2012 Destashing Thread

[mrsklamc]

Got rid of a ton of stuff prior to my sister & family coming the week before Easter. Still purging though. We do have electronics to part with and stuff to be shredded, and since I know there have been other Indianapolis destasher's I wanted to share these links about free shredding and electronics recycling days, tomorrow in Fishers, and the 28-29 at the zoo:

http://blogs.indystar.com/nfg/2012/04/11/fishers-to-host-free-recycling-shredding-day/

http://indyzoo.com/SitePages/SpecialEvents/RecyclingWeekend.aspx

 

[StephMK]

We finally got rid of a free couch on CL that people kept asking about but never came to get. It went to a guy who had nothing & the people were so nice & thankful & send a really nice email afterwards. I was happy it's being used and our small office looks so much nicer w/o that huge couch & piano & computer armoire squashed in it.

I have a pile of stuff that will be going to the Boy Scout yard sale in a week or two. Hoping to find more stuff to donate before then. I need to go through the kids' clothes & add any good pieces to the bags for my niece & nephew. The rest will be donated too. Still working my way around the basement but that will be on hold til June since I am getting ready for DD's graduation & party in May.

 

[delmar411]

I was super productive on the destashing front today. Got 5 big black trash bags of clothes and toys out of my younger DD's room. Most of it was heading for goodwill and the rest to OUAC. DH dropped the stuff at goodwill this evening and I'll stop at OUAC in the morning. Whatever they don't take, will go to goodwill right after.

I have to tackle the boys room next. They also have a ridiculous amount of clothes so I'm going to cull it down to semi-normal amounts.

 

[Ephany]

Well I have a huge bag of clothes DD outgrew waiting to be taken to a friend. Every time she tries something on, I'm making her put it immediately in the bag if it doesn't fit so it doesn't end up on the floor or back in her dresser. I've got a pile of cardboard to drop off at recycling and a box to shred, but otherwise we're doing better. I really want to to put in more storage, but this place is a rental and we can't do that. Hopefully next year we'll move and then I can start off right in a new place.

I've lost a few pounds and am in that weird limbo zone where one size is too big, but the next down is just a bit tight but I refuse to buy anything new until I'm definitely down a size; I can wear a belt for now. I'm scared to get rid of any of my old clothes just yet, with my luck the pounds will attack in the night and I'll have to buy new clothes if I donate anything.

I found a bunch of local Facebook groups dedicated to buying/selling. One's just for books and the others seem to be more household stuff. I'm really looking forward to this summer after finals are over and I can dive into decluttering without the distractions. Between these, Freecycle and Goodwill, I'm really hoping to make a dent in the stuff that DH just had to keep last year that we haven't needed or used.

 

[mrsklamc]

2 shred locations tomorrow for Indy area:

http://www.fcfcu.com/blog/shred-days-returning-in-april/

 

[delmar411]

Well I tried to tackle the boys room today. It's so mentally exhausting to deal with all this 'stuff'.

I do have 2 bags of goodwill and 2 bags for OUAC plus I'll have another bag for each of those places when I'm done. I just need to make my list for the goodwill stuff to attach to my receipt.

Good news on YDD's stuff though. The bag that I dropped at OUAC got us $66! I about fell over! I was expecting maybe $15-20 from them. DH was thinking $30.

I need to get rid of all the bikes in the garage too. They are in various states of disrepair and too small for the kids.

 

[happydisneyfamily]

We should be moving into our new home by mid-July so even more incentive for me to get rid of things. I managed to fill two garbage bags today.

 

[karriemouse]

Late to the party but I so need to join in! I just need to get over the stage when it all seems too overwhelming - baby steps, baby steps...

My plan is to declutter the whole house, but particularly the loft room and all my craft stuff (I think Michaels has less stock than I have ) and to start selling on ebay.

More room, less clutter, more time to use the stuff left, and more money - that's my goal!!!

