Frugal Village Forums banner

2014 household purge/declutter challenge

37K views 431 replies 45 participants last post by  gaja 
#1 ·
I didn't see a thread for this and cleaning up my household is one of my main 2014 goals so I wanted to go ahead and start one here.

The challenge is to purge, sell or repurpose 2014 things from your household in 2014. Everything counts, from a scrap of hoarded mail from 2009 to that sofa that smells funny and nobody sits on anymore.

Challenge starts at the stroke of midnight January 1, 2014 and runs till 2359 12/31/2014.

I hope you all are ready and willing to participate, because I could sure use a few supportive friends along the way.
:grwave::grwave:
 
#186 ·
Still plugging along here. I think I've sold 6 things this week, and I have someone coming tomorrow to buy 2 lamps. I listed 2 more things on ebay today and I have 5 or 6 games to list on the fb yardsale site tomorrow. I also pulled out a big bag of yarn to offer to dd's art teacher for use with her students.
 
#187 ·
I tossed a bunch of fabric yesterday, including some old clothes for recycled sewing projects. I also tossed a few small balls of itchy yarn. I tossed one ball that was a color I did not like. It was yarn I hand dyed but it turned out greenish yellow which is one of my least favorite colors.

All in all it was a kitchen garbage bag of stuff, maybe about 2/3rds full.
 
#188 ·
I'll be getting rid of some old sheets today, for sure. My goal is to make most of the bedding for our king bed fit in the four drawers under the bed. I'll have to get rid of at least a couple large black trash bags worth to make that happen. Clearing out all the old worn sheets and pillow cases will be a good start.

Wish the weather would straighten up so we could haul a few loads of trash and get it out of the garage.
 
#189 ·
Donated one book to the library tonight :) Over the weekend, I sorted through our winter wear, and I'll have a big bag of outgrown gloves, mittens and hats, and some homemade scarves and a coat to donate to SA next fall. Now I just have to find somewhere to keep the bag that won't drive me bonkers until then. Sometimes my minimalism crosses over into crazy-lady territory ;)
 
#190 ·
I sorted some of the inherited fancy dishes and set out about a dozen and a half wine glasses to get rid of plus three souvenir plates and a candle holder. Small progress.

I find it interesting to see what others are getting rid of. I'm not really a busybody at heart but for some reason this topic fascinates me.
 
#191 ·
On Sunday, we took our old flexsteel sofa that is in excellent shape over to dd#1. It has been extra and up in the guest room for about 10 years, and her sofa was trashed and falling apart. It is 90's floral....but a slipcover would be fine (camel back style) Her dh doesn't like the flowers. REALLY??? Someone gives you a free sofa in near perfect condition and clean...delivered to your home and set up. The correct response is: "Thank you"
Anyway....it's out of my house.
 
#193 ·
Started spring cleaning today:

Emptied, sorted, culled and cleaned the
white 4 shelf FOOD cabinet on the left side;

3 sacks of food for dh,
9 sacks for the local church that feed the
homeless weekly.

Few sacks went to trash, but not
as much as I thought would go.
 
#194 ·
I've been working on a quilt I started in the early 1980's. Yes, I've procrastinated about it that long. In order to finish it, I have used up not only the quilt top itself, but at least half of a huge piece of yardage to make the quilt's borders, yards and yards of quilted nylon I had used for another purpose but now have no need for, and a huge piece of yard goods for the backer. All of that will now be out of my sewing room and put to good use, since we need a nice summer weight coverlet. I actually have a little bit of open shelf space in my sewing room closet now. Amazing!

I have enough left of the border fabric to make up three or four new pillowcases, which we also need. I have a scrap of the quilted yellow nylon left about 8x16. I might throw that away just because I'm so darn sick of having that stuff hanging around. There are a few scraps left of the backer, and that will go into the stash to use to make things to sell, if I ever get that far. So all in all, it's worked out really well.

I also packed up a box of glassware I had sorted before, and Husby dropped it off at GW today, so that's out of here.

Husby brought in the board we took off the front of the cedar chest a while back. I'm hoping we get that cut in half this weekend so I can add a shelf to the top of the cedar chest, which will make space for three more AeroGardens without the need to use up more floor space. It should be a fairly quick, easy project.

