it. When we don't have a backup we go to the store. And all food in the house will be less than 2 months old. Extreme efficiency apparently is what he wants and i'm eating everything old.

It frustrates me how he picks on one small item saying that's the cause of all our junk in our garage and it fills up the space. But doesn't look at the bigger picture. Well now our house is torn apart as I try to declutter.

[QuarterMillionMan]

You're on a roll. The snowball will get bigger and bigger.

[ua_guy]

Small win / decluttering: Sold a case of oil and a few extra (17 quarts total) and 3 filters that I didn't need. Better than recycling it. I bought it on sale for a truck I ended up selling, and none of our subsequent vehicles have required that weight of oil for several years now. Made no sense to keep it around any longer, so converted it back to cash as best I could. $50 back in my pocket.

[disneysteve]

Our kitchen remodel is all but done. We' ve started moving back into the kitchen so we now have to figure out where to store and how to organize everything because we did a complete "to the studs" remodel and redesign of the room layout. We did a lot of decluttering in preparation for the work to start. We're doing more now as we restock. This morning, we went through the "junk drawer" (every kitchen has to have one of those) and tossed a number of items. We decided we no longer needed the manuals for the old microwave and dishwasher since they no longer exist, and we never once looked in the manuals anyway after we first got them and set them up. We went through the binder clip of menus and tossed ones from restaurants we never actually order from. As we continue to bring things up from the basement, I'm sure we will eliminate even more items. We're committed to not filling the new drawers and cabinets with as much crap as we had in them before. We want to just stick to the items we actually use on a regular basis. Items that we do use but seldomly will remain in the basement cabinets. Items that we truly never use will get sold or donated.

[disneysteve]

Well done, ua_guy! Purging your home of stuff you just don't need or use, even if it is good quality stuff, is so freeing.

[ua_guy]

The Great Purge of 2025 kicked off this weekend. The target area was our shop building.

5 boxes of misc home repair goods/supplies shrank down to 2 smaller boxes. Kept the stuff we anticipated we'll use over time, and organized it. That included an evening of sorting fasteners and stowing them in an organizer, and keeping one large jar of misc nuts/bolts/widgets. The rest of the supplies and spare parts got donated.

Some old (cheap) wooden bookcases are now gone. Those were a holdout from the shipping container, which is now almost completely empty.

We replaced our gate and all the hardware some time ago; not sure why we held on to the old openers and control box, but we did. Another shipping container find.
We donated probably 250lb scrap metal between truck chains for sizes we'll never use or see again (15" wheels, anyone?), misc hardware, gate parts, old jack stands (the kill you kind).
An old desk chair and mat, gone.

We also had a moment in our closet. Over the last two years I've transformed in size. I literally donated half my closet including some things new in packaging, and so did the other half.
The final purge was the kitchen. Vendor mugs, gone, all of them. Holiday cookie tins, gone. Old lunchboxes, gone. And somehow we ended up with two decent air fryers and decide to donate the older (huge) one.

The dump run amounted to almost 700 lbs of stuff. We donated a bunch more.

I swear we don't have a lot of stuff, but what I mean to say is we don't have a lot of junk. We seem to keep working spares and things of general value longer than we have a use for, however. Felt good to send a lot of that stuff down the road.

[disneysteve]

I started my periodic ebay inventory a couple of days ago. I've only done 2 shelves so far but have already found a set of 4 mugs that wasn't actually listed. I also found 5 items (a crystal figurine, a pack of business card magnets, a Pyrex bowl, a LEGO Bionicle, and a nice weekender bag) that weren't listed anywhere either. I know I had tried to sell some of those things on Marketplace and they never sold. It was probably before my old Facebook account got hacked and then I never relisted them on my new account.

I listed the magnets and the bag on Buy Nothing today and the bag is already gone.

