torachan | Entries tagged with decluttering

The other day we went through the dresser (and a bit in the closet) and weeded out some stuff. At first I thought maybe I could sell some of the pants on eBay, since several have barely been worn, but I looked and most pants don't seem to be selling at all, not even for very cheap, so I guess I'll just give them to the thrift shop. There's also a handful of other things from around the house.

Throw away
Two pairs of jeans
Two pairs of jeans shorts

Give away
3 chef's jackets
2 chef's hats
3 pairs of chef pants
6 pairs of khakis
1 pair of jeans
2 pairs of shorts
3 t-shirts
3 blouses
1 curling iron set
1 ipod wristband
1 whisk
2 bath scrubbies

I didn't do any before and after pics (though I did take a photo of the stacks of stuff to give away), since the drawers still aren't very neat, but I feel good about getting rid of all this stuff that doesn't fit (or we have no use for, like Carla's old cooking school clothes) and was just sitting around (some of it for years and years).

Here are some books I'm getting rid of because I don't think I'm actually ever going to read them. If you want any of them I will be happy to send them to you. Reimbursing me for postage is very much appreciated, though not necessary. (If you are outside of the US and can't pay for postage, please do not ask for any.)

ETA: All taken.

~~Dan Simmons: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion~~
(Liked the first two when I read them, meant to reread them and then the final two but I doubt I'll ever get around to it. Rise of Endymion is hardback, like new, and the other three are paperback. Endymion and Fall of Hyperion have a lot of wear, Hyperion is in excellent condition but the spine says "Hyerion" because apparently someone was asleep at the printer's when they made these.)

~~Jane S. Fancher: Ring of Lightningt, Ring of Intrigue, Ring of Destiny~~
(Similarly, read the first two and would need to reread them to move on to book three and that just isn't going to happen. All paperback, first and third are excellent condition, second has creasing on the spine.)

~~Tanith Lee: Death's Master, Night's Sorceries~~
(Picked up on a rec when I was looking to use up BookMooch points, but on second thought am not really interested. Both old paperbacks with quite a bit of wear.)

~~Elizabeth Kostova: The Historian~~
(Same deal as Tanith Lee. Paperback, some wear.)

~~David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest~~
(Sounded interesting, but have accepted the fact that I am never going to read a book that is over 1000 pages long and printed in super tiny type. Paperback, excellent condition.)

~~Jasper Fforde: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten~~
(Enjoyed the first book in the series, but not really enough to read more, especially after hearing his Thoughts on Fanfic ("it's horrible", which is laughable because fanfic is all he writes). First two are hardback, all are excellent condition.)

~~Irvine Welsh: Porno, The Acid House~~
(Loved Trainspotting but tried and tried to get into Porno to no avail. Picked up The Acid House one time when I saw it for $1. Feeling less enamoured of white male authors these days. Porno is hardback, both are excellent condition.)

~~Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius~~
(Mooched because it was a famous book and I was looking for stuff to mooch, but on second thought I'm not actually interested. See above re: white male authors. Paperback, very good condition.)

~~Michael Dorris: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water~~
(Read this in high school lit class and thought to revisit it, but doubt I ever will. Paperback, fairly worn.)

I didn't take any pictures for this. The stuff we got rid of just went immediately into the trash, and there are only a few things in the give away pile, and even for an "after" picture, just the way the bathroom is set up makes it really hard to get in and get one. But take my word for it, the cupboards look much better than they used to! There is actually quite a bit of room in there now.

So that's my last decluttering of the year (cutting it close to the wire!) and I really can't do much for the three weeks Carla will be in Wisconsin and Indiana in January, but hopefully when she gets back we can tackle the bedroom and computer room closets and really get those fully cleaned out. Then our house will be totally decluttered! (Well, there will still be some cluttery things here and there, of course, but we will have thrown out or given away all that we want to part with at the moment.)

(Oh, and I never did go through my books today, so I suppose that will be my first decluttering of the new year.)

