The Great Declutter - 18 months on

greent

mandragora wrote: »

I think I've spotted another item for......

PENDING OUT:....??:D

LOL!!! SO true!!!:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

greent xx

Yorkielass

Back from a week away and have another week off work so ready to blitz the house! Acquired a few bits while away but not too bad and I'm really keen to get going with tidying and sorting now - when I've caught up with MSE

luxor4t

IN:
- paint for dresser (15% off in Homebase wys £50)
- paint for chairs
- dowelling for bookcase
- food
- swimmingpool float tube thing £2.49 in Aldi


OUT:
to bin:
- dust/grot from hard-to-reach kitchen corners

charity shop:
- 3 old tablecloths
- assorted odd glasses
- a few books
- odd bits of clothes
- 2 stainless steel cutlery holders

recycling:
- 2 biscuit tins
- old kitchen knives (well taped up)

zarazara

IN delicious dinner for me and DH from M&S
pair of wellies for me,some perfume for me, 2 electric toothbrushes ,one each
OUT, family heirloom ring for son who is 21 today.

hollyh

Hi,

I haven't posted here for ages, i'm hoping it'll give me some motivation to sling stuff if can see it written down.

In

Groceries

Out

6 bottles of holiday skin lotion stuff to Stepdaughter.
1 magazine in recycling box
4 cardboard boxes in recycling bag

Karmacat

IN:
- 9 French marigolds
- 4 potted herbs
- 1 money "tree" .

OUT -
- one magazine file of old papers.
- old cassette tapes to be taped over for confidentiality's sake and thrown.
- old cardboard files, all ripped and torn, to recycling.

QUESTION:
how long do "normal" people (and I'm aware how loosely I should use that word :rotfl: keep their correspondence for? I'm a bit of a nut about it, because I'm a genealogist, but I've just found a load dating back almost 20 years in the cupboard I've been decluttering. Opinions, please? No flames, I'll cry :rotfl:

mandragora_2

Karmacat wrote: »

IN:
QUESTION:
how long do "normal" people (and I'm aware how loosely I should use that word :rotfl: keep their correspondence for? I'm a bit of a nut about it, because I'm a genealogist, but I've just found a load dating back almost 20 years in the cupboard I've been decluttering. Opinions, please? No flames, I'll cry :rotfl:

Really depends on my mood and the OH (who is a shocker for not staying organised) - left to my own devices, on a good day, I'd keep nothing but the crucial stuff for about 10 minutes, everything else would get thrown or burnt. However, you do need to keep stuff, and so we seem end up with paperwork in two or three places, no matter how organised I try to be. The real place of fossilised paperwork is in the dining room cupboard, where I know there's all the gubbins relating to the car we bought from new 13 years ago... and which we took to the scrap yard 6 weeks ago. Digging down through the layers, there's probably household insurance receipts from the 1990's in there - but heaven help me if I need this years'

fedupandskint

poorbutrich wrote: »

Good work declutterers!

I've not posted for a few weeks and have noticed the impact on my motivation!

Must keep going!

Same here, haven't posted for a while on here and I have stopped decluttering too! Spare room paperwork stash is building up again and I've stopped chucking things out again.

Plan to try harder this week and get back on the wagon

Patchwork_Quilt

QUESTION:
how long do "normal" people (and I'm aware how loosely I should use that word :rotfl: keep their correspondence for? I'm a bit of a nut about it, because I'm a genealogist, but I've just found a load dating back almost 20 years in the cupboard I've been decluttering. Opinions, please? No flames, I'll cry :rotfl:[/QUOTE]

My parents in law had to prove something that happened 40 years ago in order to get 2 years' worth of pension credits. Fortunately, they had it in a scrapbook, of all places.

At the end of the year, we put everything for that year in a paper folder and the paper folders go in a transparent, lidded box. That goes in the loft in about March of the following year. We've got 20 years' worth of papers but it's all tidy and out of the way. Sometimes, we have had to go back to find something but we've always managed so far. You just don't know when you'll need to look something up

Karmacat

Thanks folks - I keep every year's accounts, dating back to the mid 1980s. I keep the legal minimum of detailed paperwork backing up the accounts. And when I throw out the next set of paperwork, I've started to keep the bank statements and the credit card statements I pay off in full every month.

The stuff I've found is literally correspondence - handwritten letters from friends and from family. Some of the friends I don't see any more.

How long do people keep stuff like that.