KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

mrs-moneypenny

Our loft ladder seems to have disappeared from drive so assuming scrap man has been. Wool is now ot of downstairs ottoman and in two boxes, contents of one side of side board (board games & puzzles) now in ottoman and bottles of spirits Dh gets given for Christmas from work now in sideboard and out of upstairs ottoman. Upstairs ottoman can now be used for the bedding it was intended to free space in airing cupboard for towels.

It's like a giant game of Tetris, not cleared much but things are slowly finding their correct homes.
Next task is everything out of understairs cupboard to sort crafting stash.

Igamogam

Door of Green Shed of Doom will stay closed today. The rain is coming down like string:eek: However do have stuff to take to CS and some things to recycle center. Might revisit some areas.........bathroom cupboard is calling.
Almost forgot. ....another item gone on Eb*y. 100% hit rate with selling so far:j

lilian1977

I have a really old (and I mean REALLY old) Apple Mac that needs to go from my house but I'm reluctant to send it to electrical recycling - they don't seem to go for much on E*ay though. Any suggestions? Or is electrical recycling still an ok place to send it?

dragonette

lilian, it depends why you don't want to put it to electrical recycling. If its really old then the chances of anyone being able to recover any data from it are incredibly low

lilian1977

I guess it's just because it seems like a waste? But then I've been thinking that for years and actually all it's doing is gathering dust. Right, that's it, it goes as soon as I have my next day off.

Siebrie

mrs-moneypenny wrote: »

Our loft ladder seems to have disappeared from drive so assuming scrap man has been. Wool is now ot of downstairs ottoman and in two boxes, contents of one side of side board (board games & puzzles) now in ottoman and bottles of spirits Dh gets given for Christmas from work now in sideboard and out of upstairs ottoman. Upstairs ottoman can now be used for the bedding it was intended to free space in airing cupboard for towels.

It's like a giant game of Tetris, not cleared much but things are slowly finding their correct homes.
Next task is everything out of understairs cupboard to sort crafting stash.

In our house, many things are 'on their way' to their proper home. It makes for small piles on the stairs, on the desk, in the toy area; everything just waiting for the first person to go in that direction and put stuff away. It makes sense to me, but I think my family members have sight problems

mrs-moneypenny

Same problem here siebrie, I can put things on stairs that I know belong to either of the boys or stuff for the bathroom and they can sit there till I get fed up and take them. I think it the old nothing's really lost till mum can't find it saying. Because we tidy we know where things ae even in others rooms or the garage.
Trouble is because they know we'll do it they get lazy, with the added catch if we take it up it Ts put in the right place not dropped off else where and lost.

Sorting sewing and crafting stash out, why do I have 5 of gps old baccy tins full of pins? That's not counting the ones full of beads, needles, press studs etc. I do just mean 5 tins full of little knob pins (for pinning fabrics together)

ScotinLondon

GreyQueen wrote: »

You have noticed that it is a Bank Holiday weekend, and all we know what I do on those weekends, don't we, mwah ha ha! :rotfl:

Haven't picked an area (it'll be whatever Mum lets me get at) but I will be sure to keep you posted.

Looking forward to it, even though we are at in-laws, i will find a way! Just love the stories, as they normally give me a kick up the a**e! :rotfl:

SIL x

ScotinLondon

WeeMidgie wrote: »

Also leaving the house are kitchen weighing scales and weights, going to the CS, and a new recipe book, a duplicate Christmas gift, which I'll drop off to the library. The staff are always grateful for new or slightly used books to add to their stock.

Thank you WeeMidgie - I have a few cook books that can go to my local library too rather than the CS. :T:T
SIL

GreyQueen

It tickles me pink, the pleasure some of you profess about reading about my little kondo-esque adventures in the parental homestead. I shall be sure to rootle around in something whilst I am over there. It would be a full-time job for a year to get that place straight, it has been a muddle for the whole 46 years they've lived there.

Been at work and then nipped along to my pal's shop for a brief natter and a truffle into the cellar and came away with 6 coffee jars which are now in the bottle bank. A few more bottles and then that crate will be empty. Drop in the clutter ocean but it's baby steps. Can't abide recyclables not being recycled and just sitting around gathering dust.

I was having a think about Mum's cluttering, as she's the chief example in my own family. She recalls as a girl being sent up to her room to 'tidy up' and she'd get sidetracked and start reading and not much tidying would get done.

So, it occured to me, that many of us wouldn't have had tidiness modelled for us as a behaviour, we literally wouldn't have been shown how to think about items, how to release them responsibly. It could be likened to never having had a balanced diet; binge-eating on sweeties and then suffering remorse and starving on celery, rinse and repeat.

I recall reading something in a book on decluttering about a woman who went shopping for new tennis shoes, with a friend. For the friend. On arrival home, the friend went to her closet, took out the worn-out tennis shoes, binned them, and replaced with the new ones. It was a LBM moment for the narrator as they had no clue that you could actually live like that.

In the past couple of months, Mum has added the buttons to two hand-knitted cardigans. In the run up to finishing these projects, she told me several times that she wouldn't have the right buttons and would have to buy new ones.

Now this is a lady whose button stash has increased, over my lifetime, from a single biscuit tin inherited from Grandma, to a large plastic crate full of tins and coffee cans. As well as every button from old garments being salvaged, she has also bought bags of buttons from chazzers and bought garments from jumble sales just to get good buttons. The button cache is probably into the tens of thousands and definately weighs many kilos. It lives in the Bedroom Cupboard of Doom and was handled earlier this year by moi, so I have good reason to know.

So, I said to her, I can't believe you don't have exactly the right thing already, please don't go shopping until you've checked the supplies. Which she eventually did and, wouldn't you know it, the perfect buttons in the right number, size, colour and material were available for each cardi.

Last visit, she lamented that she was running out of the only hair condtioner she really likes and that the bottle in the shower room was the last one. I was sure that there were two unused bottles in the bathroom upstairs and went up and got them for her.

My mother isn't going doolally, she's always had a problem mentally keeping tabs on belongings. It's a combination of slight scattiness and having too much rammed into a small space and some of it being stored irrationally. By which I mean, not where you would be able to find it easily when you run out. Even though I haven't lived under her roof since the 1980s, I still get calls about the whereabouts of certain things.

The flip side for me is that I developed a fascination with household organisation manuals at an early age and have been working on the perfect solution to Stuff ever since.

And, for what it's worth, the perfect solution to a lot of it is to give or sell it to someone else, and try not to acquire more next time.:D