I spent the whole afternoon cleaning one small corner. Went thru magazines and journals. You know all those address labels you receive from charities? I tossed most. Then the cards; I packed the nice ones up to give to activities director at an ALF I visit.
My evening project is all the journal articles I kept, labeled, in a box. In this age of the Internet, do I really need to keep these articles?
No! I bet you can find them online. Plus, if theyâve been sitting there for awhile and you havenât read them or needed them yet, the chances are you wonât read them or need them now or in the future. Good for you for going through that stuff.
Chucked some 17 yr old paint cans I found in the garage!! Rainier white semi-gloss. LOL.
^ A week ago, H just got rid of 15 cans from 2002! Why were they still in our basement? lol.
Our house was built 17 years ago, and the builder left us some touch up paint. So glad I could put the dried stuff in the garbage without worrying about finding a place to dispose of it. Now, I have to figure out what to do with the pail of house paint that is not dried yet!
H used kitty litter to dry out the cans that still had some paint in them. He had to leave them opened by the curb for garbage pick up. That was what the local village recommended for drying out the paint.
Thanks! It will take a ton of litter to dry out that sucker. I think I will just leave it in the shed, slightly open⊠
@BunsenBurner you probably know that oil paint cures more than it dries (Iâm an artist who uses oil paints, but not the ones that come in big cans 
). Iâd leave those cans as open as you possibly can because otherwise youâre looking at a loooooong cure time. Some of my paintings take months to âdryâ.
I went looking for a particular photo in a photo album, and two hours later (found it!) I realized I need to do something about the dozens of photo albums-I am not moving them the next time we move, and we never look at them. I may send them all off to a company that will scan them for me-the idea of scanning that many photos is just daunting. I already have over 20k digital ones.
@bookworm - I kept the first page of the journal articles, and recycled the rest. That leaves me with enough information to find it again if I need to re-read it.
Is their a Pinterest type website/app for journal articles? If not, someone should invent one or they should allow you to pin to Pinterest. Itâs great for all those things I used to tear out of magazines.
New bathroom is done and I moved all of my stuff back in. I also threw away a large bag of stuff I donât use/need/want.
I have a clean sock drawer!
I just dumped at least a bag of stockings in the trash. I havenât worn anything but black stockings or tights in as long as I can remember (shout out to SPANX), so I just threw all the others away.
Plus, I took my husbandâs running shoe boxes and cut off the tops and used them as dividers in the drawer. Gym socks in one, âthickerâ socks in one, and very thin in a third, sorted by color, with blue on one end and black on the other (hoping to prevent the dreaded black pants and blue socks look).
I have been looking for drawer dividers, but none I found were tall enough. The shoe boxes are not perfect, but they were certainly the right price.
I should have done this a long time ago.
I had to buy a vase for my tall flowers because the cats âkilledâ the only tall vase I had, but first I went through kitchen cupboards to make sure there was no other suitable container. As the result of that expedition, Mr B dropped a bag at the Goodwill collection site today! Yay.
Darn it, @BunsenBurner â I have an overabundance of vases, would have been more than happy to send you one and it could have been a win-win!
This thread has inspired me. I excavated 2 boxes of American Girl dolls and assorted clothes and accessories, and turned them over to two colleagues with young daughters who have AG dolls on their Christmas wish lists!! Made D and I so happy to start clearing out the basement (she is uber-organized and a minimalist, I am the opposite) and passing things along to those who can actually use them!
We have a niece and nephew with small children. Went through our ornament box, and will divide the kiddie ornaments (Winnie the Pooh, Disney, etc) between the two families (after both DDs agree they want me to do so w/o continuing to âsaveâ).
DD1 is getting her treasures delivered by us in bins and boxes for her to sort through and toss what she wants to toss. No longer responsible for storing her items. Boy it felt good to get that room cleaned up now as a true guest room!
DD2 has been much better keeping her stuff in order.
This is the first year I didnât buy an ornament from our travels. We have 20 years+ of cool ornaments for the tree, and Iâm thinking ahead to when weâll either have to donate them or split them between the girls.
Itâs a yearly ritual that I decorate the tree except for the ornaments, and then we all sit down as a family and take turns putting them on the tree. Each one is marked with the year and the location where we bought it. We are not a family that is big into rituals, but this is one thatâs important to us, and I hope the girls will want to continue it someday when theyâre grown. We have ornaments from their great grandmothers and both grandmothers, so itâs been going on for a while.
In other bag a week news, I did pare down the Christmas decorations a lot and threw a LOT of non-working strands of lights out. At first I tried to replace the fuses on them, but then realized that was a trick invented by some insidious Chinese manufacturers and they donât actually function. B-)
My bag this week was cleaning out my pantry. Half finished bags of chips, opened boxes of crackers. Bags with just a few nuts. I live close to the ocean and things go stale quickly even if they are double bagged and sealed. It is frustrating that my H opens things and doesnât finish them in a timely manor.
At some point I will be in a tossing mood and I will be right behind you @mom60. Eating habits have changed here substantially and it is time to get back to the basics we are now at. Addressing other rooms first.
Two pairs of shoes in my bag, and I used an old disgusting turtleneck (what was I thinking?!) to put on the puppy who just got spayed. Sheâs eaten two cones off her head already.