This Sunday, masked up, the family will be gathering for as close as we get to a Christmas gathering so we can empty my Mom’s house.
2020, what a weird and stupid year.
We have more than one side table, one in our TV room and two more in the formal living room. Yesterday I emptied the drawer in the one we use that is all beat up, and swapped tables with another one. I reorganized stuff like fingernail clippers and remotes and stuff with an office drawer organizer. It looks nice!
We also now have cable ties holding down multi-port charging stations and a multiple outlet surge protector that we (my husband) replaced and reorganized. It’s great! No more loose wires, and only one cord going to the wall outlet.
I finally pulled out the tiny collection of Christmas decor that I have here at the condo. They tree and other stuff is still stored in a friend’s garage. I won’t be collecting that until I have a place to put it, which will hopefully happen this next summer.
My condo door is decorated, and small items are up within my unit. It does look more cheerful and warm in here with a place for greeting cards and a stocking hung on the door.
Well, my “working retail during the holidays hiatus and recovery period” is now officially over. Spent time further cleaning out the Old Place. Tossed out a contractor bag worth of junk and boxed up some more items to keep/sort at the Storage Unit. My ability to haul items was a big limited today due to the bed of the pickup being soaking wet, only having cardboard boxes for items, and a winter storm on the way in. None of which matters as much as actually getting back into the game.
Also took down the holiday decorations at the New Place, took out the trash, did the laundry, get caught up with the dishes, and there’s still the option for paperwork/filing later this afternoon.
Also have two more days before I have to go back to work in which to do things. If the impending storm makes travel unpleasant tomorrow I’ll opt to stay in and work on the New Place. Otherwise, I might put more time in at the Old Place again, and the Storage Unit. If not tomorrow for that, then Wednesday.
We’re in the new place. It is getting organized. I’ve taken two more loads to Good Will. Mostly books, but other stuff too. We’re nearly done now.
Yes, I’m taking a LONG time to get through my Old Place, but as I’ve mentioned before I have the luxury of being able to take my time. Also, I’m not just throwing things out, I’m selling them. I may have a buyer for my late spouse’s CNC machines, for example - I’ll know by mid-February for sure. Also, by going through everything I am uncovering the occasional treasure. For instance, today I found an LL Bean gift certificate that had been forgotten.
But kudos to those getting through a move quickly!
I’m hoping when my processing of all this stuff is finally over my next move will be MUCH easier and quicker due to having shed a lot of stuff, and what remains being far better organized.
I’ve been battling the clutter monster again this past month or so, after a long period of slacking off. I bravely tackled the under-the-stairs closet which was packed to the brim with junk. Overdue for a cleaning for probably 10 years. One of those Fibber McGee situations.
Sorted through all of it, donated a lot and trashed a bunch more. The items I kept got sorted into five storage footlocker bins, and over top of that I put the spare mattress and box spring that was clogging up another closet.
I fixed it up with quilts and lots of pillows so that the youngest son (a big Harry Potter fan) now has his very own Cupboard Under the Stairs hideout so he and brother don’t clash as much.
Also sorted through my overstuffed linen closet and threw out or donated about 10 bags of old mismatched sheets and pillow cases and random blankets that nobody uses.
Really made a big difference. Now my other son ALSO wants a closet hideout.
Just a reminder - vets and animal shelters are very happy to get old towels, linens, blankets, etc. They take all sizes and don’t care if they’re worn or stained or otherwise less than perfect. My local vet also took some old pillows, too.
A timely reminder as I just went through linens and created a toss pile and a donate pile. I had been holding a few of them for quite a while, thinking I might make a rag rug but I’m just fooling myself. Time for them to go.
Had to Google the Fibber McGee reference …
This is adorable.
The wife and I spent Sunday going through both our entire closet of clothes. Anything not fitting, looking a bit ‘tatty’, or not worn in a year got thrown out. Now have five huge black bags full, but we need to further separate them into “offer to family”/“charity shop”/“garbage” otherwise all we’ve done is move things from the closet to the floor of the spare room.
The closet’s heaps better, but the ‘final stage’ is going to be just as much work, and take a longer time, I fear.
How insulted would your family be if they missed out on being offered certain items?
