Showing posts with label Downsizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Downsizing. Show all posts

Friday, June 28, 2019

The Friday 15

Let's see how well I did downsizing this month...

June 7:
We have a one quilt going to our neighbor's nurse. Two Princess bags being stuffed full of snacks and handed off to a crew member. Three Effy necklaces going to the same crew member - one for her, one for her momma, and one for her daughter.
One grill tray for the BBQ that hubby tossed without a picture. Air freshener plug ins, magazines, Alaska knick-knacks, and a sweater. 
June 14:
Do you ever pick things up, thinking they would be a good resource? Well, that's what I did a while back with these cruising brochures. I thought they would be helpful for folks in my cruising classes to look at. But the pricing in cruise brochures are just outrageous! So other than teaching them not to book a cruise at the listed prices the books haven't come in as handy as I thought they would. So they must go to someone else.

Then throw in some full packages of binding and lace and a big bag of miscellaneous bindings and lace and a couple pens and away goes 15 more items.

June 21:
I'm just about tapped out of things inside the house to get rid of. One last time through my bathroom, sewing room, and office drawers netted 15 more items. Hubby's not going to be happy if I start heading towards his shed next! 

June 28:
Yep, I had to raid the shed.
A saw, hammer, and an ice chest that didn't get pictures. 2 pair of shorts that went to my daughter without a picture. And a bunch of other things makes 15.

Friday, May 31, 2019

The Friday 15

And 15 more were gone...
Starting next month I'm switching up the Friday 15. I'll only post the last Friday of the month. But, boy I sure hope I have four weeks of Friday 15s to show off on that last day!

Friday, May 3, 2019

The Friday 15

I think I can count the 12 kids quilts heading out the door towards my Friday 15. Add in a couple pictures and a hand towel and 15 things are gone again.



Friday, April 26, 2019

The Friday 15

I know I say this a lot, but some day I'm going to run out of items to send off. But today's not that day. Seriously, how can I keep finding things to get rid of? And why do I embarrass myself by posting pictures of the junk I own used to own?

Friday, April 19, 2019

The Friday 15

Goodbye to 15 more items. I can't believe I'm getting rid of my bird watching book, but it's got to go. Sad.

Friday, April 12, 2019

The Friday 15

Today needs to change from the Friday 15 to the Friday 1500. I went through our nails, screws, nuts and bolts and washers, picture hangers, hooks, and well, about 1,500 other little items we had. I came up with 15 full bags worth of things we don't need. Away they go.

Friday, March 22, 2019

The Friday 15

I seriously found 15 more items to get rid of? Heck, yeah. That makes almost three straight months of sending off 15+ items per week. Add that to all the Friday 15s I did last year and I'm getting pretty darn good at this downsizing thing.

Friday, March 15, 2019

The Friday 15

I think I'm getting close to the end of my free magazine subscriptions. While I loved getting free magazines through T-Mobile Tuesdays I realized I just can't keep up with them. But I'm caught up now!

Add those to a bunch of things I no longer need or use, like some shelving and a wicker hamper? Yep, 15 more things are outta here!

Friday, March 8, 2019

The Friday 15

Every week I think it'll be the last time I can find another 15 things to get rid of. Yet here we go with another 15 (and then some) items heading out of here.

Friday, March 1, 2019

The Friday 15

I say this a lot but how is it possible I still can find 15 things to get rid of each week? I have a small house. I have empty space on shelves and cabinets and drawers. But yet every week I have more and more to send off.

This week I have mostly things out of the sewing room. Plus a small shelf that never made it into the picture before it headed to the car makes 15 in total.

Friday, February 22, 2019

The Friday 15

Why oh why do we keep things we don't need?

Do I need a binder I've had in the kitchen since we've moved into this house? Full of dividers and inserts and menus from a city we don't even live in anymore? With daily menu plans from a lifetime ago? I even had a dried up pen and dry erase marker in there. Do I need those? Heck no.

Do I need the curtain valances I made for the bedroom when we first moved into this house? Nope.

What about a USB wall charger cube we bought at the Fisherman's Wharf CVS in San Francisco years ago? No, because it took forever to charge on that trip. And besides, now I have a wall charger I always keep in our travel things so we don't ever forget one again.

What about all those bobbin boxes? Yes, I like my bobbins neat and organized but I don't need all those boxes.

So adios to 15 more!

Friday, February 15, 2019

The Friday 15

There are times when I'm getting rid of things when I get a little tinge of sadness in my heart. Today's items would be a good example.

Sheets, fabric, some comic book boards and a magazine? Don't care.

But the cookbooks I've had for years? With everything online now it's time for those last two well-used cookbooks to leave. (I would have passed them onto our daughter but she doesn't need them either.)

The colorful napkins and plastic cutlery I bought at Target years and years ago remind me of the prospect of a life with people over and picnics and BBQs. Events that never happened and now never will. Time to let them go.

But the hardest of the bunch to let go was the Christmas tree ornaments with the year 1997 written on the backs of them. A mommy, daddy, and little girl gingerbread family. They remind me of a lifetime of Christmases with our little girl who is long since grown up.  I can't see these ornaments needing to be part of my life in the future. (And kiddo didn't want them either. Ugh. Now that's sad.)

Off they all go. 15 more items be gone!

Friday, February 8, 2019

The Friday 15

While last week I didn't get rid of any blue clothes, I've decided to go ahead and send some away this week.

I've also come across way too many cans of lavender air freshener. Don't need them. Heck, I don't even like the smell of them.

And those fabric blocks I tried to make a quilt with but then decided I didn't like so much? Yep, they are going.

Who keeps a cable for a cell phone they no longer have? Not me anymore.

