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Here's what I'm looking forward to:

The coffee table is an unholy mess. The paper piles are becoming paper towers. Once this extra-busy period is done within the next week or so, I get to sort out all the papers and clean it.

- Psii (he/him)

sisterofbloomerjunior

It seems I actually exchanged an ottoman for a bunch of books and a book bag. “Arrowsmith” is the only title I remember without opening the bag.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: Upstairs
Current Music: Fan

the_broken_tower

Pro: It's been a lot easier and faster to do dishes. SO much time and energy has been saved since starting to use the dishwasher.

Con: Not all items are dishwasher safe, and those items still need to be handwashed. When water pools on the dishwashed items, they need to be air dried. Both of those things lead to counter clutter in and around the sink.

I'm celebrating a minor victory that the counter and drying rack are clear right now. Especially since trying to find places to balance drying items led to a lid falling and being re-washed three times, because it's been stressful lately and stress leads to contamination-related OCD moments.

Staying on top of dishes is an achievement with how busy and energy consuming everything else has been lately.

- Bluebell (he/him)

the_broken_tower

I cleaned the fridge, inside and out.

All the ingredient-produce items from the past couple grocery runs are cut up and ready to go for bibimbap/kimbap/stirfry over the next week or so.

The inside of the fridge looks and feels so much better. ☆

And the kitchen feels so much better. Part of meal prep included clearing out/re-organizing the counter space.

Best of all, doing this means that next week will be MUCH EASIER as far as spending/food/planning. I include all of the logistical, planning, and purchase-related events as intangible de/cluttering.

- Finn Amara (he/him)

the_broken_tower

What? You mean that cookie dough from over a year ago can go bad? Even if it's frozen?

... The freezer now has a lot less cookie dough in it. RIP last spring's cookies. The aroma of freezer burn invaded my kitchen when I baked you. It was not meant to be.

- Finn Amara (he/him)

sisterofbloomerjunior

Well, the main thing is we’re staying at our current house for the foreseeable future, which is good since we still have quite a bit to clean up before we could ever move. I’m not 100% sure about the Buick, though.

So as far as the garage is concerned, the only thing I’ve gotten rid of is a pitchfork. I know I’ve donated something else from there, but I can’t remember it anymore. I should go through our toolbox before July 21st when Ridwell will collect hand tools. 🧰 Unsure if I’m going to have to wait until it’s cooler to possibly clean out the playhouse. The deck for it is rotting.

I’m contemplating whether I should go through my CD collection. I rarely play them anymore because I don’t have a player near my nightstand or one with a remote like I did decades ago. I could also take the holder over to where the Giving Tree is. I’ll probably try hunting down vinyl versions of most of my CDs, though.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Upstairs
Current Music: Minnesota Twins - Seattle Mariners game

vysila

Big BIG doings this month! My decluttering motivation went into overdrive, mostly due to home renovation and shortened timeline for moving.

My bedroom is empty except for my bed, the (empty) hope chest my sister and brother-in-law hand made for me when I was in my teens, and a bureau that was originally part of my parents’ bedroom set. My closet (i.e., wardrobe) has been downsized and neatly organized.

The guest bedroom contains only a bed, an empty chest of drawers (also part of my parents’ bedroom set), a computer desk & chair. The closet is completely empty.

The smallest bedroom was used as a home office/library but now is completely empty, as is the closet in that room. I am using it now as a staging area for packing boxes as I gear up for the future move.

The upstairs, which includes a large family/rec room, a full bathroom, a large bedroom, 3 walk-in closets plus some floored attic space – IS COMPLETELY EMPTY! That space is currently being renovated to make the house more saleable.

• Finished rehoming ALL of my fanzines, nearly 200 in total
• Decluttered a bunch of other fandom treasures and memorabilia – three big boxes
• Gave away my son’s old children’s books, all his art supplies, games and puzzles to neighbors with young children (my son didn’t want any of it) – two boxes worth
• Gave away the last of my jewelry to a niece
• Donated slightly more than 400 books to my local library
• Donated old purses and wallets, kept two purses and one wallet
• Donated/rehomed small decorative household items – four boxes
• Flattened and took a lot of old cardboard boxes to the recycle bin
• Took a nonfunctional old printer to the electronic recycle bin
• Small closet purge – donated four knit tops and two sweaters
• Donated one set of bedroom drapes with matching tiebacks

This was a huge, busy and very successful decluttering month, but there is still more to do, absurd as it seems.

This is such a kind and encouraging community and I am grateful to have a place like this to report on what is – and will continue to be – a physically difficult and emotionally challenging project. And I do hope that my progress might serve as a beacon of hope to everyone who struggles with clutter and downsizing, to see that through baby steps, it totally is possible to reduce your excess possessions down to whatever level is comfortable to you.

Current Mood: jubilant

fred_mouse

How goes the decluttering? Have you shifted anything out of the house? Found something to sort through? Had thoughts on things you can let go of?

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

fred_mouse

Attempting to get back in the habit of weekly(ish) check ins here. Love that people have been tracking their decluttering!

So! On that note: what have you achieved in the declutter sphere? Have you done a tiny thing? Something marvellous and magical that has transformed your life? Made a plan but haven't yet carried it out? Tell us, tell us!

