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BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho!
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 27 Apr 08 - 11:59 AM Liz, I thought that maybe on May 1 we could switch over there, and post a link back to this one, like Kat suggested, but we can shift over there now instead. Who's watching the calendar, anyway? That thread is here. One last remark, and I'll post it over there also: Rainy day out so I'm kind of house-bound. It's time to re-assign some of these newly empty cupboards with things that 1) are worth keeping and that 2) I'll remember how to find once they're in these new cupboards. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 27 Apr 08 - 03:24 AM #Sniff... so you don't want my shiny, new, uncluttered thread then.... Just as I thought, we'd all rather look at the old cluttery stuff than see the bare table underneath! LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 26 Apr 08 - 10:18 PM Did you all see the link dulcimer42 listed in the read a good book thread? Paperbackswap dot com. You list ten, get two points, choose your first two books. Whoever has them, which you've chosen from a list, then mails them to you, they pay the postage. Then others ordered the ones you've listed and you pay the postage. They even have a wrapper you can print out and mail the books right from your home. Seems a pretty neat and easy idea. And, it's not just paperbacks. They also have a site for CD and DVD swapping. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 26 Apr 08 - 07:27 PM okay. I cleaned a set of shelves by the back door today. Guess what? The limb saw that was lost wasn't--it was where it belonged, but buried under clutter on the shelf. [sigh] More eBay stuff out the door with the mail carrier today. Amazing-- one woman's trash IS another woman's treasure! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 26 Apr 08 - 05:03 PM Oh sure, leave it for me to clean up! I still have five shutters to paint and the kitchen walls and a kitchen floor to finish and a backyard of weeds to say nothing of the empty flowerbed...sheesh! **BG** How about I start a new thread on May Day and we let this one hide out on some dark shelf in the back of the closet? Or one of you could start it and we could have just one per month so they don't get to unwieldy. I was dumping extra stuff from the weight loss accountability thread, but it's a lot easier just to start a new one each month. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 26 Apr 08 - 04:28 PM In the interest of de-cluttering, including here at Mudcat, why don't we go ahead and let this thread go for a month at a time? Then Liz won't have to start a separate de-clutter thread for other stuff and it won't be so long as to be too intimidating to new readers. Leave the first post or two to explain it and drop the rest, like the weight-loss thread. Invite Liz's computer clutter into the fold--because I have a fair amount of that also, and along with the house de-clutter I have been copying, distilling, and discarding old computer disks. If there are things we want to keep links to then we can post them in other places also and link from here. I use that News of Note (was 'I Read it . . . ') thread for those kinds of things, and a couple of the gardening threads, etc. Any thoughts? Shall we let Katlaughing take a whack at our ponderous clutter thread and trim it to a tidy amount of debris here at the 'cat? SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Becca72 Date: 26 Apr 08 - 06:33 AM I brought a grocery bag of misc. crap to work and set it out on the "please take this free shit" table in the kitchen. Slow but steady! |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 26 Apr 08 - 02:18 AM You know you really want to sell them over time, because you'll have that 'last chance' to look over them and maybe decide they're too good to sell on..... DO IT NOW, IN ONE GO!!! The space you gain will soon be filled with the new stuff you'll buy with the nice pile of cash you'll get! LTS (who is fab at decluttering other peoples things but not her own... maybe we should do a house swap? All swap houses and declutter each other!) |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 25 Apr 08 - 05:16 PM Maggie, you continue to inspire! |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 25 Apr 08 - 12:08 PM The camera turned up, photos were taken. More stuff was taken to Goodwill. I'm at work all day and into the evening, so you'll have to talk among yourselves and keep up the good work. I may do more of a gardening break this weekend, decluttering by pruning shrubs that have not performed as required. I try to put in plants that will fit the space, and I try to let plants hold their organic forms as they grow (I don't like boxy hedges, etc.) but a couple that were supposed to be much smaller have required constant trimming to keep them out of the way. Maybe it is time for them to go. Big move today--I contacted a specialty bookstore about possibly selling them one special subject area I collected for a few years that I don't think I'll be using any more. Of course they want a reasonable markup, so the question arises--sell them myself, over time, or get it over with all at once. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Apr 08 - 07:24 PM Darn, I set my little digital camera down somewhere and now I can't find it. Lost in the clutter. I cleared out a cupboard in the living room and now I need to fill it with stuff we intend to keep. I think yesterday's book examination has cast a pall--today I'm ready to keep the empty cupboard and toss the rest of the house. :-/ SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Apr 08 - 12:34 AM I priced a couple of books from my "baggage" box--one of them is a scarce modern book that lists for $450 on Amazon. One hates to put a price on heartache, but this goes a way toward soothing it. Trouble is, this is one of his better books. I'll see how much the others are going for. . . Shredded old grocery receipts tonight. They didn't take up a lot of space, but because I kept them for tax purposes they couldn't be simply tossed in the trash with the amount of personal and account information they contained. I didn't burn them this evening, it was pouring down rain. You'd think after all of this work there would be less to trip over around here. I think the result of decluttering is that at this point there is still too much stuff but it isn't packed as tightly. As space clears the other clutter expands out into it. I'll eventually reach bottom, but I'm only about half-way there yet. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 23 Apr 08 - 05:36 PM Hmmm. some of those quilting books might do well in the auctions too.... : ) LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Apr 08 - 04:41 PM Took a little detour through a box that weighs a ton emotional baggage-wise and is probably one that needs to go straight to the recycle bin unexamined. Lots of old beaus stuff in there. There's a major "yuck" factor attached to much of it now. Long (but probably not unique) story. The stuff we get up to when Mudcat is down. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Apr 08 - 11:57 PM Lin, since Max is moving and the Mudcat connection is going to cost him about $40 more a month, consider putting a couple of those good gardening books in the Mudcat auction. You may have noticed that along with politics and food and (occasionally) music, we also talk about gardening a lot here. Also a lot of quilting books that I know darn well I know it wasn't intentional, but it was a tidy little pun! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Lin in Kansas Date: 22 Apr 08 - 09:59 PM Oooohhhh, I just found an ad in the paper that my favorite used book store is starting a new store and needs inventory. Have I got a deal for them! Wonder how many it would take to get them to come pick them up? I think I'll give them a call tomorrow. I have several shelves worth of gardening and herb books that are nearly new, and I'd like to put them out there for someone who will use them, since I'm not able to do much gardening work any more. Also a lot of quilting books that I know darn well I'm never going to use. And a bunch of hardback fiction that I doubt I'll read again since I wasn't that impressed the first time through. Hmmmm. Maybe if I tell them just to bring a truck....? Lin |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Apr 08 - 08:56 PM I considered and passed on hip-waders as an option. I think it's about 4 feet, possibly deeper in places. There is a pool behind my property. It has crawdads and fish and turtles and snakes and birds, to start with, and large freshwater clams in the mud. I'm a naturalist in good standing, but I don't think I want to wade around back there, the mud on the bottom is liable to be gooey. It's also an urban creek so there is a lot of runoff that passes through there. The banks have poison ivy in places. I dropped off lots of stuff today. Clothes at Thrift Town, paper at the print shop (they were amused at how old that printer paper was. They will toss it in the recycle bin there.) CD and DVD disks and floppies to the media cruncher, until it jammed. They said they'd run the rest through for me, and maybe reformat a few of the old floppies to use around there. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: GUEST,pattyClink Date: 22 Apr 08 - 03:37 PM Stilly, how deep is that creek? If only a few feet or less at low water times of the year, you might borrow some hipwaders or chestwaders and walk the creek rather than try to boat it. Or, if the water is reasonably clean, just walk it wearing shorts and Teva sandals this summer when it's hot. Creekwalking can be lovely sport in a clear stream. Course if it's deep and murky, never mind! |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Lin in Kansas Date: 22 Apr 08 - 04:31 AM Liz--LOL. Of course your sewing table is full of cats! But isn't that the case whether it's cleared of other things or not? My furbabies will perch on top of whatever's on the sewing table, so I've given up on the idea that it will ever be a "cleared space." They're such wonderful seamstress assistants... Lin |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:41 AM I knew it... I knew that if I cleared a space it would be filled again. I cleared my sewing table yesterday. Today it's full of cats. