get rid of all my clutter

My wife joined Freecycle and just got rid of a bunch of hangers for children’s clothing. I did too, earlier, but I am trying to figure out how to use it best.

Is there an alternative to Discsox? Basically they help with space saving on DVD and CD collections. They are quite expensive, however, at $1 a sleeve (25 to a pack.) They are the only things, however, that preserve all the printed media of the original jewel box or case.

I put a big dent in dishes that need to be done and took out garbage. The holiday season was tough on that as garbage bins overflowed. No more for a while, I hope.

I am reusing containers that have been cleaned—plastic, glass, whatever, and putting food stuffs into them. It is for these following reasons:

1. I buy a lot in bulk, and therefore don’t have a container
2. I can put food in a huge container into a smaller container if the former is not full.

One thing that I have noticed is that it helps me to see this as a lifetime pursuit rather than something that begins and ends. With two small children that outgrow their clothes quickly, it seems necessary to do a “clothes purge” regularly.

My wife decided to cull some books from our collection and rearrange some of our bookshelves. I did save a few cookbooks I wanted to keep but the thrift/charity shop just a few blocks down was very happy to get our castoffs.

Strangely enough, part of this was prompted by my in-laws doing some decluttering of their own; there were books my wife wanted. Incidentally, my mother was interested in others in the pile (Spanish literature books), the rest went off to the same aforementioned destination.

Not one red cent for them – bookstore doesn’t accept textbooks. Memo: they do not want any of the books I have… ever, it seems, so do not bother with them again.

So I went to the local Goodwill dropoff, handed the box to the guy at the semi trailer, and that was that.

Well, this project wasn’t much work on my part—my wife did the bulk of it—but we got the storage closets cleaned out and organized.

For my part, I sorted out food to go on the shelves, decided which books would go to donation or the locally owned bookstore, and identified those books which I borrowed that will go back to their owner. I even called said owner (my father), too.

...is done.

We had a multimedia shelf that we weren’t really using and so we moved it to that desk as well as a CD rack. This enabled us to move a bunch of disks (music CDs, software, etc.) over from that spinning carousel that was taking up way too much space.

This freed some space in the bedroom and that carousel will go out with the next thrift store donation.

Picture of finished project is attached. Cross-posted to various blogs.

My wife was very kind to get a few bags ready for the church swap meet last weekend.

I put some more old clothes of my own off to the side—I need to take them out.

Today the folks from the thrift shop came, and took our donations of the office chair, two bags filled with clothes, toys, and other miscellaneous things, and a box of books.

We reorganized some of the book shelves accordingly, and they definitely look tidier now!