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

vysila

It has come in small bursts of activity here and there, but in April I did manage to find new homes for over 80 fanzines, took a couple boxes of linens, clothes and small decorative items to the charity donation place, used up some older foods in the pantry, and finally finished my family photo curation project! 10 smallish albums and a lot of boxes were condensed down to one large photo album and two smaller ones, encompassing 160 years of family history dating back to the US Civil War in the 1860s. I can't tell you how many photos I eliminated and tossed, but it was 2 large trash bags full. There are still a lot of photos and each and every one has been identified with names, approximate ages, dates and locations. It was such an emotional journey to winnow these down. I confess to having shed a lot of tears during the process and my goodness, it was HARD. But it is DONE!

Hoping to repeat the success in May, with another large collection of fanzines and clearing my desk and paper files to something more manageable. And possibly start packing up some moving boxes. I may get rid of some furniture pieces as well, since I am downsizing to a much smaller place.

Current Mood: peaceful

the_broken_tower

I went through the dry mixes and binned a half dozen or so that had either expired or were opened and half-used sometime in the past... two years? Eesh.

The lesson was learned: I only bought ONE replacement rice seasoning during today's grocery run. It's for trail food, and if that doesn't use up one packet, then they aren't worth getting again.

It's part of the new system: Each week, a couple of older/half-used items get separated out to be used for hiking food, meal planning, ingredients, whatever happens to be going on. Eventually the old stock gets cleared out, and there's a sane use:replace ratio going on.

Based on the pantry-clearing soda breads, the method is working. The sugar/nut/dried fruits shelf is half-empty now and today I could reorganize enough that there's floor space in there. It's half as crowded as it was a month ago.

- Ron S (he/him)

the_broken_tower

... over the past month have been Baking and Beading.

Weekly bread has been a solution to clearing out the last of the Mysterious Unlabeled Cabinet Flour (it appears to be spelt) and various dried fruits, roots, and nuts that were lingering in their last dregs.

This week's bread contains the last of the spelt flour, crystallized ginger, and toasted almond slivers, as well as part of a container of dried currants.

Beading projects currently involve using up the last small bags of loose beads in the beading box. It's working reasonably well.

- Jack Mesa (he/him)

vysila

About two and a half weeks ago I posted that I am working hard on decluttering in prep for a cross-country move. After several years of doing the huge cleanouts, I'm down to the small stuff, the emotional/sentimental items and wow, it is so much harder now.

But in the last two weeks I found homes for 44 of my fanzines. 34 remain but I am hopeful that perhaps some of those will find homes as well. The bad news? Is that this are zines from just one of my fandoms and many boxes of zines from another fandom remain upstairs in a closet. But still, I am going to count progress because 44 zines is a very big pile!

The other project I am focusing on is to curate the family photographs and must admit I've done no work on this project in the last couple weeks. However, I have cleared my afternoon today to sort through a large pile and make decisions on them. Last time I posted here,

stonepicnicking_okapi had some advice from her own photo curation project, which I plan taking to heart: 1) no photos without people 2) no photos of people I don't like and 3) no photos of people I don't know.

Onward and upward!

Current Mood: satisfied

sisterofbloomerjunior

Left some rusted bakeware and an old license plate out on the curb near the driveway to be scrapped. Found more sewing notions that could be donated. Might need to go through my books to consider which ones to pack up before moving - even though we haven’t even considered all the areas we want to search for housing yet.

I added the weight of this to the running sum of things I’ve gotten rid of for the final two weeks of the Zero Waste Challenge, this final one for 2025 measures from April Sixth through the 19th. I admit I forgot to fully record the exact weight of items in the 90 gallon inorganic cart, so I just added photos to the emails I sent my liaison.

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: Upstairs
Current Music: Birds chirping

vysila

I finally made the hard decision that it is time to sell my house and move closer to my son. Part of the prep is serious decluttering for a big downsize. Don’t know yet where I’ll be living after the move, but it will definitely be smaller.

Right now I am concentrating on two rather emotional tasks: curating thousands of family photos and also sorting through all my fanzines to see which are keepers and which can be released. Hope to scan a few of my favorite zines but doing it large scale won’t happen (I have maybe 150 zines).

Today I worked on the photo project and started a trash bag of discarded photos. It seems like taking photos goes in spurts and so many photos are of the same occasion and are nearly duplicates.

I also finagled my little old desktop scanner to work with Windows 11 and managed to scan one zine for posterity. At some point I’ll try to find the discards a new fannish home.

Oh, this is going to be such a long and tedious process. But at least it is very good motivation for clearing out a lot of stuff!

Current Mood: tired

fred_mouse

It's been a while since I've had the oomph to engage with this community, which is a shame, because you are a great bunch of people, and I get motivated to go and deal with Stuff! by reading what you have all found to declutter.

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

fred_mouse

How goes the decluttering? Have you managed to rehome anything? Find a stash of things that were no better than rubbish, and bin them? Clear out a stash and now have an empty space? Anything, small or large, physical or virtual, counts as a win!

fred_mouse

the_broken_tower

If you're trying to use up a can of sweetened condensed milk and have some extra gifted sprinkles you feel too guilty about throwing out, might I suggest making Brigadeiros?

These helped me clean out the fridge and that sprinkles stash. One of the versions I'm making is matcha vanilla, so I also got to use some of the two tins of matcha powder in the pantry.

The recipe's very straightforward and simple.

Pantry and fridge decluttering has gotten a lot easier with weekly clean-outs and excuses to try new recipes from the random surplus ingredients.

- Keith (he/him)