Not quite a horder - decluttering
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Getting back on track with the move and dropped of old, beat up sofa and 2 recliners at the dump. By weeks end we’ll move the furniture we are keeping into storage, then the final sorting of remaining stuff. Last will be the bedroom furniture moved into the garage to sell. It’s been slow but it’s finally picking up now.
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illimae, it always feels so good to get rid of what isn’t needed!
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A miracle has occurred. DH decided he didn't want to keep a stack of Cooking Light magazines. I know where more are but the recycle bin is full. I plan to toss them without mentioning it to him. We subscribed for a year, but discovered that 'light' is in relation to Gourmet Magazine, not what we would call light and healthy.
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Jazzy - I sort of skimmed and then realized it's really funny. What? Classes in Blood Stain Removal? A Potato museum? Thanks for the chuckle.
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It seemed a bit much so I removed it. Was I wrong? Should I repost?
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To All Decluttering Ladies: We decided to go from just replacing the kitchen floor to redoing the cabinets doors and moving some cabinets sideways to put in space for a freestanding dishwasher. Time to donate pots/pans I haven't used in decades. I have roasting pans that could hold a 40 lb turkey. When will I ever used that again? I also have an embarrassing number of dishes. I like dishes. I like my collection of Japanese dishes with the rectangle and square shapes, the lovely glazes, the little dipping dishes. I have a whole set of French White. I have a set of multi cololured Festival ware. My everyday dishes are white with a thin blue strip around the edges. Oh! And friends bought me and my DH an 8-place setting of Royal Standard English china with all the usual flowers and such for our wedding. They never suited anywhere we have lived, or any tables we have owned. The French White and The English china are in the basement. .We are also going to reno the basement. The French White and the fancy English are in tubs and are going into the shed. I will donate the Festival ware. (bye bye my favourite summer dishes)
I heard the phrase "consumed" to differentiate those folks from Hoarders. I guess we are consumed.
Filing cabinets. Good grief. I decided it was time to purge it. I found some fun things like a drawing my friend's son had done at age 4 of me on a horse waving a sword. He's 32 now and getting married. I made sure the drawing went back to their family. Much of it is old old old banking statement. I am bagging them up to go to the local UPS that has shredding services.
The lighting in the basement is awful. I think I may have said this before, maybe on another thread, but the guy who built the suite must have thought he was going to rent to moles. Even with the brightest, whites bulbs it is like a dungeon. We are turning the kitchen/laundry area into just a dedicated laundry room. We have no plans to ever rent again and when we move it will be bulldozed. The dirt is worth a fortune and some big, new house will be put up in its place. I want to be here when the house has it's 100th birthday in a few years. It deserves that at least.
Our Salvation Army is one block away so I can bag up and walk over regularly.
We have so many books. Years ago I boxed a bunch up and got a locker for them. We still have too many books. My darling other half has a fantasy of bringing them all back and having a library. I say nothing - but - nope not going to happen. All the books that we both really love are still in the house. Sometimes I sneak a not so important book off to Companion Books and if they want it they give me a credit for getting books at their store. If they don't want it then I literally walk across the street to the Salvation Army.
Then there are the small electrical appliances that should have gone to recycling years ago. In the basement, out of sight. I hardly go down there because it is so dreary and dark.
Lots of people think we are nuts to be doing so much work at our age when the house will get bulldozed. I do not want to live in a condo. The $$ spent will not leave us penniless and we hopefully will get a few years of having a more useable space. .
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Jazzy - Personally I think you should re-post. We all need a chuckle to get through the days.
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Elderberry - I'm with you. You're not nuts. I hope to be in my house until they carry me out feet first - although my house is only just over 1/2 a century old.
A few years ago I installed new double-pane windows, a new roof and had the exterior painted. Last year I replaced the water heater & the furnace. This year I had the attic re-piped - which meant I could finally tear out & replace two ceilings that had small leaks years ago. Once the ceilings were down, it made sense to go ahead & have the entire place painted, new floors & new carpet & new tile tall toilets in the bathrooms & new tile in one bath. Still to come, new insulation & replacing the window coverings that are 45 years old - but I got tired of having people in my house every day & ran out of energy not to mention disposable funds.
What this means in terms of this thread is that much of the furniture I had crammed into the house from grandparents & parents & aunts, etc. went away. 85% of the vinyl records went to the record store. 10-12 cartons of books went to Friends of the Library. (well I still have 9 floor to ceiling full bookcases since that's my weakness). Clothes were ruthlessly taken to the Battered Women's home. Something like 16 boxes. Family things were mailed to various cousins around the country. And so far I have taken 36 huge contractor bags full of old paperwork to be shredded. Since I had to move everything out for floors & carpet, my plan was none of the boxes would come back in until I went through each one. That is working out well, but the process has definitely slowed down.