How horrible are the intended “garbage” items?
If the answers to both are “not very” then I’d suggest bringing the whole lot to the charity shop at one go. Let them sort the chaff from the grain (they may very well have different standards, or perhaps side streams for mediocre items) and you get the entire pile outta the way all at once.
The family member(s) haven’t been told yet, and live in a different city. I suspect the answer to the first question is ‘not very’, but given their financial circumstances, having the chance to receive a quality coat or similar that would last them many years would be a nice thing for us to do for them. A ‘charity begins at home’ sort of thing.
The ‘horribleness’ level is of the ‘armpit sweat stains and large moth holes’ variety. If I was in the charity shop choosing for myself, I’d question why such items were on the rack. But I imagine that for the more unfortunate (e.g. homeless) person, they’d still be welcomed.
Getting it all out of the way quickly would be great - but on balance, helping family probably trumps our convenience. For now, anyway. Ask me again in a month…
Charity shops probably throw out anything too damaged, but I advocate that you do it yourself for the obviously damaged items. Just more work for them
Actually for clothing, the metal clothing bins in many parking lots get sorted into several categories. The best stuff goes to shops in the US, the useable stuff often ends up in containers and heads for Africa or Asia and the ratty stuff gets turned into either rags or paper pulp apparently. So it all gets reused or recycled.
Usually the charity listed on the container is only getting a smallish fee from a clothing redistributor. If you see a Goodwill bin, they sort it themselves apparently and pocket most of the value at least.
Of course. I’d expect that anything of good value would be redistributed among family, first.
This. Time is money and charity shops do not exist to sort your garbage. The less time they spend sorting garbage, the less money they ask for the better stuff. They have to pay the help, just like other jobs. Be thoughtful.
This weekend my clean up project was my filing which, as usual, had escaped my control during the December holiday madness/overwork and January recovery.
Spent several hours on it. As usual, don’t feel I made a lot of progress but actually did quite a bit.
Also collected all of my computer passwords/combination lock numbers/etc. into one notebook which now lives in my desk as a reference document. Well, almost all - still have a couple more to enter but it’s a big improvement. I anticipate less wasted time hunting for these things in the future.
Interesting you mentioned computers… made me realize I need to cull my old photos and music… get the analog versions digitized, and toss half the ones that are already digital.
In other words, scan old flat photos, rip LPs and tapes and CDs.
And get rid of half the stuff on my laptop.
I guess my rallying cry works for megabytes as well as 3D possessions:
“Toss half! Then toss half of that!”
I’m finally getting back on the bandwagon. I had too many clothes - off-season clothing in bins in the guest bedroom - and had no idea what i had and what I didn’t. So I took a page from Kondo’s book and did all my clothes in a single day.
Wound up with a huge pile of donatable things: stuff that didn’t fit - that I’d hung onto in the hopes of shrinking a bit and fitting into them again. Also some things that I just didn’t love any more but were still quite wearable. A smaller pile of things that were too ratty to donate, that got tossed. Took a carload over to Goodwill. Now all my clothes are either in the master bedroom dresser, or in the dresser in my daugher’s room (off-season clothes in there). And my half of the closet is better than half-empty. VERY liberating.
That was pretty major. Since then I’m concentrating on doing one small area at a time. I got our dresser cleared off a couple weekends ago. Threw away tons of stuff like 3-year-old hotel receipts. I have a few things that need to be put away in other rooms, and a couple of things that need to be taken to hazmat recycling (an old computer battery, for example) but it’s so much nicer.
Next step is my nightstand. The top is amazingly cluttered and there’s stuff piled around it, plus the sock drawer is long overdue for sorting through, re-pairing, and tossing of solo socks. I’ve avoided doing this the past 2 weekends.
I’m trying hard to put the cleanup in small, doable chunks like that - each should, in theory, take no more than an hour or so.
My daughter’s room has become my office. I’m gradually either tossing things she’s left behind, or putting them into boxes to ultimately ship to her. That’s been a “give a mouse a cookie” thing - as every time I make a chance there to make it more usable for me, I see something else that would make it work even better. Right now there’s some stuff piled up on her bed that I need to figure out, so it’s usable as a guest room again.