Oh, it's been a month since I posted? That's because I have been busy getting rid of things. In the past 30 days, I have easily given away or thrown away or recycled well over 300 things that were cluttering up my four-bedroom, 2000-square-foot house. We are moving a week from tomorrow into a three-bedroom, 1400-square-foot house, so I have not just been organizing and decluttering, I have been downsizing as well.
The downsizing was not going as well as the organizing and decluttering until recently. This week, I sold a kitchen table set, and a matching couch and love seat. The buyers of our house bought two of my side chairs and our refrigerator. I was hoping they were going to buy our beast of a bedroom set as well, but they decided on something else.
This week, I am mailing off a package of toiletries to the troops in Iraq, via anysoldier.com. I had a basket with lots of travel size toiletries that I kept in the spare bathroom for guests. My husband suggested donating them to deployed troops (he is a veteran of the first war in Iraq) and @staceylt, a military wife recommended anysoldier.com to me. I found a unit that specifically wanted toiletries and hadn't received much so far. This unit had a good number of women and also requested pads, so I bought some of the ones that come with a wet wipe attached. My BIL works in a health food store and had tons of samples of all-natural toiletries and muscle pain creams and things like that, so I threw that stuff in, too. That box is crazy heavy.
The next week is going to be light on the getting rid of things because we will be concentrating on packing and moving. As we unpack in the new place, I expect for many neglected areas to be freshly organized and whipped into shape. I don't anticipate a problem with continuing to get rid of ten things a day, at least until later in the Spring.
Here are few things that I know are on the chopping block after we move:
- Old bike, two pairs of roller blades, safety gear for roller blading, softball gear and soccer gear. We are going to take it all to Play It Again Sports and trade it in toward a treadmill.
- Two motorcycles.
- A ton of baby clothes. The baby is ready to go up to the next size, but I won't have time this week to go through the next batch of hand-me-downs from the toddler.
- More toys
- Half the stuff in the home office because that is the one room I didn't get to (again...always) and we don't have a home office in the new place. I am going to try to use a corner of the living room, but I am not exactly sure how well that is going to work out. I may be getting rid of our big, three-drawer lateral filing cabinet from IKEA, which I really like, so I will be sad about that one.
- More kitchen stuff
- Cleaning supplies. I swear they multiply in the closet.
- Broken bamboo rug (did not fare well in the home office)
- Woven rug from Pottery Barn
- Picnic basket
- Baby's exersaucer, travel swing, doorway jumper
- Curtain rods and curtains. I am not sure how our window covering configuration is going to transfer yet to the new place. I think we will have some excess.
- Baby bedding set
- More books
- Bathroom rugs (we have two bathrooms instead of three now)
- Creepy things that I don't like that were given to me that may get "lost" in the move
