Continued: Getting rid of stuff / Clearing out clutter! PART 2

[Freedomin5]

We just moved to a new apartment and the previous tenant left a lot of stuff that they thought we could use. We’ve found two things whose purpose we can’t identify. We spent the afternoon sorting through kitchen paraphernalia. My Chinese friend started laughing when I showed her the garlic press, whose sole purpose is to mince garlic and release juices by smashing it. Her comment was, “Why can’t you just flatten the garlic with a knife and then mince?” She also laughed at the lemon/orange juice squeezed, the egg separator, the egg slicer, and apple corer, the pineapple peeler, the ice cream scoop, the pizza slicer, and the rectangular griddle for making pancakes.

We cleared out a giant ikea bag of kitchenware which will be donated.

[CrustyBadger]

Success! We can now get a car into the carport :).

Congrats! That's a monumental achievement!

[CrustyBadger]

I have been spending this heat wave staying inside my house (I'm a teacher on summer break) and decluttering.

Yesterday was the hardest ever.  I'm going through two boxes of personal mementos, letters, photos and items from high school and college days (some elementary school too!) .  I have lugged these mementos through over 12 moves, never going through them but also never weeding them out!

It is so emotional to go through them now (at almost age 52).  Young people, don't put off this task as I have done!   

I have letters high school friends wrote me the year I was an exchange student; letters and cards from old boyfriends; letters my family sent me when I was living away from home.  So hard to just recycle without rereading but everything is in cramped, faded cursive and so wordy!  How did we have time to write such long missives back then?  (I know, we weren't emailing, texting and binge watching on Netflix.)

I can't throw much of it out but I did a rough sort yesterday and am going to try a more massive purge today.  Some easy rules to help me:

- toss all birthday cards
- toss all postcards.  All of them.
- toss all letters written by people I can't remember
- toss any letter that doesn't remind me of something happy (so, the bad break up boyfriend letters -- toss them.)
- toss any memento that is broken or stained
- toss any recipes
- toss old report cards from grade school and high school
- toss awards from elementary and middle school


-keep anything written by a family member to me or anything I wrote to a family member (but not birthday cards)
- keep letters from old boyfriends that made me happy
- keep all photos for a later sorting day
- keep any saved schoolwork that makes me happy to look at it
- keep awards I earned high school +
- keep religious documents and mementos

Hoping to get two large boxes down to one organized half a box through this hard work today

[Tyson]

Here's another way that I moved away from clutter and toward minimalism (which was HARD, btw).  Instead of looking at each item and deciding if I wanted it or not (which just got me bogged down half the time), I changed my approach to asking this question:

"If I were starting out from scratch, TODAY, what would I actually use or want to own".

This is a subtle shift away from the idea of "what can I get rid of" and toward "what do I want to keep". 

Once you know the things you want to keep, it's a lot, lot, lot easier to get rid of the things that you don't.

[CrustyBadger]

@tyort1  that's a great way of looking at things.

I'm wondering, do you find you want to keep any old letters or cards?

[diapasoun]

I do this too tyort1! It's especially helpful in evaluating my (large) book collection.

CrustyBadger, I do keep all my old letters and cards (and I do read through them periodically, actually). They make me really happy to look at/through them. That being said, I don't have anything in the breakup letters/schoolwork category.

[Tyson]

@tyort1  that's a great way of looking at things.

I'm wondering, do you find you want to keep any old letters or cards?

Let me answer in a bit of a roundabout way, as for me it wasn't an immediate (or obvious answer).  But I promise there'll be a payoff :) 

I'm recently divorced.  When I first got married, my wife and I bought/acquired really nice things.  A lot, lot, lot of nice things.  To the point that things were fairly cluttered. 

At a certain point I became uncomfortable with all the clutter, all the time, in all areas of our lives.  So I made efforts to pare down, but these efforts were strenuously resisted by my then-wife. 

I didn't understand it at the time but I do now.  For me, I only wanted to keep the things that were "the most" beautiful and/or functional.  She wanted to keep everything.  Because we "might need it again some day", but also there were memories associated with a lot of it.  So it wasn't just "we don't need 3 nice knife sets", but rather "oh, remember when we were in Germany with my mom and we got this?" 

