Category: Declutter

A Christmas shed!

Would you believe it, even during Christmas I managed to shed a few things 🙂

I had my family over for brunch on what we call second Christmas day, which I believe most of you call Boxing day?

I thought I could use this opportunity to have one of the girls try on a pair of shoes I’m getting rid of, as she is almost the same shoe size as me. Turns out I have no takes on the shoes, but I did, on a couple of the other thing 🙂

While we were upstairs looking at the shoes, the other girls came up, and you know how it is, when there are clothes, and a bunch of girls… 🙂

It’s so funny…my style is pretty much what we could call a kinda conservative/sporty/classic/casual style, I have no idea what that would be in fashion terms. But I’m the jeans, t-shirt, fleece kinda girl, that when I do dress up, I prefer pants and no frills tops and shirts. Dress or a skirt? Not something you see on me very often 🙂

The girls in my family on the other hand… love to dress up! And I have to admit, they really know how to put their outfits together, and they look gorgeous!

So you can see how I wouldn’t really expect that there would be much in my closet for them. But believe it or not! Out went a couple of shirts, a sweater, a cardigan and…

a really pretty vest, which I have no idea why I ever bought! It’s knitted in the back and rabbit skin in the front, I just couldn’t seem to ever make it work on me. My niece on the other hand; tall, skinny, beautiful, could have been a model if she wanted (she decided she wanted a degree more, which I applaud), always nicely put together and picky about what she wears. The vest, it looks great on her… so guess where it now resides.. absolutely not in my closet any more 🙂

In addition to clothing, I have a painting by Pia Myrvold, I had mentioned to my step-sister (as she is looking for art for her new house), that she decided to not only take a look at, but also to buy from me! How cools is that?

So there you have it – Christmas shed of thing out-the-door – 6 items

  • 2 shirts
  • 1 cardigan
  • 1 sweater
  • 1 vest
  • 1 painting

2014-12-28 11.23.14

 

Finally out of here…

Here we are!

Another pile of stuff going out-the-door!

Phew!

Remember I told you (both on October and November tally), about this pile of things I was holding for my neighbour to have a look? Well, we finally managed to find five minutes to look through it 🙂

This weekend she took of with a couple of boxes with stuff! She didn’t take it all (and I didn’t expect her to) but she still relieved me of probably about 95 percentage of my pile – and I’m ever so happy.

I have to admit, it’s just so much easier to “declutter” when there are people you know, who might find them useful.

And here it is, the stuff she took and a few things extra, my pile of stuff out-the-door – 90 items:

  • 2 magazine holders
  • 3 microwave items
  • 1 ice cube tray
  • 3 plastic boxes to store food in + a box of ziploc bags
  • 1 serving tray
  • 3 candle holders
  • 1 pack of plastic spoons
  • 1 pack of plastic straws (should be a hit with her kids)
  • 2 wine openers
  • 3 wine stoppers
  • 1 huge sport drink reusable bottle
  • 1 reusable lunch bag
  • 1 small porcelain bowl
  • 4 long stemmed wine glasses
  • 1 tea box full of different teas
  • 1 plastic box (the one with an X I’m keeping for now.. I have an idea and if it works I’ll post about it 🙂 )
  • 1 cut board
  • 1 decorative glass bowl
  • 1 tiny shots glass
  • Bunch of rubber band (bracelets) – count as 1
  • 7 watches (she took a couple for her kids)
  • 18 Christmas decoration items
  • 1 box of decorative tiny apples (Christmas stuff)
  • 3 bean babies
  • 1 head light
  • 1 big storage box (all the stuff she took with her fit in the box – it’s that big 🙂 )
  • 1 pair of running shoes (another friend took earlier)
  • 2 medium size storage boxes (perfect for her kids toys)

67 items 

And then there are some clothing I do not have a photo off, that also went out the-the-door this weekend:

  • 1 pair of jeans
  • 6 bras
  • 7 pantyhose
  • 3 pairs of socks
  • 2 short sleeved bicycle tops
  • 1 pair of shorts
  • 1 pair of dress pants
  • 1 t-shirt
  • 1 sleep shorts

Another 23 items 🙂 

2014-12-15 10.20.07 2014-12-15 10.24.51 2014-12-15 10.27.39

November tally!