 

[mrsklamc]

I took some papers to a shred location this morning and I also DIDN'T go to a couple of tempting garage sales & bring more junk in the house, so a good day all in all.

 

[delmar411]

got a bunch of stuff cleared from the boys room. Took what I thought would sell to OUAC and they gave me $54 for it!

The rest went to Goodwill.

DH got a bunch of books out of our room and took them to HPB. He also made a pile of books for me to take to my mom so I have them packed up already for when I visit them next month.

I'm not done in the boys room but I had to go back to focusing on school stuff since it's finals week. I'll tackle it again next week.

 

[thebeesknees]

Got a bunch of baby stuff out of the house to pass along at church, but could only fit about 1/3 in our trunk, so it will be a couple of weeks before it is all gone, but it's a start! I also went through my linen closet and only kept 2 sets of sheets per bed, and 2 sets of towels per person, plus 2 extra sets for company; the rest are ready to go out with the next charity pickup. Finally, I cleaned out the garage today and made enough room that we can actually park 2 cars in there! Up till now, it was 1 car and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff with no home, so I found places for everything and freed up so much space in there. My kids could hardly believe it when we pulled in after school this morning. I think my next goal may be my sewing room. It has turned into a catch-all spot for the basement and I want my space back!

 

[delmar411]

I finally decided to get rid of my cricut and the couple cartridges that I had for it. It's all still brand new and sealed. I bought it on a whim and had so many grand plans for it.

So I posted the cricut on CL and it had a buyer in less than 2hrs! And I found out the 2 cartridges that I got for $20 each on BF(2010) are retired and worth a good bit of money. So I posted them on Ebay and one is already bid up over $100 in less than 24hrs!

Considering I sold the cricut for $100 (pd $60 on BF) and at a min that one cartridge will go for over $100 , I made quite a bit of money for storing these items for a year and half! LOL

AND I had posted that we dropped off the boys stuff at OUAC and gotten $54 for it all...well today they called DH and told him that they didn't realize just how many trios were in the bag and they owed us another $12! When does that ever happen???

 

[delmar411]

Dropped off another 2 bags of stuff to Goodwill plus some children's books to the kids school for the library.

Plus mailed off 3 Disney prints I've gotten from various promos that were extras to other people who wanted them.

Plus mailed off all our textbooks from this semester to Amazon for trade-in credit (so I can buy all our summer semester books! LOL).

DH is gone this week for school so outside of a school presentation on friday, I'm free to do as I please. I'm going to work in our room and if I get overly motivated I'll get back in the garage.

I wish Goodwill had a pickup service because I'm not sure how to get all the bikes and a chair and a bookcase over there on my own.

ETA~ both cricut cartridges sold. Total for both: $194.50!!

 

[thebeesknees]

Well, my donation stuff sort of backfired! I had it all out next to the garage labeled for the charity pickup drive, and it did get picked up....then later in the week we got a letter from our HOA stating that we needed to get rid of our "stored trash". A couple of phone calls later to figure out what happened, we discover that they thought my charity stuff was trash and we aren't allowed to have anything out except on trash day - narrowly missed a fine!

 

[Zhoen]

DelMar,

Try Salvation Army, in our area they DO have a pick-up service. Or try putting the things you don't want on freecycle (if there's one in your area.) I've found takers for all sorts of things I didn't want anymore on freecycle, and the upside is that you KNOW the person picking it up really wants it (or they wouldn't waste the gas.) With charities, you never really know if they found a buyer or not-- stuff still gets trashed all the time if it doesn't sell.

Now, charity donations are great, because you get a tax write-off and the charity gets some money (hopefully), but if all you want is to make the stuff go away, freecycle is a no-effort solution a lot of the time.

 

[delmar411]

Thanks for the ideas Zhoen!

Took another 2 bags of mugs/cups/travel mugs over to goodwill today plus a crockpot and some ice cream/soft serve thingy that I actually bought from Goodwill but I'll never get around to cleaning and figuring out how to work.

