2015 destash - Purge Purge Purge, Purge is the word

[PrincessKymm]

I need to do another declutter spree. I cleaned-cleaned my house when DS wasn't home (which is every other weekend) but I felt claustrophobic the entire weekend. Not sure what is going on with that. I found a wine rack for $15 that is free standing so I bought it and instead of the box my wine got shipped in, it is now sitting in my wine rack. It looks better at least lol.

I know I should go through my clothes but I just started weight watchers again so I'm hoping to fit into some of them the next few weeks.

 

[stayhomemom77]

Super cleaned the house today as planned and I went through the DVD's and a couple of bookshelves on in the living room while I was at it! Tomorrow we pack, pack, pack! Sunday we rest, rest, rest and Monday we are gone, gone, gone!!!

 

[OhMari]

LOL Nope, not European, just Canadian. The kids don't go back until September 8th, so I bought all their back to school junk last week and just have it all in their new backpacks ready to go for when we get back on the 4th! DH is a university instructor so he's "off" for the whole summer, so August is a good month to gallivant for us and we generally take full advantage.

We have a fun and busy trip planned. We are driving down to D.C. to check out the Smithsonian museums for a couple of days, then we are doing a day at Vero Beach (Disney of course), then we hit Fort Lauderdale to get on our Carnival cruise ship bound for the Eastern Caribbean. After we get back from that ocean voyage (8 nights), we have three nights at the Yacht Club so we can enjoy Storm Along Bay and after telling the kids for four months that we were having a park free visit this trip (we were just there over Christmas), I broke down and added one day at Epcot. Then we have to drive back home! 20 hours over two days.

I admit it was not a very cost effective move, but I just couldn't imagine staying at an Epcot resort without actually going IN to the park. It means I won't be buying any more shoes any time soon (to replace the ones I just got rid of) but that's not a bad thing on this thread! Experiences over stuff!!

Speaking of which...I'd better go finish my bedroom so I can come back on here and report!!

I am 20 hrs. from WDW, you must live in Ontario, LOL. I have a friend that lives in Ontario and she has nicer weather than I do in Wisconsin. Wow, that is a fun vacation. I would of bought tickets to a park too if I stayed at the Yacht Club. Walking into the back at EPCOT is so much fun, and leaving too. We always stick around after Illuminations and let the crowd clear out. Lots of people like to go to the ESPN Club after the park closes. Have fun on your cruise. We are doing our first cruise next Oct. 2016 out of NYC. I cannot wait.

 

[dpswift]

UGH one step forward, two steps back. School supplies x4 is a nightmare!! I can't wait til they bring it all to school the first day. For now I have giant bags of paper towels, baby wipes, tissues and notebooks all over the floor of my dining room.

I remember those days. Not only the space it took up but the cost. This year it is just DS 13 and I have not bought anything yet. Ilooked over the list and the most I would need to buy is some pocket folders and binders.

 

[Alexle2007]

UGH one step forward, two steps back. School supplies x4 is a nightmare!! I can't wait til they bring it all to school the first day. For now I have giant bags of paper towels, baby wipes, tissues and notebooks all over the floor of my dining room.

DS's teacher let me drop his supplies off at school early since we are on vacation during Back to School night and that way DS won't loaded down with them. I was so glad to get them out of my house after labeling them and adding washi tape to the pens, pencils and markers so his supplies were easily identifiable.

 

[jiminykrikkit]

I'd love to join in here! I'm on a minimalist kick and would love to get rid of everything we own haha. We have plenty of space, but I still feel like nothing has a place to get put away. And DS has So.Many.Toys.

I have piles all over the house for a garage sale. Before I do the garage sale, I want to take my son's old clothes and toys to the kids resale shop. Whatever they don't buy from me will go to the garage sale.

I do a capsule wardrobe, so I recently went through EVERYTHING and got rid of all but like 75 items. I sold a lot of it to Style Encore (Plato's Closet for my age) and got about $125. I tried to sell my best stuff to Twice (online thrift store) but they decided to sell out to eBay and instead of giving me my stuff back, they made me pay $5 to get it back. Grr. I'll take that to consignment. Whatever they don't take will go to the garage sale.

My craft room is a disaster of fabric and notions - I'm almost done sorting out everything I want to get rid of, then I will do an Instagram destash sale to unload the bulk of it once I figure out how much to charge for everything. There's a huge sewing community on IG and destash sales are usually pretty successful. Whatever doesn't sell there will go to the garage sale.

