Not quite a horder - decluttering
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I've looked all over for my shorts. I have 2 pair and one is nice. It's 88 today and I would love to wear them. I've just run out of places to look. Grrrrr
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Oh Wren, I can relate! That kind of thing is so frustrating. I say thrift shop! I quite agree about postponing the attic job. Likewise, it's in the mid 80s here and humid, and that's just hot enough to limit what's comfortable to do.
Quite unexpectedly, my husband and I just tackled some cleaning in our bedroom. Sadly, it's because his computer system at work is down, so there was much less competition than usual. Although he's not a workaholic, it does help when he knows he truly can't log in. Anyway, he purged some of his old clothes that don't fit and got a shelf in place that will give us better quality space for clothes in future, and I cleaned out a corner that was filthy and unbelievably dusty. Our bedroom is really a work-in-progress. It bothers me less than other spaces because it isn't public, but if he could get his old papers out of there so the floor is clear, it would be a pretty big room. Then we could make a little reading nook, have tea, and speak perfect French. Today's work inches toward that vision and I'm quite pleased!
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Well, I thought I might be time for me to join this group. Boy, do I need decluttering! About 10 years ago, I discovered FlyLady.net, shined my sink religiously, and found that blinking sink motivated me to organize the whole house. Well, almost the whole house. Slowly, over the past couple of years, I returned to my old ways. Radiation and all didn't help--became totally uninterested in housework, or, for that matter, movement of any kind, but a few weeks ago I shined my sink again. And again, it got me going, so effectively that I kind of panicked and stopped everything. Yesterday I polished the sink again and then went on the site just long enough to see that the entryay is this week's target. Went in there, overwhelmed by the clutter, forced myself to do one thing (close the closet door), considered myself done. Sat back down in front of the TV, got up, did one more thing. This kept happening for half an hour. Got my exercise in, with all this sitting and standing and stuff. Entry looks lots better. Sink shines. I'm kind of in shock.
Three months after finishing rads I'm finally beginning to feel human again, and truly hope all you on this site will help motivate me. BTY, I'm really happy to see some familiar post-ers!
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I love that story Brookside! Little things do add up. I'm so glad to hear you're feeling better post-rads, too.
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Hey my buddies are here!! Welcome Brookside and RunFree. I have been here for awhile. Really got some good pointers. Nice group of ladies here too.
I am down to 1 freezer...yeah!!! Tomorrow all the extra stuff may be coming out of dads old fridge. Beer my boyfriend drinks when he is here....he is not. Sodas for friends, teas etc. Time to unplug that energy sucker. It is an old icebox.
Tomorrow I am cleaning out the side by side in the kitchen and wiping it down. I hate stainless it always looks dirty. I only got it for resale. Next I need to do moms old buffet in the dining room. Two drawers full. I did it when she died now it is my stuff. Then the front hall closets.
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Thanks for the welcome, Bunkie. I'm so impressed. My buffet is still full of my mother's stuff. I've added a bit, subtracted nothing. Don't ask how long she's been gone!
As for the stainless fridge, when I bought mine, they said WD 40 is the key to keeping it gorgeous. I used it for a while, then forgot all about it. Thanks for the reminder.
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Thanks Bunkie for telling me about this great thread! Your plan of attack sounds like a winner. Good riddance to bad iceboxes!
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Apparently I did too much yesterday and today was tired, weak and did nothing. I was laying in bed all day. Geeze!!! Tomorow is another day.
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You can blame the planets if you want. I've been a bump on a log today too and I didn't do any decluttering yesterday!
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I just realized the Fourth of July is coming and I have childhood friends who always stop by. So glad I got started on the entryway! So sad there's only one more day before the Fourth! So annoyed I feel like I should go polish my sink!
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Brookside, at least you remembered a little before the 4th instead of when your friends knocked on your door! Now to prioritize.... I think a polished sink ALWAYS looks great.
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I'd just like the sink to stop calling me. This shiny sink stuff is dangerous!
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Agreed, Teka!
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SS Syndrome. I think we have a new affliction. Shiny Sink Syndrome. You had me polish my sink today Brookside!!!Now that darned fridge is buggin me. Also I looked at my stove top this morning and it was awful. I thought it was clean. It needs some polish too.
RunFree - I am still being lazy.Did very little today. I went shopping instead.