So after the divorce I still had a fair bit of clutter that I needed to deal with, even though she took like 4/5ths of the furniture and stuff to her new house.  So I went through and ruthlessly pared down to only the most essential things and the most beautiful things.  I started this during the separation.  For example, we had 5 really nice table lamps, but one of them was clearly nicer than the others.  So I kept the single lamp that was the nicest. 

Here's what happened - the impact of the single awesome lamp was actually increased because it didn't have all the other "sort of nice" lamps taking away from it's awesomeness.  It stood out even more BECAUSE it was alone. 

So the moral for me - even if you have lots of nice things, the beauty/impact of them is hugely impaired when you have too many of them.  Thus, I keep ONLY the very, very, very NICEST things and get rid of all the other stuff that's merely "good".

Now, to bring this back to cards and papers - I take the same approach.  I only want to keep the things that have the MOST impact, and bring me the MOST happiness.  IME, those things are actually pretty easy for me to identify!  So I sort those out of the pile first and put them in the "You won't even get this out of my cold, dead hands" box.  Those things are the things I cherish the most and they are sacred. 

The other stuff that makes me "sort of" happy, I toss all that.  Because I don't want the "pretty good" memories to take up any of my headspace and thus distract me from the "super awesome" stuff that I really cherish. 

Sorry for the longwinded answer, but I hope that helps!

[CrustyBadger]

It does help!  It might help me finish off this pile of letters I'm sorting through right now.

[happy]

Off to the tip today with a load of scrap metal, recycled for free. And another 200kg of random rubbish, some our own and some picked up from around the property.

[slackmax]

Good going Slackmax!  Keep at it-there will be an end to it.  Just be careful that your weekly sales aren’t flagged as a business.  Where I live, we’re only allowed 2 per year.

Thanks for the warning, SunnyDays. I'm not selling in my driveway, I'm selling out of a parking lot next to an antique store, alongside other vendors, and I pay $10 per day per table. So far no Federales!   

[slackmax]

I had been trying to sell a cute set of wooden toy soldiers that I thought for sure someone would buy at my rummage sales for a cheap price, but after 4 rummage sales and the thing still not sold, I ruthlessly tossed it into the garbage! Not even taking it to Goodwill. 

Also culled out 2 big books no one wants to buy, even for just 50 cents apiece, and they are going to the library as donations today.   

[CrustyBadger]

Now, to bring this back to cards and papers - I take the same approach.  I only want to keep the things that have the MOST impact, and bring me the MOST happiness.  IME, those things are actually pretty easy for me to identify!  So I sort those out of the pile first and put them in the "You won't even get this out of my cold, dead hands" box.  Those things are the things I cherish the most and they are sacred.

So having spent much of two days sorting through these boxes I have carried with me from home to home over the course of 30 years of adulthood -- it turns out almost NONE of it brings me happiness to look at or have.  Really, why have I been hanging on to these things for so very long??

[Tyson]

Now, to bring this back to cards and papers - I take the same approach.  I only want to keep the things that have the MOST impact, and bring me the MOST happiness.  IME, those things are actually pretty easy for me to identify!  So I sort those out of the pile first and put them in the "You won't even get this out of my cold, dead hands" box.  Those things are the things I cherish the most and they are sacred.

So having spent much of two days sorting through these boxes I have carried with me from home to home over the course of 30 years of adulthood -- it turns out almost NONE of it brings me happiness to look at or have.  Really, why have I been hanging on to these things for so very long??

YES!!  And once you realize the truth of that with one category of things, it's so much easier to carry that approach over to everything.

Here's another cool thing I find about this approach - it shifts your mentality away from "what do I want to get out of my life" and more toward "what do I want to keep in my life".  And that's a beautiful thing. 

I really love this idea that you can curate your life.  Not just your physical living space, but also your memories and relationships.  Keep the best, toss the rest.

[RetiredAt63]

Here's another cool thing I find about this approach - it shifts your mentality away from "what do I want to get out of my life" and more toward "what do I want to keep in my life".  And that's a beautiful thing. 

I really love this idea that you can curate your life.  Not just your physical living space, but also your memories and relationships.  Keep the best, toss the rest.

Downsizing really forces this on you.  It is not a question of what to get rid of, it is a question of limited space and what is worth keeping?  And once you have sorted through the clothes and the furniture and kitchen stuff and hobby stuff and office stuff, your curating mental muscles are well developed and the sentimental stuff is (relatively) easy.

