The "Bag A Week" Club

Exciting! I hope the market where you are is very hot.

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Thanks @VeryHappy . At this point it is red hot! So :crossed_fingers: it stays that way.

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My son still has a bunch of things in his childhood bedroom closet. He hasn’t touched most of it in years and I’m ready to reclaim the closet. Over the years I’ve tossed boxes of baseball cards but he still has a lot of them. Im inclined to throw them in the recycling.

Maybe offer up the baseball cards on one of the local free sites (Facebook ā€œbuy nothingā€) etc. It might give a kids or a bored retiree stuck home during Covid something fun to do.

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Ack! I’d ask before chucking the baseball cards!

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I hope to put my house on the market later this year and should probably have been using my last two snow days to blitz some closets and drawers. Haven’t done that, but I have been doing a drawer here and there and I’ve cleaned out kitchen cabinets and the pantry. While cleaning out my make-up drawer this afternoon, I listened to this Kelly Corrigan podcast episode again. It really resonated with me when I heard it before the holidays. I love Anna Quindlen reading from ā€œLots of Candles, Plenty of Cakeā€ about stuff and I thought some here might enjoy, so sharing the link:

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Don’t toss, baseball cards may be valuable.

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@2VU0609 - that’s a good start! Just keep going. A drawer/cabinet/closet at a time will get you there. We were surprised at how much ā€œstuffā€ we have in our house once we started our pre move cleanout!

A bit of a ā€œbragā€ - we had a moving company estimator over yesterday and he told us (twice) that he was very impressed with our clean out/packing efforts. He told us that we are way ahead of most people whose houses he goes in.

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I’m trying to get motivated to get going on this. As I have written before, we have done our major downsize and then a slight upsize, so I have been through all the, ā€œstuff.ā€ Nevertheless, I feel as though I need to go through our condo once a year. It shouldn’t take me that long, but I am having a hard time getting started. I know I need to ditch a lot of clothing and shoes. I just don’t need the dressier/professional items that I gravitate toward. Nowhere to wear them. Yet, that is what I tend to continue to purchase.

I also need to deal with photos and sheet music. Both are organized and fit neatly into our 3rd BR (that we use as an office) closet. I have been through both, but I am not sure why I am holding onto so much of both.

I follow Joshua Becker’s Becoming Minimalist on FB. He is my favorite of those in that camp. He actually has a 12-week course called, ā€œUncluttered,ā€ that he does that I am thinking about signing up for. It’s $100. The thing is, I don’t really need that much, ā€œhelp,ā€ given how much we’ve already done. I know what I need to do. I just need the kick in the pants to actually do it. Wondering if spending the $ and having the accountability would get me there, even if the course is more than I need.

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@Hoggirl, I have a good friend who uses that ā€˜if I sign up for this and pay for it I’ll do it’ strategy and it works for her. Might work for you too if you are considering it. It would never work for me.

I mostly just lurk :eyes: on this thread to be inspired by y’all, but I did do a nice run to the thrift store and library book donation site last week. Felt good to get rid of some of that stuff. Lots more to go though!

Also, don’t get rid of the baseball cards. Make him do it. He can keep them or sell them or whatever. They can be very valuable if they are the right ones but he should do it. if he’s not coming home anytime soon, box ā€˜em up and send them to him with a note that you are cleaning things out and didn’t know if they might be valuable.

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Idk how many baseball cards you have, but I imagine you could fit a whole lot into a USPS flat-rate box. Ship to him, and let him decide how to handle it. That is what I did over time with my ds’s sheet music and the photo albums his grandmother had made for him throughout his childhood.

Ds has one box of high school memorabilia, an accordion, and a sound-mixing board here at our condo. I’d like them out, but there is really no good way to get those items to him. And, since he may be returning to graduate school in the fall, he is going to go down to less space, so I don’t mind holding onto them.

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I am an avid photographer. I have several 13-gallon totes filled with photos, because there was no digital back then. I did a cull of one tote last week and it was easy to throw out the negatives and pics of other people I don’t even remember and bad pics and on and on. But there are lots remaining, of my kids and other loved ones, and I cannot bring myself to throw them out.

People say to just digitize them, but there are thousands of them. It’s mind-numbingly boring and time-consuming to do it yourself, or crazy expensive to have someone else do it. And so I will probably only get rid of one tote altogether through the easy culling, and just put them all back in the closet.

Why couldn’t my hobby be bird-watching?

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It could be easier to digitize negatives than actual photos because negative scanners can automatically scan one strip at a time. You just need a special scanner (or send them somewhere to be scanned). That is on my to do list for Mr. when he retires. :slight_smile:

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Laughing about shipping the cards. He lives a 7 minute drive away. I’m going to text him and ask if he wants them. If not I think he can get drop them at the thrift store. He also has several boxes that are still packed from when he moved home from college.

Years ago friend of mine looking at a new batch of my photos tried to teach me to discard the worst of them right away. I should have listened.

My son never answered my text asking about his old sax music. (One option was for me to send to our niece, who actually lives closer to him). He did not answer the text, so I shipped it to him. Media postal rate is really cheap.

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You can also get more detail from the negatives. I hate it when those decluttering advice books and TV shows, say throw away the negatives and just keep the prints. It’s such terrible advice. If you want to declutter you’d be better off throwing away 90% of the prints and keeping the negatives!

We have scanned a lot of old family photos and negatives over the years. It can be tedious, but it is fun, especially with old negatives and photos to touch them up and see what you can’t see on the old prints.

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:laughing: I think dropping a box off with him would be a great idea. If you really want it out of your house, just text him that you will be dropping it off later on and don’t ask if he wants it or not because that might lead to, ā€œYeah I’ll look at those later. Can you just keep them awhile longer for me?ā€

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Oh! Ha ha!! Ours is on the opposite coast. I would drive all of the belongings you are not wanting to store on his behalf and drop them off by his front door! Do a ding dong door dash!! :joy:

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Neither of my kids live near us. I take a picture of the item I want to get rid of and send it to them. Ask them keep or let go? S lets most stuff go, D lets almost everything go!

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@FallGirl I have been doing that with the kids stuff. Mostly I can get rid of it once they say they don’t want it. But I sent son a photo of his old and tattered childhood bedspread when I was about to bag it for garbage. I still have not brought myself to do it. Sigh. He’s 35 and a new dad himself and I still have his childhood bedspread. Also sent D a photo of a really nice blanket of hers to see if she wants it and she said to donate it. But I really like it so have not. I’d have happily given it to her. I’m not good at this.

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