448 items short of 2016

Remember back in March last year when I hit on the slightly crazy idea of having a declutter with a difference? The idea was I'd try and replicate the idea I'd read about where a family committed to throw away the same number of items as the year, and they did this for more than one year. I was curious to see how many things we would get rid of, and not starting until March made it a tougher task.

But it started well, by June there was only 1778 items to go and I was pleased with the progress I'd made. But by October I was disappointed with the progress I'd made, as there was still 992 items to get rid of. 

And for the first time I seriously began to wonder if I'd get anywhere close to 2016 items. And I almost gave up.

Almost.

But I didn't. 

In November I had a bit of a pause, a disheartened pause I guess. But realising that wasn't helping get near to the target, I started to throw more things away.

• I cleared out my craft supplies and all the things I thought I might use one day, well I went through those and quite a few that I would probably never use, were recycled or thrown away.
• We replaced some everyday glasses - with these from TK Maxx - but sent more to the charity shop.
• Packaging. Somehow I still had quite a lot of this. Well no more.
• Old bills. No not that kind of old Bill, the paper sort. At a rough guess I shredded almost ninety, with some going back to 2013. Technically I still have the shredded bills, as they're in a sack in the greenhouse, ready to add to the compost with the grass cuttings. But I'm counting these here as they've decluttered the house and are waiting to be put to better use.  I could have recycled these, but then I would potentially have had slimy clumps of grass in the compost; mixing shredded paper in with the grass cuttings as it's added, avoids this. 
• Bras. Old but not knackered ones.  I've sent a small package to Smalls for All, a charity who collect underwear to help women and children in Africa.

So, with those and more I'm still 448 items short of the 2016.  Given where I was in October I'm pleased, but the things I thought were dead certs to get rid of - like the old Dyson, a plethora of pictures, some china and an old coffee machine - we still have. 

That's pretty frustrating, especially that old Dyson. I've tried to get rid of that a few times, but MOH has always said, we've one more project to do where it'll be useful, and so it's stayed. Although today, he said we should get rid of it and it's as much as I could do not to stop myself from wheeling it out to the front of the house and hoping it might find itself a new home. But I resisted, because I'm sure there's a more ethical way of finally getting rid of this.

In ten months I've got rid of 1,568 items, which is quite some going. It's not the 2016 items I'd aimed for, and that's disappointing, but it's not bad going is it?

I do wonder how much closer I'd have got if I'd started in January though...  I thought about carrying on until March, but then it wouldn't be 2016 would it? But don't worry, I've no plans to repeat the process, but it was interesting to see how much we've thrown away.  

I will though carry on clearing things out, as with immaculate timing only yesterday MOH said the dreaded "we have too much stuff, we need to have a clear out..."  Which is where I think this started!  It's clearly a cyclical thing. 

Are you in the process of decluttering? Could you get rid of 2017 items this year?

2016 in 2016: An October update

It's been a while since I last did an update on how my year long clear out is going, June in fact. Back then I was relatively pleased with myself for getting rid of 238 items in the three months from March. But I knew there was still a long way to go.

When I looked at my spreadsheet to write this post - and yes, you knew there'd be a spreadsheet didn't you? - well I was almost disappointed, even though the number of things we've got rid of is just about larger than those left to go. It still feels like there's a long way to go, and not much year left.

So the running total for the items I've got rid of is now 1024, which means there's just 992 things to go...  

Yes quite a lot isn't it. I've consoled myself by looking at this pretty pile of junk which was in the "junk" search results over on Unsplash. 

NOT ALL JUNK IS THIS PRETTY, SADLY

In reality, our junk has been a lot less pretty.

So what's gone?

Since my last update in June, we've got rid of:

• Food languishing at the back of the freezer.  Yes, we weren't going to eat it and some of it had been in there for a good while, so there was little point keeping it was there? And now that it's all gone, the plan is to not leave things in there for so long.
• Tea. Yes tea, over the years we've amassed quite a selection of herbal teas. Some from trips away and some we've bought and taken out of the packet to take on holiday. Yes, I am that kind of person that *might* take tea abroad with me, just in case. Of course we don't drink as much as we take and then it never goes back in the box, because we can't remember which is which. And tea bags stored in a plastic bag, doesn't sound the best storage much later on, does it. So that went too.
• Jam Jars. I have a cupboard above the fridge freezer where I hoard jam jars. And all sorts of jars really. I do make chutney and they do come in useful. But even if I made chutney every month I don't think I'd use all the jars I had. So I had a sort through and was more selective about the ones I kept. I've still to make chutney this year too. But that's another story.
• Papers, brochures and magazines. I think these have been breeding. There were loads of them and I'm sure there's still more papers to sort out (and I don't mean newspapers) but just the papers that somehow you amass. And then they breed. Those sorts. There's less now though.
• Clothes. I've had another wardrobe clear out. And the summer clothes I got out and didn't wear, well those have gone to the charity shop. It saved me putting them back into the top of the wardrobe. I'm feeling virtuous here too as all my summer clothes that I did wear, are all washed and back in their storage boxes. And even some of the winter clothes that I got out went straight to the charity bag.
• Earth. Yes earth. Over the summer we got rid of over 75 trugs of earth, and while unusual to include I'm counting them as it was something we no longer needed and makes me feel better about having an eight yard skip delivered. The skip was over half full of earth, and the other reason I'm including it here as it was all hand-lovingly carried through the house trug by trug. And was hard work!
• A shed and greenhouse clearout. Underneath all the soil in the skip, was the junk from the shed and the greenhouse that we had either forgotten we had, didn't know what it was for and even why we'd kept it in the first place. I'm sure we'll be doing that again because these types of places thrive on things like that, don't they?

992 items to go

Yes that's still quite a big number, and I'm not sure where that's going to come from.  We've still some clearing out to do in the study, so that could be a big contributor and I probably *should* go through my craft supplies to see what I've deemed potentially useful in the past.

We've still got a lot of old paint cans, some with paint in, some less so, that we want to get rid of. The trouble is how. I know it'll mean a trip to the tip at some point but I'm dreading that. I've read of a old paint collection service and I need to check to see if that operates in our area. We have pots of paint - though not sure how paint-like they'll be - from when we moved in back in 2002. And it makes sense to get rid of them rather than them taking up room in our shed.

And ironically some of the things I'd targeted early on, we still have. We still have the old yellow Dyson that I'm trying desperately to get rid of, but MOH wants to keep to clear up DIY-mess. He promises it'll go at some point, but I'm not sure when that is and I'm fed up of moving it around. 

Will we make it?

In reality I'm not sure. It's still a big number, and I'm not sure where it'll come from. But I'm not ready to give up yet. There's still two and a half months to go. Eek!  

I'll let you know how I get on.  In the meantime if you know how to safely dispose of old paint tins, which doesn't involve going to the tip, please let me know!

2016 Items in 2016: A June update

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.