[Cannot Wait!]

I just watched a Nate Berkus Show on exactly this.  Move Out to Move In.  (Of course I can't find it again now...)  but he had "Laurie " put everything in boxes labeled "New Laurie" or  "Old Laurie".  They moved everything out and only the "New Laurie" boxes were allowed back in. Transformative!  She was also told to pick ONE trophy to represent all her trophies, etc. Inspiring.

[SunnyDays]

Week 4 report:

22. Ratty rattan (hah!) end table - going to thrift store although they may just throw it out.  Worth a try.  After tons of garage sales, I’ve learned not to predict what people will buy.
23. Jigsaw puzzle - thrift store
24. Decorative palm fronds - thrift store
25. Almost new makeup items - thrift store.  Believe it or not, they sell it.
26. Spray can of acrylic fixative - giving to artist relative
27. Box of melamine shelf remnants.  Trying to decide what to do with them.  You know, they “might be useful” to someone.
28. Box of branches - city compost. (This counts, right?)

Still not hard.  What have I been keeping all this junk for?
 
Not everything has left the house yet.  Putting it all in category piles to make the trips worth it.  This coming week should see couple of piles go.

[Fresh Bread]

Sunny Days - do you have somewhere like a fb freebies group where you can list things for free? I'd put the offcuts and anything you're not sure about on there. And if there's no takers, it's destined for the bin.

[Sugaree]

Cleared out a bunch of pots and pans this weekend.  I still have a few more than I really need/want, but want to go through one Thanksgiving before I fully commit to culling anymore out. 

That one was kind of tough because a lot of them were my grandmother's.  I don't know if I've mentioned this, but when I moved into my house, it was already fully furnished with my grandparents' stuff.  So, for the longest time there was stuff tucked back in closets and cabinets that I just kind of ignored.  Some of it was stuff that I thought was kind of cool, but I finally faced up to the fact that I was never going to use an egg poaching pan from the 60s. 

[chaskavitch]

I'm trying to go through my packets of photographs that are scattered in different boxes in my basement.  I don't want to get rid of ALL of them, but so many are from rolls of film I shot in HS, then didn't get developed for months/years, and a lot of the pictures are washed out or dark or of people I don't know (or of ex boyfriends, ha). 

The last few posts about getting rid of sentimental things have actually been really helpful.  I only went through one box last night, but I was far more effective at getting rid of pictures than I have been in past moves.  Usually I just look through them and reminisce and put them all back :)

Two (three?) more boxes to go, then I'm moving on to photo albums!

[Fresh Bread]

Sugaree, moving into to somewhere that already is filled with other people's things sounds really hard.

Yesterday I went through shoes and sheets. Shoes went very well, I'm down quite a few pairs but I only managed to remove two pillowcases.

Today I spontaneously had a go at my bottom drawer, the one with my rarely used stuff like hairdryer, straightener, jewellery. Well due to Sydney humidity a lot of it is in a bad way - mould made it easy to throw out a couple of travel wash bags I was keeping just in case and it compounded my desire to be super minimalist.

[Fresh Bread]

I'm trying to go through my packets of photographs that are scattered in different boxes in my basement. 

Oh you reminded me - I looked up bulk photo scanning and it's not cheap where I am but I might do it and then get rid of a few albums. I never look at them, I'll probably find when I do that I don't want scans either! I thought I'd also get my husband's scanned and then box them nicely so they can be viewed. He insists on keeping them yet they are just sitting in the envelopes from the developers in a never opened box.

This is all pics from pre-2003 - thank goodness for digital cameras for us non-gifted photographers.

[Sugaree]

Sugaree, moving into to somewhere that already is filled with other people's things sounds really hard.

At the time, it wasn't that bad.  I grew up next door to my grandparents, so this was not like moving into a stranger's house.  Also, when I left my first husband, I left behind basically everything except my clothes, my laptop, and my cat.  So moving into a furnished house really was a blessing even if my grandparents kept EVERYTHING (I'd say a depression era habit, but they both say that they grew up so poor that the depression really didn't make much of a difference in their life).  Ten years on, and we've gotten a decent idea what we use and what we don't.  Everything that was "valuable" (tv, jewelry, guns, etc.) was parted out to family members (though I may or may not have moved her cast iron skillets out of the house when an opportunistic uncle came sniffing around). 

