Getting rid of one item a day thread number 14 – where we extract precious autumn leaves, rocks and twigs from our children

[stealthninjamummy]

Well I never thought I’d still be here, on the 14th thread where a bunch of mumsnetters get rid of one item a day while we slowly declutter and reorganise our houses.

It’s autumn and some of us have commented on our children’s beloved treasures that are coming in like conkers and precious twigs that have been named. This is the thread where we focus on sneaking these things out and getting the house ready for Christmas even if we don’t know what Christmas will be like this year.

New joiners are always welcome, just get rid of one item and let us know. We’ve all different issues and challenges and it’s nice to have a friendly chat with a fellow mumsnetter.

Previous thread here.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/4003927-Still-throwing-an-item-away-a-day-part-13?pg=1

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

Some information on getting rid of items that have been asked about on previous threads.
If anyone has anything to add to this list could you please highlight it in bold and hopefully I can update this post for the next thread.

SELLING THINGS
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Ebay
Facebook sales sites
Shpock
Gumtree
webuybooks.co.uk
musicmagpie.co.uk (for CDs, DVDs, Games, Books, iPhones, Games Consoles and LEGO)
ziffit - for books, CDs, DVDs and games
Sellitback
Zapper
GAME / CEX for phones and games and electronics (CEX in particular)
Apple Store credit or recycle olf phones.

TO GET RID OF THINGS FOR FREE
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Freecyle has a good app called trashnothing

Charity shops. Some will collect which really helps if you’re just starting to declutter and have a lot of stuff to go.

Animal shelters like towels and carpet squares and sometimes bedding and duvet covers.

Homeless charities will often take warm clothes and coats, especially in the winter.

You can advertise things on Nextdoor

Some council tips have a place to drop off quality stuff to be sold.

Some charity shops will take rags if you label them as ‘rags’, this could be materials or clothes that are too scruffy or dirty to sell or donate to someone. Also some councils will collect rags (but you’ll need to contact your council)

Supermarkets are getting better at recycling. My local Tesco has recycling points for batteries, toner cartridges, glass bottles, books and and light bulbs. My local Sainsbury’s has razer blades.

Bras. Oxfam shops take bras and so do some smaller lingeries shops. Bravissimo do a scheme whereby they send good bras to Africa and strip down those that are too old for parts as well as donating 70p per kilo of bras to MIND. Also smallsforall.org take brand new knickers and good condition bras and send to Africa

Icollectclothes.co.uk will collect clothes

Nurseries and preschools will often take old toys, games, books, craft sets and/ or stationery. They might also take clean (obviously) underwear and clothes to keep as spares for when children have accidents.

Foodbanks take all sorts of food (if it is within date) and sometimes half open packets of nappies.

Rymans take old pens

Oxfam take old phones

John Lewis also have a make up recycling scheme:
www.johnlewis.com/our-services/beautycycle

And a small number of Boots stores www.boots.com/boots-recycling-scheme

IF YOU’RE HAPPY TO PAY
Clearabee have been recommended to get rid of more bulky garage – type waste and Hippo Bags can be bought from some DIY stores

Just checking in! Thanks @stealthninjamummy for creating the new thread. I haven't got rid of anything yet today but have sold 2 storage nets which the buyer should be collecting tomorrow. Also heading round to my parents' house shortly & returning a bag for life & tin of mustard powder (which DS1 used to make his cheese scones for Food Tech homework 😋).

DPIL are actually coming today- they are on their way so definitely coming so there will be more ins! We are meeting them in my parents' garden as it is large & my parents are not there & we have to meet outside as Tier 2 now.

Thanks StealthNinjaMum.

I’m not a regular on this thread, so this may have been said many times before, but can I please recommend an additional note for the OP.

If you are going to hire a skip or man with van to remove your rubbish MAKE SURE THEY ARE OFFICIALLY REGISTERED.
There are a lot of blokes advertising on Facebook or Gumtree who look fine, and will swear up and down that they’re properly registered and going to recycle or otherwise dispose of your rubbish legally, but many of them are lying and if you get taken in by a rogue fly tipper then you can be personally prosecuted even if you were acting in good faith. It is your responsibility to check their registration.

This is where you can check whether a company has a licence
environment.data.gov.uk/public-register/view/search-waste-carriers-brokers
This is a site to get quotes from registered waste disposal firms.
clearwaste.com/ (haven’t used it myself - I read about it in the Guardian).

Have posted on the old thread, but will post here too! Returned a pot of mustard powder to my mum today. The only out, but have sold a couple of bits to be collected tomorrow & bagged up library books & dead batteries to take to the library when I do my shift on Tuesday.

