KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

oceanspirit

kittie, kondoing definitely an ongoing process isn't it - a way of life really. When it comes to clothes, things which sparked joy last year may not feel the same this year.

Been back on the kondo wagon today and some maps and training manuals are now in recycling bin. One of the maps didn't have a date, but it did have an 01 London phone number on it which told me all I needed to know

OH tells me he has another box of books to go and it's good to hear he's getting on with it too. We've said that we want our new home to be full of joyful things, not other people's junk (he has been offered several items and has said no to some but not to others so hope he's chosen well).

maryb

I keep about a couple of square metres of carpet which is enough to patch a stained area (carpet fitters can do an amazing job with invisible patching if you have a disaster) or to fill in a gap if you eg remove a built in wardrobe, but beyond that, it's just clutter

silvasava

Depending on the size of the remnants I've had them bound to go in heavy traffic areas, otherwise they're binned! Did keep a small piece that DH cut into a circle to go underneath the log we use to hold the christmas tree though - its packed in with the tree this year

PollyWollyDoodle

It's a good point about patching, but in 30+ years of home ownership I have never used a carpet offcut or a spare ceramic tile. I've kept them, believe me, along with the plastic wrapping, the boxes, the wall fittings for things that you're never going to hang on the wall and the spare fridge shelf that you don't use but it would go with the fridge if you ever sold it!

GQ, you gave me pause for thought (as so often) with your comment about people who say they'll take stuff to the charity shop, after your pal has told them it's worthless. Now, I've never knowingly donated anything broken or damaged, but it made me think - how often do I put stuff in the CS bag because 'someone might want it' rather than really thinking about whether it is saleable? I know one man's trash is another's treasure and so on, but I think I've sometimes been guilty of seeing the CS as a general repository of my unwanted Stuff. It hurts to put something in landfill, it really does, but maybe I'm just abdicating my responsibility to dispose of it, and making more work for the charity shop, if they have to dump it. No doubt those who work in charity shops have league tables of the worst donations! I'm going to donate a bit more thoughtfully in future.

GreyQueen

PWD, it's good to think about these things, without emotionally beating yourself up, of course.

When we're decluttering, we're processing a lot of Stuff in a hurry. It's slower to analyse and triage every single thing and think it through. I'm in a useful position in that I know the manager and vols at one chazzer pretty well, and chat with them several times each week. I'm also pally with vols at several other chazzers and my Magic Greengrocer's service yard, where he keeps his own bins, is shared with several more chazzers and their bins. I hear plenty.

They end up dumping a lot of stuff, unfortunately. And waste disposal, even for a charity, costs money which detracts from the amount raised by the good stuff, meaning less for the cause.

My manager pal and his vols work really hard to maximise the value of every donation and absolutely HATE throwing anything away and still this smallish shop is producing two skip bins of non-saleable, non-recyclable rubbish every week. This is excluding all the textiles which they are happy to take and sell for ragging.

What I try to do, before I donate anything, is to envisage it sitting on the shelves or hanging on the racks. Is it good enough? What might be acceptable at a jumble sale wouldn't cut the mustard at a chazzer. If I have Stuff I don't want, and I don't know anyone who'd get the benefit, and it isn't fit for a chazzer, I will offer it on freegle.

I'm candid about the descriptions, faults and all, and most things will go. I'll move heaven, hell and high water to avoid wasting resources, it really sticks in my craw as a thrifter and a greenie.

If I've got random stuff for donation, such as bits and bobs of haberdashery etc, I gather them into zip loc type bags, so they can be seen and just priced and put on on the shelf. My chazzer manager has a standing shout-out for fancy coffee jars to collate small things attractively to put out on the shelves.

When we cleared Nan's bungalow, there were an awful lot of drinking glasses, including ones in their packaging which had never been used, and some sets of printed 1970s ones which have come back into fashion. These were donated. There were also an awful lot of things like cheap pressed glass vases which had gone greyish with age and lots of little itty-bitty glass trinket dishes. Chazzers get a lot of this stuff, it's a pita to handle and almost unsaleable.

