I am getting most of the stuff that came here when my son graduated from college in 2018 out of the house this weekend. YES, this stuff has been sitting in my “formal living room” for about a year and a half. Plus there’s more in an office room. I really hope none of this stuff winds up back in my house.
I’m also giving him a TV stand. Now I have to figure out what to do with the perfectly good but not “smart tv” (I don’t even know what that means) that it sits on.
I did the “hanger trick” but with spices. Turn all your spices upside down . When you use one flip it over. Set a reminder for one year. Unflipped spices go out.
@1214mom, good luck!
We have spices on two narrow shelves in a cabinet. One has a lazy susan and the other has something like this stepped shelf that enables us to see all the spices on that shelf.
Well, I’m one of those anal nutjobs who alphabetize their spices. Yeah, really.
They’re lined up flat in a drawer, so I can see them when I open the drawer.
What a coincidence. I cleaned out my spice cabinet yesterday and got rid of some things. One trick I do is make one shelf savory spices and the other one “sweet” spices – the things I mostly use for baking.
My spices are lined up on a shelf at eye level in my walk-in pantry. Organized by type bottle/then alphabetized within the type bottle category.
Sometimes I think about re-using/re-labelling bottles to get them all a consistent look, but not quite that bored yet.
We pull out what we need for a recipe. I rearrange them correctly again during the clean-up.
For spices, I have a few small plastic/metal baskets on one shelf in the cupboard. That way I can take down one (example - baking spices) to the counter and take out the ones I need. It’s not an idea method, but I like being able to use the original container.
I filled up much of our large recycling bin today. I got rid of a bunch of materials related to taking the PMP exam, way back in 2008 (so not particularly useful to anyone taking it now) plus some other work related materials. Also threw out a fair amount of stuff. I feel like I’m making progress, now that kids appear to truly be on their own, and I don’t need to save stuff for them. I told my son when we helped him move yesterday that he could do whatever he wanted with the stuff we moved from our home, but it was not allowed to come back.
I have the itch to throw out something. Broke the handle off a coffee mug… normally, Mr. would whip up superglue and fix such a boo boo, but I tossed the whole thing in the trash. 
We have plenty of coffee mugs. ?
Trying for a bag a day for 10 days. Then I move, so every bag I get out now doesn’t need to be dealt with then!
It was a productive weekend. Went through my shoe collection and found a few empty boxes… out they went. Added some clothes to the donation bag. Sorted through my painting supplies and tossed a few things.
Took a large corrugated box of new-condition toys and board games by Goodwill. Then took dogs for a quick walk in the park in gusting twenty-something weather, where they both went to the bathroom after saying “nope, all set” before we left home. So that’s one box and TWO bags.
As I was reading this thread with renewed passion for purging, my H texted me saying, “So-and-so is on sale!! Do you want to get it?” “Oh so-and-so is also cheap! Should I get it for you?” I know he means well but really… he is not helping.
Eliminated a bunch of stuff from the pantry today. I’m counting that as a medium-size box.
Mr. is auditing a class… I am on a roll! Tossed some tchotchkes that I found sitting in a box. They will never see the light of day… out they went.
H left on a snowboard trip today. Let the cleaning begin.
Venting post –
So many threads where I could post this today. Dropped off 13 bags of fabric and quilt batting to a charity group today who make quilts for kids in the hospital. I filled the Prius and took pictures of it. The stuff has been piled in a corner of the living room for a considerable period of time. This represents overflow donations from folks who bring their extra fabric to the women’s shelter quilting project that I co-coordinate.
DH gets home tonight and I say happily, “Did you see the living room?” He goes in, says nothing. Two more times I ask if he’s noticed anything, he says nope. This is the guy who told me last night that I should “do something” since I’m home all day. I (calmly and evenly) suggested he might appreciate my efforts more if he were more observant. (Seriously. His recliner is three feet from where the bags of fabric were piled up.)
My biggest hurdle to getting stuff out the door right now is my anger. Would really like to get some heavy lifting and big items taken out of here. S2 helped a lot while he was home. Also have lots of clothes and other stuff that need to be gone through to recycle/trash/donate. Working on it just makes me angry, because I get zero help, and then DH sees big piles of stuff (in the process of getting sorted) and gets angry at “the mess.” This is a guy who let his brother spend TWO YEARS of evenings/weekends cleaning out their parents’ hoarder apartment and never offered to help or expressed appreciation for completing that monumental and nasty task. He has NO idea what is involved in doing any of this stuff.
My husband is not getting this concept, at all. He is a sentimental keeper of all things with a memory attached to it.
Today, I sold (on Facebook Marketplace) a gigantic wall unit (breaks into 3 pieces which took 4 people to carry each piece out). It held all of the stuff I used to run my consultancy. Most of the stuff I have in digital form, and the rest is no longer needed (I don’t give clients bound paper reports anymore). Once I cleaned it out a few months ago, he started putting stuff in it. Before removing it…I put all of that stuff on a coffee table.
His response to that stuff was ‘I’ll go buy another piece to put that stuff in.’ No!!! I forced him to go through the stuff and find anything really worth keeping. All we found was actually mine - the knitting patterns my mother used to make a bunch of things for my kids when they were little. Had her handwriting all over them. The rest…gone! We don’t need the bag from the jeweler for the ring he bought me for our 25th wedding anniversary!!! Or maps from our first trip abroad 20 years ago. Or the programs for every single school band performance for our 3 kids. Geesh!
Just want to say that I am sorry for your frustrations about spouses not helping, not truly being on board, not appreciating your efforts, and not seeing your overall vision of what you are trying to accomplish. While you have different issues that are inhibiting your forward progress, the end result is the same - they are making it hard for you to make forward progress!
My only suggestion is to sit down with them (when you are not frustrated/angry) and try to communicate what you want to do, why you want to do it, and state that you would appreciate support - both in physical labor and/or verbal appreciation. Hopefully, they will at least listen respectfully. More hopefully, they will offer to help and follow through. However, I think the likely scenario (saying this gently) is that their behavior won’t really change. I’m truly sorry. I have a friend who has always said to me that you cannot change how someone behaves - you can only change how you react to their behavior. NOT what I (or anyone else) want to hear!!! Then you must decide if you are willing to keep going it on your own without their help/support.
@CountingDown - can you hire someone to help you with the heavy lifting? My cousin did her big purge without her husband’s assistance, and then she hired a company called “College Hunks Moving Junk,” to haul items away after she had gone through everything and decided what she no longer wanted. If your husband isn’t on board with spending money in that way, would that spur him to be more helpful? Or maybe he would be supportive of your spending $ for some heavy lifting just so he doesn’t have to help??
Spouses being on different pages about the process/desired outcome is the biggest stumbling block I see as people try to clean out. I was the one my husband had to turn around about holding onto things, so people can change their viewpoints. I read “Becoming Minimalist,” and it alerted my feelings about it. It took me a long time to come around, however. I will say, if the tables had been turned, my husband would have never read a book about minimizing clutter! He views anything I suggest as reading as my giving him “homework.” Ha ha!
Good luck to both of you.
Well I’m done. Emptied my house of everything. Moved my bedroom furniture and about 10 boxes to my folks’ house (still probably too much but didn’t have time to digitize old photos) and everything else gone - sold, donated, given away or thrown out. YAYYYYYYYYY!!
I am on my way to where I’ll be living for the next few months and got all my stuff into a carry on and a backpack 