Decluttering Thread 6 - hit those targets before New Year!

[Pigtailsandall]

So the last thread got filled up and I think I seem to have taken it on myself to start a new one every time, lol! I hope everyone finds us because I'm too lazy to tag everyone, but here's few who spring to mind. It also doesn't let me add some people, for some reason

@realfastfoodie
@IndianSummer78
@stealthninjamum
@cornedbeef451
@EllieQ
@Gassylady
@IncessantNameChanger

@nordicmom
@Vinorosso74

Now it's the last push until the holidays to get it all out and done (before new cr*p comes in)

@Gassylady no I didn’t. She needs it to study for her mocks next week. On the bright side it’s led to a massive tidy up.

8 bags have left the house! Toys, bags, shoes, Xmas decorations, clothes, electronics in the car boot. I have managed to get four into a charity shop and will get rid of the other four tomorrow

I asked at Tesco today and they apparently accept hangers from any store. I didn't have my hangers with me and couldn't see the hanger bin anyway. Will attempt at some point. Riveting I know.

Two small items in post off vinted. I've made approx £300 from sales on marketplace/vinted/eBay since November. Not bad.

I finally got a large item collected that I had on fb marketplace. I have a LOT of stuff gathered just waiting to leave the house so it looks worse before it'll look better.

I have to empty a room because we're redecorating/ renovating. So while we have all the decluttering going on we also have a load of tools/ paints taking up space.

Sooooooo much has left the house and I didn't think we even owned that much stuff so I'm really perplexed as to where all the stuff was cos it still doesn't look any different here.

@tantdequestions i think we can all sympathise with that sentiment. But it does get better honest.

@tantdequestions that’s awesome about the coat hangers. I’ve seen them in our Tesco - they’re hiding in one of the self plays sections - but I didn’t know they took all coat hangers. I usually ask charity shops if they want them and sometimes they say no so I bin them which is such a waste.

i think we’ve all found we’ve got rid of a tonne of stuff and it doesn’t feel like it’s made a difference but at some point you will notice.

One slightly shrunken pyjama bottoms and one scratchy jumper out today. Total is 1803

I chucked out 8 boxes before I left for work this morning. It's weirdly liberating realising I don’t need to keep all the boxes!
I plan to put a few bits on Vinted tomorrow and I might take a few bits to the tip if I have time.

@WhereAreWeNow I'm a box hoarder too and so is my DP.
At my previous house we had a huge loft clear out of boxes and dropped them all out of the top window. It was a huge sea of cardboard and filled the whole driveway. The postman spent about 5mins trying to find a way through and gave up 😄.

We haven't learned from that and still hoard mountains of bloody boxes. Not as many in the loft but mainly in the outbuildings. They only get damp and thrown away a couple of years later though so the aim is to cut back on the obsession with 'good' boxes that might come in handy because they rarely bloody do!

Evening all.

today I just got rid of a few random bits, I took a bag of clothes to a local clothes bank/bin but it was full so the bag is still in my car, I won’t count it until is gone.

The following did go though:
Water pistol
Holey swim bag
Paint brush
Tin of paint x 2
Dried out furniture wipes
8 x old bath toys

up to 158 🙂

Glad it's not just me @PissedOffNeighbour22 😁

I blame most of the clutter on DP and DD but actually I think I'm the one who holds onto boxes "just in case".

The boxes I'm not ready to bin are:
-Mobile phone boxes because I persevere in the idiotic belief that I'll sell my old phone when I get a new one and the box will add value but I never sell the phones (I hoard them 😬) so really I should bin the boxes, shouldn't I?
-Jewellery boxes for the various nice bits of jewellery I've got. Not super expensive diamonds or anything. Just things like Monica Vinader earrings. I do sometimes sell things like that and the box makes a difference to buyers.

Made it to the charity shop so that’s those 19 items out, clothes, games, etc.

16+19=35.

Re hoarding boxes, or anything flammable really - I worked with a retired fireman the other day. If they are called to a domestic fire, they have a rough calculation of fire load for the average house/bungalow/whatever they’re going to. If the person is a hoarder, the fire load could be way more than they calculate and could affect how quickly they can put out the fire. Just an added thought for when you’re dithering over items.

Orchestra folders mostly given out. Can move on to some other jobs after work tomorrow.

I did a tip run today, got rid of quite.a few black bags and other bits. Haven't done anything tonight, but helped d's tidy his.room, so.a small victory!

I haven’t managed anything today except getting a bunch of post Christmas tidying and rubbish out. Like others I’m feeling a bit deflated, lots of progress but the house still feels pretty cluttered and there are some really bad areas.

It’s almost hard to believe how much I’ve got rid of and how much there still is…

Its hard finding time during the week but one old pair of tights with a hole gone in the bin along with a bottle of alcohol free whiskey from 7 years ago which was minging.

