Declutter - an encouraging thread

[Housemum]

OK, so have been lurking/posting on various declutter threads - there are a lot of us out there trying to shift stuff. Anyone care to join me by sharing their small achievements in the hope of helping others to get motivated? Similar to the Flylady threads, I think, where they share their lists of achievements. I'll start off with my small achievement today - we have an IKEA tall CD rack which was full of assorted CD roms - I have been through them and ditched a pile 18" high of CD roms that I don't want or that are incompatible with our current PC. Straight in the bin as they are not worth anything, not even for giving away. I know it's not huge amounts of stuff, but they have been preying on my mind for ages.

Next up, the kitchen cupboards :)

Good work! I think I would have taken the CDs to the tip to see if they could be recycled but out is out, that's the important thing.

I am decluttering the dining room mainly - have one more Ikea bookcase to put together (after it tried to maim me earlier in the week) and may take advantage of it being van day at the tip tomorrow to pay them yet another visit.

I have a shedload of DVDs, some I want to keep but many I don't. For the ones I want to keep, I don't really want to keep the physical copies except as backup / for copyright reasons really. Do people bin off all the DVD covers and store the DVDs in books of 40, say?

I will be joining you once the half term holidays are over.
First thing to go will be the useless rice cooker!

I did see someone suggest in a declutter book that you should put DVDs into a DVD file rather than keep the boxes - that's perhaps a step too far for me, and trickier for the kids to browse and choose a film. Personally, I'm going to keep only the Disney DVDs and selected kids' films, will get rid of most of ours and keep only the ones we REALLY watch again and again. In a few years I'm sure we will all stream movies on demand for pennies!

I have a useless rice cooker too - I should NEVER drink at sales parties, bloody Jamie-useless-rice-cooker-Oliver. Paid a fortune for the pretty but pointless crock o' shite.

Haven't seen anything at the tip for CD recycling, hence the bin. Worn out clothes/furniture/wood/plastic (of the right type - our council doesn't take it all)/glass all get recycled, and anything half decent goes to the charity shop. I must STOP thinking that I should hold on to things, "in case it's worth something". I blame my mother for this - she frequently points out things in magazines worth £100's and says, "I had one of those but my mother/father/brother threw it out". If I'm not using it I should give it away unless it's worth money now in which case I should sell it. I have a whole box of Beanie Babies worth about tuppence that would have fetched about £50 a few years back...

Has anybody tried music magpie? We have tons of kids DVDs to get rid off as well.

I have decanted the DVDs into a file. Children find it much easier and it saves SO much space

We music magpied a load of CDs and DVDs last week, hoping to get about £30. You only get about 30p per item but it's better than nothing (some you get more for) but they have to have the case and inserts and be playable.

I sold my birth pool too and freed up space in the utility room.

That's then £60 in the fund for a welsh dresser...more storage

Its clothes that I struggle with. Most of my time is taken up with washing clothes drying ironing and putting away. And the rest of the house suffers for it. I really do have that many

I simply do not have time to do anything else. I have got piles upon piles of clothes that does get worn but I simply do not need and the kids are the same too.

I have storage space but things like chest of drawers are mostly broken so things get dumped on the floor (am poor so can't afford to replace)

I can't find important paperwork. My car needed taxing a week ago.

I am also waiting for the kids to go back to school then I can try and do stuff

ContinentalKat - I tried music magpie - two nappy boxes of DVDs and CDs combined got me about £30 - so definitely worth doing and the postage to them is free. If you have any nappy boxes around they are perfect for packing them in! Am just about to sort out another 2 boxes to send....

Someone on MN mentioned a company called Zapper as well for CDs/DVDs/books - not looked yet.

Achievement today - emptied and sorted the big larder cupboard in the kitchen. Few things past sell-by had to be binned, there's a box of chocolate porridge that the kids got free to try (from MN!) but hated which I'll drop in at a food bank.
Planning to tackle the toys later but procrastinating like mad, using the excuse of the first dry day for a week to do loads of washing!

Slightly outside the usual remit of decluttering, but I also have two sofa-beds, one single bed (enormously heavy as it has a motor underneath it to make the head and foot areas inclined) and possibly a desk as well. I can't actually move or dispose of any of these things myself, and I thought about using a house-clearing service to do it. Any thoughts?

Wheezo ours were sent off in nappy boxes

tribpot - are they in OK condition? If you're on Facebook search the name of your town, or closest town if you're in a quiet place, to see if there's a buy and sell page - these pages allow you to post a pic of your items, people come and pay cash on collection. Worth a shot. Never used house clearers to know anything about them.

Housemum - no, they're completely knackered :( In fairness, the one upstairs might be sellable but I'd rather just be shot of them - and I guess not have prospective buyers coming through the house to look at them?

Have done music magpie - v.good service. They pay the postage. Would recommend.

Tribpot, my local council offer a free uplift service (although you do have to get the items out to the front of the house), you could try phoning yours and see if they do the same?

