July Clutter Control, 2015

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I ended up working on the travel items until I finished last night.

Took the duplicates (including a hair dryer - one of FOUR travel dryers I have) to the giveaway shelf this morning. All items plus the ones I took Saturday morning are now gone.

Didn't do anything today on the entryway. And will probably fall further behind tomorrow since I'll be cleaning at ds's instead of here. On the plus side, I can at least log what I have in storage at his place.

edited to add: no luck with logging stuff at ds's. He's packed it all in tight and put old curtains up to hide the stuff. It would be too hard to get things out. From the outside, mostly I just saw toy bins.

[Harmony]

Good thing I've had a couple easy days for this...as I've fallen behind. I don't have an entryway, just a little space inside the door into the living room. Nothing there. We don't have pets, but I did look and extra feed bowls have been tossed when I saw DDs were bringing their own bowls with their pets. I need to look at craft supplies and I will edit once I've done this.

[Sunny]

Storage, travel items, entryway and pet items have been checked off in the last few days.

***I have gone through a couple of boxes in our laundry room (for storage) and have discarded most of it -- old paperwork from file cabinet.
***Travel items are toiletries we use every day and are put into our travel kit bags; dh's is bigger so it will hold his electric razor.
***Pet items are easy: dMinnie (black Lab) has a couple of rope tug toys, a chew bone and a jolly ball; Dblondie (yellow Lab) has no toys because she quit playing a couple of years ago and is absolutely terrified of squeeky chew toys! She will run and hide in another room if she hears one. Anyway, the toys are kept in a small basket in a corner of the living room behind a chair.
***Entryway: We have two bookcase units which has our good books, bibles and gem and mineral books and framed family pictures. I moved everything on the open shelves and dusted and arranged it all back neatly.

Today I finished rearranging my sewing table and supplies in the family room. Also moved the treadmill to the other end of the room. I started this yesterday and was able to vacuum the carpet and dust baseboards while the furniture was moved out from the walls.

[Harriet]

Was glad to see "storage" come up on the challenge since it had been storage for Focus weekly decluttering, too. I kept on and went through a storage box for the challenge, and made a decision for every item, and now even the box is tossed. Threw away two of my mother's sweaters I should have let go a long time ago. Sigh. Sort of thought of saving the buttons, I think.

Like Harmony, I have no items that relate to entryway specifically. Travel items are spartan already.

Looking forward to craft challenge day, but not looking like I can get to it today.

Edit - yes I did. One half-hour of organizing and decluttering of sewing/cutting area, plus under tables, better use of shelving.

[Harmony]

Well, today is holiday decor. I have a lot needing done in that area. I did donate one bin earlier this month, the village houses. I gave away one big nativity set. I think this year I will get out everything at Christmas and see what I want to keep and what I want to donate. I have a beautiful 6' white tree that I'd like to use, however it has been put up in a very high place and it is difficult to deal with. The bottom row of pre-lights are not working. So, a decision about this needs to be made.

Some of this stuff would be so much easier if I didn't have DH to consider. I'd get rid of that tree for sure!

Haven't looked at my crafts yet. Want to look at the scrapbooking stuff and my yarns.

Surprised just how hard this challenge has been to keep up with. I'm almost thinking it would have been easier if I'd been crammed with stuff...I'm down to harder choices / decisions now.

[lucylee]

Some of this stuff would be so much easier if I didn't have DH to consider.

Truer words have never been spoken.

[Nancy]

Donations have been droped off. I had a bunch of bags from the groc. Store they went too.

[Harmony]

I went back today and did the craft item. Yikes, this one was the hardest one I've done so far. Hardest because it was all in low drawers and I sat on the floor sorting, and I never do this any more, and I could hardly get up! Sorted the yarns, took apart 2 started-never-finished projects and rolled that yarn up with the match. Got it all together in one box with my knitting needles and crochet hooks and all my patterns in a portfolio.

In a top drawer and another compartment I found a stash of candles of all sorts and sizes. I guess this would fall under the "multiples" category..and I sorted through them. I keep odds and ends of candles because we might have a hurricane and lose power. Found a little chocolate bar also that had picked up the taste/scent from the candles, ewww, in the trash that went!

Drawer in another spot has patterns and embroidery and photo mats, etc. and I took a quick look in there. Drawer was also the lowest one... I threw away a big stack of notes, copies, patterns I copied from books. Need to go through all these again when I can spread them out on a table...but this is a start.

I don't keep gifts ahead so had none of that to do. Still so much to go through around here. If I keep at it, I wonder if I'd ever get it all done?

What's the oddest / funniest / dumbest thing y'all found in our decluttering this month?

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

What's the oddest / funniest / dumbest thing y'all found in our decluttering this month?

I suppose ds's car ownership. Didn't even know I had it!

I also returned his label maker and extra tape for it. That I forgot I had. He gave away a lot of his possessions (but not the car!) before leaving for Australia and that fell into the duplicate category for me since I already have one. He had given it to me because it was battery operated so I could take it to the project and he thought I might use it while packing.

This morning I finished up holiday decorations. Christmas is untouched because I declutter that every year when I pull things out (and a slight declutter when I put things back and have discovered something was broken or not bringing me joy.)

I still have gifts (which I discovered when when looking for travel items - I didn't know where they were) and books (that's the reorganization task.)

This was a good jumping off point for going through my stuff but I think I'll continue it informally as I work around doing things. For instance, if I'm cleaning out the china cabinet, I need to make sure everything that goes back is loved and/or used and I want to keep it.

[Harriet]

This was fun! I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially chatting with ya'll. Very interesting to see the directions randomly come up and my reactions to them. Sometimes "Wow, I never thought of specific declutter THERE.", sometimes "Ooooooo, they caught me! I need this one!", and sometimes "This makes no sense."

Fun with stickers, of course. lol

Can definitely report that it was good for propelling me through my normal weeks of Focus. Our challenge was especially helpful for the 3 "laundry, storage, closets" weeks of decluttering this month (even though a bit out of order), because there was so much emphasis on clothes. I feel like I got much more done in those areas than I expected.

Oddest things I found were definitely some of the clothing I've been hanging onto, Harmony. A pink (petal pink) fitted jacket with shoulder pads comes to mind. (what was I thinking?)

Holiday - I agree with Kathryn in that I carefully organized the great majority of holiday items in the first few days of January and wouldn't want to disturb all that stored work now. I need to trust my decluttering decisions from that time. So that might be one day of the challenge in which the topic didn't make as much sense for my house.

Gifts - I do have a gift shelf and it could use a little attention, though there really isn't much there. I'll be sure to get to that today. Actually, the attention it may need is some planning for what I should buy/choose in the future.