2015 destash - Purge Purge Purge, Purge is the word

[pjlla]

For all of you that are getting rid of clothes and household items: if you itemize your taxes, go to ItsDeductible through turbo tax to claim your items. It will give you IRS approved deduction amounts for EACH item, which are WAY higher than most of us would believe. For example, a Christmas wreath that I bought for 6.99 about 10 years ago is valued at 9.00. A pair of LEGGINGS is worth 19.00 if in excellent condition. Those numbers can really add up! You can start an account for 2015 and import it next year when it's tax time, or go back and input what you donated last year. And no, I don't work for turbotax, just trying to help out my fellow purgers.

Thanks for that website! DH is always pestering me to figure out exactly WHAT we should deduct with all of the GW and SA receipts I hand him at tax time. This year I will be better about keeping track!

Excellent progress today! We got done with all the bags in the attic. I think we threw out about 5-6 bags of junk! We wanted to get it done because ds starts his first real hospital nursing job on monday and he is so excited. Oh I found a disney dollar. I guess that and $3.00 will get me a mickey bar.

Bwahhhahahah!!

I'm having a hard time keeping up with the new layout and not being able to use the app. Looks like everyone has been making a lot of progress!

I sold 2 things on ebay and listed 4 more things today. I also made a bunch of phone calls today and tomorrow and Monday will be dropping off donations to a pregnancy resource center, goodwill, and 2 food banks (1 of them didn't have much need for the baby stuff I had so I called another one) so I'm taking food to one and baby supplies to the other. I don't feel like I have very much to give since it's divided so DS and I are going to go to Walmart tomorrow to buy more food and diapers to donate. So much stuff is going out by Monday I'm so excited!

How nice of you to find organizations that really NEED your donation! I donated a bunch to a crisis pregnancy center when I decided I was done having babies and it was such a NICE feeling!!

I'm down to just one area of my laundry room having 'to get rid of' stuff. I've gone through every cabinet, drawer, closet, etc. over the past few years several times. Of course I keep finding more stuff to get rid of! It is SO liberating. I have a bunch of clothes to go to the local shelter again. Most of them are summer clothes so I'm holding on to them until it gets warmer. They have nowhere to store donations so giving them a bunch of summer clothes wouldn't really help right now. I'm going to go through DH's stuff that he pulled from his closet and separate out the winter stuff and see if they can take it. It takes a long time to get a hold of them though so I don't know how soon it will be gone.

Wish I could find a shelter/rehab that could use my clothes directly, rather than giving it all to the thrift stores.

I've also sorta adopted the 'use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without' mentality this year. I'm trying my darndest to actually use stuff we have and not buy anything we do need. Now if I could just keep my family from buying DS stuff we would be golden

I've been working at that type of mentality for a few years now. I am trying to use up ALL of the small hotel soaps, shampoos, etc before buying more, but it is hard sometimes, because I really WANT my "nice" shampoo. But I got some nicer shampoos for Christmas so I will alternate between those and what I want to use up. Same with make up, and other "consumables" that I seem to be over-run with (perfumes/body sprays, lotions, deodorants, condiments, craft supplies....).

I've been chipping away at my scrapbooking/photo organizing project. I'm determined that by the end of 2015 everything will be organized. This will be the year I can say I'm DONE. I know it will be an ongoing process though. I've been working hard at maintaining my laundry routine and making sure everything is picked up/put away and dishes and everything are done so I start my day on the right foot.

I'm hoping to finish up some of these projects so I can follow a spring cleaning challenge this spring!

My scrapping area is organized, but just OVER-FILLED and OVER-STUFFED! I can honestly tell you I have some papers and stickers that have been in my stash for over 10 years! I seem to find something really great and then HANG ON TO IT for that "special" page.... and eventually that special page either never gets done or I go another direction and I end up NOT USING that SUPER SPECIAL piece/paper/sticker that I was saving so diligently! RIDICULOUS! Going forward I pledge to USE the SPECIAL STUFF first!!

oooohhh... a Spring Cleaning challenge??? Do tell!!

****************8

Hey all! The lady came last night to get the table so I am cleared of a large table and up $50!!!!! Half went into emergency savings and half into my mother/child weekend fund!

I am feeling spurred on by that success and plan to list a BUNCH of stuff this weekend! TTYL.........P

 

[lllovell]

Today is remove 10 bags of "trash" from the house day! I am determined to make sure the basement is cleaned out before year end. (ex hubby left me with all the trash of course....so it is mentally good for the kids and I as well ) Have a great Saturday!