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Apr 08 - 01:45 AM Me again. Sipping my cup of Sleepytime tea to wind down from the excitement of that closet. Ho, boy, was there some good stuff in there. That I haven't seen in years and don't possibly need any more. Does anyone still use tractor feed dot matrix paper? I have a couple of reams. Lots of steno pads and some old bond from the university with the seal (no longer in use) but no department information. The print shop binds up various sizes of this extra paper for people to pick up free. Good way to recycle. Maybe I can slip these pads back in there and let someone else have a go at them. Christmas cards (the extras, plus some I never got around to mailing over a few years) are now all in one cubby in the inexpensive white MDF and Formica shelves (from our days in a small apartment when we needed shelves. They may go if I can get rid of everything that is on them.) Forgotten rechargeable batteries so old I don't want to tempt a fire, so I'll take them to school to recycle. I found the remainder of the expensive ream of paper I had to buy to print out my thesis back in 1999. And those hanging file folders I KNEW I had but couldn't ever find them. Old RAM from an ancient notebook computer and some adaptors that I haven't a clue as to what they might power. A few oddball gadgets of my father's. Envelopes full of old grocery receipts (it made sense to keep them for a year, for tax purposes, but not all of these this long). Etc. etc. etc. I have to sneeze from all of the dust in there. Good work! And I have at least a cubic foot of unused paper to donate somewhere (or toss in the recycle bin, whichever seems appropriate at the time.) I stacked some backpacks and a courier bag on the luggage shelf of the wire shelves in there (you may recall that I got rid of a bunch of duffels and old packs a few weeks ago). One use for the closet will eventually be to store some of my travel and camping gear. I haven't opened the file cabinet, and my school essays and papers are still in there, now all on one shelf. They need a good look next. There is a typewriter on the floor. It also needs a good look. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Apr 08 - 10:55 PM Okay . . . I'm going in . . . wish me luck . . . The office closet has shelves stuffed-full and a four-drawer file cabinet. It needs a lot of attention. I have a shredder handy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Apr 08 - 02:41 PM I need some kind of a little boat for the creek behind my house. I can't reach the trash along the bank because it is too steep. No one around here has anything small enough for this area (and no boat ramp). Future project--creek declutter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: LilyFestre Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:10 PM I heaved some kayak gear on Saturday. I was cleaning out my boat and the box of gear I keep in my car all season long and decided I didn't need all of that stuff.....it's now tucked away for the annual yard sale!! Michelle |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Apr 08 - 11:04 AM Berries berries berries! About the only berries I see here are the wild mustang grapes. I miss the blueberries and huckleberries and strawberries (and wild thimbleberries and salmonberries) of my childhood. And those wild long rare blackberries, not the Himalaya, but the succulent super sweet super tasty forest floor ones that grownups will club each other over the head for . . . I have to work this week. But I'll be doing donation runs when I head to the office, and I'm going to take old fence boards out to the curb for the trash this week (next pickup, Thursday). Our bulky waste pickup is in June, so until then I have to blend my bulk in with the regular stuff. It will be nice to get that pile of fence panels out of the back yard. Yes, the dogs do run around and over it with charming grace and speed, and they're funny when they're playing two-dog tag, but I'm afraid they'll hit nails and hurt themselves. It's time for that to go. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: maeve Date: 21 Apr 08 - 06:47 AM Nice progress made by several folks here! We're decluttering outside still, with more compost moved to the veggie garden yesterday and a layer of old maple leaves spread over the end with poor soil. The leaves came from the lowbush blueberry patch we burned over last night. Today I'll fill and apread several more cartloads of compost on the same area ready for tilling, and start digging out the rest of the raspberries, keeping a few of the Fallgold to plant in another area along with the Purple Royalty starts we'll be picking up next month. I'll plant the Meader persimmon over by the fence, move the highbush blueberries over in front of it, then the cranberry starts down in front as edging. I'll tuck in some snowdrops before covering the cranberries with an inch of sand from the bag in the chickenhouse. They'll need water, and all of the potted plants do too, with the lovely warm May weather we've had this week. I need to build a frame for netting over the blueberries, but that can wait a little longer. Hmmm. Better soak some laundry after noon dinner and then sort out giveaway clothes. I'll see how much I can get washed, rinsed, and hung outside before we need the sink and tub after supper. