Thursday, April 1, 2021

Decluttering: And Again

 

So. The decluttering continues. This post is basically a list. So, bonus cat picture. (No, not taken by me--credit below.)

  • Quite a bit of perfume has been given away. (No, I'm not getting rid of the collection, just thinning it.) I realize that perfume isn't that much volume, but I want to get the whole collection (plus decanting supplies) down to one specific shelf, with no stray bits anywhere else.
  • Also hand cream and unused notebooks. Given away, I mean.
  • And I ruthlessly dumped half-used notebooks. That was kind of painful. I went through a high-stress (work related) period a couple of years ago where I was buying pretty notebooks like they were mood-altering drugs. Roughly the same period as the Bead Doodles. But in the end, I do not write on paper. Just doesn't happen.
  • I went ahead with my wash-sweaters-on-the-wool-cycle plan, and have not yet destroyed anything. So some sweaters will be added to the donate boxes.
  • Those donate boxes are waiting for us to investigate the social distancing policies at Goodwill.
  • Similarly, some boxes of books are waiting for us to have the courage to enter the used bookstore. I would just donate them, but no telling when the library will resume collecting for book sales. And apparently I just can't throw books out. (Oh. Ack. In that case, what do I do with the ones that the bookstore rejects? We usually take those to the library.)
  • So the tower of "on its way out" stuff in the garage is growing. As is the huddle of trash bags. I don't remember what's in those trash bags, but I seem to be getting rid of a fair bit of stuff.
  • Five container-type things that I didn't want to get rid of, and five categories of things that had no home, have been nicely married. I don't approve, in general, of keeping containers that have no current use, but I'll take the win.
  • That leaves me with a bunch of Oxo "Pop" food containers that I should get rid of, despite the moderate likelihood that I would have some use for them someday. Right now, they're empty and taking up space. We don't have spare space.
  • Two bread boxes were successfully Driveway Free Piled.
  • I should do the same thing with the Oxo containers. Maybe I will, by the next time I post. Oh, and the miscellaneous canning jars.
  • My den closet has some empty space. There's more empty space than there is stuff in the trashcan that I used while cleaning it out. This is always weird.
  • A kitchen cabinet shelf is empty. This doesn't mean that there's nothing to store there--it means that some stuff can move in from the laundry room or the garage-based Zombie Apocalypse Food Storage area. It's been empty for two weeks, and I can't seem to make up my mind what to move. One empty shelf seems like both too much and too little space.
  • I moved the cleaners from the laundry room to join the cleaners in the garage, and of course found lots of duplicates. Not sure what to do about those.
  • There is, of course, the Toxic Day at the dump for the cleaners, but I feel like they skipped that this past year and might skip it again this coming year. Do my local friends want half-used bottles of Bona hardwood floor cleaner and environmentally correct stainless steel spray? Maybe.
  • I keep being mildly surprised to find that I'm perfectly willing to get rid of series of books that I quite enjoyed while reading them. What, exactly, is it that makes one want to re-read a book? 

That sounds like a different post.

Image: Wikimedia Commons