I know this is a small step, but to move in the right direction I’m trying to pick out at least a couple of things most days, to either donate or throw away.
I purchased a bunch of new kitchen towels, so I took many of the old ones out of the drawer. They aren’t worth donating, and they are too stiff to use for dusting, etc. so I guess they will go in the trash.
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You can donate old towels to animal shelters - they go through them quickly and usually want more.
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I second that. Pet shelters will take old sheets and towels. They can be used for clean up and also as bedding; when we adopted our shelter kitties, they came home in a cardboard pet carrier lined with an old bath towel.
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Does anyone have a shredder they recommend? I see a bunch of awful reviews every time I look - they only work for two minutes and have to cool down for 30, or they only shred a couple pages at a time, etc etc.
Thanks - I take my old sheets and some towels to the vet, because they use them. I guess I can take these too.
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DD was home from college and I was looking at a bookshelf full of beloved toddler books - huge favorites, that we read together for literally years - and suggested that I pass them on to her stepsister, who just had a baby. She looked at me, lip trembling, like I’d suggested killing the cat: “These are mine.”
I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
On the plus side, she left with a low bookcase and a plastic tote full of first aid supplies/shaving gear/shampoo and tampons/pads.
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That would be my daughter - she is very sentimental about her childhood books.
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We burned up a shredder a couple of moves ago when dh shredded a TON of old paperwork/tax returns. My friend takes her stuff to a place where she pays to have it shredded. I think it is by the pound? No idea how, “secure,” doing something like that is, however.
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I have one by Executive Machines
It is at least 12 years old and still going. It will usually stop after about 30 minutes of continuous shredding and need to cool down before I can use it again. I’m sure there are more powerful shredders available but it wasn’t very expensive and it has kept going.
I shredded a huge amount of papers this summer after our basement flooded, was drying out papers everyday for a month and shredding every day.
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The last few years I have done my shredding when the local library did a fundraiser where a big shredding truck comes and you pay $10 a bag to have them shred it right in front of you. To me that is win win - the library makes money and I get my stuff shredded without any effort.
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My husband uses papers that need to be destroyed for kindling in our woodstove.
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I had some sweaters/fleece set aside after receiving my much nicer Irish Christmas sweater. Yesterday I added lots more and dropped off at the Moose Lodge collecting for the 1000+ families displaced by wildfires near Boulder CO.
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Not really “Bag a Week,” but H gave me very nice red and white wine glasses for Christmas. Purged the drinking glasses cabinet to what we’ll actually use. Put together three boxes of random wine tasting glasses, cheap Big Lots glasses and odd coffee cups to donate.
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Woo hoo! I too recently upgraded our wine glasses to beautiful titanium crystal from Costco. The odds and ends went to the dump.
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Ours are Zwiesel, recommended by our sommelier friends. We kept 24 stemless for bigger gatherings (if we ever get to have them again). 12 are in the cabinet for day-to-day since they can go in the dishwasher. Other 12 stashed away in space occupied by the now donated glasses.
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Schott Zwiesel is what I got, too. The glasses are beautiful and make a very melodic sound! 
I came up from the basement yesterday with a bag of shower curtains from old houses we’ve lived in. Now that we have only glass doors, I have no use for them. DH asked where I found them and I explained I think our basement is an archaeological dig - I take a layer out, another layer gets exposed and I can investigate it.
I am actually kind of embarrassed to even post that because it sounds like I am a hoarder. The parts of the house you can see are very clean and neat but closets and the basement?? Not so much.
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I’m sure you’re not alone! All levels and varieties of bags to get rid of welcome on this thread!
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I keep a pile of old plastic shower curtains and I use them very frequently for drop clothes while painting and doing other messy jobs. They are the perfect size and weight.
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H and I dropped off almost 400 books to a charitable foundation today. When we got home some people came to pick up H’s table saw (I put it on Buy Nothing).
House goes on the market February 18. More stuff will be going every day.
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