Also struggling with whether to throw the joggers which DS3 was wearing today which finally went at the knee. Probably should as they are getting too short anyway, we have loads more & they have done 3 DC, but seems wasteful somehow! They would go into my ragbag rather than the bin.

I need this thread! Planning on moving house in the next year and need to thoroughly declutter.
Nice day here so started tackling the shed of doom (everything just gets put in the shed to deal with another time!)
Got rid of - lots of old glass jars, plastic toys and random boxes.
Have ready to sell - sterilizer, breast pump & lots of baby toys/books.
Thanks for having me!

Placemarking from old thread. A pair of boots will be sent back today.

Hi everyone and thanks for the new thread!

I passed an old jumper to a friend and put some stuff on Freecycle but then another friend gifted me a dress and DD bought some scrunchies and a book with saved pocket money. So the ins matched the outs!

Half term and a week off work coming up so will aim for 20 items gone by the end of Oct.

Place marking for the new thread! After doing well in September, I’ve done very little decluttering in October - think I need to go back to daily updates to motivate me to do something every day.

The past week has been tough as DD has had to self-isolate due to a case in her year group at school, and she misses school and her friends (she’s 5). She won’t be back until after half term So I’m hoping to get back to daily decluttering then.

The one good piece of news is that I am very happy with my new washer-dryer - it’s the first time I’ve had a tumble dryer in my adult life

Everyone is doing so well. It is nice to see so many new people - they definitely help to inject a lot of infectious enthusiasm into the thread.

I seem to have got back into the selling groove over the past 3 or 4 weeks or so. eBay sent me a "£1 selling fees offer" at the end of September - the first one I have had since early June. That kickstarted my selling again. I listed 4 items that weekend, selling 2. I got another offer two weekends ago and sold 2 items again. I also re-did some Facebook adverts that weekend, to give things a final chance, and sold 2 of these last week, plus another item that someone posted a wanted advert for on a local Facebook selling site. I think my mojo has returned! I have now had another "£1 selling fees offer" for this past 4-day weekend, and have listed another 2 items... so far.

I wonder if it was it a mistake, waiting for eBay selling offers over the summer before listing? Would I have got offers if I had listed the cheaper items that wouldn't have benefitted from the £1 cap on selling fees? I guess I will never know. I have no idea how their algorithm decides who gets the offers and when.

Apart from that, I have been keeping the brown bin topped up with garden waste and also booked a recycling site visit to ditch cardboard and even more garden waste. I decluttered the ice from the under-counter freezer and ordered some more drawer fronts, as some of the "clips" were broken and they kept falling off when you tugged. This past weekend I also sent back 6 bags of coffee pods for recycling.

I really need to get back to sorting out the boxes and bags of stuff that were piled up when we got the new carpets earlier in the year. The big Ikea unit in the dining room still has a number of empty cubes and I have to make decisions on what should live there. I have a bad habit of keeping empty storage solutions waiting for just the right contents, while space is being taken up elsewhere with stuff in temporary bags and boxes.

I also really need to get back to updating on this thread at least weekly, to try to keep the momentum going.

I just posted on the old thread...

Anyway. Am working from dparents house today and it appears as though their neighbours opposite are decluttering their garage. As in the whole thing. It’s coming down.

I think that theirs is the house on the street with the basement. Bizarely only one house in the street of 20 was built with one. No idea why. And I think it’s the one directly opposite. I wouldn’t like to have no garage. Where would I store all my junk?!

To clarify I’m wfh at their house as they are looking after the kiddos (they do this every Monday) and ddad has a bit of a dodgy knee which is currently playing him up. Dm can’t cope with both on her own so I’m here is she needs a hand.

Thanks anythinglegalconsidered I hadn't thought of that, I'll add something to the next thread. The whole flytipping thing is just lawless, my friend had a new bathroom and in the three weeks the old one was in her driveway (not particularly visible from the road) she had three companies offer to take it away for absolute peanuts and none had a license. I'm sure they'd have just dropped it a mile down the road.

Welcome sheratheallpowerful, you made a great start.

ememem84 that's weird, why would you take down a garage? They're not planning to replace it with a two floor extension are they? I think some single story buildings aren't strong enough to have another floor built.

Anyway my update. I have been running around tidying and shredding. Papers, junk mail, homework sheets, receipts, pens, odd coins put away. don't know how my surfaces accumulate this crap it must be me I'm pleased the house looks tidier. I also spent time with dc meal planning and googling places to go - cinema, pumpkin trails etc.

I'm very inspired by the thread as always! purplefrog Congratulations on the ebay sales! I don't know how they pick who gets the max £1 selling fees, after not getting it for months and months I got it two weekends in a row, possibly due to not selling anything on there through my own account before, always used DHs. I've sold a handful of things, the last one went today.