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Hi ladies. I've been reading your posts hoping it would motivate me. Strangely, I had the urge to polish my sink
I went through my kids clothes and have 2 bags of clothes to give away, as well as one of my own. I guess it's a start.0 -
Every little bit helps, kap! Bunkie, it's a holiday!
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RunFree - You are right. I told a friend yesterday to check her church and see if anyone there needs a mid size upright freezer. If not I will call Goodwill or someone. So that will take care of that one down in the basement. Next step clean out the old icebox of all that beer and soda I do not drink and out it goes too. I am feeling motivated. Today I am going to Cracker Barrel and get some food and that is it. No cooking for me today.
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Nope, time in! I'm helping my mom downsize and move into a retirement community. She and my late father owned this house for over 30 years and lived in it all of that except a few years of my dad's last job before he retired (by that time they knew they would want to come back here to retire). The retirement community has an estate-sale agent they work with, but this lady determined my mom didn't have enough of the popular items to make such a sale feasible and we were at a loss what to do. I had heard of people who will put on a garage sale for you but didn't know where to find such a person. Today's decluttering tip is where to look for a person to help you put on a sale. I'm an Angie's List member and was looking in there but couldn't find the right category. I finally struck paydirt in the "Concierge Services" listings. There is a lady there who had glowing ratings for helping people clear out inherited houses, including one inherited from hoarders, and downsizing sales like my mom needs. That lady will be coming over to talk to my mom next week, and I hope after that there will be a viable plan to deal with the 30 years' worth of "stuff". I'll help with the sale as a go-fer and general helper, but I don't feel like I could really run the whole thing myself, because I have no idea what the prices should be. What doesn't sell and my mom, siblings or I don't keep will probably go to Goodwill. After that there'll be nothing to do but a few small repairs, cleaning and painting, and the house will be ready to go on the market. Fortunately it has a killer view over the lake and mountains, so it shouldn't take too long to find a buyer.
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Curveball, how on earth did you figure out that "Concierge Services" would include running a downsizing sale??? That is very clever! It sounds like a great service. If you're a homeowner, you'll keep receipts for anything you donate to an organization, right? In my experience, if you type up a receipt, Goodwill or other such charities will sign it. My sibs and I donated several thousand books from my dad (a professor and book hoarder) to an organization that sold them online and used the money for good causes, and we got a big tax write-off that year while the causes got a windfall. Win-win. Except I think after us, the organization we used stopped taking on such huge amounts of donated books at a time!
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Curveball, am in the same position as you. My brother found such a relocation service specializing in the retirement communities too and spoke with her yesterday. My only concern is that he feels its safe to have them start packing without one of us present and I'm not sure I can count on their honesty and integrity. Am I wrong about this? You just never know about people, plus my parents have treasures wrapped up in junk due to my mom's Alzheimer's.
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@runfree, I didn't figure it out, I fell over it by accident! That's why I made that comment, I figured other people wouldn't know where to look either. The Goodwill donation center here gives receipts but they're blank. I found out the other day the charity isn't allowed to determine the value of the donation (may vary in other states). I guess it's OK to send you a receipt for the actual sale price. I got a receipt for a car I donated once and it was $100 so I guess they sold it for scrap. My dad had a mess of books too, although I think hundreds, not thousands. They all went to Friends of the Library and it took two full loads in my car to get them all out of the house. Actually, come to think of it, there are three more boxes in the garage still to go! As far as I know, Friends of the Library doesn't track which books came from which donor--I got a blank receipt from them too. Personally, I've never bothered with taking a deduction non-cash donations, because I doubt it would be enough to change my taxes by more than a dollar or two, but I can see where if there's a large quantity donated, such as from clearing out a house, it makes sense to guess at what the value would be. I think in my mom's case, I'm going to suggest she look and see what her homeowner's insurance has for the value of the contents of the house, and take some fraction of that as the value of the donation.
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@2TA, the retirement community my mom is moving to says they vet all their service providers very thoroughly. Personally I wouldn't let anyone pack up a house without being there, even if I had no doubts about their honesty, because there are bound to be a zillion questions that only the person who is being packed for can answer: are you taking this with you, or if not what is supposed to happen to it, and on and on. Fortunately my mom doesn't have Alzheimer's, so at least there is someone to ask. Packing for someone who doesn't remember the answers to those questions must be very difficult.