[SunnyDays]

Fresh Bread - I’m not on Facebook, but I’ve decided to just put them at the curb and hope they disappear.

Also, you can just take pictures of the pictures and then it’s all digital for free!

[FireHiker]

Here's another cool thing I find about this approach - it shifts your mentality away from "what do I want to get out of my life" and more toward "what do I want to keep in my life".  And that's a beautiful thing. 

I really love this idea that you can curate your life.  Not just your physical living space, but also your memories and relationships.  Keep the best, toss the rest.

Downsizing really forces this on you.  It is not a question of what to get rid of, it is a question of limited space and what is worth keeping?  And once you have sorted through the clothes and the furniture and kitchen stuff and hobby stuff and office stuff, your curating mental muscles are well developed and the sentimental stuff is (relatively) easy.

This is exactly how we're approaching things with our upcoming move. If I have to ask whether I should keep something or not, out it goes. There is just not enough room to keep things that aren't a definite yes.

We had open houses this past weekend so I haven't gotten much getting rid of stuff done since I had to keep the house pristine. I did spend a few hours Saturday morning working on the laundry room shelves though and did another pass through the pantry last week. We leave tomorrow for vacation and then it will be back to frantic packing and clearing out of stuff next week. I'm really looking forward to the break. It isn't even just the physical effort and time at this point, but the emotional effort. I don't want to make one more decision for a bit!! It is a LOT of decisions when you're going through all the stuff...

[RetiredAt63]

The emotional effort is definitely a thing.  I just dropped off a carload of donations, couldn't even get everything in the car.  More will go out in a few days.

[slackmax]

Here's another cool thing I find about this approach - it shifts your mentality away from "what do I want to get out of my life" and more toward "what do I want to keep in my life".  And that's a beautiful thing. 

I really love this idea that you can curate your life.  Not just your physical living space, but also your memories and relationships.  Keep the best, toss the rest.

Downsizing really forces this on you.  It is not a question of what to get rid of, it is a question of limited space and what is worth keeping?  And once you have sorted through the clothes and the furniture and kitchen stuff and hobby stuff and office stuff, your curating mental muscles are well developed and the sentimental stuff is (relatively) easy.

This is exactly how we're approaching things with our upcoming move. If I have to ask whether I should keep something or not, out it goes. There is just not enough room to keep things that aren't a definite yes.

......   (snip)   .....   I'm really looking forward to the break. It isn't even just the physical effort and time at this point, but the emotional effort. I don't want to make one more decision for a bit!! It is a LOT of decisions when you're going through all the stuff...

+1 to the decisions being tiring. Each item is another decision for me. Even if I decide to keep it, I have to decide where to move it in the house.

When I was decluttering my parents' house my motto was "When in doubt, toss it out". lol.   

[Sibley]

On two separate occasions my sister and I both showed up at parent's house for a few days. We went through ALL the Christmas, books, and china boxes over about 3 days (a year apart). Probably 40 or so boxes in total. By the time dinner came around, everyone was tired, hot, dirty, and incredibly crabby. Someone ordered pizza, everyone took showers, and then we all avoided the rest. The emotional management was at least 60% of it.

[former player]

Reorganised my kitchen a bit: it looks a lot tidier because stuff I don't use much is out of the way and stuff I use a lot is easily to hand.  The food cupboard yielded up a jar of honey and a jar of chutney that I won't get to any time soon: they have gone to a friend who came by with a trug of fresh produce from her garden.

[diapasoun]

I just found out that I have to move by the end of September (current rental needs foundation retrofittals, which can't be done while the place is occupied).

I anticipate a sudden influx of decluttering...

[Car Jack]

Well, decluttering for me and for a friend.  Friend's husband just died of brain cancer and seemed to be a professional collector.  Hundreds of event t shirts and hats.  But also a dozen or more guitars.  I'm a guitar player and live in a much more populated area, so am craigslisting these for her.  My wife has helped her a lot with sorting, throwing out and taking stuff to either donate or sell off.  Just emphasizes to get rid of crap before you die and leave the work to someone else.

For myself, just craigslisted off a couple maple bar stools that my mom gave us and my wife told me 3 years ago that we'd use them.  Well, ok, if use them means collecting cob webs in the basement.  Nobody will miss them and I collected a cool five bucks.  :D  Craigslist.....it's like a dumpster that hands you money.  I have a couple wedding presents to sell off next.  They've been in storage in attics since we were married in 1986.  Think we'll use them?

