Identify and Rid Myself of 43 Items of Überclutter

Dismantled the pile of magazines, coupons, receipts, reminder notices from the vet’s and optometrist’s and dentist’s offices, notices from my daughter’s school, etc., that accumulated on the kitchen counter. It’s the pile of stuff my family thinks I want to save; the pile that begins harmlessly enough as a magazine left out for me to read over lunch, but metastasizes and grows little appendages of pencils, paper clips, and bobby pins. I really need to train my family (including myself) to resist the urge to pile stuff on the corner of the kitchen counter.

Today I returned to a friend the spinning wheel and related accoutrements that I had borrowed from her some time ago. Life’s too short for me to take up spinning.

Item 10: Several bottles of beer that were left over from a camping trip 6 years ago (SIX!) and have been cluttering up the fridge ever since. Obviously, I don’t drink beer, or those bottles wouldn’t have sat there that long. My husband was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple of years ago, so he can no longer drink beer. I poured out the beer and recycled the bottles.

Item 11: A 3-ring binder of handouts I used to give my students when I used to teach American Lit. Recently, I had been using the back sides of the handouts for grocery lists, but it was going to take me, like, 5 years to use up all the paper that way. My current studies in yoga and dharma have made me more conscious about living in the present, and I had this realization that it was not serving me to have that reminder of that past career constantly in front of me. I recycled the paper and threw away the binder, which was broken.

Talk about uberclutter! This old bathrobe has been hanging on the hook on the bathroom door for sooo very long, it practically blended in with the door. I happened to notice it the other day, and realized no one in the house has worn it in years. I washed it and donated it to the Goodwill.

8. Kitten accoutrements
When we adopted our kitten a year and a half ago, he was “pre-owned,” so he came with some pet toys, a bed, a litter scooper, and a bunch of stuff like that. (I suspect that the people who gave him up had a small dog, too, as some of the items seem rather doggy … like the Milk Bone dog biscuit chew toy(!), the harness and leash.) These items have been sitting on the floor in the closet in the laundry room. If we haven’t found a use for them in this amount of time—out they go!

(1) Travel kit – a bottle of hair gel had leaked all over the inside of my toiletries kit. I cleaned up a couple of items that could easily be washed and that made sense to save (for example, a hairbrush) and tossed everything that could not be salvaged, including the case itself. The hair gel leaked during a trip I took well over a year ago . . . this clutter was past due to deal with.

(2) Bamboo table runner in the linen closet. This was stained, I doubt it could be cleaned, do not know why I was keeping it. so I threw it away.

Donated to the thrift store yesterday:

(3) Box of new, trinket-y items that I had bought and meant to give as gifts, that was in my closet. Donated the gifts to the thrift store and recycled the box. Note to self: Do not buy trinket-y gifts that you will be too embarrassed to give to people. (This also counts toward my goal of decluttering and organizing my closet.)

(4) Box of Halloween candles, never used.

(5) Pair of sandals, too large, not my style. Barely worn. Donated to the thrift store.

(6) Toddler’s play ball; not enough toddlers in the family right now to justify the space this was taking up.

(7) A pair of decorative Christmas plates, never used.