Meant to say, I have used Music Magpie, and also Cex for PC games which MM don't take, and clothes for cash for old clothes - I had loads of kids clothes that they'd outgrown and no way of getting them to the charity shop in one go. All worked really well for me, Music Magpie and CFC sent couriers to collect, and Cex have a free post address you can use to send the parcel from the post office.

4th load of washing done but no decluttering! Have emptied one toybox (Ikea ottoman) but DD2 is going to a friend's house shortly so will wait until she's out of the way before everything becomes "special".

Love this thread.
Daughter gave me a hideous Barbie unicorn and HSM doll to give to niece or charity.
I have made a list of everything that has come into this house since January. Not groceries obviously but clothes, furniture, books etc. It's a scarily big list but only two items were purged already. The rest is all loved and needed. Also a lot more left the house than came in.

We have been very good and not brought much into the house - my youngest won a doll on a Facebook competition, but she doesn't have many of her own toys so think that can stay! Other than that I have been to the library rather than bought books, and the 2 books I was given by my mum last month I have now read and given to someone else. We purged the youngest two DDs' wardrobes before buying any summer clothes. So new stuff is now not an issue, it's getting rid of emotional attachment to the old stuff!

Second achievement of the day - been through the 2 ottomans in the dining room (long room, one end toys/other end dining table) and have filled 2 of those collapsible crates with things to go to charity shop or to bin.

I'm very guilty of holding onto things thinking I could/should sell them - but in reality each item is usually only worth a couple of pounds at most. Yes, they would all add together to make a nice sum, but only IF they all sold. Also, it could take ages to actually sell anything. Although we are as cash-strapped as the next person, I must realise that I will be so much richer in time if I just give away stuff unless an individual item is really worth more than a fiver in which case it will go straight on local FB page or eBay.

Good idea for a thread! I am also trying to declutter. I have taken 2 carrier bags of stuff to a Charity shop today.

I have been eBaying quite successfully this year, but have decided that instead of having things lying all over the place, I am going to start putting everything I want rid of into the spare bedroom. This will hopefully mean I can see what is there, put it into sets and and sort it more easily into piles for eBay, Gumtree, NCT Sale, clothes for Friend's DCs, Freecycle and Charity. To achieve this, I have to put my craft stuff and the boxes-from-last-house-move-nearly-7-years-ago-that have-not-yet-been-sorted-out into the loft. I hope to start on that tomorrow.

I have already talked to DP about getting rid of various items that are taking up space in the loft, so it might mean a lot of stuff swapping places!

I am also drowning under mounds of laundry, so am trying to iron at least 6 things every day. I didn't do any yesterday so have done 12 today to make up.

optimisticpessimist (great name btw!) Where did you get rid of baby clothes to please? I'm giving first dibs to a friend for her DC so not sure how great my stuff is (anything stained going to recycle), mostly H&M, a few Zara so hardly designer.

I did get in touch with a women's refuge to try and see if they needed anything but no one got back to me. I should try again.

I have boxed up some stuff for CEX - an old Nokia phone with box and some satnav thing. Also loads of leads! USB/Firewire etc. Awash with techno detritus. Will CEX take this kind of stuff?

My kitchen plumbing is absolutely fucked and I have to wait till August to get it all ripped out so I can actually use the sink properly or the dishwasher or the washer dryer. It is doing my head in. So I am paying for the luxury of laundry every week but it is awesome not having ironing or washing to do at the moment so am trying to see the positive side of things and ignore the sound of cash haemorrhaging from my bank account. Grrrrr. It's making me swear a lot.

PurpleFrog What are you going to spend any funds you can raise from ebay/gumtree on?

Did anyone watch that C4 series Get your house in order? Am going to watch it now and see if it helps me make a list...

I didn't see this and started a thread in Chat, I have a copy of the master list from the how the hell do you get organised thread in AIBU in January this year for encouragement.

I also hold onto things for much longer than I should because I think that it's too wasteful to throw away in a throw away society. I need to take a more logical approach and simply throw out anything which hasn't been used,

I got rid of a bag of clothes to the charity shop today, but tried on other clothes and unless I lose about half a stone will need to buy new trousers etc for my holiday at the end of July

I used Clothes For Cash, they send you out a big bag to fill and when it's done (anything from half full onwards) you request a pick up from them and they send a courier. They sort and then weigh it and pay you 60p per kilo for the stuff that's any good to them, and recycle the rest. I think my first bag was about 30kg, and I got paid for 27kg of it, so about £16. I have another bag that I'm in the process of filling atm (decluttering in preparation for moving!) of which I think a lot more will be of little use to them, but it gets it out of my house with very little effort, so tbh I'd do it even if they didn't pay

slowlyburning's thread - it looks very, very useful.

slowlyburning - Freecycle can be a big help in getting shot of stuff that's too good to go to the tip. It can be massively frustrating as well, though

Wheezo - beware of trying to off all the spare cables in the house. Typically the menz cannot handle that and the necessity of a cable drawer may be long discussed. Save yourself some aggro and negotiate quickly to a position where only one drawer may be given over to cables.