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 21 Apr 08 - 05:38 AM "there are flat surfaces under there somewhere..." "And they look so good when they are revealed! " No they don't. They are covered in cat prints, cup rings, dust, dirt, fur and stains. I want to put something over it to cover up the dirt, so's I don't have to get a scrubbing brush to it.... so what do I do? Move the clutter from another room onto it! LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:52 AM there are flat surfaces under there somewhere... And they look so good when they are revealed! Those surfaces come and go here. And the love seat in the corner of the living room is a staging area that sees light of day every couple of weeks. My eBay room is also a staging area. But my hallway outside my office is now clear (if you don't count the upright freezer and my son's arcade game--the rest of the stuff is gone.) There is a book I found (I can't say which shelf it is on right now, but I'm tired so am not going to look for it) called something like "Chop Wood Carry Water." It's a 70s natural living kind of manifesto, suggesting finding the sacred in the mundane is good for us. I think they were onto something, actually, even if it has the classic look of a 70s environmental Buddhist style manifesto. Enjoy what you're doing, enjoy the space you're improving, send the clutter onto the next home with good will and good feelings. Some things are meant to be kept, but a lot of it is too much. And when you get it down to those really important things, like the atlas that Patty described, then you're onto something. She's also right about "insane commitments to your yard." But that is an untreatable disease. It gets pretty bad every spring. But even there, I am trying to bring this decluttering into play. How often have you bought bedding plants, only to have they die or become horribly root bound waiting for you to prepare the beds? I'm simply not letting myself buy any new stuff until I dispatch or move or use up the stuff that I have here. I cleared out some old bags of top soil (falling apart and had to be shoveled into the wheelbarrow) to fill in at the basketball hoop hole, and today I used 2 1/2 of the 3 bags of cedar mulch I still had out there from last year. Decide which plants simply aren't working and how much work you're willing to go to to remedy the problem. I have a couple of those quandaries I'm working on now. And as soon as I find the saw I use for limbs, one of those problems, a Dawn redwood that has never done well, is coming out. (I think the saw must be keeping company with the missing pair of pruning shears.) I moved the cannas today and there are a few roots and plants left over. I have a bunch of iris that came out of the ground. In the next week I'll find homes in the yard or give them away. The bed is finished and now I need to water it well. I'm sure it will look worse before it looks better. I took a photo this evening but the flash came on and it looks odd. I'll wait till daylight. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Lin in Kansas Date: 20 Apr 08 - 11:08 PM You all are doing great! Keep up the good work, there are flat surfaces under there somewhere... Okay, it will be a BIG de-clutter when I get it done, but it's probably going to take me an unconscionable amount of time to do it--I've been reading ideas about how to "organize" all my genealogy files (back to the beginning, no?) and have decided I want to set up my rolltop desk drawers to keep those records in. That m3eans, first of all, that I need to clean out what's already in them, most of which can be shredded, I think, and another place found for the remains. Then I will have to sort all the papers, etc., that are presently in several different places in several rooms, and consolidate them into some sort of filing system. The ultimate result I hope will be my computer table cleared, a bookshelf mostly cleared, some more storage in the craft room, and the ability to find facts, papers, etc. about the ancestors, all in one place. Wish me luck! Don't know if my stamina is up to it, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. Thanks for all the inspiration this thread has given me. Now, one piece at a time, eh? Lin |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 20 Apr 08 - 09:51 PM *smile* I am immune to it, too, because our yard if SO large and so raw...too much to commit to at once.:-) Boy, we did a lot today and it feels great. Little things, but they add up. OUr closet is a disaster. We can hang clothes and reach them, but in the middle sits Rog's highboy with a tv on it which we rarely use and the drawers are full of storage stuff he never uses. We didn't have time or energy, today, but sometime we are going to pull that out, build a shelving unit for the tv and pull out baskets for socks, pjs, etc.