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MinusTwo: Can't just can't get rid of the records. I still have The Rolling Stones "England's Newest Hitmakers" record that I bought when I was about 14 - 1964. Considering the crappy turntables I used it is still in good shape. I have bought CD versions of things like "In Search of the Lost Chord' but still have the vinyl version. Oh dear --- books. So hard to part with.
As to old folks moving into condos so as not to have to contend with stairs. I figure that is keeping me fit. When I worked at The Travel Clinic we had a couple who were 86 years old just back from summitting Mount Kilimanjaro. They got into shape for it by doing The Grouse Grind everyday. Folks here will know that the Grouse Grind is a grind. They were off to some other adventure.
My 84 year old brother-in-law just gave up riding his 10-speed bike but he can still walk miles.
Keep on truckin'
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Elderberry - I have records I can't part with - but invited my nieces & nephews to come take what they wanted before I went to the Vinyl record Exchange, Of course they wanted all the records I kept - for example 1st Beatles album. But I got almost $100 for the records I did take in & treated myself to a nice dinner.
Last year I walked 6 miles every single day. I slacked off when renovations started, but I still walk 6 miles several times a week. Hope we both have the genes that let us be relatively healthy for a long time yet.
Edited to say - I really feel relieved that so much stuff is gone. Even all my Lenox and De Havilland china and much of the silver. I'm happy w/my books.
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I have old Fiesta Ware which I love, but is too heavy to use every day. So we mostly use plain white Corningware and have some cuter dishes from Goodwill for desserts. It was my great aunt's and I loved to visit as a kid and choose which color to have my cereal in.
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Looks like we're all re-using instead of tossing recently. There was a great article in "The Week", adapted from a story originally published in "Philadelphia Magazine" by Sandy Hingston. Why I'm Not Throwing Out My Stuff. Since we know our kids don't want the stuff.... Her take away - "I could always stuff all this crap into Hefty bags and toss it out with the trash. I mean. It is trash, right? Stripped MY memories of when & how it was acquired and used, it's not worth dick."
And that's the kicker...discarding the memories.
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Minus the article makes a great point. It's often the memories that keep us keeping it.
I continue clearing out and have made the most progress in my office. Keep avoiding the basement where DH and I have the most/ mingled memories and stuff.
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There's a lot of stuff I don't use and don't particularly want. We have been getting rid of much more than getting over the last several years. However, the house is largish and there is a lot of empty storage space. There isn't clutter and there's no big need to get rid of things quickly. But I don't want to leave a mess for my kids, either, and I don't want to leave a mess for me if we choose to move some time in the next few years.
But in the meantime, I should make a point to truly enjoy what I have. Dishes? Yeah, use the pretty ones. Are they too heavy too fragile too hard to wash? Use them a few more times, enjoy the feel the look the luxury. And THEN get rid of them.
I always get something out of the discussion in this thread. Thanks, everyone!
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Season's Greetings to all!
Marie Kondo who I consider the queen of decluttering agrees that sentimentality plays a big role in what we choose to keep. That's why her suggested plan of attack is to start with clothes, then books and papers and miscellaneous, leaving sentimental items for last. It makes incredible sense because if you start with that which is near and dear to your heart it can slow you down or halt the process completely.
MountainMia, I also have lots of room and rooms and am good at organizing but at one point I realized I had an awful lot of organized junk! That was a number of years ago and since that epiphany I've made lots of progress in decluttering.
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My most recent epiphany: my bedroom closet needed an update. Dh had built it 30 years ago, a nice size, but somewhat crudely built and the cheapest sliding doors for the four foot opening. One of the doors was 28" wide which left me a 20" opening to put clothes in, pull clothes out. After awhile the hardware malfunctioned so the doors jammed up a lot. With so many other priorities, life was too busy to pay much attention to it.
Last month, tho, I told dh for my Christmas present I wanted him to replace the sliding doors with louvered bifold doors. The inside was in desperate need of new paint, some parts were still exposed wood, and I wanted a new clothes rod and some hooks installed. It only took a couple weekends and oh. my. word. The transformation has been like going from the black and white part of the Wizard of Oz to the doors opening to “living color"in Munchkin Land. I'm thrilled!
Since the bifold doors open from the middle, I now have full access to the entire closet and my clothes at one time. During the process I thinned out stuff I no longer wore and organized the rest according to type, sweaters together, then jackets, short sleeve shirts, etc. I enjoy it more and more every day.
Since I had clothes to donate from this project, dh and I also sifted through some winter outerwear resulting in four large bags of coats, jackets and hoodies. All still in really good condition, zippers and snaps still working, no holes or stains, nice and warm! He dropped them off at Urban Missions yesterday. Stuff donated to them stays local—I'm not so sure about Goodwill.
I bought a new, smaller Christmas tree this month. I never cared for my old one, but there's nothing wrong with it and it's prelit, so I plan to donate that to another local organization. All this decluttering feels really, really great!
