2023 Organizing & Decluttering Annual Thread!!!

Today I had to pick out cutlery. It is nice knowing I have enough forks. The random stuff we have is all going to my son so that is this weekend.He wants Lots so I am glad. The new stuff is pretty!

There is nothing better than a decluttered space and celebrating by treating yourself to something new that you actually like to replace things you’ve decluttered!
I know I work at a school and we’re always needing spare cutlery that people no longer need for the staff rooms etc as it goes missing all the time!

hope you're feeling better soon cecelia

Finally! Dh and I share a small walk-in closet -3.5 ft rod on the left, 6ft rod in the back, and stacked 3.5 ft rods on the right - made smaller by the a/c thingy for upstairs being in there. When we moved in, the fuse box was also but we had an electrician flip it around to face the hallway instead. But that required taking down the single 5.5 ft shelf/rod and it never got put back up. And one of the stacked ones had fallen off.

BUT Dh reinstalled my rod yesterday and is working on his (the stacked one) - it was improperly installed to begin with so there are holes that need fixing first. I pulled ALL my stuff out and went through it. Donated stuff, shredded stuff, trashed stuff, rehomed a few things and organised it all. YAY

Ryann - it is! That closet was one of the compromises when we bought this house. Because one of the things I was looking for was separate closets (one of us is more organised than the other). Overall the house was perfect and there is a ton of storage spaces but the closet has been an issue.

Another huge box of goodies cleared from my craft room (the stuff that comes in a kit that you just know you’ll never ever ever use, try to use but hate the page so why keep it?) ready to be photographed and listed shortly. Also binge read and cleared out about ten books that I’ll also list soon. Packed an item back into storage (was going to sell it but hubby wants to keep it!) and I can now finally see the top of the chest of drawers in my room.
I think the next thing I need to tackle is my tbr collection stacked next to the bed - no more new books until I clear out the ones I already own!!!

Hi today I have a hair appointment and then I would like to get started on my storage room again. I wish I could lift and dump a box but they are very heavy. Regardless I only have 5 weeks to get this project done so I need to work on it a lot. Wish me luck!

I impressed my cleaning lady today. She was like damn you have been busy in your office/craft rooms. She hasn't been here in 4 weeks because of our COVID quarantine the last time she was set to come. But she definitely noticed all my efforts.

I am off to a terrible start. I got down a box and it was all my son’s notes from high school. I texted him what to do. I am 0/2 with donate. First box might be treasures.

Yes but he lives 3 hrs away. I did ask him what to do. I will try again today. He has an expensive backpack so I need to take that to get fixed.

Shipping is crazy expensive--I'd just recycle them!  If they were important, they wouldn't have been left behind ... and high school notes are unlikely to be useful for anything, especially with Google and the internet being such a big part of our lives.

I went through the lazy susan cabinet in the corner of the island yesterday and pulled out probably a grocery bag full of throwaway containers which went into recycling. There were a few oddball water bottles and things that went into a donation box (along with eight 1.5” ring binders from the office from the business insurance policies that I emptied out but the binders would still be useful for someone). Everything else was straightened up and now it all fits! 😎

I have a few never used kid’s food containers with utensils that fit in a little spot in the lid from that cabinet too, those I’ll put up on the Buy Nothing group along with her outgrown Frozen backpack. I’m sure someone will snap those up in heartbeat. I really thought my kid would take cold lunch to school but she really isn’t a sandwich kid at all, and DH more or less insisted she should just eat hot lunch every day and skip the hassle of packing a lunch. So that was that and they never were used. Now she has a different lunch box for the handful of times when she needs to bring a lunch and we have other containers that fit better in it.

I happened to catch the mail carrier a few days ago and asked her if the PO would take back the unused priority mail boxes I didn’t need and she said she thought they would. So I loaded them all up in the car today and hauled them over and they happily took them back. I even went so far as to restock their little stand in the lobby which was almost empty, LOL, so I came at a good time.