Today we went to Walgreens where I found three nesting, collapsible canvas "baskets" (only five bucks!) which I lined up on a built-in shelf over by my side of the bed in which I sorted all of my undies, socks, tees, and pjs which have been living in a basket on grandma's trunk at the foot of our bed. Rog put all of the other clothes on hangers. These clothes have been circulating from the basket, to us, to the washer and dryer, to the basket for months and months. My dresser is in the office used for other things and the old buffet which I use for all of my jewellery boxes, etc. in our bedroom is full of other *stuff* and I don't like digging through drawers for clothes anyway, so I think the canvas thingies are going to work well and our room looks so much neater. Plus we switched out granddad's chair from the bedroom to living room and put the one from the living room into the bedroom. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: GUEST,pattyClink Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:34 PM Last night I did gather up garage sale stuff from one room, and put it in The Box For That. Not a big pile but feels good to have a start. Found a long-lost Delorme atlas I thought was gone for good, with lots of important (to me) notes in it. By really LOOKING at the contents of the shelves for once. Also walked around making lists of likely things for the sale, a little list for each room. Breaking it into little pieces I can grasp. I have a closet full of archive boxes full of writing and stuff, boy has that stuff created a bottleneck preventing normal stuff from being stored. A closet should be for stuff that needs to be at hand, not an archive. So it's time to take those, one at a time, and start purging them down to a manageable one or two if I can, bound for Deep Storage. It was another splendid lovely day, another one I am sorry to have spent too much indoors. Think of all those organized souls who finished doing all this stuff in dreary February and now they are free to wander around looking at flowers and listening to birds. Well, no, they're probably not--not only working hard in the garden, but wildly overcommitting themselves to garden additions and whatnot. The seductive cool days of spring will do that, lure you into making insane commitments to your yard. Luckily I am largely immune to this lure. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:55 PM I'm working on garden clutter also today. I took a breather to come eat a little late lunch, get a drink of water, and cool off. The cannas are coming out, but they're really dug in. I'm about to where the tar layer is worst, so I'll be scraping up the top and trashing it. I hate to be disturbing irises that haven't bloomed yet, mixed in where the cannas are, but if I wait any longer these lilies will be too big to move at all this year. When I finish in the garden I'm going to load some stuff in the pickup to take over to Thrift Town when I head to the office tomorrow. I have a few more things to photograph and add to the bag. I also have a couple of things to put on eBay. Whether it leaves via the pickup, the trash, a passer-by, or the postal carrier, this place needs more emptying! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:38 AM That should be a butterfly busH in the first sentence. At least I got the loose photos sorted into envelopes and scanned about 50 in... only another 300+ to go! How on earth did I end up with so many photographs of such a cute baby? You'd never believe the long-haired, hormonal pre-teen that's slugging around the house in a blanket today is the same girl... LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 20 Apr 08 - 02:40 AM I was going to start decluttering the garden this week, but as the blackbirds are nesting in the butterfly busy (where the pigeons were last year and the bluetits the year before), I can't cut that down. I can't cut the top out of the tree next to it, because that's providing cover for them and they're feeding young at the moment so pottering around clearing up the rubbish that's accumulated isn't really fair on them either. I just go out occasionally to shoo away a new cat to the neighbourhood. He's a big, pale tabby bully, who sits under the butterfly bush, drooling and looking up suggestively. So instead, I'm indoors, making a start on scanning a crate of photographs to the external drive, in hopes of storing the real pictures somewhere other than the bedroom. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 19 Apr 08 - 11:58 PM Thanks, Maggie...I like rhyming.