This is the last of the kitchen decluttering! Today I went through the rotating cupboard, which has long been overstuffed with things we never use. Carla got a large salad spinner for Christmas, so we needed to make room for that, and I had been wanting to finish up the kitchen decluttering before the end of the year anyway, so now was the perfect time.

We also got a few things out of a drawer as well as bits and bobs from other cupboards (including the one I cleaned out because of ants the other day), and I already had some stuff set aside from when I cleared off the cart our microwave and toaster oven are on a few weeks ago, so there was quite a bit of stuff.

There wasn't much to throw away and what I did throw away, I didn't take pictures of, mainly because I did it in pieces rather than all at once. There were some ancient spices from the cupboard with the ants, as well as some containers we never use (yogurt cartons, etc. that we save to hold leftovers, but our collection needed to be weeded out, so some of those went in the recycling). (No list for that stuff, either, since I didn't note things down as I was tossing them out.)

I didn't get any before pictures, and it's hard to take photos of the rotating cupboard, but I did take one and you can see it's fairly well-organised and tidy now. I did take a pic of everything to give away, though. Photos here.

( List of stuff going to the thrift store )

I'd still like to maybe do the bathroom cupboards this week and then that will really just leave the closets to tackle for 2011. :D

This closet is going to take at least one more go-round before it's fully decluttered (and then the remaining crap has to be organised!), but we did get rid of quite a bit today. I didn't take any before and after photos of the closet itself, because the before doesn't look too different to the photos I took before (pretty much the same stuff is in there, though minus the white drawers, which I got rid of the other week), and even after getting rid of all this stuff today, it's not tidy yet, so no use taking any after photos. :p

( List of stuff decluttered )

Pics are at the bottom of this set.

I also found one iCurve laptop stand and Carla remembered we had a second in the other closet, so since neither of us have laptops anymore, I put one up on eBay (I'll put the other one up once the first one is sold) along with her Birkenstocks, which I really hope get a decent price because they're not that old, but estrogen has changed the shape of her feet so they are really too large. She's been trying to wear them (since they weren't cheap), but they've just become too painful.

Woohoo! I had actually hoped to maybe work some more on the closet today, but I woke up around two and then we had to go out to the store, so by the time we got back it was too dark to do anything in there (there is a light fixture in the computer room closet, but it only had a cloth string to turn it on and off and that broke years ago, so really if you want to be able to see in there, it has to be daytime).

So instead I decided to do the cupboard over the washing machine. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but the cupboard is pretty deep (maybe a foot and a half), so there was a lot of stuff in there. The top shelf was nothing but my mom's old knick knacks (this used to be my mom's house; she moved out when she got married and since her husband's house was already furnished and had no room for new knick knacks, she left them all here), so there were no hard decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. It all got boxed up and she can look through it and either keep some stuff or give it to the thrift shop (they remodelled a couple years ago, so she does have some room for more knick knacks now and may want some). There were a handful of things to throw away, but not much.

So now the entire top shelf is empty. I don't want to put anything up there, because it's too high to reach (I had to use a chair). I would like to get up there one more time to do a bit of cleaning, though. There are a ton of dead spiders in the corners. XD Carla was on the phone, though, so I couldn't run the vacuum, and the shelves are too deep for me to reach in and dust, not the top one anyway, since I was already rather precariously perched on the chair.

The middle and bottom shelves, I did take everything off, but just put it back on in a slightly more organised fashion. The middle shelf is mostly taken up by a few large items, such as the ice cream maker and crockpot, and one large pot that now that I think of it, could probably be moved with the other pots. There's also some random stuff like lightbulbs and things.

The bottom shelf is all food, some of which I moved to the narrow cupboard on the wall to the left of this one, since it was mostly empty. (This shelf is mostly empty, too, because it's so deep, but I don't like having things in front of other things, because if the stuff in the back is blocked, we won't see it to think about using it.)

Anyway, I'm very pleased with getting that area decluttered and tidied! Maybe now I'm on a roll and will get those other last few areas done before the end of the year...

( List of things gotten rid of! )

Photos on flickr, including before and after.