I can’t believe where the month of November went. Seriously if feels like it’s only a few days since I wrote up October tally, and now November is over. I swear the days have wheels attached to them, because I sure can’t catch up.

So how did I do in the month of November (that I’m sure was only 8 days long 😉 ).

NOVEMBER TALLY of things “out-the-door” =  23 items!

  • 1 bead bracelet
  • 14 KLM Delft Blue Miniature houses – shipped to a friend in – A Tiny Village 2
  • 3 DVD’s – part of my Watch a movie program declutter project
  • 1 down duvet – that I am still debating if there is anything I can use it for, rather than “toss” it – any good ideas out there?

In addition, my neighbours mum popped over for a cup of tea, and while she was here it turns out that a couple of the clothing I was planning on getting rid of worked out for her. So she “ran” out of here with:

  • 1 pair of running shoes
  • 2 scarf’s
  • 1 pair of pink super soft socks, that just never fit me 😦

So there it is, 23 items out-the-door for the month of November.

P.S I’m still sitting on this pile of things, waiting for my neighbour to have a look, that I was hoping would count in November.. guess the pile is making it to the December tally instead!

2014-12-07 10.35.49

Another book installment!

Now that I’m not sitting her ogling the TV all the time, there has been time to get back to chipping away at my “reading myself out of my bookshelf” task.

And here it is – another 12 books out-the-door 🙂

2014-12-04 10.01.15

Waterlogged?

When I lived in the US a few years back, I had this small water feature sitting on my kitchen bench. Just a little something to give me the sound of a small trickle of water.

When I moved back to Norway, I did install it, but a couple of months into using it here, the bowl started to leak, and I never really found another bowl I like to use the water feature with.. so I packed it away.

And now that I have a decent outdoor water feature.. I see no reason to keep this in my closet. So out-the-door it goes!

I can’t really count this item, as it got counted in my July? toss, I obviously just didn’t get it out-the-door after all, hmmm 😦

2014-01-11 11.21.04

You’ve covered me for years!

I’m sorry to say, but my old goose down duvet has to go. There is a ridiculous amount of down and feathers that are flying around every time I change the duvet cover. And I have to admit, it’s getting a bit tedious having to vacuum “half the house” just because I want a clean bed 😉

In Norway the normal bedding exists of a fitted sheet that we sleep on, a down/feather or synthetic duvet, covered with a duvet cover, that we sleep under and a couple of pillows.

It’s not the norm like I’ve seen in US, to just sleep under a thin sheet, or sleep under a sheet that’s between us and the duvet/blanket. Because I don’t use that extra sheet, I change the duvet covers pretty often. So you can see how flying down/feathers is becoming a problem.

I’ve had my duvet for years, so it’s not really all that surprising it’s throwing in the towel. Thankfully I have an extra duvet laying around so I don’t need to go and buy another one (which is really good as they are expensive over here, if you want a decent one).

My dear duvet!

Today I have to say goodbye 😦 I’m sad to see our parting ways, because you have served me well all these years.

You have always been there!

To keep me nice and warm on chilly nights. You have been around for sad days and sick days, allowing me to hide under the covers. You’ve been around for snuggle days, reading or watching tv in my living room. You’ve even been outside with me once or twice, on beautiful winter days just sitting enjoying the weather.

You’ve seen me at my best and my worst, and you’ve followed me from home to home.

Sadly this is the end of the road for you. I would have loved to reuse you for something, but I’m not sure what that would be right now. Refurbish you is to expensive, compared to replacements. And you know that your goose down brother, who is “hanging” around in my closet, is chopping at the bits to come out to play.

So long, my trusted friend!

TV Detox – How am I doing? And a new project!

