Frugal Village Forums banner

2016 Household Purge / Declutter Challenge

34K views 476 replies 30 participants last post by  momoffiveboys 
#1 ·
2016 Household Purge/De-clutter Challenge
This challenge is for those who are interested in de-cluttering or purging all or parts of their homes in 2015. You may do a Fling 2016 Things in 2016 or just a general "fling".. Join in anytime and post your progress.
 
#3 ·
I'm in. DH and I are looking at downsizing for a variety of reasons. I need to go through the rooms and de-clutter for a spring garage sale...if necessary. First goal is to put thing up for sale online. If they don't sell, then we'll walk friends through the piles to pick out what they want. If we still have stuff, there will be a garage sale in April. After that, it all gets donated to the Salvation Army. :)
 
#6 ·
I'm in on this one. Don't know how well I'll do but I'm in. I need to find more space. I'm one of those people who attaches sentimental value and have a hard time parting with stuff or thinks to herself I might need that or be able to use that some day. So we'll see.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nannyd and peanut
#7 ·
Niko, I'm the same. I always think I will have a use some day. We filled two 12 yard dumpsters this fall, in preparation of getting remodeling done. Most of this stuff came from the basement & garage. Now remodeling is nearly complete & I have the job of putting everything away. We turned one bedroom into a storage room & it has to be cleaned out. Anything that doesn't have a place in the newly remodeled rooms is getting given away or thrown away.
 
#8 ·
I’m back, and I’m definitely “in” on this one. We are moving two small homes into one larger one within the next six months: some stuff has GOT to go – but what?

I donated a brand new, unused steam iron just last week: I’d been keeping it “just in case”, of course; and as soon as it was gone, a friend said “But what if the one you have just stops working?” I reckon you can’t go on keeping stuff “just in case” but it’s hard to know what to get rid of.

Do you know the site “365 less things”? The blogger suggests tasks for six days a week: dispose of, declutter, throw away, give away, sell, get rid of . . . every little helps. I’m trying!!
 
#9 ·
It's a process. It gets easier the more you purge though.

If you have two of something and don't need two, keep the best and get rid of the other. If you get rid of something extra and the one you keep needs to be replaced later, chances are good the stores will have another one. You have to decide if you want a home or a warehouse. There are some exceptions, of course.

If you have numerous things of sentimental value, choose one or two and let the rest go, especially if they're all from the same person.

Don't try to figure out other uses for things unless you need whatever you're repurposing the items into. Repurposed items still take up the same space. It took me a long time to get over remaking things just because I can.

If you don't need it or absolutely love it, ask yourself if it's earning the space it takes up.

If it's a project of some kind, be honest about how likely you are to finish it, and if you do finish it, where will it go and do you really need/want it?

Accept that you'll make some mistakes, and make up your mind right now you're not going to beat yourself up about it, you're just going to buy a replacement and forget about it.
 
#11 ·
Don't try to figure out other uses for things unless you need whatever you're repurposing the items into. Repurposed items still take up the same space. It took me a long time to get over remaking things just because I can.
Yes - ! I stood for a l-o-n-g time with a fragile, basketry tray in my hands. It's been with other trays, in the kitchen, for ages; I was thinking I should get rid of it but I found myself wondering what I could repurpose it as. NOT A THING. It's gone.

But the childhood I had in England, in the aftermath of the Second World War, when we were still collecting newspapers, glass bottles and jars and metallic "silver" paper in class, and when there were pig-swill containers in every community, and when those lucky enough to have space to keep chickens made their own chicken-feed from household scraps . . . was a very strong formative influence.

Today I put in the collecting bag for local charity one voluminous heathery-pink scarf that I haven't worn since I donated the pink coat I wore it with - and that was so long ago I can't remember when it was.

The craft materials I am probably NOT going to use up are next for consideration.
 
#10 ·
Dh returned in Oct after 3.5 yrs. Combining the
2 households will take a while. This thread will help.
 
#13 ·
SD, you're a writer, right? I have a question. What do you do with the old drafts of your books/articles? I have hard copies of drafts of a self-published book taking up a filing cabinet drawer. I'd like to get rid of them, but am not sure if it's a wise thing from a legal or professional perspective. Can you or anyone else shed some light on this topic?

Also, for other homeschool moms or those who've homeschooled in the past... I have two bankers boxes of finished projects and work the girls did. They are in their late 20s/early 30s now and won't be needing this stuff. Hanging onto it is purely a sentimental thing for me. For DD#1 I neatly organized everything into 3 or 4 binders to keep and pitched the rest. But DD#2 presents a problem. She was a lot more prolific in her writing! Should I just bite the bullet and do the same for her that I did for DD#1? Or should I just give up and toss everything? What are you doing? Or plan to do?
 