 

[Nztara]

After an 8 day vacation in WDW and a week to play catch up at work, this morning I have purged two trash bags of useless items and have two items pending sale on a local mom swap group. I will only make $10, but that's $10 more than I had and less clutter in my home!

 

[Alexle2007]

I went through DS7's closet this morning and purged 4 bags of short sleeved shirts to give to friends. I couldn't believe how many still have tags on them. Oops, a little too much shopping on my part. There are probably still more that can go but waiting until I do my summer shopping for him. I now have about 50 hangers that are free. I'll have to do that with his long sleeve shirts as soon as we are close to the end of winter. Many of them are getting a little too short in the sleeves. Now to find something else to go through while I have some free time.

 

[dreamin_disney]

I'm at it again!! I got rid of another grocery bag size of trash in my hobby room. Tomorrow I plan on shredding my junk mail creditcard offers, receipts, old bills.

With Valentine's Day coming up I have a few Valentine Day plastic candy holder containers, that I'm going to fill and give out to coworkers. There's about 15 mini containers. I also have a few candy bags that will fill treat bags for staff.

I'm going to do Lot Sets of clothes to sell on Craigs list and facebook sales. This is the year.....I want to be totally clutter free so I'm hoping this is the year!!!

 

[Ephany]

The weather is gorgeous here so it helped motivate me to work some more on my Facebook and Craigslist selling. Bumped up an old listing and the lady ended up looking through my 'for sale' album and asking about 3 other items. $47 in to my stash and 4 items gone = score! I also received a check from the dentist where we had overpaid on a procedure so that was a nice surprise. It isn't much, but every little bit helps. Also put a huge bag (33 gallons) of clothes into the back of my car to drop off at a friend's house in the morning. So nice to have it gone from the top of the stairs where it's been 'reminding' me for the last month lol. Only wish I could find the magic words to help motivate DH and DD.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Purging paper today. I hate paper. a lot.

 

[bcwife76]

Successes and setbacks this weekend.

Hurrah: DH went to the dump on Saturday and got rid of some broken kids toys, his old snowboard (he hasn't ridden in QUITE a while!) and the kids' crib (which we couldn't resell as it was a dropside crib. This made me a little sad as we had also tried to give it away to no avail). A few other bits and pieces went out too, yay!

Boo:the tops of our dressers have all become dumping grounds again, ugh. Girls' bedroom (they currently share although we have enough bedrooms for everyone) is a mess....again. Sigh.

 

[Shanna-like-Banana]

I think we killed our vacuum this weekend !

We tackled dd14 bedroom - 7 hours later........the vacuum ate about 40lbs of dust bunnies.

We started by taking her bed out of her room to have a nice big work space, and instead of just dumping everything on the floor, we did one section at a time. It was so much easier than looking at one huge mess to only look at just a dresser or cabinet at a time.

The choices were trash, donate, keep....with keep being last.

We took out 7 bags of clothes, shoes, purses/bags, and just "stuff" she didn't want, didn't use or didn't even remember having.
And 2 lawn size bags of just plain junk, broken, old, worn out garbage crap.

Yesterday afternoon, I started our bedroom, DH joined it when he got home from work, we got a lot done

 

[lauradis]

Purging paper today. I hate paper. a lot.

I love papers that's my sickness lol all 20 plus boxes of them.

 

[lauradis]

I think we killed our vacuum this weekend !

We tackled dd14 bedroom - 7 hours later........the vacuum ate about 40lbs of dust bunnies.

We started by taking her bed out of her room to have a nice big work space, and instead of just dumping everything on the floor, we did one section at a time. It was so much easier than looking at one huge mess to only look at just a dresser or cabinet at a time.

The choices were trash, donate, keep....with keep being last.

We took out 7 bags of clothes, shoes, purses/bags, and just "stuff" she didn't want, didn't use or didn't even remember having.
And 2 lawn size bags of just plain junk, broken, old, worn out garbage crap.

Yesterday afternoon, I started our bedroom, DH joined it when he got home from work, we got a lot done

wow go you. Hope you had a reward after all that work like pizza or Doritos

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I love papers that's my sickness lol all 20 plus boxes of them.

LOL want to come over and sort??? Got to get my tax stuff squared away, I have an appt Monday and I haven't started yet!

 

[lauradis]

LOL want to come over and sort??? Got to get my tax stuff squared away, I have an appt Monday and I haven't started yet!

Shh no Tax talk here, im waiting till the very end to pay them. Heck no I seriously have like 20 office boxes of papers to go.