Man, this year has really sucked for decluttering. The thing is, there are really only a few areas left to do (I think one kitchen cupboard, the cupboard above the washing machine, the bathroom cupboards, and the two closets), but they're all fairly large (especially the closets), so I think that's having an effect. When I could just do a drawer here and a drawer there, it was easy to do it in small batches. I really want to do at least one of those areas before the end of the year, though!

Anyway, after getting the SNES stuff out of the closet, that left two drawers empty in this horrible little plastic drawer thing we have in there (the plastic squeaks badly when you open it), so I wanted to clear out the last drawer and get rid of it.

The bottom drawer was just filled with old computer stuff, mice and cables, mainly, and so we were able to part with almost all of it. There was also some other stuff from around the house that had been piling up in a "to give away" box, so I added that stuff in the photo as well.

Throw away
1 dead hard drive
2 installation CDs for PCs we no longer own
1 broken SNES controller (not pictured)
1 cracked plastic video game case (not pictured)
1 medium pot with peeling "no stick" coating (not pictured)

Give away
1 pot lid (from above-mentioned pot)
1 metal camping pot/steamer
1 pair of shoes
1 microphone
1 PC/Mac controller
1 trackball
2 ancient Apple mice
Various firewire, USB, and AV cables
1 set of squeaky plastic drawers
1 arcade-style controller (non-working, but it's nice so maybe someone can fix it)

And technically I have gotten rid of even more than that if I include the stuff I've sold! The SNES stuff alone was two drawers of that thing in the closet.

Photos are at the bottom of my decluttering set on flickr. (No before/after, because it really wasn't one specific aread being decluttered, although you can see where the shelves were in this photo from some previous closet decluttering.)

1. Carla sold her textbooks today and got $35. I'm just trying to focus on the "yay, money!" part and not how much they cost originally. ^_^;;

2. We did a load of laundry and couldn't find enough hangers to hang stuff up afterwards, so we did a little decluttering in the closet. She has a bunch of old men's t-shirts she doesn't wear anymore, so we got rid of ten of those, two polo shirts, and an old sweatshirt and pair of jeans of mine. This isn't a proper decluttering post, since it wasn't a whole area cleaned up, but I did take a picture. (Hopefully I can do some real decluttering soon.)

3. I really liked this post by

azurejay:

My fat is not your mother's diabetes or your father's bad heart. My fat is not your dog's anxiety problems or your best friend's cancer. If my fat is a disease, it's my disease, my risk factor, my life in my hands and on my hips.

My relationship with my fat is not my relationship with your fat. I will say and think things about my fat that I would never say or think about yours: my relationship with my fat is not my relationship with your fat. My relationship with my fat is not my relationship with you. Neither is it your relationship with your fat, nor our relationships with anybody else's fat. My relationship with my fat is mine. We've been together a long time, my fat and me. We've been through a lot. Your fat has been with you a long time too--maybe you should talk to your fat, and leave me and mine alone.

Daily Happysong:

Angela Aki - Still Fighting It
This is a really awesome Japanese cover of one of my favorite Ben Folds songs. Unlike a lot of Japanese covers, it's not just unrelated lyrics using the same tune. It's also not a direct translation, but is on a similar theme.

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...

Well, maybe there will be a few small declutterings before the end of the year after all. :p

Before my mom came to pick up the stuff for charity the other day, I went through the stuff that was in one of my old ebay boxes and decided that since it's never sold, it's time to just get rid of it all.

Throw away
GLAY poster
Star Wars poster
Star Trek magazine
Star Trek movie pamphlet thing

Give away
A Sailor Moon coloring book
An incomplete set of Michael Whelan trading cards
A tiny stuffed Agumon
A Totoro puzzle postcard
A bunch of trading card sheets
2 karaoke CDs
An iPod case
A pocket knife
A pair of opera glasses
A pair of clip-on earrings

Photos are here and here.

So now we have a big empty rubbermaid container just sitting against the wall here. It makes a nice little table, but I'd rather have something nicer than an empty plastic box. XD Not sure what to do with it at the moment, either.

