Simplifying Saturday 11/7/09

I haven't posted a Simplifying Saturday in a few weeks because I haven't been doing much decluttering. I finally started getting back on track with it this week. I really need to get on the ball since we'll be moving in less than two months. This week I packed up my nice stemware since it's something we don't use often. I got rid of my crystal stemware earlier this year and made the decision to keep these for special occasions. I'm not ready to part with them at this time. Then I went through a basket of papers that I wasn't sure what to do with. Paper clutter continues to be my biggest challenge. In the end I only kept a few of them. The rest were tossed, shredded or recycled. I also went through my junk email account and deleted 2,000 emails. I'm terrible about deleting emails. It was time to get it done. So I did make some progress and hope to get more done this coming week.

What did you do to simplify this week?

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday

I haven't posted a Simplifying Saturday post in a few weeks. I've been so busy. We travelled over Labor Day weekend and have been going pretty much non-stop since. Most of my time has been spent painting rather than decluttering but I finally had a chance to get rid of more stuff this week. Our local communtiy consignment sale is going on this weekend so I loaded up a bunch of my girls' outgrown clothing and toys for that. It's always nice to get rid of stuff and make a little money. I went through the tubs of hand me downs this week and discovered that my youngest has plenty of clothing for this Fall/Winter. Yay! I just need to buy her some dress shoes. My oldest daughter on the other hand needs almost an entire wardrobe. She has one pair of jeans, 3 tops & 2 dresses. She does have 2 other pair of jeans that I had bought ahead but they are still too big for her. She is in between 8s and 10s so it's making it tricky to find pants that fit. I was planning to shop at this consigment sale as well for the needed wardrobe items but H1N1 struck at our house this week so we're hanging out at home instead. I'll just hunt down some good sales elsewhere when my daughter is feeling better and I'll be able to use the money I made at the consignment sale to pay for it.

Did you get any decluttering accomplished this week? If so, leave a comment sharing what you did.

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday On Monday

Oh my goodness, these busy weekends have me all off schedule. Saturday was my baby girl's birthday and we had family in town visiting. We had a great weekend. It was a lot of fun and my family was a big help with getting the house read to go on the market.

I did a lot of decluttering last week as I prepared the house to go on the market. I came to the realization that I am an awful packrat. I really couldn't believe how much I threw away this past week. I had a huge lawn bag stuffed of junky little stuff that needed to go, much of it from my kids' craft closet. I also came up with another box of items to donate as well as a box of books and magazines to take to Half Price books to sell. And I still have more to get rid of.

This is what I have left to go through:
-My clothing closet.
-My bathroom closet where I keep my health & beauty items. I should not need that many shelves for that stuff.
- The rest of the storage closet/pantry. Made some progress on that a few weeks back.
-The closets in the guest bedroom.
-Another time through the garage. I'm sure we haven't gotten rid of everything we can in there.

Every time I think about moving, I get all the inspiration I need to let stuff go. I do not want to move what we don't have to. It feels good letting go!

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday On Sunday

There was major decluttering going on around here this week. We had a huge yard sale yesterday. I tried to be ruthless as I went through pretty much the entire house this past week. Now, I'm sure as I begin packing up the house I will continue to find things to get rid of, but we made a lot of progress this week. One thing I discovered while doing this is that I have gotten pretty good at having less stuff over the last several years. Most of what we sold at the yard sale was kid related. And once we convinced them to let go of most of their toys, I think they realized how nice it is to have less to clean up and keep tidy. We sold probably 90% or more of what we had to sell yesterday. I called a lady who works for a local non-profit agency that is hosting a fund raising yard sale soon and she swung by this afternoon and picked up the leftovers. That was nice! So it's all gone.

I'm not going to list all we got rid of but here are some of the highlights:
Little Tikes Playhouse, kitchen & sandbox
Cozy Coupe, bike & skooter
Doll house, easel, & Fisher Price playsets
Dolls, stuffed animals, random toys
air compressor, aquarium stand, crystal stemware
Lots & lots of stuff we just didn't need.

It was so nice to see it all go and know we're not going to have to move it!