[Logans]

I just watched a Nate Berkus Show on exactly this.  Move Out to Move In.  (Of course I can't find it again now...)  but he had "Laurie " put everything in boxes labeled "New Laurie" or  "Old Laurie".  They moved everything out and only the "New Laurie" boxes were allowed back in. Transformative!  She was also told to pick ONE trophy to represent all her trophies, etc. Inspiring.

Love the idea!!! Thanks for sharing!

[slackmax]

I had been saving an old rickety set of shelves and a small wooden lecturn, to try to sell at the rummage sale, but got tired of looking at them, and drove them both down to Goodwill and jettisoned the space-wasting ****suckers. I am just sooooooooo sick of this ****.     :)   

Tore into the basement hoard today. Yes, the sacred basement hoard!  Moved some of it into the car for Friday's rummage event. Moved some into the toss-out pile. Why is this so hard? 

[CrustyBadger]

The basement is my next area to venture into.  I don't know why it is so hard.  So many years of accumulated items - no matter how much I get rid of it seems there is always more!

[diapasoun]

I've used up half of my ridiculous stock of lentils.

It's the little declutterings that bring so much satisfaction, sometimes.

[mspym]

My subconscious seems to have decided it's time to kick this back upstairs- all my dreams last night were about moving and having to frantically declutter/discard 90% of what I owned. I just wanted to burn everything so I didn't have to think about it

[Frugal Lizard]

I am working in a disaster zone - all the basement storage is out and stashed around my office, the porch and even under plastic outside while insulated walls are going up in that end of the basement.  Our house is U-shaped so this part of the basement has a lot of exterior walls that were lined with stuff in bins or on shelves or in cabinets.  I was not able to fully review all the stuff as it was coming out of the storage, now it is piled around my work space and it is driving me nuts.  I am not going to let it just all get put back though - so I am going to live with it for a while until the walls are done and only the stuff we actually use is going back in there. 

The Hubs made a comment about building more shelving once the walls are done and I asked him if it wouldn't be better to have less stuff?  It is so open and spacious now without all the junk in there. He commented about how some of the stuff was boxes he packed up from our old house that was in the basement there.  We moved here in 2010.  Gwack I wish I wasn't working so much right now - I would be pulling open those dusty / moldy gross boxes and tossing stuff in the right location to leave us forever.

[middo]

I am working in a disaster zone - all the basement storage is out and stashed around my office, the porch and even under plastic outside while insulated walls are going up in that end of the basement.  Our house is U-shaped so this part of the basement has a lot of exterior walls that were lined with stuff in bins or on shelves or in cabinets.  I was not able to fully review all the stuff as it was coming out of the storage, now it is piled around my work space and it is driving me nuts.  I am not going to let it just all get put back though - so I am going to live with it for a while until the walls are done and only the stuff we actually use is going back in there. 

The Hubs made a comment about building more shelving once the walls are done and I asked him if it wouldn't be better to have less stuff?  It is so open and spacious now without all the junk in there. He commented about how some of the stuff was boxes he packed up from our old house that was in the basement there.  We moved here in 2010.  Gwack I wish I wasn't working so much right now - I would be pulling open those dusty / moldy gross boxes and tossing stuff in the right location to leave us forever.

If the boxes were moved from another place to here, and haven't been opened since 2010, is it worth opening them at all?  They obviously don't have anything of use in them, or you would be using it, and if it is of value, sentimental or otherwise, then you would know.  I would be voting to toss them straight into a skip bin.

[diapasoun]

Three books and some comics in the to-go pile. \o/

[Sibley]

I am working in a disaster zone - all the basement storage is out and stashed around my office, the porch and even under plastic outside while insulated walls are going up in that end of the basement.  Our house is U-shaped so this part of the basement has a lot of exterior walls that were lined with stuff in bins or on shelves or in cabinets.  I was not able to fully review all the stuff as it was coming out of the storage, now it is piled around my work space and it is driving me nuts.  I am not going to let it just all get put back though - so I am going to live with it for a while until the walls are done and only the stuff we actually use is going back in there. 