I stopped the car on one of the trips back from Nan's and posted a box's worth of this kind of stuff straight into the bottle bank

If nothing else, it helps to be realistic about donated clothing. If it's very worn, faded, stained, flecked with bleach splashes or has holes, it's best to segregate it into a bag-within-a-bag labelled Rag Only. My regular receiving charity loves this, they can just pitch it straight into a hopper without having to sort it. Imagine the frustration of having got an item out, steamed it and only then found some fault which renders it unsaleable.

I would also, as a matter of course, stitch any small repair like a loose button, to stop it causing a rejection at the other end.

Yup, time isn't infinate, we've all got a lot to do but, with a kondo'd life, we should end up in the happy position of not having excess Stuff anyway and being able to dispose of it at the end of our need for it, or it's material life, in the best possible way.

Well, that's my two'pennorth, anyway.

Slinky

We had a large carpet offcut bound which protects the hall carpet on the dash from front door to burglar alarm control panel. We also have various other pieces that see service protecting bedroom carpet from ironing board feet, landing carpet from loft ladder feet, lounge carpet from spare visitor chair (when viewing telly) feet and hall carpet from my business stock when it arrives once a month.

However I have just thought about some vinyl pieces we have in the loft from when we had the kitchen floor done. They could probably go......

silvasava

I've used leftover vinyl to cover the bottom shelves in my kitchen cupboards where there is a lot of heavy usage as melamine coatings only stand up to so much wear

Karmacat

I use leftover vinyl under my oilcloth tablecloth, to avoid scalding the wood (I know thats not the right term, can't think of it!). I also use it on the heavy-use path between the front door and the kitchen. And I've just cut pieces of it up so that I can hammer them onto a wooden frame and use them as the sides and top of a haybox

Slinky

Oh no, perhaps I'd better keep the vinyl.......JustinCase!!!

The hall carpet protector has just come in handy, protecting the carpet from the nice piece of mouldy beef my cat has just brought in for us....

SparksAlive

GreyQueen - exactly, I did think about storing all the leftover rolls in my loft, but I have a strong feeling they'd sit up there forever and never get used. I've kept one piece, which is a small roll of the stairs carpet because the fitter said it's possible to replace one stair at a time if they ever got irreparably stained or damaged. That's the only genuinely possible scenario I can imagine!


Kittie - yep she seems like a nice person, but as a neighbour I have a feeling she's going to be very interested in all my business! One of the other neighbours already warned me that she's incredibly chatty.


I do have a couple of vinyl tiles I'm hanging onto, because I did them in my kitchen myself and it's not been long enough to see if any of them will peel or shrink with age. I have the best part of a box left and they're easy enough to store, so I'm going to hang onto them until I'm sure the ones I've laid are good long-term.


I've been packing up my bedroom at my parents house over the last few days, hoping to get it finished tonight. Despite living solely out of one room at their house for the last year, I've still managed to accumulate way more than I realised. I'm trying to be ruthless and noting that if I haven't used something since I moved in, I probably won't use it at all. I had a whole box of bits of makeup that I've had for ages. I've held onto one lipstick, the first I ever bought because it's a sentimental item now (more on this below) and almost everything else has gone in the bin. I only wear four items of makeup - coverup, light powder, mascara and eyebrow pencil - and so keeping loads of eyeshadows and lipstains that I never use is a waste of space!


I've also developed a bit of a clearing system for keepsakes. I have two small boxes that will be going in my loft, which hold any sentimental items I don't want to throw away, but have no actual use for. I refer to this as an object becoming a memory. I had a bigger box holding everything before I moved home, but I took a bit of time to go through it and threw away everything that didn't have an actual memory or association attached to it. Some bits were things I just liked the look of and had decided to hang onto. Not very Kondo. So now I have two smaller boxes, one for large items and one for fiddly bits like jewellery, just stuff that still makes me feel happy and interested to look through, but not random bits from my past that don't actually mean anything!