#15 ·
Peanut, I'm going through unpublished stuff and if it's of no more use to me, it's being shredded. I would never toss unpublished work where just anyone could find it. Magazines I've been published in, I keep in slipcases. It's the e-files that make me crazy. That, and the various drafts of my first novel because I stupidly did not date them, so I have several 400-page mss. I can't get rid of till I determine which one makes the most sense to keep and which are the oldest ones and which are multiple hard copies I printed for my beta readers. E-files are hard because I need bits and pieces from them and IMO it's hard to looks at an e document, moreso than being able to page through a hard copy. But I'll get through them eventually. I also have a stack of partials I'll be going through and shredding. I think fiction writing is a bit different though because I do use parts of past work or even just the ideas from some parts in new projects. Nonfiction, not if the info is outdated. I may keep some of the e-files of my non-fic because I still own all rights and could potentially sell the articles again.

I'm keeping the magazines the articles are published in. I never had hard copies of those, but I would dump those, too. That's the plan with the hard copies of my published fic, as soon as I get time to go through and match up the mss. with what's been published. No use keeping those either, since I no longer own the rights to them and there's no other market for them anyway.

If I had multiple copies of published works that have no monetary value, no question, I would keep one copy just because it's a project I accomplished, and destroy or otherwise get rid of all the others. There's no point I can see in keeping multiple copies if you can't sell them. There are no legal ramifications I can think of for destroying extra copies.

If your girls aren't interested in the homeschool projects they did, why not pick out a couple of their best stuff and dump the rest? Or maybe the best one from each year for each of them or something like that. Why keep ALL of it?
 
#18 ·
Today's declutter was
1. a packed-away box of half a dozen vintage glass dessert dishes (that I bought second-hand anyway!) - used once. They'll go to the dealer who works for a charitable organization; she's very effective at getting the best possible prices for the charity she works for.
2. a scarf that MyLovelyMan's mean-spirited b*tchy sister gave me one year, at Christmas. Not my colour(s); scratchy. I've tried it as a table runner and it doesn't work so - donated.

I sometimes wish we could donate the sister . . . Any takers?
 
#19 ·
I am going to start on my bathroom (BR ensuite)

It is such a mess that I don't hang out there much.
 
#21 ·
I am in too, we have a few major changes in the next 2 years, need to declutter/purge to simplify our lifes. DH agrees too. So posting my progress might help me to stay on track. I am not going to set a time frame on what need to done by when, because sometimes we can get a whole lot done in one weekend but could be months later before we find time to work on another area. I have a different approach this time, 'declutter/purge daily, 5-10 mins at a time', & then 1 day a month to do a more detail decluttering on the sections I've been working on in the last few weeks. In a way, a systematic approach, let's see how this work out for me in 2016.
 
#22 ·
Peanut, I think the basement makes good sense for several reasons. It'll give you someplace to sort into, and it probably contains a lot of stuff you don't have any big attachments to, making it easier to purge and get in the habit.

OTOH, if you have tons to purge and things aren't well organized, then it's probably not possible to do things in a linear way. For us it's been circular, because everything we had to do had things that had to be done both before and after the targeted task. All we could do is jump in at some point in the circle, do the minimum we needed to do to work on a task, and go from there. Usually that meant jumping back out of the circle after a task and jumping back in at some unrelated point. Getting rid of the pool table is a perfect example of that. I'd have love to do things in a certain order, but because of the space the pool table took up and the difficulty of getting rid of it, so much of our plans had to be delayed till we could get rid of that. That's why we had the big freezer and the dining room set in the LR for so long. But we just worked on other things till we could work out the pool table issue.

I finally decided it doesn't matter what we do, as long as we're making progress. Eventually things will start to come together like you want them to, but it might not seem like it for a long time. I make a lot of lists of things that need to be done around here, but if we decide to work on something that's not on the list but still needs to be done, we just go with it because it's still progress and it all has to be done sooner or later. This year we've gotten more done than we ever have, but most of what we did was not on any of our lists.
 
#24 ·
We're real wishy-washy about moving but haven't ruled it out at retirement, which could be as early as three years from now. It's a good incentive even if we don't move. And you're right, thinking about having to pay to move all this crap does help put in perspective how important some of this stuff is. Three years is going to go by in a flash, too, so we know we don't have as much time as it seems if we want to be ready to list the house and move at that time.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top