Unclutter 2014: days 21–30

[nou]

As previously noted, I'm doing Unclutter 2014, which involves getting rid of 1 thing per day in 2014, plus an extra thing for every thing that comes into the house. I thought I'd also keep track of where the things go (landfill, charity shop, recycling, etc). I'm planning to post once every ten days, giving a summary of how I'm doing.

Days 1-10: 32 out (6 landfill, 3 recycled, 19 charity shop, 2 gifts, 1 Freegle, 1 used up), 8 in, net total out: 24.

Days 11–20: 28 out (12 landfill, 6 recycled, 8 charity shop, 1 Freegle, 1 used up), 15 in, net total out: 13.

Day 21: Nothing in, nothing out.

Day 22: 2 in, 19 out: DVD and card arrived from a friend; did a drawer cleanout yielding handful of old receipts (recycled), old circular (envelope recycled, circular put in local history archive, counting as one recycled), five flyers/leaflets (archive), old medical notification (shredded, composted, counting as recycled), wrapper from a cereal bar (landfill), specimen tube surplus to requirements (recycled), two old map printouts (recycled), expired membership card for local shared workspace (archive), handful of old Boggle word sheets (recycled), old takeaway menu (recycled), list of who got what meat from a pig slaughtered a couple of years ago (recycled), crochet cotton label (recycled), old copy of London Drinker magazine (recycled), greasy paper bag (shredded, composted, counting as recycled).

Day 23: 1 in, 10 out: Copy of Interzone arrived; took 5 boxes of expired medication to pharmacy for disposal (counting as landfill), took a lemon zester, corkscrew, bottle-opener, plastic mat, and pocket-sized mirror to charity shop.

Day 24: 1 out: tin of candle wax collected by a Freegler.

Days 25-30: Nothing in, nothing out.

• Total out so far: 89 (24 landfill, 20 recycled, 32 charity shop, 2 gifts, 3 Freegle, 2 used up, 6 archived)
• Total in so far: 26
• Net total out at day 30: 63

NB I'm counting stuff put into my local history archive as uncluttered, because this involves filing things properly (rather than having them scattered around) and I'm counting new folders as "in"s. I'm not counting future things in and out though, as long as they get filed promptly, which they usually do. (Hopefully in the long run this will be merged into the existing collection at the council-run local archives service, but this depends on resources and budget cuts. We've agreed that the best course is for it to stay with me for now.)