This may be our last decluttering of the year, but we're going out with a bang! Our new sofa and loveseat were delivered today, and a truck is coming tomorrow to take the old sofa. We're going to see if they'll take some other stuff as well... XD

Our closet is fairly large, but there's no place to stand where you can get a good picture of the whole thing, so I had to take six shots to get all of it! (That's six before and six after...)

It was actually not that cluttered compared to how it was in years past. A lot of stuff has been got rid of already. But there was (and is) still a ton of junk.

Today we took out a bunch of stuff, got rid of a lot, and then got very, very tired and couldn't tackle the whole thing, so just put everything we knew we wanted to keep back in no particular order. (Because of how everything was jumbled up, it really wasn't possible to do the "one shelf at a time" thing I've done with other areas.)

So eventually (possibly we might do some more in the next couple weeks, but I am not going to stress if we don't) we'll have to come back and go through the rest of the stuff, then organise it all nicely, but for now, we've at least got a ton of stuff out of there.

Flickr is not wanting to show these in the right order, so actually the after pics are showing up first, then the befores (I only say that because they are both messy so it may be hard to tell in some cases!). But the tag for the closet is here and the whole set with everything we've decluttered this year is here (that one is organised in order, since it does let you rearrange sets).

( Lists of stuff thrown away and given to charity )

So, changing the subject slightly. The furniture. I will have pictures once everything is properly moved around. Currently the living room and dining room are a huge mess because there are two sofas and a loveseat in them! Also a very large desk.

You see, when we were thinking of how to rearrange the new sofa stuff, we began pondering what to do with the desk in the bedroom. That desk was bought a few years ago because Carla wanted a desk in the living room to set up another computer. That never took off too much, but then she did use it for doing homework for a while. But when we rearranged the living room, we put it in the bedroom and now it never gets used. It seems silly to have it sitting in there taking up space if it's not getting used, but we don't actually need three desks.

It's also a little nicer than I'd just want to give away, yet I don't know that I want to go to the trouble of selling it. And I do like the looks of it a lot. So what we decided to do is give away my old desk, which I do love dearly, but which is huge and I don't actually need all that space. I'd rather have floor/wall space than desktop space these days. So we'll get rid of the old desk (hopefully the guys will take it tomorrow) and I've moved the newer desk into the computer room and set up shop at it. I am liking it quite a bit, though it will take a while to get used to!

The only thing I didn't like about this new (to me!) desk was the horrible CD rack on the side. Why did I even install it!? We don't actually have CDs to put on it, and it doesn't hold them well unless you fill the whole thing up. Either way it's just a dust-catcher. So I unscrewed some bits that were holding the top of the desk on, pushed up, and tried to pull it out. As luck would have it, it was exceedingly flimsy, so I was able to just bend it out, then screw everything back in. Take a look at the remains. :D

The printer stand needs to go between the desks now, which means there's no place for my little rolly cart. I will miss it, but at the same time, it's not got all that much stuff in it anymore, so I can put that stuff in the drawers of the printer stand (and move some of it elsewhere). All of this will really free up a lot of space in the computer room.

So now we have a ton of free space in the bedroom, too, and we hit upon the brilliant idea of putting the exercise bike in there. OMG IT WILL FINALLY NOT BE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM! This is a dream come true, really. There has never been room to have it elsewhere. I am super excited about this part.

It's been a month or more since my last big decluttering and I was really hoping to get something done this weekend. But then two things happened:

1. I remembered I lent Alexander my camera, so even if I did do any decluttering, there would be no pictures, and I find the pictures to be a big motivational tool for me. I love being able to see the difference and to see the piles of stuff to get rid of.

2. I looked at both the closet and the cupboard under the kitchen sink (the two areas I wanted to tackle next) and despaired. Under the kitchen sink is just super gross even if we get it tidied up, because the cupboards in the kitchen are just not nice. There's no finishing or anything, so the wood's nasty, plus there's a hole in the wall from some plumbing work. Then there's the fact that what's under there is bottles and bottles of cleaning stuff, and while it's stuff we never use, I also feel like it would be a waste to throw away (even if it's like ten years old or more). Meh.

