Recap
For the last few years I haven't done a proper cull of un-needed things. I do cull, clothes always, but other stuff - mostly quite superficial. We have three pitch-in days a year at the dump and I take advantage of all of them - well, the September one is mostly garbage from Baron's Howe, but this year i've gone above and beyond.
I pitched in from the barn, from the garage, from the small garage beside the house that we call the shed, from the crawl-space storage, and of course from closets and cupboards. That was in May; I still have stuff from the shed to go. Then, because we have lots of allowed garbage bags, I continued to get rid of stuff, breaking it down so it could go into bags. One day I took eight bags to the dump. (Normally we have about two a month!) I did a big book cull and now have a $38 credit at the used book store, I took five bags of clothes to the Sally Anne and one to Rebuilt Resources. We took a pick-up truck load of old electronics to the recycle place, and a number of tins of paint as well.
All the closets in the house can now be looked into and one can see what's there - no mysterious bags or boxes in corners. No totes full of fabric scraps in the sewing room - and that now looks like a room again. It has a futon frame, a big empty usable surface to sew on, my music boxes for decoration, the Laurel box for the bedside lamp to sit on - and that's about it.
The space under the stairs has a few things stored in totes. The front of the basement which no longer really has a function since NS now works upstairs is at least tidy, and so is the back part of the basement. There will be a further cull there when July pitch-in happens. Even the root-cellar has been emptied of its boxes that used to have electronic things in them that we no longer own.
The "Narnia Closet" in the front porch has been emptied and cleaned. I keep cloaks and winter footwear in there. Seems suitable!
It's so easy to just accumulate stuff that might be useful at some date, or to save stuff for other people who forget they've left it here! (Or for exes - we still have some of that!) I know people who would be even more ruthless in getting rid of stuff than I was, but I think I did pretty well!
I pitched in from the barn, from the garage, from the small garage beside the house that we call the shed, from the crawl-space storage, and of course from closets and cupboards. That was in May; I still have stuff from the shed to go. Then, because we have lots of allowed garbage bags, I continued to get rid of stuff, breaking it down so it could go into bags. One day I took eight bags to the dump. (Normally we have about two a month!) I did a big book cull and now have a $38 credit at the used book store, I took five bags of clothes to the Sally Anne and one to Rebuilt Resources. We took a pick-up truck load of old electronics to the recycle place, and a number of tins of paint as well.
All the closets in the house can now be looked into and one can see what's there - no mysterious bags or boxes in corners. No totes full of fabric scraps in the sewing room - and that now looks like a room again. It has a futon frame, a big empty usable surface to sew on, my music boxes for decoration, the Laurel box for the bedside lamp to sit on - and that's about it.
The space under the stairs has a few things stored in totes. The front of the basement which no longer really has a function since NS now works upstairs is at least tidy, and so is the back part of the basement. There will be a further cull there when July pitch-in happens. Even the root-cellar has been emptied of its boxes that used to have electronic things in them that we no longer own.
The "Narnia Closet" in the front porch has been emptied and cleaned. I keep cloaks and winter footwear in there. Seems suitable!
It's so easy to just accumulate stuff that might be useful at some date, or to save stuff for other people who forget they've left it here! (Or for exes - we still have some of that!) I know people who would be even more ruthless in getting rid of stuff than I was, but I think I did pretty well!