Daily Check-in

[fred_mouse]

Hi Everyone!

Have you found something to declutter? Made a plan that you can implement later? What is today's decluttering win?

Open to regulars, drive by commenters, and lurkers alike!

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Physically? nothing. Digitally? I've removed two long standing tasks by actually dealing with them!

[kalloway]

That works!

[fred_mouse]

I am So. Pleased. With myself on this! Who knew that actually sitting at the desk, and devoting about six hours would actually cause a thing to be done! (and bring the count of things in that folder down to 200 items to deal with. *sigh*)

[kalloway]

I've been going through writing notes and writing little things so I can drop the notes in recycling and marking things off for WritingMonth!

I also went through one of the plastic drawers in the bathroom and pulled out five(!) pairs of questionable nail clippers. I'll test them out as-needed and toss the crap ones in the scrap metal bin (where I also put two pairs of useless tweezers). Dusted a bit more, too!

[fred_mouse]

Small wins! And writing as a bonus!

[vae]

Two boxes of wine glasses, a pair of boots and an unused photo album to the charity shops today!

Plus two old books into recycling (non-fiction, DIY/repairs books that are very out of date)

[fred_mouse]

Many wins, especially getting them Out Of The House!

I hear you on putting books in the recycling. I have several I need to make that decision on (is there really any value in coding books from the 90s? really?)

[arlie]

I resemble that remark, particularly with regard to antique programming books I'm not yet willing to discard. The top of one of my many bookshelves has stacks of computer books I never expect to use again - but kept. I did get rid of a handful. But why do I need most of a multi-volume series on the X-Window system? I *did* get rid of a few when I moved them out of the east-to-reach shelves, but only a few.

[fred_mouse]

Ha! I don't think I have anything quite that serious, but multiple coding languages where "maybe that will be useful".

[vae]

as a pro dev - most of them are probably no longer relevant (except the DOS ones, always keep the DOS ones), and your local computing museum already has a full range of O'Reilly's and Dummies Guides. I give you an internet stranger's permission to pulp them if it helps!

[fred_mouse]

I don't think I have any O'Reilly's! What I know we still have are Cobol, Fortran, HTML (possibly 'The HTML Bible' or some such claim to be comprehensive) and Javascript :) Also multiple R books I'm unlikely to be able to bring myself to rehome, even if I'm never ever going to need to generate a plot from first principles in base code again.

[tanaqui]

Just as a heads up, most charity shops will be able to send unsellable books (like old tech manuals) to recycling and get a teensy bit of money for them, so please do ask the shop where you're donating if they'll take them. (I believe the shop where I volunteer gets the princely sum of 5p/kilo for books, so an O'Reilly book will probably be an extra 5p for them and it does all add up!)

[vae]

They were hardbacks, so not easy for charity shops to recycle! For paperbacks I would definitely donate them, especially if you've got a local charity bookshop because they probably fill up their paperback recycling skips pretty quickly. Hardbacks are tricker, which is why these ones got the pages ripped out for local recycling collection and the covers in the waste bin.

[tanaqui]

The shop I work at happily takes ANY kind of book.

The ones that we can't sell (for various reasons — mostly because we only have room to put out books that look new or nearly new, or because we're just not going to sell 30 copies of each of Celebrity TV Chef's entire backlist of 15 books in a year) don't go into our council recycling bins but to a recycling company where they're sorted and sent in different directions.

Some books go to literacy schemes (in the UK and internationally) where it doesn't matter that the book is a bit too dog-eared for us to give it space in our shops; some get sold in batches to second-hand book dealers (who don't mind paperback fiction with dog-eared corners or e.g. history books with ripped or missing dustjackets), because their customers will buy them; and some do go to be pulped.

So we can get paid 5p/kilo for any kind of book, even if it's falling to bits or very out of date.

Obviously this may not apply to every charity shop, but I'd urge people to ask and find out what they take!

(Sorry for harping on, but I'm rather passionate about this because I'm the book specialist in our shop. While I sometimes feel overwhelmed and wish we didn't get such an avalanche of books donated each week, I also know we are making a few pounds each week on all the rejects.)