Apart from ebay, I've been going through my to-do list app and continuing to do the niggly little jobs I never get round to. It's freeing to read what I need to do and get some of it done, rather than forget most of it and think I've got much more to do, that's what I normally do.

Thanks for the new thread stealth

@confusedofengland the discussion about how many items you have in your house reminded me of this:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_Down_(Landy_artwork)

In February 2001, Landy gathered all his possessions at a former C&A branch at 499 Oxford Street near Marble Arch (now a branch of Primark). Over the previous three years he had catalogued all 7,227 of his possessions, from postage stamps, his passport and birth certificate, to food, clothes (including his father's 1970s sheepskin coat), works of art (including works by Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst), and his Saab 900 Turbo 16 S. The work was arranged into ten categories - artworks, clothing, equipment, furniture, kitchen, leisure, motor vehicle, perishables, reading material and studio material. They were then all destroyed in a two-week period, opened as a public exhibition.

I dread to think how many items we have in our house - a lot more than Landy, that’s for sure.

On a similar theme, I read a decluttering tip once which suggested cataloguing every item you own. I think the idea is that the process of writing the item’s description down on paper would make you evaluate whether you still need it (and if you have a lot of items you might get so sick of writing items on a list/describing them that you start to discard them so they don’t need to go on the list

Thanks to the inspo on this thread I took 5 items to the charity shop at lunchtime - scarf, gloves, 2 teddies and a toy!

5/20 outs for october

Thanks for the new thread. I discovered a load more old baby clothes in some drawers in our bedroom, so those are on the way out too!

The spare room is looking fabulous, I’m so pleased. Now I must tackle the main bedroom - it’s such a mess and I’m really dreading it.

Would love to join in with this please.

Today I bagged up two of DHs awful shirts, one of his jumpers, one of my work jumpers with a tiny ink stain on the sleeve and one of the kid’s jumpers for the clothes bank.

Should probably try to sell the shirts but just cannot be bothered with the hassle.

Aim today: take charity stuff, out of date meds and flat batteries to their relative disposal points BEFORE our new lockdown kicks in.

Jumping on the new thread, thank you Stealth

confused you made very good progress on the top of your dressers.

Nothing more to add, although I hope to fit some decluttering in tomorrow while I sort the junk drawer out.
Oh! Actually I did go through some of my shoes (very quickly might I add) and picked a pair I haven't worn for a year. I did have an in in the form of a pair of boots from a coworker. But I do have another pair of trainers I know I can toss.

Welcome to the newbies!

Thank you Hazel & others who commented on the old thread. I keep admiring my dressers as I go past

Miaowse I love that, how fascinating! I think if I were to do a log it would take forever

Welcome new beginnings, apt user name.

Emem I like the idea of a hidden garage!

I'm off to volunteer in my village library this morning (usually do paid supply work in libraries too but has been none since March ), so taking a bag of books & dead batteries as there is a recycling point for them there.

Thanks for the new thread stealth.
Belated congratulations to the new baby wondering and on the decluttering too.

Still just managing the one item a day - today's was the end of a moisturiser discarded by DH as 'empty' that I have been actually using up for the last 3 days.

miaowse I hate to think how many possessions I have. I think if I were to log them I would take for ever. It seems like quite a good tip to really process what you have. Why do I have 25 mugs for example? And that’s after I’ve given half to stbexh.

Welcome newbeggingsnow

I don’t really have any plans today, Flylady says do the bedroom so I might clear away my surfaces but I’m not sure I have much to declutter in there, it’s more that I need to put things away.

[quote Miaowse]@confusedofengland the discussion about how many items you have in your house reminded me of this:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_Down_(Landy_artwork)

In February 2001, Landy gathered all his possessions at a former C&A branch at 499 Oxford Street near Marble Arch (now a branch of Primark). Over the previous three years he had catalogued all 7,227 of his possessions, from postage stamps, his passport and birth certificate, to food, clothes (including his father's 1970s sheepskin coat), works of art (including works by Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst), and his Saab 900 Turbo 16 S. The work was arranged into ten categories - artworks, clothing, equipment, furniture, kitchen, leisure, motor vehicle, perishables, reading material and studio material. They were then all destroyed in a two-week period, opened as a public exhibition.

I dread to think how many items we have in our house - a lot more than Landy, that’s for sure.[/quote]
That's one way to declutter! You would only need to do it once. I'm quite tempted to do that with the back room. It has all of the kids stuff and attracts mess. I'm never quite on top of it.

Hi, signing in! I never caught up with the previous thread so hoping to start afresh here - actually did manage some decluttering the other day after several weeks of doing nothing. Just gathered a bit of stuff to chuck out but still have an awfully long way to go with our bedroom before building the wardrobe! It’s so hard to fit in the time.