Weekend Uncluttering

[fred_mouse]

How goes your weekend? Are the unloved items sneaking out of the wood-work, or are they perfecting their camouflage?

I'm back in the salt minesspare room, sorting paper again, although I've done a few other bits and pieces of sorting as well. I found yet more kid sized coat hangers (I swear, they are spawning under the kids' beds); made the kids look through a basket of bits and pieces that were pulled off the shelves for being inconveniently located (they kept one pack of cards and the twister game, which means about a dozen items of assorted sizes will go, including a kids microscope and a game of Buckaroo); moved the contents of shelving around in the games room/library, resulting in about 20 books that I want to get rid of (one vetoed so far) and four damaged items thrown out.

I've also moved several items out to the car to be dropped at the op-shop in the morning. I'm hoping that they open at 9am, because the current plan says groceries (which are on that street), op-shop, shopping for bulk staples, and if the middle part doesn't work, the car will be too full for the last part (plan: one carton each breakfast cereal, soy milk; at least two 2L tubs of peanut butter, and multiple 2-3kg jars of assorted pickles).

And I've made a promise to myself that when one particular artistically minded family member passes on (possibly within the next decade), the kids and I will do a thorough inventory of all the things that that person has given us, and work out which ones we actually love, and rehome the rest (so many items on the display shelf - I really had forgotten how many dust collecting knickknacks are attributable to this one person). Rehoming them now would be an unkindness, but oh, I hate dusting them.

Comments

[rmc28]

I am turning our spare room into a child's bedroom and so much stuff has to be moved around! I am culling things as I move them. Moving things off the shelves for child's clothes, I filled a box with paper recycling, and a carrier bag with empty plastic bottles for recycling (why? Why were they just accumulated there instead of taken downstairs to be recycled?)

Moving clothes into the room, I filled a bag with torn or worn clothes for recycling, and a storage box with clothes to send on to smaller relatives later.

Also I found a cache of Christmas presents from last December, when I decided on Christmas Eve I'd bought really too many things for the children and hid a bunch that could wait another year. I wrapped and labelled about half of them and hope to finish the rest next week. I've identified somewhere I can put wrapped presents which is out of the way but not really hidden - but that's ok if they're wrapped! And hopefully being able to see the stash of wrapped gifts will stop me going so overboard this year.

[brigid]

Nice!

[fred_mouse]

Many wins! Wonderful that the motivation to get the space sorted is flowing on to sorting the Stuff! rather than causing you to just move it elsewhere (which is my go to sorting method).

[rmc28]

I find it's straightforward for me to sort out the obvious rubbish (like, ancient newspapers or magazines in which we have no interest, torn paper bags, etc) when moving things. Also things for which I have an obvious route out - to the charity shop 5 minutes walk away, or into the clothes-for-smaller-relatives box. It's the stuff that "needs a home" that lingers, or gets piled elsewhere to "sort out later".

(I was commenting to a friend that there is a stash of bags under a table in a room in my house which has been there over TWO YEARS. I was clearing a set of shelves in order to dismantle it in order to make room for a new sofa in our living room. The delivery guys rang to say they'd be there in 20 minutes as I was halfway through carefully removing and sorting things, and everything went into bags in a tearing hurry and I shoved them under the table in the next room. And there they've been for over TWO YEARS, waiting for me to "have time" to get back to them. The bags are biodegradeable plastic bags from the supermarket and I half-expect them to disintegrate when I touch them now.)

[fred_mouse]

I sympathise on the bags under the table. Some years ago, we cleared out space by putting things in the garage, with the plan on slowly sorting things so that everything got dealt with. Three years of not being able to put the car in the garage later, we had one dreadful session of attempting cleaning everything up and bringing it in (where I asked partner to not obsess about dealing with every item, so that we could get everything into the cool of the house, rather than the 40degC outside, and they only managed to do that for half an hour), and then six months after that I moved things in on my own. Those piles are still in the games room, but every now and then I deal with one or two items.