Remember back in March when I set myself this crazy challenge, well yes I've been throwing things out since then. It's amazing what you can actually bear to part from once you've got the right mindset. I'll admit now I've thrown out more than I thought I would, but there's still a long, long way to go if I'm going to get close to the target of freeing myself of 2016 items in 2016.
But every little helps, right?
So what's gone?
Don't worry I'm not going to share everything, just a few of the highlights:
- Books. I've sorted through a lot of our books and 51 of them are no longer with us. The majority of these went to the local charity shop, but some I sold through We Buy Books which worked out roughly at a pound per book. Now I've even some space on our bookshelves, which of course means there's room for more books. Not all new ones though, I can repatriate some that were in other parts of the house.
- MOH's T shirt cull. This much promised and long awaited cull took place in April. And rather than the loads he promised, there were just nine. But even so, that's a lot of t shirts he was hanging onto there - and yes, of course I'm laying the current "summer" firmly at his door!
- Thyroid papers from the first occurrence back in 2012. I've now got the TS3, TS4 and TSH levels in a spreadsheet, which came in handy when I was re-diagnosed earlier this month, but you wouldn't believe the timing would you?
- Broken plastic plant pots, which now I realise I'd never use (because I have so many more!)
- Shoes that killed my feet. Just the one pair mind.
- A bedding set that was most probably ten years old, well used and let's be frank had seen better days.
- Roasting tins and oven gloves which I'd already bought replacements for. I tell you it's a mindset change.
- The old lawnmower, well given MOH now has a petrol replacement it was obsolete.
- Our 3-seater sofa, which you might think is taking things a bit far as we were still using it. However it wasn't as comfortable as it once was and we really need to sort out a replacement. It's departure was prompted by a new purchase at Grand Designs Live earlier in the month when we purchased a garden sofa (not rattan) for our conservatory. It's temporarily being used in the living room. I know, classy. So the tenner from selling books, went on paying the council to take this away. It was a big sofa and I needed to enlist the help of our next door neighbour to get it out of the house.
- Our old dining table and chairs, another biggie but also another duplicate. Remember we bought our new table back at the start of the year and ordered chairs soon after. Well the table was sorted and delivered on time but we had a wait for the chairs. Finally that's all sorted so we sold the old brown furniture for fifty pounds to a local second-hand furniture shop, because no one was biting on eBay.
1778 items to go
So since March I've now disposed of, in total 238 items, which leaves another 1778 to go. Yes, like I said there's still much to do. And we've still lots to sort through - a shed clear out is threatened, and maybe just maybe I'll look through my cookbooks too.
There's also talk of a skip to get rid of some of that stuff from the shed and around the garden - I realise this makes me sound a bit like something from Steptoe and Son, it's not that bad but it needs to be done.
And slowly, we're getting it done.
