Today we took 40 items + a huge bag of clothes to be donated. I had a chat to the people in the store first and they said no to a few things so I don’t feel so terrible about tossing them. Also they took almost all of it enthusiastically so that makes me happy.
We also moved the clutter in the spare room around so we have space in there to sort.
I got another hit for a board game on my buy nothing group too. It turns out they are related to my next door neighbours and knocked on our door last weekend after hitting a ball over the fence
Today’s declutter: hauled a roll of bird netting that I’m not going to use and put it in the “free” area of the community garden. I hate that stuff! So tangly and annoying!
Little has left my house yet, but I’ve identified the following things to get rid of:
A necklace I never wear. More necklaces Iikely to follow this one. I don’t really wear much jewelry at all, and it’s about the same 3 things when I do.
Two books I read but didn’t care for.
Three purses I either never really used or no longer use.
A broken lawn mower I have since replaced.
A completely working push mower that I simply don’t use (given to a friend!)
A mixer that was long ago upgraded from
A microwave that was bought before we had a place that came with one built-in
Three tanks my pet snake had long since outgrown, along with her old heat lamp and water bowl.
A number of cook books and gaming magazines my in-laws gave us that we quite frankly will never use.
A broken coffee table.
There are quite a lot of large things in there that will free up space! Trying to figure out whether I actually want to bother trying to sell anything or if I should just donate it all.
500 items works for me because I have a shit-ton of stuff to get rid of. It may or may not be the right number for you. Maybe a different sort of goal (time spent decluttering? Specific spaces decluttered?) would work better for you than a number of items?
I think the reason it might work for me is I have a bunch of small things, such as jewelry, broken hair ties, books I hated, etc that I am inexplicably holding on to. I do think maybe I won’t actually count the things, because tallying the number of Bobby pins I have discarded seems silly…
Anyone else’s SO or housemate super resistant to getting rid of stuff? I asked Greyman if we should sell the lawn mower, microwave, and mixer or just donate them, and he said not to sell them because he’s going to use them “for parts”???
We’re moving on out after raising our kids and spending the last 20 years in this house. That’s a ton of accumulated stuff. I am trying to focus on how freeing it is going to be!
One problem I’m fixated on is that since we’ve been here and stable for so long, we have been the family repository for “heirlooms.” It’s super hard to know what to do with Grandma’s China or Mom’s College Yearbooks. I don’t feel that I really have the authority to unilaterally pitch a boxful of old photos in which I can’t identify anyone. They’re not “my” possessions, I’m just a guardian for them, so it’s super tough.
I feel like I lost a game of hot potato or something.
So I hope this thread will help me stay focused and moving forward and not frozen.
My mother’s family has been distributing heirlooms recently. What they’ve done is to take good photos, email everyone,.and everyone who wants them emails back. Then they get to discuss it with whoever else also wants them. If nobody wants them, the agreement is that they are passed on to charity. You may be able to do a variation of this, but also is there a historical group near you or wherever you’re family’s from that may take on the interesting pieces your family doesn’t want?
While this thread is more about the physical stuff, I finally got fed up with having a stuffed email inbox last week and have begun working through the backlog as well as making new systems/habits for keeping the ongoing stuff under control. I got rid of a couple of hundred emails this morning and will be able to actually reply to the important stuff now I can find it.
Over the weekend I did a couple of things. First, I broke down one of the two mattress boxes that has been hanging around in the guest room and took it out to the recycling. Then I went through a bin that had been used for the move and never unpacked. That was mostly reorganizing since it turned out to be pretty much all stuff I wanted to keep, but I managed to get it a lot more organized: worn-out old sheets to my office/craft room to use as fabric, random mesh laundry bag to the basement (where the laundry is), fuzzy bunny slipper under my bedside table (now to find the other slipper), and good full-size bedding back into the bin and up to the guest room, which is where the bed they fit on is. There was some packaging that I was able to throw out, so a slight decrease in ~stuff~!
I also asked my MIL about the bins, since she had given us several for moving, and she wants us to keep them. That’s perfect because we can use them to organize and store stuff in the basement, and makes me more motivated to empty the others.
Not decluttering per se, but important organizing steps: Bought two bins that match/stack with other bins we have (those are for our camping gear). New Bins- one is so that I can store away my non-pregnancy clothes in one place, and not have my drawers cluttered up and frustratingly filled by things I can’t wear right now. We have a couple ideas for the second bin, but that’ll wait until we haul everything out of the closets and start sorting through. This should all eventually allow our space to be way more functional and easier to sort through anyway, vs the tiny cloth and cardboard boxes we’re storing things in now.
Usually I’m more in the ‘don’t organize your clutter, just get rid of it’, but the dynamics of life right now mean that doesn’t really work. There’s a lot we don’t want to pitch, but definitely need later. But the space is poorly used right now. And I want to get ahead of the inevitable influx of baby gear, so we can more easily integrate it as it comes in.
I didn’t actually get rid of anything yesterday but I identified some things to put aside for the yard sale. Two small plastic trays that I don’t use, a wine bottle stopper that is pretty but I don’t use (I use a wine vacuum since I don’t drink a lot of wine at once and it’s better at keeping it from going off), and two candle holders as burning candles around kittens seems unwise.
Parts for what? Do the parts from your old mixer fit the new one? Does he have an idea in mind of what the parts will be used for?
(My father is very much like this. My parents have a room they call “the junk room” because he will.not.get.rid.of. broken and unused stuff. Wizard has some tendencies in this direction too.)
I was thinking this morning on my walk about the oppressiveness of Stuff. Ugh.
Went through Ewok’s hand-me-down books again and sifted out another twenty that we really dislike, without even having to look hard. Why are there so many crap kids’ books?!
remember, progress is good even if you don’t hit a given benchmark!