I'm going to keep working on the inventory and try to clear out some dead stock that just hasn't been moving. I'll either do Buy Nothing or donate to the thrift shops. It will free up storage for inventory I do want. Also ebay sometimes deletes listings in a "spring cleaning" process but they don't notify you when that happens. You could have items sitting on your shelf that you know you listed but they aren't actually listed anymore so they're never going to sell.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

where's the photos!

[disneysteve]

We're in the midst of remodeling our kitchen and in a few weeks we might need to store the new cabinets in there temporarily. Previously that would have been a pipe dream but now, I think it can actually work if we need it to.

We found out on Thursday that the cabinets were coming Friday morning. I asked our contractor if he needed the garage cleared to store them. He said he didn't want them stored in the garage due to the heat but he did need a 30" wide path from the garage door to the house door to bring them in. In about 15 minutes, I was able to rearrange and condense stuff to create a path several inches wider than 30" so there was plenty of space. That was a huge win in my mind. As I said, not that long ago doing that would have been impossible.

Of course, now some of the progress made in there got messed up but as soon as there's a cooler day, I can go in and rearrange again as the shelving units are currently blocked, but at least I was able to make it happen quickly and easily.

[disneysteve]

It's more organizing than de-cluttering, but I figured it was worth sharing all the same.

I think organizing is part of decluttering. Having a place for everything and everything in its place reduces clutter. Having one storage case with all of your gear contained is much better than having it scattered about. It keeps you from having to search for everything when you need it. It saves you time when prepping for a trip. It prevents spending money to replace things because you can't find them.

A lot of what I've done in our garage is better utilizing the space, storing things more efficiently, and making things more accessible.

[myrdale]

It's more organizing than de-cluttering, but I figured it was worth sharing all the same.

I ordered a pair of Pelican Air cases. One for my caving gear, and the other for my diving kit. Before storing each time, everything is washed, and dried.

I took the box on a caving trip this past weekend. I just tossed the box in the back of the truck and took off knowing everything was in order. At the site I pulled out what I needed, then that afternoon all the muddy gear went back in the box then everything was pressure washed the next morning.

There are cheaper options, Harbor Freight Apache boxes were a close second at about half the price. While a plastic tote from HomeDepot would probably provide most of the function, it's not the sort of thing to travel (fly) with.

I'm now in the process of going through my hiking/backpacking kit. Luckily the backpack itself removes the need for another box. If it's gear I wouldn't take on a week long trip, it's gone.

[disneysteve]

I did a bit of cleaning in our computer room today. I listed 2 old printers on Buy Nothing and someone has claimed one of them so far. I haven't used either for at least 2 years so they need to go. If nobody claims the other I'll list it on Freebie Alerts.

[disneysteve]

About 45 minutes in the garage tonight. Emptied out one carton. Broke down a couple of large boxes. Started sorting through a very large box of collectibles and found numerous items to give away and several to list on ebay. I didn't get through the whole box but I made a pretty good dent. I'll finish it next time. It's going to be in the 90s here for the next week so I may not get in there again until it cools down.

[disneysteve]

Gone! I sold an unused soft top for a Jeep that was sitting in my garage. The box was 60"x38"x24" and I got $800 for it by posting it on Craigslist. Talk about reclaiming some space and a few bucks of spending cash. Onward!

That's awesome!

I spent a little time in the garage after dinner. Two big items got added to the donation pile. The original dining room chandelier (builder's grade, nothing of significant value) and the foyer light fixture. When we first replaced them, I saved them in case we sold the house and wanted to put them back, but we're not going anywhere. If we do, we're not attached to the fixture in the dining room. We do like the one in the foyer but for $30 or so we can pick up a cheap one to put there. I went through some old (like from my childhood) scrapbook stuff. I saved a small pile of photos and memories and tossed the rest. A number of product boxes got recycled. We've had them plenty long enough that we won't be returning them and if we ever sell any of the items, having the box wouldn't add much of anything to their value.

All of that was along the back wall of the garage. That's the area I'm focusing on now. Plenty more to do there but it's getting better every time I work in there, even for a short period.