The closet in the computer room is also really overwhelming. It's very messy and the majority of the stuff in there is Carla's, so I feel like I don't even know where to start. It doesn't help that there's no light in there, so it's hard to see (there is a lightbulb, but it's one where you pull a string to turn it on and years ago the string broke, so I don't even know what to do for it), plus Carla's old gigantic PC is taking up a lot of floor space, as is the monitor, so it's hard to even move around. (I could move those, but her desk is kind of right in front of the closet, and she's using her desk right now, so...) Gah!

So I just decided it was obviously not meant to be. I will get something done as soon as I get my camera back, overwhelming or not.

For now, though, I figured I'd console myself by listing some stuff we've got rid of over the past month or so that just came from here and there around the house, so I never took pictures or did a big post about.

Thrown away
Dozens of cooking magazines

Given away
6-7 old polo shirts
2 small blankets
6 magazine holders
2 contact lense cases
A thermometer
A tube of lipgloss

Sold
A ton of Japanese magazines
A ton of CDs
A handful of DVDs

The dining room has a small cupboard in the corner that has held various junk over the years. For a while it was a ton of audio tapes, just stacks and stacks of them, and then when we finally decided we were never going to listen to audio tapes again, we got rid of them...and then filled it with more junk!

The stuff that was in there now was almost all knicknacks of my mom's. Most were stuff she'd had in the bathroom, but I think some had been in the dining room, too. So I just took them all out and put them in a box and next time she comes over, she can either take them for herself or take them to the thrift shop. (Now that the remodelling is done at their place, she might actually want some of them back herself.)

The other thing in there was some cans of car paint and primer that I bought at one point thinking I could fix the bad patch on our car. I never did and then the car got totalled, so...

That emptied out the entire cupboard, and I have nothing to put in it at the moment, but I'd rather a completely empty cupboard than one that is full of junk that's not even ours.

Trash
A cardboard flower basket that's too beat-up to save

Give away
3 cans of car paint/primer
1 piece of padded sandpaper
3 decorative tins
11 perfume bottles
2 old fashioned shaving cups & brushes
1 decorative wooden jar filled with old curlers and pins, of all things
1 poweder puff jar
2 glass jars
1 wooden statue
1 crock (was on top of the cupboard, not inside)
1 glass basket (not pictured)

Pics here.

We have an old-fashioned desk in the living room, which still had some stuff of my mom's, and it's been over eleven years since she moved out!

I don't have any pictures again because it was a spur-of-the-moment cleaning, but I did want to document it. The inside of the desk, where the desk part folds down, was pretty empty (we'd already cleaned it out at some point years ago), but there were a few things to get rid of. I then put the stuff from the sewing machine drawers in there, since we no longer have the sewing machine.

The main area to be cleaned was the drawer under it. It was stuffed full of old magazines and junk. If I were to ask my mom to go through it, her packrat tendencies would mean she would keep a good chunk of it. I'm just doing her a favor by tossing it all out. :p I did save a few things and put them out in the garage with some other papers of hers, but for the most part it was junk she'd lived without for over ten years and will never miss.

I also added some stuff from my desk area and from around the house to the thrift store pile, which now covers the whole dining room table and part of the dining room floor (I hope my mom can take it soon).

Trash
Some odd metal bits and bobs
A purple iron-on patch for pants with holes in
A huge stack of old magazines and papers
A filled-in workbook from when Carla was in cooking school 8 years ago

Give away
A 13" TV/VCR combo*
An old scanner
A car adapter electric outlet**
Two door stops
Two pairs of glasses + cases
A box of staples
A couple USB cords
A mirror that was on the wall in the living room***
A Sit & Step (lets you "walk" and get exercise at your desk)****

*I used to use it for work, but who's going to send me stuff to translate by VHS now? I have no need of a second TV.

**We have no car! Plus, we bought it so we'd be able to plug in our laptops in the car the first time we drove back to Indiana, and we never used it the entire trip, nor when we went last year, so even if we did rent a car and drive a long distance, I can't see us using it.