The Hubs made a comment about building more shelving once the walls are done and I asked him if it wouldn't be better to have less stuff?  It is so open and spacious now without all the junk in there. He commented about how some of the stuff was boxes he packed up from our old house that was in the basement there.  We moved here in 2010.  Gwack I wish I wasn't working so much right now - I would be pulling open those dusty / moldy gross boxes and tossing stuff in the right location to leave us forever.

If the boxes were moved from another place to here, and haven't been opened since 2010, is it worth opening them at all?  They obviously don't have anything of use in them, or you would be using it, and if it is of value, sentimental or otherwise, then you would know.  I would be voting to toss them straight into a skip bin.

Seconded. Clearly, you don't need them. And if it's moldy, sorry - but that probably has to be tossed regardless.

[Frugal Lizard]

I am working in a disaster zone - all the basement storage is out and stashed around my office, the porch and even under plastic outside while insulated walls are going up in that end of the basement.  Our house is U-shaped so this part of the basement has a lot of exterior walls that were lined with stuff in bins or on shelves or in cabinets.  I was not able to fully review all the stuff as it was coming out of the storage, now it is piled around my work space and it is driving me nuts.  I am not going to let it just all get put back though - so I am going to live with it for a while until the walls are done and only the stuff we actually use is going back in there. 

The Hubs made a comment about building more shelving once the walls are done and I asked him if it wouldn't be better to have less stuff?  It is so open and spacious now without all the junk in there. He commented about how some of the stuff was boxes he packed up from our old house that was in the basement there.  We moved here in 2010.  Gwack I wish I wasn't working so much right now - I would be pulling open those dusty / moldy gross boxes and tossing stuff in the right location to leave us forever.

If the boxes were moved from another place to here, and haven't been opened since 2010, is it worth opening them at all?  They obviously don't have anything of use in them, or you would be using it, and if it is of value, sentimental or otherwise, then you would know.  I would be voting to toss them straight into a skip bin.

Seconded. Clearly, you don't need them. And if it's moldy, sorry - but that probably has to be tossed regardless.

This is the area that gets complicated - the stuff is my husband's stuff.  If it was mine - then it would be gone already.  I can't throw his stuff out.  I am hoping I can go through it all just to see what it is. I will test the waters. He got really upset when I didn't realized how important some of the 'junk' was to him when we moved the second time.  Then we got this little dynamic going where he hoarded stuff just because he needed to have a hoard.  A couple of years ago he threw out a bunch of notes from university (twenty years after)  Then about two years ago, when his parents went from 2800 square feet with two car garage and full basement and a shed to a 1400 square foot condo with only a small locker of storage, and all his stuff came to our house, he threw away boxes and boxes of stuff.  It was incredible.  Hopefully he is ready to open all his remaining stashes and make this decision for himself. 

All the kids stuff will be sorted through a second time and I will be asking them what we must keep. 
All my stuff will also get a very careful going through. 
But Hubs stuff is his stuff.  I will just be asking questions and making sure all the moldy dusty card board is out of the house.  If he wants to repack crap into plastic bins and dust them, I have to live with that.

[slackmax]

I had been saving an old rickety set of shelves and a small wooden lecturn, to try to sell at the rummage sale, but got tired of looking at them, and drove them both down to Goodwill and jettisoned the space-wasting ****suckers. I am just sooooooooo sick of this ****.     :)   

Tore into the basement hoard today. Yes, the sacred basement hoard!  Moved some of it into the car for Friday's rummage event. Moved some into the toss-out pile. Why is this so hard?

Made morale-boosting progress in the basement. Got rid of BIG junk, like an old oxidized chaise lounge.  And a big plastic kids easel. I recycled the aluminum  chaise lounge at the recyc place, and donated the easel to Goodwill.

Tossed some other BIG stuff into garbage like old picture frame with broken glass.

Will go through my rummage sale stock and recycle/donate/jettison lots (I  hope)
of stuff today, that hasn't sold. 

It's so good to have enough room in the basement now to easily move around!!

[Tyson]

I'm pretty minimal at this point, but I continue to be pretty ruthless about stuff.  My ex-wife left a ton of unfinished projects around the house.  Like, our garden level finished basement only being half-painted and then abandoned (mostly because her junk grew up around all the walls), so I re-painted all that myself and made it look really nice.  Same with our entry way - it was a hodgepodge of different colors along with holes left over from a previous alarm system.  Filled all that in, and painted it a sunflower yellow, as that's the darkest area of the house & needed some brightening. 