I've been working off and on in the bathroom, trying to clear out the shelves there so I can remove those and put in a repurposed microwave stand to hold all the usual bathroom stuff. I've been getting rid of dried up lotions and combining partial containers of HBAs and stuff like that. Still a long way to go but at least it's started now.
 
#195 ·
WTG on the quilt, SD! I am still plugging away slowly, selling a few things each week. I consolidated my sell/donate pile into 3 boxes...one of winter things to save until next fall, one of household and summer things that I'll take to SA soon if they don't sell, and one of new items that can be used as teen gifts for Toys for Tots.
 
#196 ·
All that's left to do on the quilt now is the hem, which is going to take a while since it's huge. But that's just time, nothing too difficult, and it'll be easier than the topstitching that was in the middle of all that yardage. I'm not doing anything elaborate on this project, that's why it's going so quickly. I did the top so long ago it's not very well done, so not worth trying to do any precision work on it now. But it'll be new and nice and summery, so it's worth finishing if not finishing well.
 
#197 ·
Came here for inspiration and got it! Am having such a hard time getting rid of anything - ugh. Definitely need to check in more often!
 
#198 ·
:cheer4::cheer4::cheer4::cheer4::cheer4::cheer4::cheer4::cheer4:

Wow, what a RELIEF! The quilt is ALL DONE! Thirty years after being started. Better late than never, I guess. It's far from perfect but at least we can use it now. I'm sick of the old stuff we've been using so maybe I can get rid of some of that to help clear out some clutter.

Now I'm more inspired to work on other sewing UFOs. I know I have at least four shirts back there for Husby, and most are at least half done. He loved wearing interesting shirts to work but then they changed the dress code, which is really stupid because they don't deal with the public in person, so what's the difference? Now he can only wear his pink shirt with the puff paint teddy bears on it, or the one with the moose and eagles all over it, or the native American prints, etc. on Friday which is casual day. So now he has less need of his goofy shirts. But I should finish those up anyway. There's some other stuff that needs to be either finished or purged, too, stuff I can't even remember.

MM, one thing that's helped me get rid of things is thinking about how many hours of work an item represents, and how much of my life it's going to take to make it into something useful. A lot of the time, it's just not worth the sacrifice to me and then it's easy to get rid of it.
 
#199 ·
Congrats on the quilt - pictures please!

Mahalo for the wise words!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Spirit Deer
#200 ·
I posted the pic of the quilt top on a couple other threads but not on this one, I don't think. I don't really have a good way to take any pics of the completed quilt, so this will have to do. It doesn't really look much different except for the border added now.


Now I need to make up the pillowcases from the leftover fabric before I change my mind. Those would be really quick and then that fabric would be completely out of the sewing room.

I think I will start work on the Lone Star quilt. I have the star done and it's gorgeous. It was a ton of work so it's a shame it's just hanging around in the closet, unfinished.
 
#202 ·
Thanks! It's from my days of fascination with Magnum, P.I., reggae music, Eddy Grant, Barbados, and all things tropical. LOL. It's going to fight like crazy with the northwoods theme I started in the bedroom, with the woodsy curtains and the moose and canoe wallpaper border. Oh, well.

I've been waiting all winter to dump the old feathers out of our bed pillows. Some of the feathers in them are from back when I was a kid, and that was a while ago. I had some new feathers added a few years ago but it didn't help much. They're still not nice pillows. So I'm going to dump them, literally, outside for the birds to use for nesting material, assuming spring ever arrives and the summer birds, too. I got a bunch of really nice feather pillows filled with wild goose and duck down when we cleaned out Mom's house last year. I was going to make some over into king size pillows, but then started thinking about how we use pillows. They're all over the bed. We curl around them, use them under our heads, prop our books on them, fold them in half to prop up our heads to watch TV, etc. We'd be far better served by having six regular size pillows instead of two king size. So that's what I'm going to put in there. If we change our minds, I can always make king pillows later.

I should get eight or nine pillow cases out of the remnant of the shell fabric by piecing in the scraps from the quilt back. We need new pillowcases so I'm all for that, since we're going to have all these new pillows. Piecing them will take a little longer, but it'll be worth it to get so many new ones.