***While tidying the desk area in the living room, I found my diploma from UCLA. I have had it in an envelope and meant to get a frame for years, so yesterday I just said, hey, let's walk down to Aaron Brothers for our walk today so after nine years I can finally put this "away". Got a nice frame, but needed somewhere to hang it, so the mirror has to go.

****Nice idea, but we are talking daily walks now, so it's not really necessary, plus it makes a horrible squeak, which makes me avoid using it.

We have two dressers in the bedroom, one tall and one short. The short one my mom wants for their new, bigger bedroom, so we have slowly been moving stuff out of it for a while. Today she came over and took the drawers from it, so we had to get the last couple emptied.

The tall dresser just had a bunch of junk in the top drawer, so that was easy to clean out. Except for a few random photographs, which went in the big box o' photos, everything went in the give-away pile.

In addition to that stuff, we also got rid of some old underwear and socks (stuff that was too full of holes went in the trash, stuff that was decent enough went in a bag that my mom took with her for their homeless outreach). Carla also made the decision to part with two nice sweaters that had been in a drawer for years and years and never touched (she pretty much never wears anything heavier than a short-sleeved t-shirt). My mom also took those for her outreach, so none of the clothes are in the photo, but it's more stuff we got rid of!

Plus yesterday we went through a bunch of CD wallets and found four that we didn't need, so those went in the give-away pile, too. A bunch of CDRs went in the trash (and I'm trying to find homes for some Japanese stuff, which will otherwise be thrown away in a couple days).

Oh, plus I washed all the bedding tonight since moving the dresser out (it's now in the dining room, waiting for Tom to come with the truck, hopefully tomorrow) meant moving the bed and that seemed like a good time to wash stuff. When I took one of the comforters out of the dryer, I found that the stitching had come undone so much that the padding was no longer attached to the material. I'm sure someone who has a sewing machine or is otherwise talented in that area could stitch it back up and make it usable, but I don't want to have to deal with it getting bunched up all the time, so it's off to the thrift shop as well. (Luckily we have a ton of blankets, so it won't really be missed too much, though I have had it for twenty years or so.)

So I don't have any before and after shots, just one of some of the stuff that's being bagged up for charity, but I still feel like we got rid of quite a bit of stuff.

Trash
One sock with no match
About five or six pairs of underwear
A stack of ~25 CDRs

Give away
About ten pairs of socks
Five or six pairs of underwear
2 sweaters
4 CD wallets
2 glasses cases
4 small photo frames
A ring
A US flag pin
An embroidered scarf
An unused lightbulb for our old fridge
A CD player
A car adapter
A penguin patch
A pair of headphones
My old Motorola RAZR
A pair of goggles I used to cosplay Daisuke from Digimon once (they don't really look like his, but were the closest I could find and my costume was really half-assed anyway)
A twin-size comforter
Hundreds of jpop CDRs

This was a fairly small decluttering job, so I hope to get some more done next week, but we did get rid of some stuff, and I dusted the stand itself (took four dust rags omg).

The TV stand in the bedroom used to be stuffed full of VHS tapes, but we got rid of most of those years ago. Now we're to the point where I'm not even sure we should save the VCR itself (hasn't been used in years), but I guess we'll hang onto it for a little bit longer just in case.

Right now the main annoyance on it was these huge boxes of recipes that Carla took from my mom's father-in-law's house when he died. Carla thought she would go through them and pick out some, but it's been almost a year and they're still just sitting there being messy and collecting dust. She did look through one box, but most of the recipes turned out to be for stuff we'd never make. The other mess was a stack of newspapers with recipes in them, which she will go through, and then throw away the remains once she's cut out the actual recipes. So without those two messes, the shelves look a lot better.

Trash
5 VHS tapes
1 old PC game
1 DVDR
1 CD
A stack of penny wrappers
2 bags of old computer parts

Give away
3 metal boxes
3 boxes worth of recipes
11 VHS tapes of old jpop

As for the boxed recipes, I don't really want to throw them away. Is there anyone on my flist who likes to collect or look at old recipes? I will send you all these (minus the boxes, which are too heavy to ship) for the cost of postage ($5 in the US if I can fit them in a flat rate envelope).