**bg** You are so full of energy and seem to be getting so much done! Phew! I have done ALL of my jewellery findings, beads, bit and pieces save on small baggie of misc. that I will sort tomorrow. All of my split rings, jump rings, both top and side openings, were mixed in together along with some head pins and other small stuff. I separated them all out. If I never see another split ring/jump ring I will be happy! It does feel good to get it done. I am eager to start designing now. Thanks everyone for participating in this thread. It has really helped. kat |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:56 PM That's good, Kat--shutter clutter. :) I dug a flower bed this afternoon. My aching body will attest to this. Before the new roof last fall every time it rained there was the granular stuff from the old roof landing in a few drainage areas. This new bed is away from that, so tomorrow I will dig up and transplant a bunch of cannas from one of the tar areas. I may have to start by carefully scraping up several inches of granular stuff first. The foundation soaker hose is the occasion for this new bed. Since I water it during the summer I might as well have some beds all of the way around. That side of the house is plain brick with grass and a heat pump. I don't want hedges, I'll put various height annuals. These cannas are a good start. My neighbor tells me she had good luck with asperagus out in that area of her yard (until her husband dug it up because he was afraid it would hurt his foundation. Asperagus hurt a foundation! I think what might have hurt was the frying pan on his head!) I have a lot of yard rearranging to do, and another thing I think I need to dejunk out there is one of the silverado sages. It was supposed to be a dwarf, but I have to keep pruning it back below five feet. It is lovely when it blooms out lavendar, but it didn't live up (down!) to the tag that said it was dwarf. Or if this is a dwarf, the regulars must be trees! It's good to see that others are reading through and being inspired by this activity. My daughter took a microwave up to school today and a box of felt I bought for her at a garage sale. For all of this work, the living room and dining room are still very cluttered as I bring it forward from the rest of the house. I have a long way to go! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:30 PM Me, too, pattty! My daughter told me today they want to have a yard sale soon and would I do the money bit AND bring some stuff. They live four doors down from us. Would I!!??Heck yes! Rog had to go in to work this morning and I was mad. I channelled it like a good dooby and painted another shutter. They've been stacked in the kitchen all winter waiting for me to get each one done. I have two layers of paint on this one, add another two and I will only have five more shutters to go! That's a good bit of clutter to get done and out! |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: GUEST,pattyClink Date: 19 Apr 08 - 07:31 PM Greetings to all you de-junkers. I've let things get out of hand the last few years and need to do a major purge around my house. Too many projects and interests, too many files, too many rocks and fossils and minerals and shells, not enough good storage space....yada yada. I actually have read Aslett and done a lot of that stuff in the past, but it requires a certain vigilance to keep up which has been lost. Recently I was agonizing about how we NEED to have a garage sale and start e-baying, since we are no longer flush enough with cash to just freely donate everything which of course is much faster and easier, but not really as rewarding, especially when you see the clerks at the goodwill grabbing your good suit for themselves rather than leaving it for a job-hunter to find on the rack. From the blue, a neighbor we don't see much asked if we wanted to help with a garage sale in two weeks and bring some stuff. YES!! A window of hope has opened. We can bring some stuff, yet not have to kill ourselves getting every possible thing out there, or do the advertising, etc. Heaven-sent help. Now, if I could just get started with one corner of the place.....lost hours today just getting a bunch of stuff filed away and laundry caught up. Never mind starting to really box stuff up and get it out...and then suddenly another meal needs preparing and we're out of milk and then...oh sheesh. Then it'll be time for work again. Anyway, I've enjoyed reading the progress that's being made and deriving some inspiration from. So give 'em hell, declutterers. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Apr 08 - 01:25 AM maeve, you've identified some chores that indicate you have a much larger garden operation than I have. The luxury of a greenhouse—it's on my "one of these days" list. I do have "decluttering" to do in the yard this weekend, jusch as to finish with bags of mulch and soil that I bought last year (before the plastic breaks down and I can't move it without a shovel). Here is a blurb from Aslett:
sub chapter Blue Ribbon Junkees Talks about farmers having the space to park things farther and farther back, and if they have a welder, then everything is "repairable." He concludes: Brethren of the soil, I've struggled with this myself through two generations of farms and ranches and most of it is clutter! Haul if off and plant something—you'll reduce the rattlesnake breeding grounds and help prevent injuries and divorces, as well as the profanities you utter every time you're looking through it for a part. I love farm women—they're the real class and beauty of the world's womanhood, so I won't mention the fact that they are also the champion bottle collectors of the world, the garden junk accumulators of all time, the sewing scrap savers supreme, queens of the recipe collectors, and of course the cellar shelf fillers without equal. Farm folk, de-junk—and the junkyard won't know what hit it! This could explain some of my clutter/packrat genes. My mother grew up on a farm. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: maeve Date: 18 Apr 08 - 07:29 AM Such progress you're making! Well done, everyone! We're decluttering outside this week, with such good weather at hand. Gardens cleaned, brush cut and hauled to the compost piles, fruit tree pruning, scion cutting for grafting in a few days... I emptied many pots of good soil (from overwintered plants that gave in to the ice this winter) into various garden beds. We'll be hauling and spreading compost for a while, too. The aim is to get the 30 x 100 veggie garden covered with several inches of compost before tilling it in. I need to start planting in the next week. We're expecting this next year to be a hard one, with food costs rising fast. We'll need to raise most of our food, and neighbors will likely need extra help as well. TL cleaned out the birdhouses too, just in time for the swallows' and bluebirds' spring arrival. I painted the old metal loveseat swing out on the lawn. Greenhouse frames are assembled. Moving the greenhouse bench parts out from the veggie garden and out back to the greenhouses this morning. When the rain returns this weekend I'll return to the decluttering in the house. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Apr 08 - 12:13 AM I photographed those phone cords this evening so I can drop them off in the morning at the Goodwill trailer. This is about 3/4 of them, with the rest being tucked neatly away in the cupboard for in case I need to sling phone cords around the house for some reason. All of the rest of these are overkill. What I kept is probably overkill. The seven on the right hand side are at least 50' long. The rest are anywhere from 7 to 15 feet. The ones I kept were for their length and interesting colors. (Great reasons, right?) There are some china platters that my sister sent from my Mom's house that have made it from storage into my eBay room. We ended up with them when my parents bought a sideboard at an estate auction in about 1967 and it came with the contents, including a set of Warwick china. We used some of it, but mostly the big platters and such stayed in there. I looked them up on eBay and after figuring out the name of the pattern I figure I have a couple hundred dollars of plates here that I wasn't planning to keep. Looks like its time to dig out some of the packing materials and make some really safe shipping packages and let these seek their own level in the auction world. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:35 AM Diva, is this what you mean by a Welsh dresser? Are you getting rid of the contents or the dressers? Those are beautiful display pieces (I'd love to have one for my china and crystal). I know. More to dust. . . I took several unused duffel bags and a bunch of plastic baskets and containers down to Goodwill this morning. Also a perfectly good computer keyboard, except that for this touch typist, once the little bumps on F and J wear down, I get lost on the thing. I even taped on the installation disk to go with it. I try to differentiate between useful donatable stuff and things that simply must go to the recycle bin or the dump. When I look at the stack that piles up overnight by the Goodwill trailer, I can't say everyone uses the same discrimination. I think they're trying to avoid being charged for an extra bulky waste pickup by the city. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:10 AM That's why I asked Manitas to take our bag of books to the charity shop or recycling centre.. I knew that if it were still here I'd be poking around in it and changing my mind about which ones to dispose of... Trouble is, there is a bag in the porch that looks suspiciously like a bag of books that never made it to the charity shop..... LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Diva Date: 17 Apr 08 - 07:07 AM 1 and a half welsh dressers so far......a piano to a very good home. A manky carpet.....and a massive pile of junk from the kitchen which is out in the garden awaiting uplift to the dump but can't bear to get rid of books |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 16 Apr 08 - 09:40 PM Saulgoldie, good to see a new face here! 20 paper grocery bags? You've had a tripping hazard around for a while, it sounds like! When I was a child and going to elementary school in West