I decided to give myself a break. Any day that I work on The Great Clear-out I now count as the next day. So even though there have been a few (quite a few, really) days between my last post and this one, today I’m making forward progress, so it counts as the next day. I think that’s a generous and helpful outlook.

Today the courier is due to pick up the boxes of CDs and DVDs that we’ve sold to MusicMagpie. Each box is properly  inventoried, boxed and labelled, waiting by the front door, ready for pickup.

Also ready to go out the door, lots of books for Oxfam, which I have to courier into town myself.

Also gone: old frying pans, bits of hardware no one recognised, and a japanese print cloth that we’ve kept for years and have no idea where it came from (well, probably Japan, at some point).

I took a few days off this week to attend the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference in Birmingham. This was my first conference, and definitely won’t be my last. I found it uplifiting, and downright inspirational that there are so many people in this country for whom fairness, human rights, and a commitment to do everything in their power to life children out of the trap of poverty are HUGE, TOP priorities. I feel proud to be a Liberal Democrat.

Anyway, in the run-up to conference, and during it, I lost my clearing-out mojo. In order to grab it again, I’ve asked for support, read blogs of master clearer-outers and talked to my friends and family about their methods and outcomes. I don’t know if Mr Mojo will move on again, but for today, it’s here. The Great Clear Out continues…

CD’s are done! Well, as good as. dh has a collection in his office that he’s agreed to cull this week.

More than half the CDs got an offer from MusicMagpie, and the really great thing is that because I had more than 50, they’ll provide a free courier pick-up. I pack and use their label, and arrange a time for the package to be picked up. Total take (without dh’s additions): more than £92. Some were rejected: no one wants Dido, Elton John or Robbie Williams. But Jennifer Warnes, Steven Halpern and Styx were hot!

So, the empties. For the two smaller racks, I think I’ll post them on Freecycle.

I sort of actually like the larger one, but I haven’t found a use for it yet. DVDs only fit on their sides, and not all DVDs have labelling on their sides. Anyone have any ideas?

I’m going to be away for a few days from Saturday, so the last two tasks will wait unitl next week: send the package to MusicMagpie, and take the others to a charity shop.

Now — what’s next?

I got caught up in a task that’s taking a LOT longer than I’d planned for.

The trouble with getting rid of CDs is that there are three places where I still use them, although only occasionally.

1. In the kitchen
2. In the car
3. On holiday

If I can get a system for each of these situations where I can still hear my music, then I can unload all the CDs. A new (well, new to me, anyway) website called MusicMagpie buys CDs and provides a Freepost label for your shipment. They get mixed reviews, but might be better than donating them, and is deffo better than binning them.

Here’s my thought process: get all CDs loaded to itunes, and backed up externally. Get an adequate ipod station for kitchen. Ditto for car. Let the holidays sort themselves out. I have an ipod for listening, and the only loss would be the car on holiday. And that’s only until all cars have docking stations. Or I could get a car docking station that I can take with me when I travel.

So I gathered all the CDs into one place — the top of Dave’s piano (he’s out of town this weekend).

Of course, I do have some cr*p CDs, especially some I’ve received as unsolicited gifts. Often I bought an entire CD because I heard one track in a restaurant and liked it (Cafe del Mar). I never throw anything away. I notice Ally McBeal, several seasons worth – entirely cringe-worthy.

So I’ve worked out a flow chart for managing this project (as you do).

1. First, decide: do I like the music? If I’ve never listened to it, or I don’t like it, it goes into The Out Box.
2. Of those that remain, is it loaded onto itunes? If yes, then it goes into The Out Box.
3. Of those that remain, load it to itunes, and then put it in The Out Box.
4. Back-up itunes to the external drive frequently. It gets backed up off site periodically.
5. Dave can go through The Out Box and take what he likes, but he has to store it well away from the de-clutter zone.

I am still on step one, because when I run into a CD that I haven’t listened to, I think I should listen to it before deciding. That’s silly and life is far too short! So, a tough self-talking-to and I will get well into step 2 today — checking and loading to itunes.

Yes, this will only clear about a cubic metre of space, but it punches above its weight in terms of clutter and dust-attraction. (They used to call them “dust jackets” in the days of LPs for a reason.) Plus, it will feel really good to get this cleared out. (All my old cassette tapes are still in the sideboard, bottom drawer. I think (I hope) I have no vinyl anywhere.)

That’s The Mission, Styx, Bazza and The Dalai Lama showing here.

I have currently 3 CD racks. When I’m done, I expect to have one rack, barely filled. (I’m confident there will just be some CDs I must keep. Maybe those can be my holiday CDs?)

Will report in later.

She rested.

 

 

 

 

 

I love charity bags. Here in the UK, people drop off plastic pags at your door, with a day marked when they will come back around to collect. The word might be out by now that I’m having a clear-out, AND that I’ve lost quite a bit of weight and am donating old clothes.