I am also giving away some videos, again, for the cost of shipping (media mail in the US, so it shouldn't be too much, depending on how many you want). I held onto these for years, but I just don't think I'm ever going to do anything with them. There are 9-11 tapes (I thought there were 9, but there are 11 in the picture, so some of those might be something different) of jpop/rock performances from various shows like Music Station, Countdown TV, Hey! Hey! Hey!, Yoru mo Hit Parade, etc. (mainly from those first two) from the mid to late '90s (I discovered Japanese rental shops in '96, but I also rented older episodes back to at least '94, maybe earlier).

What I used to do is when I would rent the shows, I would copy the songs I liked onto a separate tape in EP mode, so each of these has six hours of music, hundreds of performances. I don't have a list of what's on all these, but basically any artist that was popular and appeared on shows at that time has a good chance of being on there. :p There's lots of Johnny's especially, because there is always some Johnny's group on Music Station every week.

The first tape also has a few full episodes of variety shows before the music performances start (I know one is Oshare Kankei with Tokio as guests (this ep was my first exposure to them) and I think the others are Johnny's-related, too). The tapes are pretty much in chronological order (except that the pre-'96 stuff is mixed in with stuff from '96 in the first tape or two).

Pics here.

Gah, over a month since I decluttered anything! So yesterday and the day before we tackled the last three kitchen drawers. I didn't get rid of a ton of stuff, but I feel better for having gone through them.

( Details and lists and pics! )

Argh! Once again it's been almost a month since I got rid of any crap. :( This was a pretty big purge, though, so it balances out somewhat.

We decided to tackle the bedroom closet this time, though we really only did the clothes and didn't look too much at other stuff in there for the moment (it's not too badly cluttered, though; mostly just needs to be straightened up).

It's one of those big closets that covers the whole side of one wall, and our clothes (mostly shirts, since pants go in drawers) took up almost half of it. We really don't wear that much stuff, though, so they're just sitting there.

We managed to cut down the clothes by about a third, which makes me happy. We also got rid of a ton of old hangers and only kept the nice plastic ones.

Throw away
1 t-shirt with really bad discoloration under the arms

Give away
A big trash bag full of t-shirts and a couple sweaters (I didn't count how many)
2 pairs of pants (not pictured as they were so dusty we had to wash them)
1 dress jacket (not pictured because I forgot)
1 belt
1 Hello Kitty purse
More hangers than I can count
2 notebooks of my mom's (not pictured)

Pics here.

If anyone is interested in the Hello Kitty purse, let me know. It's so cute. It's slightly dingy, but I think using a soapy rag on it would brighten it up. I can take more pics if you want. I'd like $5 + shipping.

I also still have this penguin baby blanket. It's really adorable, quilted red and white squares with a penguin design. It is handmade, though not by me. We bought it on eBay years ago when we were in our obsessive penguin stage and buying anything cute with penguins. But...we don't have kids and don't plan on having kids, so it's just sat in a drawer all this time and its cuteness does us no good! It's 30x30 inches and brand new. I'd like $15 + shipping.

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last decluttering. D: (Though I console myself with the fact that at least I've got rid of a bunch of CDs (and now hopefully some DVDs as well).)

I mainly wanted to tidy up the drawers I use for my packing supplies, but it ended up spilling over to other dresser drawers as well. We have two dressers in the bedroom, one of which I've had ever since I was little. The other one is my great-grandmother's and my mom was using it until she moved out. Now my mom and Tom are remodelling their house and once that's done they'll have room for it in their new and improved bedroom. So I figure I might as well start emptying it out now.

