Other Decluttering Successes

**AmyBoz** · 01-03-2006, 02:52 PM

It seems as though many of you are decluttering many areas of your home at once.

Please feel free to use this thread to share with us any decluttering successes you are having in areas of your home that we are not currently working on in the NYNH Challenge!

For example, two days ago I freecycled away a box of toys and today someone is coming to pick up a metal storage drawer system that was taking up space in my basement, but not being used. Yeah me!

guest7 · 01-03-2006, 04:16 PM

Today I took down the decorations and sorted the ones that were still boxed.
Every year DH and DS mumbles something about how they hate taking down 10 heavy boxes of decorations when I only pilfer through a few.
So, this year DH bought 10 rubbermaid bins ($3/10 at HD).
I marked each bin individually so that all I have to do is decide what I want to decorate with this year.

Each year is something different- that's why I pilfer through and pick out certain things.

I have themes- blue and white, red and green, red and gold, silver and gold, country classic, red and white, green and white, red, white and blue and the list can go on.

So I sorted each ornament and decoration according to it's color or purpose and marked the bin. They are ready to go to the attic when DS gets home from work.

There's one bin that contains things I'd use every year- such as window candles, extension cords etc. It's marked- Take Me Down Every Year!

The great part, is the bins are not too large or heavy so I won't be getting mumbles next Thanksgiving. And- I only need to decide the color combinations I want and the minimum number of bins are coming down.

DH and DS are VERY happy with this.

guest7 · 01-03-2006, 04:26 PM

My next organization project I'll have to do before and after photos.

Since joining FV I realized that my kitchen is not running efficiently. When you see the pics you'll know what I mean.

I am always jumping up on the counters searching for basic ingredients. My cabinets are overstuffed with -God knows what!
I simply can't keep track of it.

So, I will be organizing my cabinets and pantry. I'll inventory what I have and what basic ingredients I'll need. Then Ill research frugal recipes so I'll know if I have at least those ingredients. I saw a great thread on FV with some great ideas.

I'll keep you posted. But you'll have to promise me you won't laugh at my cabinets when I show you the disorganized mess in there! LOL

**AmyBoz** · 01-03-2006, 05:24 PM

No one will be laughing! We'll be proud of you for getting it under control.

**crdurham** · 01-03-2006, 06:04 PM

I have a table in the basement where I keep all my frames and mats, etc. I love to frame my own prints and reframe, etc. I have done a few paid projects as well. Anyway, I had a mess down there, stacks of frames, everything out of order, etc. There was all kinds of other junk piled up on the table to.

I went down there yesterday and got it all straightened up. I can take a picture if you wanta see

. I separated my frames, mats and cardboard. Got out the stuff that has pictures in them in a different pile. And now ONLY framing stuff is on the table. I am going to go through them again when we clean the basement and put some in the yard sale pile. It was just a little project but it makes me feel good to get it done.

**SHOPGIRL** · 01-03-2006, 07:19 PM

I've been getting rid of paper, filing, etc... I filled up one bag today. I'm working on getting rid of the mail the minute it touches my hands. I've always tossed the junk mail right away. Now, I'm going one step further, throwing out catalogs I don't need, etc... right away.

My dh unfortunately got on the declutter bandwagon while I was out returning things yesterday. I came home to a broken armoire. He decided to rearrange the office, but didn't want the armoire in the office. It's very heavy and part of it went crashing down the basement stairs. I was sooo mad at him. Then, he brought another piece of furniture into the house, but I decided that it didn't coordinate with the room. In the meantime, all the stuff inside the armoire was scattered all over the floor in the office and the basement. After calming down, I started to pick up the mess and sort it. This was not a project I was planning on doing. I was in the middle of another declutter project. We ended up bringing up a couch from the basement and putting it in the office. This was really tough as the legs and the back of the couch are curved which makes it about impossible to make it through our narrow doorways. So, after a long time, we made it to the office. I rearranged it, but not before I gashed the corner of my face on one of the pieces of furniture. Oh, and we wrecked the light and the light bulb in the basement stairway. I did mention to my dh that I though we should remove the light, but of course, he didn't think that was necessary. The office looks great except for the desk. That totally needs to be decluttered, but that will be for another day.

I conquered all the clean laundry. It's been piling up in the basement waiting for me to put it away. So, that is one large pile gone, and a whole lot of socks found their mates.

Tonight, I'm going to finish working on the kitchen. We enter our house through the kitchen since we use the back door so this is where a lot of stuff gets dropped.

Oh, and I have a hook on the back of one of my doors in the kitchen-it leads down to the basement. This is where I put my coat when I'm too lazy to walk through the living room to the front hall closet.

My main decluttering project besides the paper are my clothes. There are just too many not being worn so I'm really trying to part with them. I've got a donate bag started.

The rest of the week will be spent working on the basement. I'm reorganizing it and decluttering at the same time. The decluttering project is making slow, but steady progress

**AmyBoz** · 01-03-2006, 07:28 PM

Great work Cornelia and Shannon! So exciting! (Sorry about all the damage, though, Shannon!)

I'd love to see pictures!

**SHOPGIRL** · 01-03-2006, 10:04 PM

O.K. Amy, here is the photo. 4 bags of trash and a kitchen floor that needs to be cleaned. The junk is all stuff that I found around the house.  Good thing tomorrow is trash day.

http://www.ssb4.net/users/11464/trash.jpg

**hollyhill** · 01-03-2006, 11:14 PM

Dh finally had time to fix a large computor desk which was given to us. It needed a piece to be reglued. We removed the two smaller desks from Ds roomand replaced them with the one large one, which fits much better. Unfortunately the two smaller ones only moved to the crawlspace because we have no way of transpoting them to the thrift store (we have two small hondas)...so they will have to live there for awhile.

**kaykwilts** · 01-05-2006, 11:27 AM

I got rid of a bunch of magazines. I also threw away about a dozen or so useless boxes taking up space.

**missmollymayhem** · 01-05-2006, 06:53 PM

This may sound sill, but I de-cluttered my kitchen window ledges. I had a collection of cobalt blue glass bottles that just collected dust- I'm trying to get out of "collection mode" so I recycled them all. Recycle man took them away this morning. Some of them were vintage, but I've decided that just means really old garbage.

I also put the teapot from that window ledge collection on Ebay, and it's bid up to $13 right now. When the buyer pays I'll be sending that money off to my debts.

**AmyBoz** · 01-05-2006, 07:46 PM

Good for you, MissMolly! Those are some of the hard decisions that we need to make if we truly want decluttered homes! I'm proud of you!

**Darlene** · 01-05-2006, 08:08 PM

Oh my, I did this with my ds help. We live in a house with no real attic. The kids closets are the biggest and have held many diff things including the many games and things they played over the years, many with missing pieces. Well the other day he got a new desk and was wanting to get rid of all the unused stuff in his room especially that closet but waited til late afternoon to do it but he was unrelenting. It was just what I needed to just get the job done. 3 large garbage bags to trash and one big burn pile later he has a closet with major empty shelves. I threw sentimentality to the wind and just got it out. Some leftovers will be going to family and friends tho.
Dd's clost is next.

**couponchic** · 01-05-2006, 08:35 PM

Sounds like you guys have been busy and doing a great job. My main focus on decluttering is paperwork right now. Since we will be moving hopefully in about a month, most of our stuff is boxed up. We really pared down when we moved back in the fall, so we're in decent shape other than the neverending mountains of paperwork.