Have I stayed within my allotted 1 hour a day? Hmm, probably not quite. Have I stopped hanging in front of the TV all day, absolutely!

Remember about three weeks ago, I decided I needed to do something about my TV time? And I did! The first couple of weeks I did really well, I more or less stayed within my allotted hour, some days the TV never came on, and sometimes I watched a couple of programs rather than just one. But on average, probably no more than 1 hour a day. Which was my goal!

This last week though, there’s been a slight change, and mostly because I have added another small declutter project to the mix 🙂

As you probably know, I started this year with an intention to read myself out of my bookshelves, and this have so far been a pretty successful endeavour. I though I could take a cue from this, and try a similar thing with my DVD/Blu-Ray collection.

I’ve decided to watch myself out of my movie collection. This means, I will go through my movies one after another, watch it one more time, then decide which one of these categories it falls into:

  • keep – great movie will watch it again – worth being kept as a physical disk
  • copy – good movie will/might watch it again – worth copying it to a PC hard drive
  • toss – good to crap movie probably won’t watch it again (or know I won’t) – get rid of it

Now, I know this will play a little havoc with my TV time. But since I’m doing this with a friend, it will mostly be weekend watching, not a day to day thing 😉

Sounds like a fun project, yes?

Counting them, I probably have around 200 movies, which are movies and not series. Some of them are really old, and some are really crappy – you will probably have a laugh when you see pictures of them – so hopefully it won’t be to hard to cut down a little on my movie collection.

My biggest challenge when it comes to cutting down the amount of DVD/Blu-Rays are my series collection. Not sure how to handle those yet. You see, I have collected a few series over the years, especially sci-fi series, that I kinda would like to keep. Most of them are in CD/DVD albums, so they don’t eat all that much space. Hopefully when I get good a getting rid of movies, I can start chipping away at the series as well. We will have to get back to that…

But we were talking about movies! So far we have watched 4 movies, or rather watched 3 movies, one was so bad we couldn’t stand to watch more than the first 5 minutes 😉

Result? 3 out-the-door and 1 maaaaybe copy (probably not).

2014-11-13 10.20.30

A Tiny Village 2

I don’t know if you remember me telling you about I was bringing with me half of my KLM house collection to Houston , to give to a friend of mine, whose mum collect them.

A few days ago, I shipped off the rest of the KLM Houses to my friend, and I just got an email, confirming it arrived.

I decided to keep 8, for now… but you never know.. they might leave the house sometime later 😉

That makes for another 14 tiny houses leaving the house (29 all together). Slowly but surely things are going out-the-door again 🙂

 

The last 14 – shipped off

2014-11-07 22.09.42

October tally

It’s that time again! That monthly catch up to let you know how I did with my decluttering task last month. And I have to say, I did appalling. As you have probably noticed there wasn’t one single post about things going out-the-door, in the whole month of October, with maybe the exception of my post about shedding some TV time.

That don’t mean that there wasn’t the occasional thing going out-the-door, it just means I didn’t ever get around to write about it, or remember to take pictures of it before it was gone.

It’s hard to remember what all those things was right now, but some of the items I decluttered was:

– papers, magazines and stuff like that, that I’ve been holding on too for a long time = 2 big paper bags worth – count as 1
– stuff in my outdoor storage boxes, and outdoor storage room – like wood, piping, plastic pieces, paint cloth, paint brushes, plastic plant pots and I’m sure.. a few more things. What count to give them? Hmmm.. why don’t we say 1 count per category I remember I was tossing out, that seems kinda fair, since I can’t really prove to you what went out the door – count as 6 items

And then there’s is the stuff I’ve been decluttering out of different rooms in the house, but that are still “stored” in my guest room (for my neighbour to check out before it leaves the house). Those things I will be writing about as they leave the house permanently (hopefully during the month of November)

OCTOBER TALLY of things “out-the-door” =  7 items!

Not good, I know.. but I’ll do much better in November, I’m sure, now that I’m done with my kitchen project 😉