I had three drawers with packing supplies, plus some boxes stacked on top. The main drawer I use was just a total jumble, so I went through and took out stuff I'm never going to use and organised everything else. I also went through the second drawer, which had a bunch of priority mail boxes...most of which were in sizes I never use, so I just put those in the recycling. I got those two drawers consolidated into one, and while I still have a couple boxes on top of the dresser, it looks a little neater (plus I dusted). The third drawer that had packing stuff was just envelopes (manilla and legal), so that stayed pretty much as-is, though I also added all the mailing forms I have (insurance, customs, priority labels, etc.) so that they don't get lost in the shuffle with the actual packing supplies in the other drawer. It all looks so much neater!

Then I went through the drawers in the other dresser and emptied all but three (there are eight total). This was mainly consolidating. All the jeans and pants from two drawers could fit into the one empty drawer that had previously held boxes, and some other shorts and pants that were scattered across a couple drawers were consolidated into one.

So this was a lot of tidying, but I didn't actually end up getting rid of that much stuff. That's okay, though. I still feel good about it, and in a few weeks when my mom's remodelling is finished, we'll be able to get rid of the second dresser, so that should count, too!

Trash
1 pair of jeans beyond repair
2 ratty bras (not sure why these were even around, considering I haven't worn a bra in years and don't plan to ever again)
1 ratty sports bra
1 pair of long underwear in very sad shape (will need to buy a new pair once the weather gets cold)

Give away
3 chef's kerchiefs from when Bruce was in cooking school
Several white aprons also from cooking school (not pictured, as these were leftover from cleaning out the hall cupboard)
1 never-used baby blanket

Pics here.

And speaking of the baby blanket (or more like a quilt, I guess, since it's padded?), does anyone want it? It's really adorable, red and white squares with a penguin design. It is handmade, though not by me. We bought it on eBay years ago when we were in our obsessive penguin stage and buying anything cute with penguins. But...we don't have kids and don't plan on having kids, so it's just sat in a drawer all this time and its cuteness does us no good!

It's 30x30 inches and brand new. Picture here I would like to get $20 plus shipping.

Since my mom came by and got all our bags and boxes for the thrift shop, now seemed like a good time to tackle another drawer!

The bottom kitchen drawer is where we keep our ziploc bags, and rolls of foil and parchment paper and cling film, etc. It also had a ton of random stuff underneath those boxes, and that's what we were after.

It turned out to be all stuff to get rid of, except for one knife which we put in another drawer. There were a ton of hand towels and rags and pot holders and stuff like that. We have a few pot holders we use (though mainly we use oven gloves, so we could probably get rid of even most of the other pot holders that are on top of the toaster oven as well) and these have not been touched in the ten plus years Bruce has been here, and probably not much in the time before that, either. There was also a set of knives still in the plastic sheet they'd come in. Bruce says they came with some meat once when his mom sent us a package from Omaha Steaks. We have plenty of good knives already with the ones from when he was in cooking school.

Trash
Sticky plastic from the bottom of the drawer (reusable, but it's gross and we don't need it)
A pile of extremely worn rags and towels
A few various bits we couldn't figure out what they were for
2 instruction manuals for things we didn't have anymore

Give away
A pile of towels
A pile of pot holders
3 sharpened metal sticks we're not sure what they're for
A set of turkey lifters
A knife set
A ladel we had no idea we owned

Pics are here.

*

Totally unrelatedly, I meant to mention in my other post, but forgot. People who use Twitter, do you have a search box in your sidebar? I don't and I can't figure out why. Bruce does, but when I click to view his page on my computer, he doesn't; his style looks just like mine.

shut up and let me see your jazz hands

Decluttering: dresser

Decluttering: books!

Decluttering: bathroom cupboards

Decluttering: kitchen cupboard + misc stuff

Decluttering: more from the computer room closet

Decluttering: cupboard over the washing machine

Decluttering: misc stuff from around the house

Daily Happiness

Decluttering: laundry room cupboard

Decluttering: box o' stuff

Decluttering: the closet

Decluttering: here and there

Decluttering: dining room cupboard

Decluttering: living room desk

Decluttering: various stuffs

Decluttering: TV stand

Decluttering: kitchen drawers

Decluttering: the bedroom closet

Decluttering: dresser drawers

Decluttering: the kitchen drawer

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