Whatever doesn't sell at the garage sale will go straight to Goodwill. I'm really hoping to make a decent amount for all this stuff. Most of it is really good stuff from within the past couple of years. Everything I make is going to the vacation fund!

I'm just so overwhelmed with it all right now. It seems like a never ending process. But I'm so sick of all this stuff.

 

[bcwife76]

Getting rid of some more kids toys/clothes!
Gave away their easel (chalkboard one side, whiteboard the other side) as they hadn't used it in ages and it was in rather icky condition (hence why I gave it away for FREE!)
Just posted some more clothes for sale this afternoon along with their outside slide.
Going to my gave kids used clothing store next week, Once Upon a Child, to see if they will buy some more of the outgrown clothes.

Out out out of my house!!! LOL

 

[jiminykrikkit]

Worked on the playroom yesterday and filled up a large tub of toys plus a medium sized one full of thomas trains and set aside 2/3 of the books to sell/donate.

I also started a little bit on DS clothes since our Children's Place order came in for his fall/winter clothes. He's got so much nice stuff that's too small now, 2 pairs of sperry and and a pair of pumas that are practically brand new...note to self: he lives in Crocs, don't spend money on a bunch of fancy shoes!

I might take this stuff to the resale shop this weekend when I can do it alone. Otherwise I'll have to wait 2 weeks until he's in school to do it. They make me stay in the store while they go through it and it's a LOT of stuff.

 

[sarahk0204]

Mailed (donated) another box of work related books. Now I have to keep working on the journals. I am sorting them by year first, as some sites only want those published within the past 5 years or the past 10 years. The kids start school on Monday, and my extra work is slowing down a bit, so I should be able to get more done during the day.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

Well after a long hiatus I finally worked on stuff from the attic and garage with ds.

I sat in a chair on the porch for 4 hours. That was a big mistake because I didnt put m leg up as ds was sitting in the chair I would normally use for that and I suffered with the blood clot side effects for the next day but...

We managed to throw out one huge bag of stuff. Had 1 bag of save stuff and 1 small bag of donate stuff and lots of recycle cardboard boxes and the best part was....
I found $50 each in 2 cards that fil gave to us once and ...my high school diploma and yearbook.

Tomm. I am taking 4 books I recently won and read and giving them to a lady at church.

 

[StephMK]

luvmarypoppins - hope your leg gets better soon! That must be frustrating to deal with.

I have not done too much since school started back up two weeks ago. I do plan to take a load to Goodwill today. So far it's 2 bags of clothes but I will look around the garage to see what else can go. I've been slowing working on the garage and we cleared out some stuff a few weeks ago. There is still a lot in there and I just need to make some decisions and get it done!

Last weekend, I went through the linen closet and kids' bathroom cabinet. I was able to recycle several almost empty bottles and toss some broken and old stuff.

I have got to tackle the remaining piles in the basement sometime this fall. The basement still has a toy corner even though my kids are now officially all teens. I know I need to donate more but some of them are hard to let go! I guess that's most of my clutter problem anyway, sentimental stuff.

 

[Cheryl726]

StephMK, that's a lot of my problem too is letting go of stuff because of sentimental reasons! My kids are always telling me to get rid of it!

 

[sarahk0204]

Yeah, sentimental stuff is really hard. For toys, I am trying to limit what I keep and be more selective. Since we painted the kids' rooms and moved most of their toys to the basement, I have to keep working to carve out the space to display what we want to keep (AG and Legos). I am keeping some other things for sentimental reasons (FP people sets, for example), but there are some other items that could go. I was keeping all of the board games, but I need to revisit that.

First day of school is tomorrow. I am looking forward to having some time to myself to get some things done.

 

[jiminykrikkit]

Sentimental stuff is hard. I can get rid of almost everything and not care. But Disney stuff, ugh...that's where I get tripped up. DS doesn't care about most of his stuffed animals, and even told me to get rid of them, but most of the collection is Disney. Lots of special Mickeys bought on trips, a stuffie for almost every Toy Story character...but we really don't need them. I have them displayed on a high shelf for now. Since they're not taking up space we'd use otherwise, I'm tempted to just keep them.

I didn't make it to the resale shop. I keep piling things up to move out of here...I'm going to have to call ahead of time because this is a ton of stuff.