What about tanning lotion from the tanning bed place? That place folks in this house went to for a only three months in their entire lives.

An old wallet, a hand towel, and a magnet from Hawaii round things out to make 15 heading either to the donation bag or the trash.

Friday, February 1, 2019

The Friday 15

The other day as I was getting out of bed I realized I kind of overdo it in the blue department.

I got out from under my blue sheets.
Which were covered by my blue comforter.
I put on my blue slippers.
I looked at the blue clothes and blue robe and blue towel
hanging on the blue wall by the side of my bed.
I opened my t shirt drawer to finally find something not blue. I've got pink. And blue. (The clothes looking black? Nope, just dark blue.)


While I'm not getting rid of anything blue - at least not yet - I am getting rid of 15 black clothing items I've been holding onto for a year or so. I've been hoping to cut them up and do something with them but it's not going to happen. Now if they were blue it might be a different story. But they aren't, so there goes 15 more items out of my home. 
Yay me for knowing when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away, and when to run. (Sorry, I got carried away...Kenny Rodgers' song is on the Casey Kasem Top 40 station I'm listening to right now.)

Friday, January 25, 2019

The Friday 15

I love that our library checks out eBooks. I don't even have to go into the library. I can just sit at home and check out the book and read it on my iPad. Easy peasy. This month I've been reading a new book called The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. (Actually the full title is The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store but I went with, well, less.) Reading books like this one provides motivation to keep going.

Motivation to keep purchases to a minimum.

Motivation to keep donating/discarding 15 items each week.

This week's pile is a hodgepodge of things. Mostly they are things I had stuck in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. Basically another pile of junk I don't need.

Friday, January 18, 2019

The Friday 15

The other day I was going all KonMari on my daughter as I was helping her organize and tidy her den. (So proud of kiddo - six big garbage bags of things left their home!) As I was working with her as she culled her books, it occurred to me I had forgotten about some books at my own home.

Just a couple weeks ago I bragged about going from all these books and bookshelves:
down to just these few books:

But I forgot about all my kids books and teaching materials. When I left the classroom years ago I got rid of hundreds and hundreds of books. But I kept a couple containers of books and materials. Things I thought would come in handy someday when I had grandkids. 

Well, no grandkids yet. And a realization that even if and when grandkids arrive, I really didn't need everything I had kept. So the other night after hubby had gone to bed I went through the closet and the containers. I did keep a few things (can't get rid of that set of Dr. Seuss books - that's an order from my daughter), but I can happily report today's Friday 15 is actually a Friday 101. Yep, 101 books and materials that had been important to me over the last 30 years will no longer be mine. 

I just noticed something about the picture. Since less stuff = simpler life = more free time it seems pretty ironic that the last book I put in the stack was Teacher Tested Timesavers.

Friday, January 11, 2019

The Friday 15

I'm an organizer. Anything I have in the house is placed just so. Straight lines, edges matching, labels facing out. I'm also a paper goods hoarder. I used to be, that is.

Just look at my basement from 2014.

While I don't hoard paper products anymore (don't have the space), I do tend to buy consumable items on sale in large quantities at rock bottom prices. I usually stick to tried and true brands but occasionally will branch out and try something new. Clearly this new brand of soap I purchased wasn't our favorite because look how many we still had that hadn't been used. It was almost enough to fill up my entire 15 for the week. My, oh, my.

I'm finally getting rid of them after way too long. How long have I had them? Well, here's the embarrassing part...I found my order from Amazon with a purchase date of June 2014. They've been sitting around here for four and a half years. Yikes!

No more though. Goodbye to 15 things that no longer serve a purpose!

Friday, January 4, 2019

The Friday 15

A couple years ago I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. If you haven't read it, you should. It'll change your ideas about "stuff". Marie also now has a show on Netflix called "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo". I've been binge-watching the show this week and realized I've been doing a lot of the things she proposes long before she ever wrote about them.

Pile all your clothes on the bed and then decide which ones bring you joy? (Joy = keep.) Yep, I did that back in January 2014.
I can report I got rid of most of that pile. While some of the keepers from back then have now since been replaced with others, the number of items are still low. In fact, if I were to create a new pile of all my clothes today it wouldn't even take up a quarter of the bed.

Go through all your books and only keep those you wish to take with you into the future? Look at what we had in 2012...
Oh, my. We had a lot of books!
Here's all we have left now...
Now when we want to read something new we check out an e-book from our local library.
Clothes and shoes and books and kitchenwares and garden items have been pared down. Christmas decorations are much more manageable and a huge salt and pepper collection has been sent on its way. 

We're getting closer but aren't there yet. While I've been on a minimalism path for several years, hubby's kidney failure in 2012 helped us re-prioritize our lives. Simpler is better. Less is better. With that in mind I keep looking for items that don't bring joy to our lives. 

Here are 15 more this week. More Christmas and clothes. Where does this stuff come from???

Friday, December 28, 2018

The Friday 15 Year End Wrap-Up

It has been a while since I've posted The Friday 15. It's hard to downsize when you aren't home! But now I'm back and today is a wrap up of the year. Here is everything I discarded or donated or sold off in 2018. Yay for downsizing!

January

eBay sales
emptied my computer trash







February


March


April


May


June


July
0

August



September


October


November
No photos, but to my daughter went two pair of pants, one sweatshirt, two Christmas ornaments from upcoming tutorials, four stuffed fabric pumpkins and one candy corn trick or treat bag from the tutorials earlier in October, and one rope toy for her dog. And a fidget quilt went to our neighbor.

December
Just this wrap up.

Between the things I have photos of and the things I wrote down but didn't take pictures of, over 400 things left my home this year.

Now that rocks!