A long time friend of mine phoned me the other day with the exciting news that she had decluttered a bunch of scrapbooking supplies. She had given them away to a person from where she works. I agreed how great that was and said how I had been paring down my craft supplies again lately and have finally reduced them to the amount I was happy with. She said. I didn’t realise that you still did papercraft or I would have given my supplies to you. My response was “Thank the heavens you didn’t!”
The topic changed to some other items she had set aside to take to the thrift shop and she asked if I would be kind enough to take them for her as she works all week. I told her it would be my please as I was going there the very next day. She did me the return favour of taking me to collect my car from the mechanics. Below is the photo of my car stacked up with both her and my donations. Lo and behold two days later another friend and neighbour asked me to take a load of donations to the thrift store for her as well. I was going past that way to drop my son of at university so it was no bother.
It feels good to do favours for friends and it is also good to know that the thrift store that I volunteer at is benefiting from all these generous donations.
My car load of thrift store donations
This Weekends Mini Missions
Saturday – Do you have too many Gadgets ~ Kitchen gadgets, grooming gadgets, garage gadgets, electronics… If so now is the time to weed out a few.
Sunday – Do you have too many Digital media ~ Cd’s, DVD’s, computer games, downloads…  If so now is the time to weed out a few.
We just got a new computer because the old one was too slow. Well, the bad thing is that you lose some of your old data and stuff like that. But, the great thing about a new computer, I think, is starting over on a clean slate. i love my minimalist, clean front screen. And everything is organized…for now. lol
I agree. I have a Mac, and I read somewhere that on startup, it has to load whatever is on the desktop and in the documents folder. Well, once I got those organized and decluttered, I just kept going. Nice subfolders and such, and I can find everything again. Just pick an organization system that works for you and stick with it. I do things chronological by school year right now (since everything I have is from high school/college).
Win win situation for everyone Colleen! You go to work with some goodies and those friends would love what you have done for them. My biggest problem with decluttering is where it goes. I like instant removal, the out of sight ,out of mind approach. You do not have to think about it again. When something requires a bit more thought , I usually bin it. I am looking at a pile of worn out hi-vis work shirts, almost everyone is supplied with these at their workplace in Australia. They are heading to Mondays garbage collection. But I am open to any suggestions?
Sun is shining , heading out to tidy back yard up this weekend. Cheers.
Hi Wendy, do you have a rag collection? Many charity shops in the uk sell on poor quality clothing donations and I’ve seen a shop where they’ll buy rags from you direct ….I dunno if hi-vis stuff will have too much plastic in it?
And Colleen, I’m with you on the helping out friends thing, I have a van, I rarely get to visit close friends and family without coming away with a pile of stuff either for the skip or charity shop/ to pass on.
Oh and ‘hi’ everyone, am loving this blog, totally inspirational and I’m working my way through the archives :o)
Hi Fruitcake, love that username by the way even though I know your real name ;). I does feel good to help out where you can with friends and family, it is better that than having others throw stuff out because it is all too hard. The thing I like is that when I take the stuff away for others I get to choose which charity I take it too and of course I pick the one I volunteer at.
my family used to cut old worn out clothes into little cleaning cloths. google a bit around and you might be surprised, what things people do with used items :-). If you dont want to do anything with it, you can still trash them afterwards.
Sometimes Wendy, worn out is just worn out and you don’t have a choice but to throw it away. I know that the charity I work at sells bags of rags but from what I have seen they are mostly t-shirt fabric. Why not ask your charity drop off the next time you are there what they take in the way of rags. The more you investigate the possibilities ahead of time the less stuff needs to go to landfill until it is used to the max. I must find the time to investigate the big recycling site that I think is out past Cardiff somewhere. You can check out the newcastle council website to for lots of good local ways to recycle.
I like taking things to a thrift shop. But, before that I try to sell things via a yard sale or something.
My min-missions for the week. Mon–postcards for every state. Tues– two bottles we kept and made vases out of. wed–hanging file folders, Thurs–bags, Fri–a pile of books, Sat.–windshield wiper fluid. Sun–Font CDs. I was able to rid our house of all of these.
Well done Deb J, you covered those mini mission admirably.
I love to put on garage sales but with my slow decluttering approach I would hate having the stuff cluttering up my garage until I had enough to declutter. I am happy to donate most of it.
What I really like is that I have friends who like to have garage sales. So they keep one half of their 2-1/2 car garage for holding garage sale things that they collect. They have a sale about every 4-6 months. I price and tag my stuff and take it over there to store. Then they sell it for me. Am I spoiled??!!
hell yeah. I am so jealous. I want to have friends like that too 😉 thats a great way to get those things out of your house, but its still yours, and you can even get money in return.
We dont have garage sales here, only flea markets. and thats always hard to organize, if you dont own a big car. but hey, I will get this stuff out eventually. one way or another. I will try this flea market shop in the city center soon…
Hi Lena,
have you ever considered having a garage sale anyway. Someone has to start the trend. I suppose it is against your lease agreement to set up a stall in an open space on the apartment lot somewhere though.
I just googled a bit. It would be legal to do it on my own property, but as I dont have any, so I would have to ask permission from my landlord (and I really dont know if he is up for something like that). Then I could do it.
Go on Lena give it a try, you know you want to. I am sure you are a trend setter underneath. Get your family and friends involved so you have enough stuff to make it worth the effort.
lol. I will for sure think about it and ask the landlord if he would be alright with it. and then I can still ask some friends 😉 and turn into this trend setter, you want me to be, hihi.
Lucky you Deb J. I could easily do this myself but like I said I am happy to give the bulk of it away. I feel it is the least I can do considering we are living a fairly comfortable existence. I used to have them years ago and fleamarket stalls as well occasionally but my husband isn’t keen on strangers riffling through our garage and I don’t care enough to force him out of that comfort zone.
Hi I didn’t make huge inroads this week, had lots of snow boarding gear to list on trademe plus auctions from previous that were finalised and needed dispatching. Also the knex sets that were stored in the ceiling came down ahead of schedule and so I’ve been doing stock takes on the sets so they can go on trademe too. A bit of nuisance with all the other going on but…….
OK, I focused on stationery items – we eliminated a student desk a month or two ago, but all the drawer contents were added to the desk drawers of my computer desk. So I have in the “find a new home for” pile a surplus 2-4 of everything. Also realised we still have the office chair that belonged to the eliminated student desk in the room. Funny how the obvious gets overlooked.
Well done Moni, sometimes listing things for sale is more bother than any other decluttering. So even if that was all you got done then it was a pretty good effort. As it was you did a few other things as well. So good effort.