H cleaned out his closet while I was out of town.
I need to travel more often.
Tackling my closet today! Need to make room for the new stuff that just arrived from Neimanâs extra percentage off clearance sale!
^One of the many reasons why I hate shopping. But I am still working on my numerous closets, not done. More bags for Salvation Army are coming. We have big closetsâŠBut I have about 4 years, hopefully will be done in 4 years.
We have some plastic shelves in our laundry area that were bending under the weight of all the stuff on them. I cleared one set of shelves off and reorganised the shelves and threw away a couple of trash bag full of long expired food and other useless stuff. My husband hovered anxiously over my shoulder, but just retrieved a few things he thought he could feed to the birds. We can actually find stuff on those shelves now and I told him no more stacking stuff on top of stuff on top of stuff.
I had no idea how much carpet cleaner I have. I can never find anything because we have so much stuff so I just go and buy again. I probably wonât need to buy carpet cleaner again before I die!
Of course our trash man picked last week not to show up. Our road was lined with smelly bins all week. We live out in the country so no city pick up and have a private contractor. Hope he didnât drop dead or something.
Congrats on the progress, @swimcatsmom!
Thank you. Progress is slow, but at least itâs progress. We also got rid of a few cardboard boxes and a couple of brown bags of newspaper (H recycles but rarely ever actually takes the stuff to the recycling place it just grows into mountains in the den - I work so itâs hard for me to do it). My daughter and her husband are moving into their first house and needed some stuff for packing. I told her she could take it if she promised not to bring it back.
I Love that satisfying moment when the monstrous pile of stuff thatâs getting thrown away is finally hauled off by the âsanitation engineersâ. Swimcat, you will be doubly happy when that guy gets back on schedule.
Life gets busy, doesnât it? When it switches course, my focus changes. This month, my mother in law suddenly decided to move into a duplex across the street from us. Hubby and I have been sprucing the outside of the place up for her (sheâs in her 80s) and are making arrangements for the move as well as dealing with the realtor whoâs selling MILâs house. I lost concentration on decluttering and am hoping to get back on track in a few weeks when all this moving stuff will be behind us.
Iâm going downhill at the moment. I bought a stuffed Minion over the weekend (Kevin), and I have not yet thrown anything out in compensation. But the Minion is just so cuuuute!
Cleaned out the bookshelves.
Onward to the office supplies storage closet.
Cleaned out my closet on Tuesday and have 5 bags ready to go. Iâm working on purging our playroom and have pulled some books to go and am tearing things out from magazines so I can recycle those. Next week I will be watching week 1 of Wimbledon and that magazine purge is a great way to accomplish something during tennis.
Only 1 more week until the church rummage sale. Staged in the living room now - lamp, chair, 2 tables, 2 boxes of kitchen items, 1 bag of clothes, 1 bag of shoes and purses, 2 boxes of books, 11 old vases, and a few miscellaneous items. In the van already are about a dozen boxes of books from MILâs house. My favorite week of the year.
Both kids are established in their apartments, so I donât have to keep any of the old furniture around in case they need it. They donât. DD got a dresser, table, chairs, and the rest of the kitchen stuff last month. I can walk through my basement now. What fun.
Well done all. Iâve ground to a Halt as Iâve had to work the last 3 weekends to finish some big work projects before I leave for England Thursday . Boy, Iâm tired. I Need to stick the piles of stuff I cleared out of the closet in trash sacks ready to sort through and list for donations when I come back. My husband asked if itâs ok for him to put them back in the closet for when the bug man comes while Iâm gone 
so I need to get that done.
Keep this thread going strong to inspire me when I get back. @2VU0609 - if youâre watching the menâs quarters a week on Wednesday, look out for me. Iâll be the one in court one with a glass of pimms and a bowl of strawberries and cream. (That doesnât narrow it down much)
Have fun @swimcatsmom. Iâm quite jealous 
Thank you - Iâm quite excited. My brother and I go every year in the first week but have never scored lottery tickets before! The Next day I go to the Harry Potter experience and my daughter is green eyed. & between posts I bagged up a bag of clothes to go to th Salvation Army. Now if I could just get packed.
StuffâŠaaarrrggghh!!! Iâve had 5 years of cleaning out houses, my grandmothers, our family home, my home, daughters home, and now my mothers. A few were due to death, others just moving, etc. I am so sick of âstuffâ Iâd like to have just enough to fit in my car⊠unrealistic but I am feeling suffocated by stuff. This experience is making my ruthless, purge purge purge. The local thrift store/ Goodwill loves me!
^I hear you. Sometimes Iâd like to just start fresh. Iâd make sure not to accumulate too much stuff.
Just saw a report on the local news about families whose basements flooded when the latest thunderstorms overwhelmed the sewer system. And found myself getting a little envious, because they are just going to throw out all that junk now.
We had a minor flood in our basement last week. The silver lining was that I got to get rid of lots of âstuffâ without even giving it a second thought. If I had intentionally gone down there to sort through boxes, I wouldnât have tossed as much as I had to in this emergency.
^^^the wet floor in part of our basement was just enough to soak boxes of DHâs college notebooks and other assorted papers he has schlepped with us for the past 30 years. (And no, he has never looked at them.) I sent them to âChuckâ without regret.
Havenât stopped by in awhile but rather proud of myself today. I grew up with a hoarder so Iâm pretty good about purging on a fairly regular basis but still have my trouble spots. When my mother moved out of her house 13 years ago, she handed me a large bag filled with letters from my college years, including those I received during my study abroad (semester at sea). Way too busy 13 years ago to deal with it so it went under the house. We cleaned that out about 2 years ago so the bag moved to the corner of my bedroom. There it sat, with me making feeble attempts to go through the bag which also had photos and other memorabilia. Carpet cleaners were coming today so yesterday and this morning I forced myself to go through it. 95+% ended up in the recycling. I kept a small stack of letters from grandparents long gone and some photos to enjoy another day. That had been an albatross around my neck and I am so glad itâs gone!
I also stopped by the local kelly moore paint store and dropped off all the cans of paints weâll never need and good will to drop off 2 bags of misc items. Oddly, D1, who lives in the city 30 minutes away and doesnât have a car, received a box of diapers from Amazon. She (single, definitely not a mom!) called Amazon who apologized for the error and told her to keep them. Somehow they ended up at my house so I dropped them off at a home for domestically abused women today. Very productive day getting things out of my house AND I have clean carpets!