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Congrats on the new closet, DivineMrsM. That sounds like a great gift from a lot of different angles.
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Minus Two - I have heard some people take a photograph of their sentimental things before they donate them. I also believe the memories stay inside my head. But that's not entirely true. Just recently, I saw something online that jarred a memory of a book I read when I was about 12 years old, but I couldn't remember the name of the book (and the actual book was long gone). My sisters helped me by finding the book online. So we do forget things.
Reader - good work on the office. It's time-consuming to go through paperwork, but we have burned a lot of it in our fire pit - that's fun!
Mountain Mia - not leaving a ton of stuff for my daughter to deal with is my motivation, too. We just used our good dishes at Thanksgiving. My daughter says she wants them when she gets her first real job and an apartment. Sounds good as long as we can get them to her. We don't know yet how far away she will be.
We recently got rid of a couple of large pieces of furniture - a roll top desk and a piano. The piano was quite the ordeal. Even though it was on the first floor of the house, The 1-800-GOT-JUNK would not move it down the short flight of stairs at the front door. So my husband and his friend did the work, and these guys are not big/strong men. So the brick steps got a little damaged. But we have re-done the first floor with new planked floors, new painted walls, fewer pics on the walls, fewer things sitting out. It looks really nice. However, it created some piles of stuff to go through. My DH took a car load of stuff to a local charity. After Christmas, I hope to clean out my closet.
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GoKale - I am constantly amazed that NO ONE wants used pianos. Not only did I have problems donating/removing mine, but several of my friends had the same problem.
Mountain Mia - I agree about using those old dishes with lingering memories one more time & then passing them on. My BFF did that two years ago at "the last" big, formal,Thanksgiving dinner. Well it was the last big dinner & she did box up the dishes - but she couldn't bring herself to give the box away & she's moved it twice now.
Wow Devine - the closet sounds wonderful.
I have worked diligently all year getting rid of stuff after old galvanized pipes leaked in my attic & ceilings had to be removed - with everything boxed up & stacked in the garage.. As Devine mentioned, leaving sentimental items to the end does help. But I stalled out when I got to the 14 or 15 boxes of pictures and the reams of correspondence. I have letters from some friends spanning 50 years. I did read through numerous shoeboxes full of letters I wrote to my Mother that she had saved. Unfortunately she even saved every little card that was attached to delivered flowers, and Hallmark cards with no message so it was a big chore. I actually created a "word" document with dates & snippets of things that struck me as worth 'memorializing'. Of course it was me editing & judging, and what I chose may have no meaning to anyone else - and I may never read it again, but still....
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GoKale: We tried to donate our upright piano to "Piano On The Streets" . They take old pianos, paint them up in wild colours and patterns then put them on streets throughout town for people to just sit down and play. But they have more then they can use and Covid put pay to even doing it these two past years. No one wants real pianos anymore. Everyone seems to have weighted key electric pianos and since so many people are living condos and townhouses with joined walls they can play with earphones on.
We are not hoarders like in "Hoarders: Buried Alive" but we seem to have too much stuff but I like the "stuff" ---- too may vinyl records, CDs and books. Renovating the kitchen I managed to get rid of an excess of things like quiches pans. I don't need three.
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Here's before and after photos of the closet exterior. Dh and I cannot get over what a huge difference and improvement in appearance the new doors made. And I'm thrilled with the vastly improved functionality of the space!
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Wow, looks so nice, Divine Mrs. M! What nice work - and for the space to be much more functional - so great!
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Divine: those bifold doors make a HUGE difference. They add grace.
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Thanks for sharing Devine. What a wonderful change.
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Really lovely change. My next home improvement project is going to be a revamp of my two walk in closets.
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Love this look!! I'm inspired to change my mirrored slider door ( dark, limits access) to your louvered style. Thanks for sharing.
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I would do the change also if the house wasn't up for sale. Likely buyer would be a builder who would tear it down and put in ugly townhouses.
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Oh Wren - got it in one. I live in a very small older neighborhood - but not 'historical' old. Residents keep mentioning we should find some way to stop owners from selling to 'flippers' and 'investors'. Yeah - like that would work... When older people die or have to go into nursing homes, their kids really don't care about the neighborhood. At least 6 out of the 8 sales this year were to to real people, and 4 of those are pregnant with their first babies.
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It would need some expensive updates to sell to a family. The electrical for one and it's lath and plaster walls. They've built 4 townhouses across the street and 3 next door with each having 2 dwellings. Perfect for an au pair or air b&b. The small unit is 640 sq feet.
We lived just off Westheimer in a duplex for a while in Houston. It was sort of the not quite hippies neighborhood at the time. The kids went to River Oaks elementary where the first lunch room rule was "Be kind to the maids". We definitely did not fit in and were happy when we moved out south of town.
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