The NSPCC (Nat’l Soc for Prevention of Cruelty to Children) just got some Nike Air trainers, pretty purple jumpers (sweaters), some long-sleeved tops and a knitted hat.

In compensation, my LandeEnd order just arrived, with two noew pairs of trousers, 2 tops and a yummy coral jumper.

I forgot to take pictures of all this.

The next thing in my sights is the sideboard in our living room.

We use it to hold all sorts of stuff, and I’m going to clean it out and maybe get rid of it. I say ‘maybe’ because I have a sentimental attachment. It’s an English sideboard that I bought while I lived in California, and then shipped all the way back to England when I moved here. I really do love it, but we don’t have a good space for it, and it doesn’t fit my end picture of a rather minimalist space.

We’ll see how I feel after it’s cleared out and cleared off.

To lower the stress levels, I have set 5 separate tasks: each drawer, then the cupboards on the side, then the surface.

First was the top drawer.

Here we have incense from San Francisco (mine) and from India (his). Plastic protectors for Beanie Baby labels (we were caught up in the craze a decade ago). A Hohner harmonica, global touch screen remote control, dream catcher, bicycle lights (never used) and a cribbage board and playing cards. Also 11p.

I was ruthless. (What is the opposite of that, ruth? ruthful?)

Here’s the result:

If you’d like my advice on how to clear out your clutter, drop me a line.

 

I love watching television. I especially like to watch an entire new season of a series, one episode right after the other. Right now I’m in season 2 of Ghost Whisperer.

In the spring, while DH was away, I was watching Season 1 of House (don’t you love to hate him?). The TV went off, and got sort of hung up and I had to leave it for awhile to let it rest before it would re-boot. (You can tell from this that I have extensive technical knowledge of how televisions work.) I had DH do the research to find the best TV for the best price (yes, while he was still gone), and went out and got a new one, which DH installed as soon as he got back.

The old one still had some life in it, so we decided to Freecycle it. Of course, it sat around in our already over-loaded house, until its number came up in the Great Autumn Clear-Out.

Its number came up today.

DH wrote the ad for me, and I posted it on Freecycle. I got the first reply within 30 seconds! Over the next 15 minutes I got 23 replies. Some of them even after I’d posted on Freecycle: Taken! The young man came right over to get it.

So, one more space-taker-upper is gone from our house.

Small and steady steps win the race.

The bathroom drawers got a turning out today. There are 7 drawers there, three large and four small. The oldest thing was some Bonine (anti-motion sickness) I bought in Costa Mesa California when I lived there. I moved away in 1994.

The oddest thing was a complete plaster set of teeth moulds. I decided to keep it for when I get my bottom bridge replaced. Might save some dosh, or at least some aggro.

Also found, for a laugh, 8 lipsticks (Lancome, cos I deserved it), of which two belonged to my mother, who died in 1993. I haven’t worn lipstick since I came to the UK in 1997. I saved 3 (in case of emergency) and binned the rest.

A couple of weeks ago I was in some massive pain, and whinging about how we didn’t have any good painkillers. Today I found co-codemol in the drawer. Off code, assuredly, but probably way better than nothing. I kept it.

I found a small plastic tool that DH is convinced belongs to something important, but neither of us can remember what. I kept it.

Outcome: two empty drawers, and one that’s only half full.

Result!

 

Today I removed all the cleaning products tucked into various corners of the bathroom floor. I hadn’t used some of them in years. Not that I haven’t cleaned the bathroom in years – eeuuw – but I bought all these products guaranteed to fight soap-scum, mould and mildew, and never found anything that worked any better than plain old Cillit Bang, which I’ve kept.

I’ve engaged DH for some tasks this weekend. He strongly prefers just to do as he’s told. Also, he prefers not to be put in a situation where he has to make any decisions about whether to keep something or let it go. (In the Myers Briggs world, he’s INTP. The P is the problem in making decisions. He likes to keep his options open, so holds onto everything.)

Nothing looks cleared out yet. Removing Nanna’s cupboard yesterday and the orts on the floor today has only exposed more peeling wallpape, spider webs  and dirty baseboards. But things have to get worse before they get better.

That’s all for today.

Time to begin! I’ve made a list of every place in the house that needs my attention, and there are about 80 things there. I have 120 days or so, less a few when I’m away, so that’s probably doable. What do you think?

The Lib Dem Bazaar is in December, and I plan to complete this by 1 Dec, so they’ll be smiling when they see my donations coming in!

Here’s a sample of the list I made:

I entered all the tasks into an Excel spreadsheet so I can attach Do-Dates to each one. I tried to keep each task to something that can be done in under an hour. I plan to do one each day. We’ll see how that goes.

Some tasks are going to be troublesome. We have a few boxes full of books that we somehow haven’t been able to get rid of. The very fact that they’re in boxes rather than on the shelves means we haven’t referred to them in quite awhile, and we didn’t expect to want to get to them anytime soon. But when it actually comes down to putting them in a bag and taking them to Oxfam, well, that might be a different story.

Dave and I have very good intentions!