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In this area, we have an auction house who will either purchase individual items or sell them and give you your share. In either case, they haul them away, which is lovely. Also, they will do the same for the entire contents of your house or attic or barn. Also, I remember an antiques dealer who came and valued everything (and offered to purchase certain items) for my father's estate. I guess who does what varies considerably from community to community, but just getting a valuation can be helpful when it comes to calculating the amount of the ultimate donation.
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Curveball, I'm certainly going to file this information in my noggin, thanks! 2TA, I don't blame you for wanting to be there, and I agree with Curveball, if only to answer questions. Maybe your brother can go through and make a video of what there is, and unwrap things, and make sure it's clear he has a video? Very likely they are honest but you just don't know, could be the last person hired isn't. Curveball, when we've donated things, I've put an estimated value on it. This has always been good enough for our accountant; I guess she figures if we ever got audited, there'd have to be research about what things sold for, or comparable things, and adjustments would be made. If you figure your federal taxes (plus state if you pay them) are 25%+, think of that percentage of the value of what you're donating and ask if your time is worth that much. My time is pretty valuable, but at a certain point, sure, I'll take the trouble to make a receipt. But using the insurance values is probably a good way to go. My dad did not have specific insurance riders on his books though.
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@Brookside, that valuing of the entire contents, sell it for you etc that the auctioneer does for whole houses is what the estate-sale people associated with my mom's retirement community do, but after looking at what my mom has, and leaving out the items which are being given to children or grandchildren, the estate-sale lady said there wasn't enough to make her type of sale viable (which I guess means they wouldn't expect their cut to cover the expense of putting on the sale). So we had to look for other options.
@RunFree16, the quantity & type of items I donate personally, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be worth ten seconds to guess at a value, because it would be so low. Last time I looked at the tax tables, it took a fifty dollar change in income to change my tax amount by one dollar. My dad's books didn't include any valuable volumes that I know of, they were just ordinary used books. If there had been some collectibles among them, it might have changed the estate-sale company's decision about whether they wanted to do the sale or not. In the case of the books, it would have taken us a very long time to look each up on Amazon, add up the values, adjust for condition, and in the end, the tax savings are only 2% of the value of the books (assuming my mom is in the same tax bracket I am). Minimum wage in Washington is just over $9 an hour, so it would take valuing about $450 worth of books per hour (or $900 if both of us worked on it) just to bring the tax savings up to minimum wage. I just don't think it would be worth the effort for the minimal tax savings. And then, you mention there's the possibility of being audited.....))))shudder((((
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For those still trying to value "regular books", when my Mother died the bookstore in California that dealt with her library gave me a quick method that they use for IRS. A standard box holds approx 20 books. Each book is worth $2 to $3.00 each. I assumed this is for hardbacks and I treated paperbacks as 2 or 3 to 1 - around $0.50 to $1.00.
That said, I can't tell you how sad it was that I couldn't fit all the books into my house even if I could have afforded to ship them across country.
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Wow! I go on vacation for a week and I have pages to catch up on. You ladies are really getting stuff done.
As for the stainless fridge, I was told olive oil when I bought mine, but have found that if I use the stainess polish made for fridges and then use a cheap buffer made for cars, it polishes up nicely with less work.
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One pro to the stainless steel fridge is that mine won't hold magnets, thus the clutter on my fridge is relinquished to the strip along it's side which is only about 6 inches wide. The con...no place to post memories with cutsy magnets!
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There is a hint for me. I put a small magnetic whiteboard and bulletin board on the wall beside the fridge and thats where I limit my posting.
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OK I just posted a long one and it dissappeared. Ugh.
Meece thanks for the info about the stainless fridge. I keep my magnets on the side too.
I have been having some health issues...really bad vertigo again but have been busy.
I called a friend who knew a family that needed everything. They just bought a small house so I asked about my moms freezer and dads old icebox. They were really happy to get them both and came yesterday. The icebox was full of drinks from last year when my boyfriend was her during cancer treatment so I gave him all that stuff too. Sodas, beer, teas etc. all gone. I can not stockpile if I do not have room so that is going to help me a lot. I still have the big upright freezer down there but it will stay with the house when I sell. If not I will donate it also. It was really hard to move about with the room spinning but I managed. Next step more clothes. He will take them too. I want to get my wardrobe down to basics. No more than 2 of the same thing. Who needs 8 v neck white t shirts? Ok maybe 3.
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