From there I took a good sized box of kid’s craft and science kits to a place that takes gently used or new toys, craft kits, dolls, etc. and dropped that off today as well. This place collects the stuff and sets it all up on shelves like a store so families who need a little help can come by and “shop” for things for their kids for free. My kid had so many of those kits that other kids gave her as birthday gifts, etc. and she almost never used any of them. Most of the kits had been opened and looked at, but then she would decide she wasn’t going to do the project and put everything back in the box complete. Some kid will like them even if my kid didn’t.

I’ll see if I can fill up the rest of that donate box this week and get rid of that stuff too. I’m trying to decide if I want to go to the trouble of tagging all the bigger toys for an upcoming consignment sale. It’s the quickest and easiest way to offload stuff like that and it almost always all sells. The downside is that they changed up things and now the max % you get back is 70% of the tagged price, but because the stuff is all vetted, it usually sells for more than garage sale prices and you don’t have to deal with Facebook flakers, etc., so I probably will do it. There are two sales a couple weeks apart, and if it doesn’t sell at one anything left can be transferred to the other sale without retagging which is a big plus.

Books listed for sale, craft items listed for sale, and my daughter made a sale today for a toy kit she didn’t want (she gets the cash if it sells, incentivises her to declutter items she no longer wants!)
Peas, I am WORN OUT.
But on a bright note my craft items are now exciting me as I only have what I like instead of constantly compromising or using bleh things to get them off my desk.

I am officially joining you guys today.  I’m a few years too late, but I’m going with “better late than never” and I’m very late.  I had three of my moving pods delivered a few days ago and a neighbor organized a few guys to help me unload them.  They are not professional movers, they usually work in the local fields where they grow Christmas trees and wine grapes.  It has been quite wet and apparently they haven’t been able to work for several weeks due to the wetness and we’re quite happy to be hired to unload my pods.  And I was quite happy to get them!

They did a great job for the most part.  I say for the most part because they made a few decisions that frustrate me a little.  I only wanted boxes marked for the kitchen and master bedroom brought inside the house, which they did.  My kitchen has one side filled with cabinets and the other side is empty and will be eventually used for my kitchen table when it gets here.  Guess which side they put all of the boxes on?  The cabinet side.  

And I asked them to put a bed into the guest room and the furniture into the master because I need to repair the bed frame before I can put the mattress back on it.  They put the mattress on the wall in the master. Fortunately I saw that before they left so they moved it to the guest room for me.  I wanted desperately to sleep on a mattress last night.  Unfortunately, my fatigue was such that I just couldn’t bring myself to put sheets and a blanket on the bed so I spent one last night on the uncomfortable cot.  I am going to fix up that bed for sleeping on tonight before starting in on the kitchen.

I can’t get to my sink, refrigerator, or basically any cabinet because they are blocked in by the boxes, while the empty side of the kitchen is, well, still empty.  I will spend today shifting all of the boxes to the empty side so that when I unpack each box, I have access to an empty cabinet to put away the items that I unpack.  
I did a lot of the unloading and carrying yesterday so I’m pretty wiped out today.  And I’m mid fibro flare so I hurt everywhere.  Plus the fibro flare brings a serious fatigue with it.  I had planned to try to get as much of the kitchen unpacked as possible for today knowing that alone will be all I can do.  At least having a functioning kitchen is going to be amazing! Now, just the lifting and moving of kitchen boxes is going to max out my quota of energy for the day.  I’m retired, so it isn’t the end of the world to be delayed by another day, I am just frustrated because it was so unnecessary.  

And since I can’t get to the refrigerator or any cabinet, I haven’t eaten since having a banana for breakfast yesterday morning.  I’m hungry and cranky.  And I’m more than a little irritated with myself that I didn’t do a major downsize before the move.  I’m going to drive over to this place that seems to do a terrific business out on the main road called Dutch Bros.  It looks like a coffee drive up place and has cars there every time I drive by so it must be good.  A cup of coffee and something to eat is going to do wonders to put me in a better mood.

Lexica - welcome - I'm glad that you finally have your stuff. Good plan to get coffee and some food and then get your bed made for tonight before tackling anything else. Good luck getting everything organised- don't over do it.

scrapmaven - welcome also! well done organising and purging in the scraproom. Hopefully it'll be easier to scrap now