Still throwing an item away a day – part 13

[StealthNinjaMum]

One of mumsnet's friendliest corners this is the 13th 'one item a day' thread to inspire and motivate a group of mumsnetters to declutter their houses, gardens and lives bit by bit, one step at a time.

Each day we get rid of just one item and report back. We’ve all got different challenges and problems and it keeps us going to discuss them and work through them together.

Newbies are welcome. It’s not just decluttering, join us in the chat about recycling, organisation, grumbles about hoarding family members and obviously our many successes.

Previous thread here.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/3913755-The-decluttering-one-thing-a-day-thread-part-12?msgid=99387987

And for 2020 some of us are also aiming to get rid of 2020 items!

I need to catch up on the thread. No outs, still doing DIY.

I saw this on another thread for donating clothes, might be useful for anyone who is struggling to find a charity shop that will take donations:

www.icollectclothes.co.uk/

Alex thanks for the link. They take curtains, hurray!

@stealthninjamum

hamsterfan I would give pants to a charity shop as 'rags' rather than advertise on freecycle. Or I'd even see if someone like a refuge would want them. I'd feel a bit uneasy about just giving child's pants to a stranger! (But I speak as someone who had their knickers stolen off a washing line when I was a child!)

In the olden days (ie 1970s!) people used to clean with pants. I can remember my nan cleaning the windows with my grandads y-fronts!

ellieq my stbexh used to spend hours on the toilet with his phone. So infuriating.

I have emptied the drawers of the utility room. There is mess everywhere. I had a big pile of tools owned by exh before we moved in together that will eventually go into the garage. I have found about 20 alum keys - one from every piece of IKEA and argos furniture we have ever bought! I'll probably keep a couple. We also have about 30 door hinges which are going. There's a massive tub of white paint that I can't easily dispose of. It has separated so I'm not sure it can be used now. Anyway it's good to bring it all together and work out what's going. Just putting stbexh's stuff in the garage will give an enormous amout of space.

Just a tip for a Allen keys from ikea. I normally sellotape them to the front of the manual and then I have a storage box for all manuals in a cupboard.

alex thanks for the link, I'll put it in the second post.

footprints that sounds so organised, I wish you'd given me that tip about twenty five years ago! I take the manuals and leave them in a random drawer / on top of tall furniture / in a file / in the Room of Doom and then every so often find one, realised the item was thrown away ten years earlier and it gets thrown out! I am saving some of the keys but not all of them.

I have now sort of tidied my decorating stuff. I had 35 paintbrushes. One of those things that I buy when I decorate because I'm so excited to buy new paint I don't check to see if I already have brushes. All are bagged up now and when school are able to do plays again I'll donate them to the props painters. I donated about 6 last year so I couldn't believe I still had that many.

Small amount of Playmobil sold and posted and another ready to go to a larger postbox tomorrow.

Good work everyone!!!

Today (again whilst kettle was boiling) I quickly sorted the tuppawear cupboard. All pots are stored with their lids attached. So three lidless boxes were recycled.

I booked a collection for tomorrow, so hopefully some clothes, bedding and curtains going out. While cleaning the bathroom I finally allowed myself to throw the half used bottle of aveno emollient wash which has been sitting around for a year. I held onto it because it was expensive, but it was so stiff you needed super strength to squeeze it out of the bottle, and once it was in the bath it didn't dilute, just sort of rolled about the bottom of the tub.

My day 22 update:

Not much de-cluttering done today. I’ve put the badges from my old Brownie uniform in an envelope to go in my memory box. I think I may just box up all the emotional stuff (photos, cards) and store it to go through later. My mum’s house has been on the market for a while, and we’ve just accepted an offer, and I’m finding it hard.

Still feel annoyed with DH, who is still on furlough while I’ve been working (at home) all through lockdown. I feel like I am cramming everything in (I work 30 hours over 5 days), struggling to find time to do housework, to de-clutter, always doing sodding laundry, and there he is complaining about having to iron a few shirts. I don’t want to ask him to sort through his boxes of paperwork and random stuff (even though he has plenty of free time), because the sighing and complaining would probably outweigh the joy of having a slightly less cluttered house.

Two school polo shirts and two button-up shirts set aside for donation. Outgrown after five weeks. Made a reasonable guess at sizes for online orders, but with all the fresh air and exercise that LOs are getting each day at school they've started growing again. Also a few pairs of socks, pants, pyjamas.

Our local donation centre takes anything that's newly washed, which means I never need to decide whether it is fit for the shop or just rags. Phoned this morning to find that they take bags by appointment. Hope that's still the case in a few weeks when I will be better sorted.

@EllieQ I’m in the same boat as you. My DP is off, I do 35 hours over 5 days and all at night, then get up with the kids and school runs, chores, washing etc. I’m so tired.

I’m hoping I’ll start to see a light at the end of the tunnel soon. Although a relative dropped off a huge box of kids dvds, that I’d just decluttered. At least it’s replacing stuff and not added to what we would have had previously!

Hang in there, it’ll be ok eventually.

