Happy to see H’s yard clothes in a pile to be thrown away. I don’t mind his worn-out jeans and t-shirts, except when he wears them away from the house.
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I have too many shoes!
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I have one Christmas container that I use for Christmas stuff I don’t want to use but I’m not ready to deal with. Finally decided to tackle it this year as I’m putting away. So many kid Christmas drawings, ornaments made in after school program, torn out magazine articles for Christmas crafts and food. Evidentially I haven’t looked through the bottom layers in a long time. The kid who drew the scribbled Christmas tree is now a PhD student. I did save the Christmas wish lists of Lego sets, Wii games, and My Weird School series books in their handwriting. Those are priceless memories. I have a donate pile of ornaments and decor that haven’t been used in years. Result is now I don’t need a new container for the few new pieces of Christmas decor I bought this year.
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I need to do this. We have gone to much smaller trees and can no longer use all the ornaments I have collected and have been given. Maybe separating a bin and letting it sit will help.
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I’m going to set aside all of the ornaments I have not used in ages and keep whatever I take off the tree next weekend (the tree is now too big for the next Christmas so it will be planted in the backyard forest).
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I have 3 ornament boxes, labelled #1, #2, #3. Really only probably need two now that the current tree has integrated lights, but I keep them all in hopes of my tow kids taking a box each someday with favorite ornmaments. I only bring up #1, and this year I realized that I only use the top layer because my favorite ornments are the 25+ from a friend who makes a different bead kit ornament each year - they pack compactly. Next time I have both kids with us for Christmas we really need to dig through it all together, get me down to one ornament box.
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Basement rehab is complete, and we’ve moved lots of stuff back down there. It looks so much better. “Fresh” is a good way to describe it.
The workers took a sofa, chair, ottoman and a bunch of old pictures (for wall/we would never use again), and that’s after we ourselves took out several large pieces. They also took the basketball hoop from the top of our driveway that hadn’t been used for years.
Today I was about to throw out a brand new in box sunflower mirror from the Smithsonian shop (I noticed the actual mirror had a little scratch on it). I decided to put in on our neighborhood group, and it was grabbed within 5 minutes. A “tulip table” or some other old brown wood table hasn’t faired so well, but it’s in near perfect shape and worth donating, so we will do that.
We still have lots of “stuff” but it’s most fairly neatly organized. We tossed more stuff from down there today, including 3 ski helmets that I last used with my kids 15ish years ago. Google said they shouldn’t be used at this point, so trash was the right place.
We need to buy at least one additional storage shelf kind of thing for our abundance of suitcases, but we’ve done a good job parting with things.
ETA - it’s really kind of amazing how good it feels to get rid of stuff/have less clutter.
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So I’m trying to clean out all the old computer stuff–moniters, computers, cables, headphones, a thousand misc cords, tv whatevers…I had some boxes of just…stuff…
Cornered my H and said “you gotta help me. I’ll hold it up and just tell me if it actually goes to something before I toss it.”
He says…“Hold it up and see if it brings you joy…”
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The wood tulip table sounds cool! Do a google photo search and make sure you don’t have a gem!
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I have a bag full of cords and cables and no clue what they belong to/ what they are for. I figure I will hold onto them a while longer and then get rid of them.
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Cords should be required to somehow note what product they are for! Seriously!
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I just posted on the random thread about this very topic.
When we downsized two years ago I went through all the cords and threw out anything we didn’t know it went to or it went to something we knew we had gotten rid of. Ended up with a small fraction of the cables we had started with.
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The easy ones were the ones I labeled a billion years ago when I went on a rampage with my new label printer.
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It is large item pick up tomorrow, so out on the curb are a mattress, 3 tubs (broken) full of trash, the regular trash and recycle bins, and an old suitcase. In the garage ready to go to good will are several bags of clothes, books, household stuff.
I did throw away a lot of photos I know there are 20 other copies of and even some old albums from my youth that are just too big and bulky to keep around, and I’d never look at again (girl scout camp, some from college, many I didn’t even recognize the people in them and many were stuck together. Some games are off to the thrift store because we haven’t played them in 20 years.
Books are hard to get rid of but it’s got to happen.
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A few times I’ve taken old cords and put them in a big ziplock with a piece of paper stating the year that they are being put in purgatory.
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There is a place you can take TVs and other electronics to be recycles. Some are free, some are $5 for 10 items (even things like toasters). They will take all the cords for free and try to match them up or make them useful. I think the thrift store will even take them.
I just have a shoe box going all the time for collecting them if I don’t know what they are for (and oh are there cords I don’t know what they are for or even what the ends are for like big fat round ones and little thin ones and two ends that are the same)
I also have a shoe box for all the eye glasses. It is almost full and I found a few today when shorting and packing. One of the rec centers collects ‘something’ every month and this month it is glasses (sun or prescription). I suspect the Lion’s club is running the drive. There are a few of the optometry stores that collect them all year. There used to be a drop box at the thrift store (very convenient) but it’s been gone for a while.
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I got rid of several books this week by putting them on Buy Nothing. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of Little Free Libraries and I look into them when I am walking to get an idea of which one/s need more books. I get rid of a lot of books that way.
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Costco’s eye department will also accept old glasses as donations.
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At least in NY, stores that sell electronics are required to accept them when they are no longer working. My old printer went to Staples and tvs to Best Buy. You don’t have to have bought them there.
My city council rep sponsors a shredding day where they also accept old electronics and smash them to bits. Another old tv went there last year.
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