Just thought I would mention that AARP (here in NY, anyway) has started hosting their free local shredding events for the year. Scheduled 2 appointments for next weekend, one for us and one for my parents. We have 2 boxes and so do my folks.
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Today we took 3 loads of stuff to a dumpster on our street for the day. Felt good to get rid of stuff!
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A couple near us posted that theyāre collecting donations for some refugee families from Ukraine. Their recently deceased parents moved to the US a few decades ago and this is close to their hearts. H decided to accelerate our pre-move purge and filled his truck with furniture and linens. He will make another delivery next week of mostly kitchen items and clothes.
Iād been asking for Hās help on removing stuff we wonāt need but he always had something else to do. Iām delighted this got him motivated. When I thanked him (I couldnāt help due to an injury), he blew it off saying it was a benefit for us to reduce what will be moved later so he was glad to do it.
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What a wonderful win-win!!
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Sofa, chair, desk, and old TV stand are all at the curb now, and our cats are truly freaking out. Too much change for them. (And the sofa and chair were their favorite scratching posts).
I hope we donāt upset our neighbors having that old stuff out on Easter Sunday.
Not sure what will go in our āformal living roomā now. We are considering making it an exercise room instead of a living room.
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Just took about 6 bags/boxes to Goodwill.
My husband says he told his wife the place was too cluttered so she got rid of the furniture. (Our formal living room furniture trashed and our kitchen table and chairs are being painted).
I am making a dent in the clutter, slowly but surely.
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Good progress here today - got rid of a lawn mower we never use. (We hire out because of grass allergies, but we still had the old one we used during the years we hired our own kids.)
I had encouraged neighbor to have her kids take it to do their lawn instead of hiring outā¦ and then we could be the first customers. They wanted a new electric model instead of messing with an old cranky gas model. It turns out our town is encouraging electric mowers, with $150 rebate. Part of the deal is you have to turn in an old gas owner.
Guess who now has new space in the garage? 
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My husband (the electronics hoarder) took three amplifiers to electronics recycling today. āYou donāt know how hard this is for me (jokingly), but I feel better knowing I have four more if I need themā¦ā (not joking).
I had asked if I could put them on our local Buy Nothing site since they all still work, but he said they would only be good for someone who wants to listen to AM/FM radio.
When he returned from the drop-off, he backed into the driveway and opened his trunk. I was worried he had had a change of heart, but he was excited because he had spoken with someone in charge of recycling and asked about some old Apple computers. He had always been reluctant to get rid of them because he was worried about someone in another country getting old income tax information off of the hard drives. The gentleman assured him that everything collected was immediately destroyed. So off went two huge monitors and three old laptops. A great day!
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My husband took the HDs out of our old computers prior to taking them to a recycling yard and āinitializedā them with a hammer. 
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Oh my, we have several old desktops in the house. I should figure out how to remove the hard drives so I can get them out of here.
I must be a Luddite ā I prefer desktops to laptops. We just got a new laptop to replace our 11 yo desktop. Got it with a 512GB SSD, thinking that will be sturdier than a regular hard drive. My photos take up 90% of the drive. This is a big problem! Now my photos are relegated instead to an external drive, which makes it more difficult for me to manage/edit them, plus I have boxes and boxes of photos and slides from both our families that I need to scan and save.
Need to pack up all the bulky plastic hangers and find a place to donate them. Taking up lots of space!
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HELP??? (Can we use this thread for suggestions too?). I have (5) old computers. Each runs a program I either cannot get again - or cannot run again on new operating systems. One runs an OLD version of Autodesk products. (I still use it, but rarely). If it dies, I can no longer load my old version, as Autodesk will not give a key code to install on a new operating system. One runs an OLD version of Photoshop (which I still use). One runs an OLD slide scanner (which I still use). One runs an OLD CD / DVD drive (which I still use). My current tablet runs the latest version of MS office, but is not powerful enough to run Win. 11.
If I were to purchase a new computer, Iād need to purchase (or subscribe) to all new programs and peripherals. I donāt use them often enough (Iām retired), and the programs/equipment would cost thousands!
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@CountingDown I have had laptops for years, but H still prefers a desktop. He even bought a new one recently when we moved.
Just made a couple of bags of old electronics and some old suitcases
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I have four bags packed up for Good Will!
On the āold computer issueā - just be positive (as Iām sure most are!) that the info in old computer is safely located in a new locale.
We thought our old computer pictures (of kids from toddlerhood to ages 8/18) were saved on an external hardrive. Hub took a sledgehammer to old computer. Nope. Not saved. Cloud back up only went back a few years. 
Fortunately we have a few prints, but lost tons of pictures.
Hope that might help someone else!
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We had a desktop computer hard drive go bad. Luckily I had a lot of photos backed up onto DVD. I really do need to use our external DVD drive and get them copied elsewhere too.
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Yesterday we brought the old suitcases and card tables to a thrift shop associated with a local charity. Today I went through the rest of my kitchen cabinets and have 4 more bags to bring them. They take just about anything, looking around their shop yesterday inspired me to get rid of old vases, bowls, etc.
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Thatās great progress! I actually walked through a local consignment shop yesterday to get an idea for what things might still be selling. I was actually shocked to se a nice set of china (maybe Lennox?) for over $1300 ā¦ didnāt think there was still a market for that.
We are getting ready to take a trip to Boulder (about half hour away) to get rid of some scrap wood and broken lawn fertilizer spreader and other stuff at CHaRM - Center or Hard to Recycle Material and Hazardous Waste dropoff (appointment required for that stop). Itās nice being retired, so we can plan a lunch date around our yard declutter effort.
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The thrift shop I was in yesterday had a lot of china. I was rather surprised, nobody wanted the china I was trying to get rid of a few years ago. I gave it to a rummage sale - I just assumed it was sold
Has anybody found any good ways to get rid of old textbooks? Iām talking 1980s Engineering books. The science of basic coursework has not changed, but I assume that textbooks have changed a lot (if schools are still even using textbooks).
I think the only choice with text books are places that take any book with an ISBN (most used book stores and used book sales donāt accept textbooks). See if there are any of these donation boxes near you - Individuals - Better World Books Services
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