Tackling the Office

The shoe rack above was one of two I gave to my mother, who asked right out if she could have them. She mistakenly thought I was planning on giving them away because I'd set them down unused near a pile of things I was getting rid of.

Before I knew it, my mouth had opened and I'd said "sure". Why not? They might technically be a useful item, but if I'm not using them they are not. And do I really want to fill them up with more shoes? Ahem, no.

So they are both gone.

I've slowed down for a while getting rid of my own clutter, but part of the reason for that is I've been busy ferrying clutter from my workplace to the Goodwill. Terri and I spent part of our weekend recently tackling the Swirling Vortex of Doom that is our office/toy-storage area at the daycare.

It was not a pretty sight. After three hours, I could not fit any more old toys/yucky books/old couch covers/who knows what else into my trunk. We didn't even try to attack the clutter on the desk that day, but we've been steadily throwing away and sorting out a little bit each day since then.

It's amazing how much better it looks right now and I notice that other staff members are trying to put things back where they belong now instead of just chucking stuff on a random shelf or piece of floorspace. Heh, now that there's an obvious space to put things back, it's a lot easier to do that.
Other than that, I've been sorting out more old magazines and I managed to cull a bag of clothes from the closet in time for a charity pick-up.

3230 things gone.

Free Box

"Can I really have this?", said my friend Kim, her eyes lighting up. "I've been looking for one of these!"

It was an old green ginger jar, an antique Kim said knowledgably. She'd seen one for fifteen dollars recently and had regretted not buying it.

I admitted I had no idea what it was, only that it had ended up in my flea market box somewhere along the way.

She asked me if I still wanted to give it away, knowing it had some value.

Oh yes. Happily.

I had brought a random Free Box up from the basement and placed it on the kitchen floor for my friend to go through. Out of it she chose:

A camera lens, a pomander, a gargoye for her garden, a baby shawl, a small blue and white cream and sugar set from Holland (I think it used to belong to my friend Pol), a set of Phonics flash cards, a brass bottle-opener shaped like a seahorse, and the ginger jar of course.

Some of the stuff from my flea market stuff feels just too nice to give away to the thrift store, without at least trying to inflict it (in a nice way)on my friends first. :)

3178 things begone!

Baskets and Magazines Galore

Ironically, a magazine called Real Simple , a household magazine whose ideals are simplicity and organization , were in a pile cluttering up my Library.

Yes, I'm starting to tackle that room. So far I've gotten rid of a pile of ten-year-old gardening magazines, some seed catalogues and most of the back issues of the Atlantic monthly . Some good articles in some of them, but very doubtful I'll plow my way through them again.

Also gone are a handful of paperbacks to the Friends of the Library book sale, and one book given to my mom, The Wicked Day (not pictured)which she would like to add to her book collection. If she discovers she has a copy already, she'll pass it on to the sale for me.

Now above are some baskets that were divvied up by a few crafting co-workers of mine, whereas the baskets below were utterly transformed in the preschool art class. Nicely took care of my Wednesday morning Art Project idea with the children.

Another 62 items banished. New total of 3218.

A Whole Tin and a Bag 'O Junk Gone...

Gee, but I used to really think that wreath was pretty. I made it myself years ago and it hung in the bathroom in our previous house. There's just no place for it here, and it's gotten rather dusty and bedraggled to boot.

Somewhere along the way I stopped being fond of dried floral wreaths. Aren't they bad feng shui anyway? :)

I also found a decorative tin that was just chock full of little gew-gaws: buttons, pendants, perfume samples, and an assortment of junk jewellery.

And this lot above, well, I just have to face it---I'm not about to sew anything with these cloth scraps now, am I ?

3156 less things to dust.

Starting to Run Out of Flea Market Things...

I culled these old gardening/decorating magazines from one of the big bookshelves in The Library. You know what that means?

Yes...I'm starting to run out of flea market things and I'm starting to consider the process of Decluttering the rest of my house. My stuff.

And I keep coming across things I'm just not sure what to do with. Which fortunately for this project usually means they need to go.

For instance, this papier-mache woman that somebody (maybe Amber) once made. It was yellowed and crackling, but I toyed for quite some time with making some sort of Goddess figure from it.... No, I told myself, if you're going to make potentially Sacred Art, you don't really want to construct it from something that's been slowly decaying in a corner of the garage!

And, pictured on the right beside it, is a cardboard box covered with wallpaper--a somewhat dilapidated Touchy-Feely Box that could be used at the daycare.