-Cleared out all of DS' dresser and closet. There's one load in the dryer now, so I will separate those out when they're done.
-Reduced the Hot Wheels stash by half! That's a lot. I still think we can get it down to an even smaller stash, but baby steps haha.
-Tackled all the papers piled up in the breakfast room and on my nightstand.
-Cleaned up and purged the games and puzzles.
-Purged a few DVDs we don't watch.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

OK school starts tomorrow so I am back to purging. My house for some reason has exploded this week and I am just so done with stuff!! I have piles of clutter everywhere but we haven't been home long enough to do anything about it. I'm not ready for early mornings but I am ready for routine again.

I found a bag of uniforms for the uniform closet so that will be going with us when I drop DD off at school. Plus her 2 bags of paper towels etc.

I need to come up with some kind of game plan for attacking the rooms but I need to wait for peace and quiet for that. The problem I'm having right now is the whole house is at the bursting point so I don't know where to put stuff while I sort and organize.

 

[jiminykrikkit]

OK school starts tomorrow so I am back to purging. My house for some reason has exploded this week and I am just so done with stuff!! I have piles of clutter everywhere but we haven't been home long enough to do anything about it. I'm not ready for early mornings but I am ready for routine again.

I found a bag of uniforms for the uniform closet so that will be going with us when I drop DD off at school. Plus her 2 bags of paper towels etc.

I need to come up with some kind of game plan for attacking the rooms but I need to wait for peace and quiet for that. The problem I'm having right now is the whole house is at the bursting point so I don't know where to put stuff while I sort and organize.

Oh man, I know what you mean. I'm so ready for school to start. I have large piles everywhere that need to go to the resale shops. I need to do that before I do the garage sale (I think I'll make more money that way), but I need to be able to do that when I don't have my son tagging along.

I FINISHED purging the playroom today! It's clean and organized and vacuumed. DS seems to be excited about it so I'm hoping he'll help me keep it clean. He's capable of putting stuff away when he's done, so this is something we're really working on. He's expected to do it at school (and he does), so I just need to be more consistent with it. It's hard to not nag though...

 

[Alexle2007]

I FINISHED purging the playroom today! It's clean and organized and vacuumed. DS seems to be excited about it so I'm hoping he'll help me keep it clean. He's capable of putting stuff away when he's done, so this is something we're really working on. He's expected to do it at school (and he does), so I just need to be more consistent with it. It's hard to not nag though...]

Nice job! It looks great! Did you label the drawers for your son? That's what I started doing after spending hours sorting Legos so hopefully the red pieces don't end up with the blue pieces.

 

[Eureka]

Love your playroom!

I did that with school supplies that we always have on hand...pencils, loose leaf paper, one subject notebooks, etc. each drawer is labelled and the kids (middle and high school but still always can't find things) don't have to ask me where everything is.

My next purge project is going through old Halloween costumes we have and getting them ready for EBay. Haven't sold there regularly in years, so I don't remember...when is the best time to list costumes? Is mid-late Sept. too early?

 

[jiminykrikkit]

Nice job! It looks great! Did you label the drawers for your son? That's what I started doing after spending hours sorting Legos so hopefully the red pieces don't end up with the blue pieces.

Thanks! I didn't label the drawers because they're see-through and DS knows what's in them. I haven't begun the Lego sorting yet. I'm weird and actually like that sort of thing. We are going to make a big Lego table with shallow drawers using Ikea Trofast units. When I get those, I'll start sorting and I will label those drawers.

Love your playroom!

I did that with school supplies that we always have on hand...pencils, loose leaf paper, one subject notebooks, etc. each drawer is labelled and the kids (middle and high school but still always can't find things) don't have to ask me where everything is.

My next purge project is going through old Halloween costumes we have and getting them ready for EBay. Haven't sold there regularly in years, so I don't remember...when is the best time to list costumes? Is mid-late Sept. too early?

Thanks! I am taking old Halloween costumes to the children's resale shop. The one I go to now has a special display set up year round for costumes. The one by my old house put out a display around the beginning of school each year. I don't have the patience for listing things on ebay.

 

[bcwife76]

Well we had a massive windstorm here this past weekend, at the height of the storm 500,000 people were without power. We had no power for 42 hours so what's a family to do but CLEAN their house lol DH and I cleaned/purged the playroom and the front hall closet. Some stuff was thrown out, some stuff was put into a bag for donation and some stuff I took down to a local kids used clothing store (they had power) - they offered me peanuts but whatever, I'm tired of fussing around with FB selling groups and CL so I took it. Scored a brand new with tags pair of New Balance running shoes for my eldest for $9!

School starts here next week so I'm still in the middle of purging school work from last school year and determining what's the best organization system to implement going forward for school work.