I have given away a lot of Christmas decorating items thru Buy Nothing FB group. This year I vowed to get rid of items we haven’t used. I successfully gave away a lot outdoor lighting, window candles, big bows, Christmas village and misc other items. Emptied one big bin.
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Last year I vowed when I put Christmas stuff away to go through every box/bag/whatever of Christmas decorations and pair down to just the stuff I always use and get rid of the extra. It was a little hard just because when I’m putting it away, I just want to be done with it!
But it was such a pleasure this year to go up to that area in the attic and see a smaller footprint of stuff and actually be able to find what I needed easier. Still a couple of wreaths I can probably punt this year.
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I just went through my kid’s dresser and some other stuff in his room, and came away with one bag of trash, 3 bags of his things to take to HIS new home, and some recycling. I’m trying to build up to doing a serious purge of kid’s stuff. It’s harder than my own.
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So in my crawl space I have a 1990-ish car seat. I know that it is far outdated for safety standards, so I am tempted to bring to our CHaRM (Center for Hard to Recycle Materials) center. But…. would I be sorry someday if I had to do an airport pickup or something for visitors with little kids? I assume it would be better than no car seat.
If there is precious cargo arriving and you have to be the transporter you will want and they will be worth a current safety standard car seat. Get rid of what you have - it’s decades editions and standards old.
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I agree with abasket. You don’t want to have that thing around, and the parents of the child you might one day long in the future have to transport don’t want it either. If and when the time comes, you’ll borrow an up-to-date one.
Your thinking is how closets, basements and attics stay filled!
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Thanks for the feedback on childseat in crawlspace. I was leaning same way, but now I have some good answers if husband disagrees.
Any baby equipment we have in our attics from when our kids were little like car seats, cribs, playpens, swings, etc., all need to be trashed. None of them meet today’s safety standards.
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Emptied a box of papers, mail, bills, from fifteen years ago. Had gotten pushed to back of closet. Found some photos to display.
Have some old Christmas cards with photos of various family and friends. Thinking of sending back to them for vintage fun vs recycling.
Anybody else save last year’s cards or finally just pitch?
I do have cards/letters from various friends’ (who have passed away) last couple of years of life that I will keep.
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I’m afraid I’m terribly unsentimental with Christmas cards. I read 'em, keep 'em for a few days (or maybe even the season), and then discard. If I need someone’s address, I save it into my phone.
My sister, on the other hand, keeps them in binders so she knows not to make blunders like, “How is your husband?” when it was reported in a Christmas card that he died last year. She was a Navy wife, traveled all over the world, and has kept in touch with gazillion people. So I kind of understand it.
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Some stores used to allow you to return an outdated car seat for a discount on a new one. (Sorry, I do not recall which stores).
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Just did another pass through our books and took another box to the donation bins in town.
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Yes, I save the Christmas cards … put them into a gallon ziplock labelled by year. After retirement I did go through and thin the collection (and did same with collection of greeting cards and notecards). But I still kept some of the ones from dear relatives now gone. If we ever move, most will get trashed.
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I used to throw out the cards at the end of the holiday season and keep the photos of the kids. Then one year I went through and threw those out also (i really didn’t care about the photo of my neighbor’s son when he was 10 etc.)
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Target stores take used car seats twice a year, around September and May. Materials that can be recycled are recycled. You get a 20% off coupon to buy a new one.
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Big move for me: I forced myself to donate a ton of new clothes and some really sentimental favorites (to me) that I bought and my daughter wore to various dances, including her senior prom. Lord I loved some of those clothes (the ones that were mine will likely never fit me again) and it hurt to get rid of them.
The good news: I found a church-related “closet” for its members in need, which made me feel so much better than the really crappy Salvation Army in town, or dickering with the really overpriced and nasty consignment store. We have few options where I live.
In miraculous news my husband THREW OUT a pair of jeans with a huge hole in the crotch. It took him a week. Of wearing them. But he finally did it. I cannot remember the last item of clothing he actually threw away.
I’m starting to broach the topic of getting rid of some of our literal stacks of serving platters. We used to do a monster party every year, and had bought over the decades dozens of things to facilitate this party. We aren’t doing the party anymore. The stuff is taking up so much room in our kitchen.
This will be a big ask for my husband, the cook & the hoarder.
Fingers crossed.
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My husband and I went through our almost 40 years of brochures/maps/other paper souvenirs from our travels. Created 3 bags of recycling - down to one folder of stuff to keep.
Created a list of books that we have here that belong to my daughter (she has a small apartment so she can’t fit all her books). Hoping when she reviews it, she will be fine with me donating most of them. I am doing this in stages with her, just gave her a small list (I have hundreds of her books for her to eventually review). Last pass, which was college textbooks, was a complete fail - she wouldn’t part with any of them.
My husband weeded out another 20 or so books from his collection (gone into the book donation bin).
It makes me happy when I see these newly empty shelves and drawers in my house!
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Wonderful progress! Sounds like you are on a roll.
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Good luck! I’m facing something similar. When unpacking all of the holiday dishes and platters that H moved to our new home, I set most aside to donate and kept hearing, “But I like that one!” from H. I like them, too, but we have no room.
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Just got rid of two more boxes of stuff - one filled with my in-laws old tax returns (shredding those) and another with paper products (I had probably 100 plastic knives- gave those to the library).
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