I still have clutter to get rid of. Most of it is paper related. For some reason, I'm never sure which ones to toss and which ones to keep. I'm getting better but there are still plenty of bills, EOBs, bank statements, etc. to go through. I've got to figure out better way of dealing with them.

We had the realtor over yesterday to get things in order to get the house ready go on the market. I'll be spending the next week getting rid of as much of "us" as possible which includes simplifying some of the decor and getting rid of more stuff. As I begin packing things up and preparing for our move, I am going to try to take a good, objective look at each item before I pack it. I really want to be able to just unpack the things we need and the things we love in our new home.

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday And Job Update

Well, the last couple of weeks have probably been the craziest two weeks of my life. The day after my husband's job loss we packed up and headed to Alabama to visit my family. My husband had two phone interviews and two face to face interviews while we were down there. We left Alabama on July 31st and headed to North Carolina to spend the weekend with my husband's grandmother. We arrived home this past Sunday evening. This week has been a blur of doctors appointments, dentist appointments and back to school preparations.

We were thrilled and a bit in awe when my husband received a job offer this past Thursday, two weeks to the day he lost his job. If you want the full details on how this all worked out, you can read it here on my personal blog. This will require us to move but we'll be moving to an area where we've always wanted to live. We realize that in the short term that saving money is probably not going to be possible. Not only are we going to incur moving costs but we also have to sell this house. We know that we may have to carry a mortgage and rent for awhile. We have chosen to look at the long term benefits of this move which include living in an area with a lower cost of living, living where we have always wanted to live and being closer to family. We feel that the long term gain is worth the short term pain. This was not something that we decided to do on a whim. If you read the post on my other blog, you'll see this is something that we had already discussed and had been pursuing. We are very excited about this new opportunity.

So because of all of the circumstances of the last couple of weeks, I have not made as much progress in decluttering as I had hoped. However, yesterday my girls and I tackled the basement playroom. I was absolutely thrilled with my girls' enthusiasm and willingness to get rid of so many of their toys. The toy storage shelves and containers are mostly empty. We tossed a bag of trash and have a ton of stuff for the yard sale we're planning next weekend. This next week should be very productive for us as we prepare for the yard sale.

If you would like to join me in simplifying, please feel free to leave a comment detailing how you simplified this week.

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday

I made a little progress this week in reducing the clutter. I worked on my closet one day and then I spent some time in my pantry/storage closet.

This week I simplified things by:
-clearing some clothes out of my closet-I tossed a pair of shoes and an old swimsuit and donated a couple of bags of clothes to goodwill.
-cleaned out and organized 3 shelves in my pantry/storage closet. I tossed a bag of junk and recycled some unnecessary boxes.
-threw away the matchless socks that have been hanging out in the lost sock bucket for a couple of months.
-threw away some rags that were too threadbare to even be rags anymore.

With my husband's job loss, we are pretty certain we will be moving so I'll be doing a lot of simplifying in the near future. If you would like to join me in simplifying, please feel free to leave a comment detailing how you simplified this week.

Read more...

Simplifying Saturday

As I've made the transition towards living a more frugal lifestyle, I've learned a lot about living with less and being more thoughtful about the things I purchase. I have certainly brought a lot less into this house in the last year or so than I was before. One area I struggle with though is getting rid of what's already here. I'm not very good about letting go of the stuff. I recently stumbled across a blog called Becoming Minimalist, about a suburban family of four's quest to become minimalist. While reading through the Causes Of Clutter section, I have to say that I think all of those reasons either do or have applied to me at some point. I have the desire to simplify and I do little bits here and there but I'd really like to let go of the excess for good. So, I've committed to letting go and simplifying things. I will track my progress here in a regular series entitled Simplifying Saturday.

This week I simplified things by:
- selling 2 bags of books and magazines at Half-Price Books. Less stuff, extra cash.
- clearing out the phone book drawer and tossing the extra phone books. Are you overrun with these too?
-tossing make-up that was old and I was no longer using.
-mailing a box of cloth diapers and covers that I was saving "just in case we have another baby" to a friend who is due any time now.

If you would like to join me in simplifying, please feel free to leave a comment detailing how you've simplified this week.

Read more...