Sending hugs to those of you with unhelpful husbands. I sometimes think it’s easier to be a single mum than when you have someone who doesn’t pull their weight. I think you’re amazing working so hard and doing all the childcare and housework and decluttering.

Anyway I looked at my flylady email and it suggested dusting my bedroom surfaces. I did that a few days ago but they’ve become a bit cluttered with stuff that lives elsewhere so I’ll have a quick tidy.

I’m then going to focus on the utility room and some admin.

Today my goal is to find somewhere for all the tech boxes, phone boxes, etc. I’ve got somewhere in mind but I just need to get up and actually do it!

EllieQ my DP was on furlough/unemployed (he's got a new job now) but trying to get him to declutter is a mission..... I got him to sort through some paperwork and eventually some books but he still has loads of stuff. He did voluntarily do some painting outside which needed doing. He doesn't see cleaning or tidying which needs to be done and then why I get annoyed.

I just sorted through the medicine cupboard. An embarrassingly large amount of expired medicine is now in a bag to drop off at the pharmacy for disposal...

We have loads of boxes of paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin so I’ve written the expiry date in sharpie on the top of each box and put all bar one box of each type in a container so they are corralled and won’t waterfall down on me when I’m trying to find something at the back of the cupboard.

I also found a couple of unopened number candles that I’m going to pop in a charity shop bag.

Em we have the Box of Boxes, half of which I'm sure are no longer relevant. They're staying put because I've not got any better ideas for them at present, so let me know what you come up with. It's probably the biggest obstacle to my goal of being packing box free (3 left, almost 1 year in).

I wrote a really long post earlier and lost it. It was probably too long so the summary is I have organised lots of screws, screwdrivers, drillbits, and unidentifiable plastic bits. Some have been binned. Then I decluttered lots of beauty products, had a long bath and I now smell of strawberries.

@GlumyGloomer for now my kitchen kallax is in my lounge, so I’ve freed up a box in there for all the tech boxes. The relevant ones are in there (they’ve got serial numbers on) and any that are no longer required are gone.

Manuals were in there too and they’re now in an alphabetical order in a lever arch folder out of the way, with any Allen keys that came with it.

The box is a lot clearer, considering it originally took up two corner cupboards and is now one small kallax box.

I’m a bit stumped on what else to do now tbh. I did behind the sofa earlier and found a huge amount of kids toys and magazines. Everything’s been recycled or put away for now.

Hi all mainly just been picking away at old tax folders and other paperwork. Yet more holed socks in the rag bag. Paper recycling next week so I’m going to press on with office for now. Couple more travel sized toiletries finished off, decided that even if it’s not a scent I really like it’s only a few showers worth anyway. Need to get busy and list some playmobil on eBay as people may well be looking for xmas soon.

One of my bras went In the bin today as the wire had given up. Actually snapped in half. Sigh.

Also Dd has shuffled a hole in another pair of trousers.

This wretched book has been given to a friend.

My day 23 update:

Managed to extract some packaging from the pile of DH’s stuff on the dining table to put in the recycling/ bin. An achievement as he often lets stuff like that linger in his piles of paperwork - I’m convinced that he could reduce his boxes of ‘paperwork to scan and file’ by half just by going through and getting rid of crap he’s left in there. It’s reassuring to hear that other husbands are just as annoying!

I think we have spent too much time together over lockdown. He was out this afternoon and I don’t feel quite so irritated with him this evening

Stealth I have taken one for the team and watched two episodes of The Home Edit. Didn’t feel like a style I could emulate, lots of squeaking, bouncing up and down and lots and lots of acrylic boxes to put stuff in. Think I will stick with hoarder programmes to make myself stick to the decluttering

@footprintsintheslow oh that book!!! Hate that book!!

Also really regret buying ds room on the broom. It’s a nice enough story. But not every day.....

foorprintsintheslow we had that book! Dc loved it. That and a book about The Queen’s Knickers. I was so glad when those books left the house.

gassylady I have heard so much about The Home Edit but it’s just another way to procrastinate. I started watching the Hoarders programme but I found it upsetting at how bad some of the hoarders were - like the lady who hoarded vegetables to the point they had turned into liquid. At least those programmes make me feel better about my own house.

I am at the stage with the utility room where everything is out everywhere and I am grouping things together and putting them back neatly. I can see the cupboards are going to have so much more space. I might need to buy boxes to make it neat but I have been putting groups of items in foodbags to at least keep them neat and together.

Very much one step forward, two back here.
Am keeping up with one item a day out, however, efforts to donate the two spare single beds are not going so well. The booked British Heart Foundation pick up failed to arrive yesterday and then I had a call saying the van doesn't operate on Wednesdays, even though it was BHF that gave me the booking! Anyway, have re-booked for next week on Friday. If that fails then I have a local charity that is a fall back, I hope.
So, only managed the packaging from the new bed out with recycling this week plus the now unneeded single bed sheets etc to local charity shop. Had hoped bedding would go to the local Refuge but they are not accepting donations of 'things'.
1626/2020