Decluttering: laundry room cupboard

I can't believe it's April (almost mid-April!) and I hadn't yet done any decluttering this year. I did get rid of some stuff here and there, but no specific areas. I really want to get back on track with this, as there are still a few cupboards that could use it as well as both closets (and those are big projects, which is why I've been dragging my feet).

Anyway! I did finally get a cupboard done yesterday. This is an odd cuboard. It's very narrow (as you can see in the pictures) and so really not good for storing stuff. The top cupboard (not pictured), we use for canned goods and small stuff like that, but this bottom one is even more inconvenient because we keep our recycling box and some other stuff in front of it. So I was basically doing this job just to empty out the cupboard fully and get rid of junk, rather than to make room for other stuff. I did end up putting some of the candles that were in there back in, because they're good to have in an emergency, but otherwise not something we really need, so we don't need to access them.

( Cut for long lists of stuff I got rid of! )

In addition, I wanted to list the stuff I gave/threw away since the last time I did a decluttering post, just so I have it documented and can feel like I at least got rid of some stuff!

Throw away
1 bottle of wood polish
1 bottle of grill cleaner
1 bottle of dish detergent
1 jug of vinegar
3 bottles of Murphy's oil soap
1 bottle of glass cleaner
1 can of Comet
1 bottle of floor wax
1 bottle of Pine Sol
1 jug of canola oil

Give away
1 pair of old shoes
2 sweatshirts
3 t-shirts
1 henley shirt
2 polo shirts
2 grocery bags full of scrapbooking supplies

The stuff I threw away was all ancient stuff from under the kitchen sink. I saved a few things that were more recent, or that we actually use, but a lot of that stuff, even though I felt bad about getting rid of it, we never ever use it, so there's really no reason to hang on to it. (And yet the bottles were so old and gross, and the products themselves were ten or more years old, I didn't feel like it was something I could include in the charity box.)

The scrapbooking supplies I gave to my cousin when they were down here visiting. I had got rid of some of my stock a few years ago in one of those Christmas wishlist things where you send packages to strangers (that was an excellent way to get rid of stuff, though the postage got expensive), but I still had a ton left and I doubt I'll ever scrapbook again. It's just really not something I'm motivated enough to do on my own (maybe if I had a room where I could keep stuff out all the time) and I have kind of grown apart from the person I used to scrapbook with (plus she's in Orange County, so we can't exactly get down there for scrapbook night anymore even if I wanted to). So, like my art supplies, the scrapbooking stuff was something I just needed to say "I enjoy this, but I'm not likely to use this stuff again, so it's time to get rid of it".

So I feel good about all that. Now to make sure another four months doesn't go by before I declutter again...

Community & Parks and Recreation

So having decided half-hour shows are much easier for me to keep up with than hour-long shows, I decided to check out Community and Parks and Recreation.


Community I loved immediately. I watched all twenty eps in two days (and then found to my dismay that it's on hiatus for a few weeks) and was totally hooked. I love Troy and Abed especially, but I don't think there's any characters I don't like.

The premise bugs me, because I hate the prejudice against community colleges and the whole elitism thing going on there, and this just perpetuates the idea that community colleges aren't real schools, that they have horrible teachers, that you can get a degree taking nothing but filler classes, and that even the real classes are a total breeze where you don't have to do any work.

I love that the cast has multiple women and multiple characters of color (even if the main character is a white male and the balance is overall more men than women and more whites than PoC) and that they're not just there as window dressing. It does play to stereotypes (Britta is the annoying unfun feminist, and I cringed at the plotlines involving Abed's family (also why are both Abed and his dad played by South Asians when the characters are Palestinian?), among other things), but thankfully not all the time.

Also...I totally ship Abed/Troy, but the nudge-nudge wink-wink thing with them and with Raj and Howard in Big Bang Theory really gets on my nerves. There are no openly queer characters on either show, so the only thing approaching queer representation we get is joking about how close male friends might be gay. Although in Community there's also the dean, which um...again, queerness played for laughs. :-/

Still, I really enjoyed it and am eagerly looking forward to more episodes.


Parks and Recreation I'm a little more ambivalent about. I watched the "whole" first season, which was only six episodes, and while I didn't dislike it, and I liked a lot of the supporting characters, the main character, Leslie, hits my embarrassment squick majorly, so it can be difficult to watch.

I really love Tom and Ann, though, and while at first I wasn't sure if I was going to continue watching, the fifth episode really hooked me. That is the episode where everyone thinks Ann and Leslie are a couple at a function, thanks to Leslie's very masculine haircut and suit. XD (That wasn't the only reason I loved that ep. Ron's speech, omg!)

So I'm downloading what there is of season two now and will see how that goes. :)


Overall I am really enjoying this foray into sitcoms. They were pretty much all I watched growing up (aside from some action shows like Magnum P.I.), but when I started watching TV again a few years ago after my long hiatus, it was all stuff that had big fandoms, like SGA and SPN, or that sounded interesting like Brothers & Sisters and Ugly Betty, and I find that while I can enjoy longer shows okay, I really do prefer short ones. I have trouble staying interested in a forty-minute plot, plus IMO, drama shows should have limited runs, yet networks want to draw them out forever.