Seattle, Washington, the school would do a paper drive every year, and families saved up for that. We lugged so much paper to school in those couple of weeks that they stacked them high in these "play courts" that we used in cold and wet weather. They just about filled them. I try not to let more than a couple of bags of paper pile up, though this time of year I keep at least one bag out in the garage to use in the garden, where it is sometimes handy to put under the mulch to keep weeds down. I've put more on eBay, and I'm targeting a bunch of kids clothes this evening. I'll photograph, list, and bag them, and drop them off at Goodwill tomorrow morning. It's going slow, but it's going. Did anyone else read the story about the Collyer brothers? I looked a bit further, there was a book written about them in 2003. They had the defective gene in spades, but through their madness they took themselves out of the gene pool. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: GUEST,saulgoldie Date: 16 Apr 08 - 09:11 PM I just bagged 20 bags of newspapers for recycling. Some of them went back to 2003. When I finish going through my LPs, I'll know I'm home free. |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:29 PM Oh dear.... oh deary dear... My name is Liz and I'm a hoard-a-holic..... LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 16 Apr 08 - 01:09 PM I am still far away from having the place ready to sit down and sort my beads and findings. I've been moving things forward in the house, but my son tends to dump things out of his way without asking why they are where they are. I asked him not to do that, it slows down my ability to get this out of the house if I have to sort it again, and I would like to press him into service one evening if he isn't loaded down with homework. I found an interesting article in the April 2008 Martha Stewart Living on page 170. The Healthy Living/Wellness feature this month is "The Curse of Clutter." How timely. Mary Duenwald wrote this piece that discusses the process of hoarding and how it contributes to clutter and how it may even have a genetic marker. I checked, this article isn't online. I would hasten to add that a lot of what I think she is talking about is the kind of stuff that gets houses condemned and emptied with back hoes, but that might not be the case. She starts with an example I hadn't heard of, the Collyer brothers in Harlem, from a well-to-do family but with reclusive and hoarding behavior that is amazing to read about. And when I did a search I found a site for the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation. The Duenwald article says the two, obsessive/compulsive disease and hoarding aren't necessarily related, but the web site claims they are. Here is the link. My house isn't like that house. No way. Pack rat isn't the same as hoarding, but if you read the Martha Stewart article, you may well notice tendencies that, when amplified, escalate into hoarding. I learned something new! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: katlaughing Date: 15 Apr 08 - 10:39 PM Well, maybe the sty doesn't want you reading too much, tonight?**bg** I am down to sorting my findings: chain, clasps, crimps,jump rings, etc. Aarrghhh...tedious, tiny....time-consuming, but still feels good. This afternoon, Morgan christened my new bead board by stringing his very own, first necklace. It is an eclectic mix.:-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: De-cluttering accountability - heave ho! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 15 Apr 08 - 10:06 PM Target and Sam's Club and Dollar stores and (for the high end) The Container Store and places like Office Depot have lots of those kinds of boxes. I have quite a few here, especially the ones that have hanging files. A big trash bag of mostly stuff pulled from my linen cupboards went to the thrift store today. Some of those old twin sheet sets had been on my bed when I was a child. But no one is going to use them now, and someone might pick them up and give them new life. Or maybe they're interesting in 40 year old patterns. . . Also took out some old mattress pads and some old pillows. They can recycle the Dacron fibre. My laundry room cupboards are so tidy now--but I have a couple of boxes of useful stuff that isn't used often that needs to go in some bins on a set of shelves out in the garage. So I have to clean up those shelves before these go out. It's the child's party favor all over again--you know those little puzzles with 36 spots and 35 tiles? You have to move them into the blank spot and move the next one into the new blank spot and eventually they're in order. SRS (who won't be online too much this evening--I have a sty in my eye that feels almost like a sinus infection because it's on a pressure point and I lobbed a stink bomb on another thread this morning before I left for work and don't feel like going back to see where the shrapnel landed. . . it's put the laundry in the dryer and an early night with Harry Potter 6. I want to finish this one before the film comes out. |
