Total items out of the house: 249/365
Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of things – some of them pretty pricy. I was able to sell our old Kitchen Aid stand mixer on Craigslist for $75, and an old bike trainer (the kind you prop your back wheel on and it provides resistance) for $25, and a tap-a-draft system. I also sold one of the Japanese learning games on Amazon. We netted about $200 over the last two weeks before the holiday weekend.
I also found someone on freecycle that was looking for old towels and cat beds to foster kittens. I had a pile of them waiting to figure out how to donate to the local animal shelter, but this is just as good. She picked them up this morning.
I also have a small list of items that I want to list on Amazon (but haven’t yet), and others that will go to freecycle (or the trash). We also have a box of china (a full set with serving pieces) that Dad was given when a great aunt passed away. He’d never used it, and we already have other china that we like (and sometimes use). It’s worth something though, I just need to take it out of the storage closet in the basement, unwrap all the pieces and figure out what we have. The pattern sells pretty well on replacements.com, but I’m not sure I want to deal with shipping all of that china to them – its’ current newspaper wrapping survived our move almost 5 years ago, but I don’t think it’ll stand up to a shipping company.
I’m slowly getting rid of things as I come across them in the basement – although not much has been done about removing that stupid carpet mastic.
We’re also trying to clear things out. We buy almost nothing but it seems like every time I turn around there is more crap everywhere. Right now we’re selling a lot of baby stuff and a crockpot. Such a pain, but wonderful to clear this stuff out!
There’s almost a “high” for getting rid of things, such that I look for things to get rid of. Dad’s only demand is to not give away the homeworld.
I wish someone would talk to my wifey. She seems to be tied to everything I want to get rid of. I hate clutter and would prefer the less is more look. Craigslist has been my friend and slowly we are going through the things we simply do use or need. Things seem to multiply or have little kiddies. We seem to have 2 of more things then I could count. Maybe if I say she can have the profits from getting rid of or selling these things she would go for it.
I certainly used to have an emotional attachment to a lot of my clutter – I moved 9+ bookcases of books across the country and state 4 times before I finally got rid of them. I’m not sure that there’s an easy answer to the emotional attachment. For me, taking pictures of the items that held memories before donating them really helped break some of the attachment. And donating or Freecycling them instead of just trashing them has also helped me.
My current problem that I’m working on is that I still think things have a value, and that may be true in some cases, but not all, and they really should be trashed/recycled. I just recycled about 3 shelves worth of travel books the other day. The value on Amazon was $0.01 or less and no one on Freecycle was interested in them, so I bit the bullet and tossed them in the recycle bin. I hate to do it because it seems wasteful to me, but I need the clutter out of my life more than I need to save the planet 🙂