I'm going to start using the pretty embroidered pillowcases we got for a wedding gift, too. We'll be married 39 years in July. What the heck are we saving them for? Crazy...
 
#203 ·
Today is a beautiful day, while we're waiting for the next winter storm to hit and dump 12-18 inches on us. April Fool on us, I guess. Let's hope that forecast is just a bad joke and we don't get anything.

At any rate, I took advantage of the fifty degree temps and went out to the garage to get reacquainted with my saws. First I used up the front of a cedar chest we removed a few months ago, and made a shelf to set three AeroGardens on. The new shelf was installed on top of the cedar chest, so now we have space for six gardens without giving up any more floor space than we were using for three. That nice cedar board is put to use instead of being clutter in the garage, and the living room smells like fresh-cut cedar. :) I love seeing the whole wall full of veggies growing.

I also cut some scrap lumber to make some shelves for my mom's pantry in her apartment. I'm sure she'll appreciate the extra storage space, and it gets a small stack of lumber out of our garage. I have to paint and assemble those yet, so I'll do that sometime this week. Hopefully, the snow will melt quickly so it's safer for me to come down off the hill so I can install it at her place soon.
 
#205 ·
I hope you avoided the snow, SD. It was so sunny and beautiful here yesterday...today very gray, but at least no snow.

I emptied the card catalog yesterday (office and craft supplies), looking toward selling it. I really want a new camera. I've sold one old camera and will list another soon, but the only thing I have left of high enough value to raise the money for the new camera is the card catalog, lol! I was planning to sell it in 3 years anyway before we relocated (it's our local library's original card catalog from around 1906, so it needs to stay in town!)

Anyway, I emptied it out and relocated stuff I actually use and want to keep to a few small drawers. Some 30-40 tubes of paint, fabric markers and a few other items are going to DD's art teacher. A small bag of scrapbooking materials, a little grapevine wreath, and some plastic battery cases (I had a gazillion of these) will be donated. A few things hit the trash. Now, to figure out where to sell the card catalog!
 
#206 ·
I forgot to post. A couple weeks ago I went through the teen girls clothing. I donated 2 blue bags full, put away 1/2 blue blue bag for dd10 and then a few items for me (losing weight, and some of their things will fit me in a few months..lol..it will save me $$ on new clothes, during the transitional phases, they may not be happy to see me wearing their old things..lol). This weekend, we went through the laundry room/junk area and got rid of a bunch. DH cleaned the back entrance high shelf, and we disposed of several things.

I have been working in my craft space, the clutter isn't trash but things with no real homes, working through that now. Don't get much time down there, but 30 minutes a day will make a good amount of progress in a couple weeks.

Need to go through the cabinets. Dh keeps saying we need more frying pans. More means more dishes to wash, as no one washes the pan when done with it. One means it does get washed. What do you do?

I want to thin out more items. I think we'd be fine with less of several things. It means washing more often. Not a big deal. It means more room in the cabinets, less stuff collecting on the counter.
 
#207 ·
I just recently joined this forum, and would like to join this challenge. I have been decluttering for the past few months, but I haven't been counting items.

I box up and pass down our kids clothes to our nieces and nephews, so they get packed up and put in the garage until we see family.

We have taken tons of books to our local used book store. We've done the same with video games and some board games. It's nice to get the stuff out of our house, and also nice to get some money for them.

My sister was here last week and we were able to send several boxes of outgrown clothes and toys and some household items with her. We also gave her 2 dressers and a glider and ottoman.

I have a van load of misc. stuff to donate to our church yard sale.

We regularly donate stuff to local charities.

If I had to take a guess, I'd say between passing down clothes and toys, and all of the stuff we've donated to charities, and the stuff we've taken to the used book/game store, I think we've exceeded 1,000 items!
 
#209 ·
as I am moving soon I better join this challenge. Got rid of some dishes, bowls, pitcher, decorative tins, antique cobalt blue bottles (4), wood serving tray and an antique canning jar.

Last week got rid of two small bags of winter clothes to local clothes closet (free thrift shop).


DH got rid of most of his socks and I will be going through more clothes today to donate to clothes closet tomorrow. Got to do winter clothes before they "change over" for the summer!
 
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