Why has it not been used then? Because the RAT that lived in my garage at one point made it unuseable with the residue of droppings. Awful!

Then why, you may ask, why did I simply not toss it long ago? Well, it's because my friend Carol made it and now she has passed away. Four years ago this month actually. And I have to pause before I throw out something my dead friend made.

But really! I have better things to remember our friendship by. So out it went finally this week.

And lastly, here are a few of the dregs that were cluttering up the dark corners of the garage still. No more.

3056 less things to trip over.

Out of My House and Into the Daycare

A lot of the stuff boxed in my basement is great stuff to pass on to the dressup box/toy collection at the daycare.

And there's always the fifty or so art projects per year that I'm responsible for coming up with to consider when I peruse my clutter.

Alas, half of the art supplies pictured above however were too dried-up/empty to be of any use to anyone, so they went straight to the trash.

But these baskets, for instance, were perfectly useable--perfect for the children to paint!

These items gone brought my total Declutter Count to just over the Three Thousand mark: 3019!

Getting Going Again

It's easy to lose momentum....

But here's another hundred little things at least that are gone.

2888 things decluttered.

Dregs of the Garage

The garage is almost ready for the AFTER picture. Not only is the last of my flea market stock now removed, but Jeff went and cleaned up all the untidiness that various carpentry projects have contributed to over time.

There is a big empty space now where before there was a jumble of junk. We can get out of our car in the garage and walk to the inner door without worrying about stumbling over a single thing.

I'm impressed.


All the things in this post for the most part were awkward items left in garage corners because they didn't fit into boxes. They took up a ghastly amount of shelf space.

The exception to this is the comic books which I'd been saving for my friend Chris. Today, he took them away and I think it's safe to say they've found a home which will appreciate the adventures of Conan the Barbarian more than mine ever would.

2788 things gone.

More

I can't even always remember which boxes are things to keep and which are full of flea-market junk.

Yesterday I pulled out a box from the area where I keep my holiday ornaments and there was all this STUFF . Egads! *shakes head in disbelief*

Of course, it's all gone now. :)

2729 things gone.

Okay to Cheat a Little

I've told a few friends about my "Ten Thousand Things Decluttered" project, and one of the questions that they ask is "Do you count every single thing?"

Well, I said, I'm not sure if I should. I mean, every single thing ? Is it too silly to do that? Example: so far, I've been counting a pair of earrings as a single item decluttered, even though I could argue that it is actually two physical objects...

No, said my friends (laughing a little), count everything .

"A bead is a thing, a button is a thing!", said Claudia. "If you want to really count to ten thousand, you should do that."

In a phone call yesterday, Tai said, "Hey, see if you have any poker chips to get rid of...you could count those!"

Heh, that was a bit spooky. I looked over at the box of poker chips on the countertop that was coincidentally sitting there just waiting to be tossed.

On the wise advice of my friends I am going to cheat a little today, which will boost my count by exactly 417.

Why not? I might as well have some fun with this process.

Hmmm, so let's see...that will make 2579 items decluttered.

Indecision

You see, it's things like this wooden rack that are hard for me to let go of without a second thought.

It's rustic, appealing, perhaps useful......hmmmm... I was very much aware of how I was teetering on the brink of keeping it, how I was actively brain-storming for good justification to stow it back somewhere in my home.

However, I thought and thought about how I would really use it, where I could usefully put it---and not a single useable idea came to me.

Out it went. I'm sure somebody will give it a good home.

It was Item # 2162 decluttered.

More

The whole overhead shelving area on the left side of my garage is empty except for a few forlorn signs that I used to advertise my perennial garage sales ( I recycled them by just changing the date and time.)

Now I have just passed the two thousand items decluttered mark (a fifth of my original goal). I now think that it may be unlikely to actually reach the ten thousand item goal...I have given away an enormous volume of STUFF already. Do I really have that much more? I'm not sure.

But in any case, two thousand things released is fairly impressive to me at this point. My mother (also in the process of emptying her cluttered spaces) pointed out that many, many people around the world would not even be able to claim ownership of so many things.

And here we are---still burdened with a surplus of possessions even after shoveling out so much. It's a little embarrassing.

My old and ugly kitchen clock has found a new home by replacing an even older and uglier clock. And the daycare now has a clock that actually keeps time....

2161 things have now been released back into the universe. Yeah, that's it. :)