@WhereAreWeNow I also have the same issue with the pointless phone boxes and the phones that never get sold 😄

@LivingInaBuildingSite my DP is a firefighter so the cardboard box hoarding is a bit of a guilty secret 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

Spent hours today cleaning and tidying on the ground and first floor then decluttered one tall kitchen food cupboard and most of the medicine boxes in the larder plus did a shelf DH hadn’t finished in the utility cupboard. Then finally had my one meal today so now very very tired and still have to adjust my supermarket delivery but at least stuff got done . it’s amazing how when ever we do an area in the house there’s more to go even if I feel like I’ve just done it recently . This house is a bottomless pit it seems . I know that to someone else this house wouldn’t now seem cluttered at all but the truth is that we still don’t need a lot of it . I will try to bring in less and use what we have and have less duplicates . With my many health problems I only have so much energy and brain power to be the only one keeping tabs on everything anyone of us needs in our house so we then end up getting too much of some things that end up not using and they go to waste or to charity in the end .
Out today :
-21 packets of old vitamins and medicines
-6 half eaten or unwanted dog treat packets
-17 old half eaten packets of food
-3 old laundry products
-1 dog toy
-4 candle stumps
-1 pencil case
-2 packets of baby wipes to food bank
-3 damaged Christmas ornaments
-5 old cocktail bottles
-1 whisky bottle with a broken cork

When ever I’m more unwell as I have been with Covid over Christmas this house descends into chaos and now I’m having to do all the extra work while still feeling ill . The amount of laundry in utility is just crazy . No one else can put any of it into the sheet and towel laundry bin for instance it seems it’s just piled up on top of it until I sort it out or get it all washed …
Once again I’ll have to look back to figure out my new total …

196 is my new total I think !

Well done @Nordicmom - that’s fantastic. I always get good ideas from your posts - I’m going to do another push on baby bank and food bank stuff.

Made myself do my Toss challenge - mainly so I’d get a new one tomorrow - it was underwear. Found a sports bra which hasn’t fitted since I was pregnant with my older child, a pair of socks which had seen better days and a pair of disposable maternity knickers. So that’s 3 for my total.

Otherwise I’ve mostly been decluttering chocolate and anything resembling a waistline. 🤦‍♀️

I find I useful having posts here from people at the maintenance decluttering stage as well as those at the drowning in stuff stage. As someone who never decluttered until last year, I need to see what maintenance decluttering looks like

I feel like many of us grew up either in poverty or in a time before overconsumption and the internet, when home organisation/aesthetics as an extension of DIY projects wasn't really a thing. So we all got obsessed with keeping "good/useful/pretty" boxes because it wasn't an option to just go purchase one in a size/colour of your choosing, fairly cheaply, whenever you needed it

I remember as a child, going into late teens, my room was decorated. It involved new wallpaper, the same on every wall and it came cheap from the local DIY store. New lino for the floor. New bigger solid wood furniture to replace the cheap, battered, small and babyish MDF stuff. Just basics - wardrobe, chest of drawers, bed and mattress, bedside table. Plus new curtains, duvet and bedding set. That was it. No art, baskets, cushions, throws, boxes, additional furniture, shelving units etc. None of the aesthetic trappings seen in home décor magazines now. All personal possessions fitted into/on the basic furniture and if you had excess you gave it to a charity shop. There was nothing to store other than what was in daily/weekly use. Reckon that's what I'll aim to get back to eventually, with only a few nice extras dotted around

I've realized I rarely go looking for anything even if I know I've got it and where it is. Preferring to make do with whatever is easily to hand. Makes it pointless storing anything

I did grow up with clutter @IndianSummer78 but I really agree with what you say about rarely bothering/managing to find things I've stored away so I end up just using what's to hand or buying what I need (even though I know I've got one somewhere...).
My big triumph last year was clearing out the under stairs cupboard which we could no longer get into because it was so filled with junk. I got a builder to put in a new floor and shelving and I sorted out stuff into boxes so I actually know where to find the light bulbs and the extension leads. I just need to do the same thing with the rest of the house 😬

I can't download the Toss app. I think it's incompatible with my phone's version of android.

indiansummer your post has made me smile, things were simpler at one time, we had a house with various crazy wallpapers, plain carpet, nice furniture but fairly minimalist. My mum was super organised and would have summer curtains and winter curtains she’d swap round a couple of times a year and she’d do the same with her summer and winter clothes. We had nice houses but definitely no need for throws, lots of cushions, nice baskets. In contrast dd2 has spent hours researching things for her room and it’s all coordinated - right down to coasters (yup a teenager who puts their drinks on coasters), plants, cushions, blankets.

i sort of see myself as maintenance because every item has a home now and we mostly have clean surfaces and floors but after yesterday when I chucked out bags and bags of stuff I realise I still have a lot to get out of the house and I am just repeating every area but it’s so much easier than when I started and less mental effort. Apart from dd2s artwork I don’t struggle emotionally with any of it. I made a list of 60 areas of the house two days ago as my plan going forward is that if I spend 5 minutes a day on a small area (chosen by an app) every area of the house will be organised and decluttered once every two months or once a month if I do two areas a day.My first area was my larder cupboard. The only three items that were really out of date were herbs so I threw them out. It literally took two minutes to do an area of the house. So I then filled my salt and pepper pots as they live in that cupboard. They have been empty for about two years so we have been putting the large plastic bottle of salt on the table to eat which is so ugly. It feels so nice to have the time to do a silly job like that that and I try not to dwell on the fact other adults seem to do that stuff and change lightbulbs effortlessly. Today Toss has asked me to do my glove compartment and so I’ll do the whole car which will probably take one or two minutes and I already know I’ll get rid of a carpark ticket and an empty bottle. My own house app has told me to do medicines which will also take me one or two minutes. I just wish I didn’t need an app to tell me to which part of the house to do!

Definitely @IndianSummer78. For me, I know that I come from a family of hoarders on both sides - not in the modern sense of overbuying - but those for whom resources were scarce and to be kept long beyond normal expectations. Getting rid of things was intrinsically wasteful and new things were fewer and further between.