 

[pjlla]

Hey all! Impressed with some of the progress I am reading about! I have an unexpected day at home here (thought for SURE I'd be called to work) and I plan to spend one hour sorting through ANOTHER drawer in the scrapping area. The basement is just TOO COLD to work in today (even though I told myself that would be my next area to tackle. And DD is coming home for a long weekend so I will probably spend some time in there just straightening up and moving some of the "stuff" to the playroom (which is now really just a storage room). DD really needs to spend some time tackling the overflow of STUFF.... she moved her stuff home after her summer at school and while I don't mind storing the apartment stuff she doesn't need for now, she REALLY needs to sit down and sort through the boxes of misc. desk JUNK that she has just left me with. Until now I was content to just leave it all in her room, but her room is overflowing and it makes it hard to leave it looking neat for when we have company or when DD is home. I don't mind storing important stuff, but it is such a hodge-podge of important and JUNK!

Also plan to do a few scrapbook pages. One of my 2015 goals is to FINALLY finish all the swim pages for good! It was my 2013 goal, but I never achieved it and did not scrap a single page in 2014....

Off to work!..................P

 

[Shanna-like-Banana]

Last night we finished our bedroom.......it actually looks like 2 adults live here.

Our kids tend to bring things to our bedroom and just leave them. I found a few empty tubs we had, but each of the names of a tub and as we found their long lost treasures, they went into the tub for THEM to put away.

We didn't really have much in the means of stuff to toss or garbage, maybe 1 regular size bag of just clutter type stuff. This was more of a deep clean type thing.

Our house is sslllooowwwllyyyyy started to take shape

 

[sarahk0204]

Finally joining in for this year!

My dad, after a 7 week nursing home stay at the end of 2014, managed to be home not even a month before he went back to the hospital. Now he is in a nursing home permanently. So, our family is cleaning out his assisted living apartment. Sadly, there are still several boxes in my garage and basement that are not put away after cleaning out his house 2(!) years ago. So, I will be adding a little to that and need to sort the whole lot. Due to the very limited space in the nursing home, I will likely end up storing some off season clothes for him as well.

Once this cold snap ends, I can perhaps take some items to the thrift store. I kept track on its deductible, and I donated twice as much in 2014 as I did the year before, so I think this board did me some good.

 

[dromio42]

Letting go of 3 boxes of Christmas decorations. We have tons, decided to set free stuff that we no longer love. Trunk is currently full of donations for Good will ; if only it would stop snowing I will drop it all off! Next....paper and books

 

[Canadian Harmony]

On Monday, in an effort to avoid putting in my receipts for taxes, I spent an hour clearing out and cleaning the laundry room. This space has the washer and dryer, as well as an apartment-sized chest freezer, recycle bags, boxes, cans, glasses, refundable drink containers and a big plastic wardrobe we call our POL locker (we're military so we do that sort of thing) that holds stuff we don't need all the time like lightbulbs and other things we don't want the kids to get into.

I swept and mopped behind the freezer, moved the POL locker and did that side of the room, moved it to another wall to create more space, moved all the stuff I could downstairs to be taken to the dump (which DH did yesterday!) or to recycling depot (which we'll do when we have a good car load of stuff to take), and now there's room for all my cleaning things (except the new Swiffer vac isn't working... grrrr...) and my hanging clothes rack for when I need to dry my Lulu's!

Today I'm tackling the last few cupboards in the kitchen. I already have 1 box to be moved to the camping gear section of the basement, and a box getting filled with stuff I'm selling on Varage Sale. And the space I made in the corner cupboard is now holding all the stuff from on top of the cabinets where they won't get dusty and sticky anymore!

Every item I sell, the money goes into our Trip Account for spending money and souvies. I would usually buy myself a six-pack to drink through the week, but this way I can get more toys when we go and my waistline (and liver) will appreciate the break.

 

[vleeth]

Any tips on how to get dh on board with getting rid of stuff?

 

[OhMari]

We lived here 28 years. We moved at least 1/2 of our belongs. See that white door above the porch? About 3 weeks ago, I convinced my dh to get a back hoe lift and we brought down all of our heavy dressers and anything else that cannot fit down the steps. We just need to bring down our mattresses. I should take a picture when we do it. 2 people stand up on the porch roof and we slide the mattresses down using those big blue tarps. I wish the snow would go away, but I don't see that happening. It is suppose to be bitterly cold again this week.

I finally convinced my dh to get a dumpster.