[vae]

Oh that's very cool! All the ones arounnd here (UK, Norfolk) can only recycle paperbacks, even the specialist charity/secondhand bookshops.

[tanaqui]

Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. It may be that you're too far from any of the recycling companies for them to be willing to do pickups. At least two of them are in the West Midlands (we had to switch companies after the first one proved too unreliable) and I think one is somewhere south of London.

But thank you for responding to my ranting so graciously! And this conversation has reminded me I really should write a post for this comm with some tips on how to maximise the value of your donations to the charities you donate to. :-)

[vae]

Norfolk is often too far from things! We don't have any motorways and it makes a lot of "nationwide" services unwilling to run lorries out here.

My mother set up a charity secondhand bookshop in north Norfolk and she's done all she can to set up recycling, along with identifying higher value books and creating a relationship with a local antiquarian bookseller so he can get first dibs on them as they don't have the volunteer time to manage selling on abe/ebay. So yes, donate your books if you don't need every penny from putting the work into reselling them yourself! And definitely donate them if you thing they're not worth any money.

[fred_mouse]

That is really interesting about the recycling. To my knowledge, there isn't any such programme here (Perth, Western Australia), but I will ask next time I'm at the op-shop.

[arlie]

It's not clutter per se, but the results of decades old sloppy decluttering.

I opened up a filing cabinet, and looked at what was inside. Much of it appeared to be random papers from 2 decades ago; some from even longer. A few were organized by category, but no longer remotely relevant. Others look like the result of gathering loose papers from desk and other surfaces, shoving them into a file folder, and cramming the file folder into a file cabinet. Repeatedly every month or three, for what must have been years.

I've looked through several of these folders so far, with most of the contents winding up in the recycling bin. A few were things like personal letters to me, which belong in a different file cabinet, sorted by sender. In the course of filing them more appropriately, I found all kinds of now useless papers in that cabinet too.

When I get through all this, I should be able to move various still useful groups of files from filing boxes to file cabinets. That might in principle reduce the number of filing boxes. Unfortunately, I just repurposed an empty filing box for mostly non-paper random junk from my office floor, as a temporary (hah!) location while I have workmen in the room next week, wanting to move furniture for access to selected locations, and needing a place to put it. (When the dust clears, unfortunately somewhat literally, there will be a heating and AC vent in my office. Central heating and air conditioning for the win.)

[Edited to add: this isn't really something I did today, but something I've been doing off and on for at least the past week, and intend to continue. I kind of missed that this was a daily thread.]

[fred_mouse]

It is absolutely okay to drop in once in a week and tell us all about the week's decluttering! When it happens is less important than getting to brag about it :)

And that is an amazing amount of work to have achieved. So! Many! Decisions!

[word_geek]

I rearranged the kitchen. Initially I had just planned to take everything off the window ledge, and chuck things out or find better homes for them. We still have things to do with washing up by hand up there, and a plant, but the space is not currently a dumping ground.

That set off a bit of a cascade. I moved the microwave to the other end of the main counter, allowing me to put the toaster and bread bin next to each other again.

I then cleared the small counter between the fridge and the hob, which had been the tea station. The kettle and tea box ended up between microwave and sink, next to the food caddy, so I will be more likely to put my tea bags in the caddy. The small IKEA shelves that hold sauces and condiments are by the hob.

I also decluttered the trolley so we could move a few other things out of the way.

There's less stuff on the countertop, especially around the hob, so it's easier to prep food, and we have defined stations for making tea and sandwiches, which is also helpful

And actually, only a few things got chucked out or taken to the charity shop or whatever. A lot of it was finding two of the same thing and combining them

[fred_mouse]

Oh, wow, that is an amazing amount of sorting out and matching location to the way you use things! And even if nothing leaves the house, it is still less clutter, because it is all where it should be.

Getting ready for the holidays

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

Cleaned off the top of my dresser and put my record player and collection on it. I started this tradition decades ago to play “Alice’s Restaurant” since I kept missing when it was played on the radio.

Re: Getting ready for the holidays

[fred_mouse]

Oh, that is a lovely holiday tradition. And a lovely song! Well done on sorting the space out for that.

also: I love that icon!