Same with stuff outside - there was just projects she started and simply abandoned.  So there's metal dividers sitting on the back porch that's supposed to get planted in the front that just sat there for the last 9 months.  Or, even better we have a concrete sidewalk out back that she got flagstones to replace the concrete with so it'd be a nice walkway.  That crap has sat there, half done for 2 years.   Grr.  So as of today, that's being properly installed by professionals.  Yeah, it cost me some $$ but it's worth it not to have a half beaten up concrete sidewalk and a massive number of flagstones just piled up randomly. 

Anyway, this is actually the nice part about having already done the decluttering in the rest of the house - it gives me energy to tackle other stuff that otherwise would never have gotten done. 

I forget where I first heard it, but someone once told me about "The strategic value of clear space", I didn't understand it at the time but I do now.  Getting to this point is freaking awesome.

[zygote]

Plugged my old kindle in one last time as a last ditch effort, and this time the charging light came on, but the low battery screen never disappeared. In my desire not to deal with Amazon support, I googled kindles that won't turn on and came upon a hard reset from holding down the sleep/wake button for 30 seconds. Well, that did the trick. Now I feel silly for not trying that sooner. But now the kindle has been fully charged and wiped, and I've signed up to trade it back into Amazon for a $15 credit. Definitely better than the zero dollars I thought I was going to get for a dead device.

All the rest of my hard drives have been wiped, too. Now I just have to find a time to get to Best Buy to hand them in for recycling. Not worth trying to sell them now that one can get better new drives for cheap.

Plus, we've got two more small bags full of random items that have accumulated over the last few months.

I am really feeling the results of all this effort. Small decluttering tasks like this come up every once in a while, but I spend most of my time tidying and cleaning the apartment rather than decluttering. We still have more stuff than I'd like, but it feels much more manageable and livable now.

[jengod]

“The strategic value of clear space”

Brilliant

[marion10]

Went through all toiletries in my bathroom. Threw away expired stuff and some half empty lotion that I was never going to finish. I use a monthly pill box- filled that and can see what pills I need to get refilled in the future. Had a huge stash of Korean facial masks that were a gift that I will never use- off to the giveaway box.

[mustachepungoeshere]

Listed a top on eBay and gave a dress to my mum.

I also got her to hem a pair of suit pants that I've shrunk out of so they are in good enough condition to donate to charity (the hems were slightly worn in a couple of places but they're in otherwise good condition).

[Cannot Wait!]

Well...I DID IT! I have gone through every box, shelf, dresser and cupboard in my apartment.  As well as the storage room and shed.  Today was the last box.  THEE BOX that I had been dreading, thee box that I glossed over or never quite got to.  Done!  It was HARD.  So freakin hard.
My god it feels good.

[Sibley]

Well...I DID IT! I have gone through every box, shelf, dresser and cupboard in my apartment.  As well as the storage room and shed.  Today was the last box.  THEE BOX that I had been dreading, thee box that I glossed over or never quite got to.  Done!  It was HARD.  So freakin hard.
My god it feels good.

WHOOO!!!!!

[mspym]

Took a bag and some tops to the Vinnies yesterday. I've been trying to make myself love them for several months and I don't so off they go. I also went through my bags and they are now all stored in a way that won't disfigure them PLUS they fit in the space allocated to them. My next mission is to be better about taking my bag UPSTAIRS when I get home and emptying it and putting it AWAY so I stop having a small bag mountain downstairs by the end of the week.

[SunnyDays]

Week 5 report:

29. Vinyl flooring glue - new almost full can, to be put up for sale.
30. Tee shirt that's too big - to be offered to relative.
31. Never worn blouse - to be offered to same relative.
32. Dog house - to be offered to animal rescue group for northern dogs that have no shelter.
33. Leaky basketball - garbage.
34. Old, unused shingles - going to curb with off-cut shelves.
35. Roll of drawer liner - to be actually put into drawers.

25 items have left the house so far.  It's easier to identify things to get rid of then actually do it.  There's no second thoughts involved, it just takes some organization to get them to where they need to go.  So, I'm behind in that regard, but confident it will eventually happen.  But still, I'm a quarter of the way toward my goal!