My cup cabinet looks a lot better and ODD will be happy not to have a cup avalanche when she empties the dishwasher.

 

[Mouse7116]

I am always looking for inspiration to keep going! I feel like I've been destashing forever and that it will never end. This time I think I finally have DH on board. Typically he's of the mindset that we paid good money for it we can't just get rid of it. Unfortunately, we've been storing some things for the last 15 years and just aren't using them! Plus, we're in a constant state of remodeling (gotta love older homes where one project turns into many) and I know if we could just get rid of stuff that we will find it much easier to do the work that needs to be done and may even be more inclined to do so!

Currently I'm all excited about working in our bedroom which is our attic. There is a lot of storage space behind the walls and of course we have made great "use" of that! This weekend we finally pulled the last of the stuff from behind the walls and found boxes full of boxes that were from items that we had gotten from our wedding. Those were all collapsed down and dropped off at recycle along with a couple of small boxes for Goodwill. Currently I'm grateful to my friend who holds garage sales and has invited us to tag our stuff and bring it over to her house. Made almost $100 a couple weeks ago! Normally it would have all gone to Goodwill. Now I'm tagging everything I find and boxing it up in the garage for the next one in a couple months. I can't wait and I'm hoping that I can keep working and adding to the boxes I've got started!

Okay, now that I've gotten really lengthy I'll just say I'm glad to be here and find some support from others who are going through the same thing I am. I have no deadline and have just been trying to work it a little bit every day. Some days are just better than others.

 

[rhonda_2003]

We had a huge yard sale yesterday at my mom's. I took approx. 3 full van loads of stuff up there, plus more that I had taken up previously. It was a 3 family sale and we made around $500 total and over $200 of that was mine We head to Disney on the 19th of this month, so that is a lil extra spending money!

When the sale was over, I only kept the kids name-brand clothes that I do well on when I ebay, which is only 2 flat under the bed type boxes. I will be ebaying those when we get back from Disney. I took an entire van full of the huge black trash bags to the local charity center this morning (like Goodwill but affiliated with area churches) and have about another half-van load to go. This was of everything that was left from the sale for all of us, so we all did some serious destashing! I will take the rest on my way to school Moday, just not enough room in the van to do it today. Got receipts for my taxes too, which is just a bonus.

I am getting ready to go work on my workspace area in our bedroom. My antique desk that I sent out for refinishing is finished and I would like to get this area cleaned completely out so that I can arrange things exactly how I would like them. I am sure that I will find plenty of things to destash there too.

 

[dreamin_disney]

Its been a busy month for me. I havent had a chance to declutter anymore items. I left some of my stuff on craigs list but it seems to be going very slow. I keep seeing same posters trying to sell same Lot of clothes so that tells me not many people are buying kids clothes.

I get some time off work in 2 weeks so during that time I plan on posting more stuff and having a yardsale. I plan on going through our bedroom, spareroom and garage. We will be painting our bedroom so everything in the closets need to be removed while we paint.

weekends have been so busy but next month i plan on going nuts with destashing-lol!

 

[dreamin_disney]

How is everyone doing with destashing? I have several things listed on craigs list and its been really slow. All of a sudden I'm getting people interested in some items. Today I sold 2 Lots of kids clothes and made $25 So I got rid of 29 pieces of kids clothes
Someone else was interested in another clothes lot but it had more of one size that they didnt need. Around 9pm someone else emailed about the same lot but I got home late. They emailed their name and number to set up a pick up time. I'm going to call tomorrow and hopefully it sells and that would be $40 and 41 pieces of clothes out of my house.
I'm now offically off in the summer so I plan on going through more stuff and posting it on craig list. I'm also going to toss some items and donate items.

This summer dh and I are going to paint our bedroom and add a built in closet organizer so he will be forced to go through all his items. Any clothes that dont fit or we havent worn will be post on CL, tossed(if not in good condition) or donated. I have 2 months to declutter everything!!!!!!