Decluttering one item a day (and counting down til the opening of charity shops!) – thread number 17

[stealthninjamum]

This is an accountability and chat thread for mumsnetters who dream of living in an uncluttered haven of calm and tidiness.

Bit by bit we are slowly decluttering our houses and keeping our fingers crossed that charity shops will open on 12th April – although we’re also adding to the list of places in the second post that will also take our clutter.

The aim of this thread is to help us get rid of just one item a day or 365 a year. We just report back on our progress and then chat about anything and everything. The thread is for anyone so newbies are always welcome.

Previous thread here.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/4144854-Decluttering-one-item-a-day-and-having-nowhere-to-put-it-thread-number-16?msgid=105205665

5 bags is great!

i've retrieved my lunchboxes from under the bed as am back to work tomorrow. wahooo. cannot wait. so a lot of my stuff will go back to the office yippeeee!

Zipper went on a favourite jacket (boohoo).
It was ancient, tbf. Now cut up for rags.

@Liquorishtoffee Five bags is great going!

I spent all day cleaning. Things that went out:

• an old waffle make that was just sitting on top of a kitchen cupboard looking ugly and gathering dust
• a blunt potato peeler
• an odour absorbing ball from the fridge
• an egg poaching cup that made poaching eggs much more difficult

416 so far!

Day 180:
Struggling to do anything here so just photos and emails deleted.

Earmarked a cabinet to go, selling a record player and temporarily packing away perfumes and records. These are future goals for now.

Dh took an old radiator off the wall. So that’s in the dump pile.

358: the frozen bones of two chickens. nothing voodoo lol, my Mom feeds foxes so we keep bones for her.
359: we seem to have a leak and my iron has been sitting flat down in a puddle for however long (i don't iron if i can help it) so it's going out with the toastie maker
360: ton of cardboard waste sent to mother in laws

DS does not want to be back at school and i did no decluttering except decluttering from my watch list Hamilton, The Great and Shield.

Taking some paperwork back to the office to be shredded today. Also taking a hand cream and my work stuff. Yay.

Morning all, I'm enjoying the peace and quiet here after decluttering DD back to school!

More garden decluttering here at the weekend so lots more weeds into the compost plus a pair of gardening gloves that had lots of holes. I also did a quick go around the playroom and binned a picture of a snowman, two random coloured discs for a game we no longer own and a dried up pen.

Hope you have a good day at work ememem.

Andddd I came to a crashing halt.

I’ve been unwell for a couple of days and I am useless when I am, so not much done at all.

I’m feeling marginally better today so hopefully from tomorrow I can pick up the slack.

ememem84 I hope you're having a good day. I'm impressed your dh took a radiator off, it's always exciting to hear about diy.

hagqueen I hope you're feeling better, just catch up tomorrow.

It's such a lovely day I have put washing on the line and gone for a walk, not a long one, just a couple of miles to get a coffee and back. I should be decorating and doing the room of doom but instead I have gone through some photos and done housework. About a dozen photos have gone. Also I haven't mentioned before but I have finished about two little showergels and one body scrub in the last week.

I've got a few thousand emails to sort through so I'm going to spend until pickup time deleting them, replying to the important ones, and meal prepping for dinner.

I've posted a couple of ads, one on Freecycle and another on Gumtree to see if I can get rid of some items.
Went to Sainsburys this morning, I was good and didn't buy any freezer stocks. Did the usual drop off of some plastic bags/packaging.
About to shred some old credit card bills, all paperless now!

Look at all the shit I’ve got out of the house!

Two notebooks
Hand cream
Sanitiser
Lip balm
Headphones
Plant
Cup

And a bunch of paperwork has been shredded. Wahoooooooo.

It appears we need a new shredder.....

I have been finishing off ancient bags of sweets...

When you say ‘ancient’ how old are we talking here?

Hi everyone! I hope I may be welcome round here - I had an absolutely enormous clear out last year but that involved a fricking skip, so I want to maintain everyday good intentions if that makes sense! Particularly because the ‘visible’ bits of the house are now sorted I don’t want our storage to become where a solitary trainer goes to die.

I haven’t got rid of anything exciting but our council have given us an extra recycling bin on request so some cardboard has gone out for collection.

maybe up to 2 or 3 yrs, not 1990s!

Just ‘mature’ then...

vinorosso good luck tomorrow.

Welcome slothkin.

lljkk how did you even have sweets in your house that long? We have things like ood pickles and spices but sweets get eaten immediately.

My storage box for photos has arrived. I am going to put all my photos on my bed to sort through over the next few weeks. It’s a plastics box with 16 smaller boxes that could contain 1600 photos and take up very little space. I have a few big photo albums. I’m wondering whether to keep them. I haven’t looked at them for 20 years so I could remove them and just put them in the plastic boxes. I am wondering if I should do something with these photos like some kind of montage of my life and travels. Seems like a massive job.

slothkin sometimes I wish I could just dump everything in a skip and have a lovely clear house 😂

I seem to have a mass sort out then end up with empty storage/surfaces that I then fill again. I need to break the cycle! And I need to buy less for dds for birthdays/Christmas. Sorting their toys highlights just how much they have and don't use, eg dd2 plays with barbie style dolls. There's probably 10-15ish she adores and plays with all the time. The other 40+ in various drawers rarely see the light of day!

I havent done much this week, mon/tues is crazy at work so literally come home and do the bare minimum before collapsing on the sofa for the evening 😂. Day off tomorrow so hoping to be super productive!

vinorosso good luck tomorrow sending good vibes your way 💐

Day 181:

Lots of boxes recycled
Photos and emails.

Definitely taking less photos now

Thank you stealth. I'm a bit all over the place as I know I need to find out what it is, there's nothing I can do about whatever it is and I'm scared in case I'm not one of the 9/10 where it isn't cancer.

Finished up a face mask so that’s another thing gone from my beauty stash.

@Vinorosso74 sending you love and good vibes for tomorrow. Xx

I didn't think I'd find much to go out today, but then I watched The Minimal Mom again and was inspired. I only spent a few minutes looking around but found the following to go out:

1 very well used curtain panel.
1 broken chopping board.
2 candle holders. (This was a bit tricky as I really like them, but I've had them years - maybe 20?? - and just never use them.)
13 DVDs. (Quite pleased with that.)
1 universal remote control? (DP won't want to get rid of it, but you never know. We don't use it any more.)

I also cleaned quite a bit of the bathroom and then had a bath which meant I could use up a bath bomb. (DP, very sweetly, gave me a load of them, but, it's going to take me YEARS to use them up! I might have to use them a few at a time.)

@Slothkin - Welcome!

@Vinorosso74 - I'll be thinking of you tomorrow. Good luck!