KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GreyQueen

Losing some textiles due to natural attrition, just rag-bagged another pillowcase, one of the six matching ones I am slowly destroying by only ever having one on the go at a time. Only two more in the cupboard, and then I will move onto the other pillowcases.I use two pillows at a time, no need to have pillowcases numbered in the double-digits.

Plus a couple of hankes which have got religion, and a pair of socks rapidly heading that way.

Been busy on the allotment with my favourite pathology (arson) and have burned away a lot of horrible bramble and nettle roots which I dug out of the berm at the back of Plot2. Let's see them regenerate after that, mwah ha ha! :rotfl:

MMF007

Hi, I'm back again!
A busy week visiting my mum where we tidied the garden, had a *bonfire* to get rid of garden rubbish and a lot of paperwork, made a very neat file of all docs to do with sorting out Dad's estate, took 3 large suitcases of clothes to CS, earmarked other clothing for giving away, chucked some perished wellies and kondo'd several nice luncheons at local eateries.
A very full but useful week.

I also got to play with a very joy-sparking new painting set my lovely friend bought me and now have another picture to display somewhere (a tortoiseshell kitten, if you are interested). Consequently I rearranged some wall art today to better display things*. Caused a bit of consternation with DH who hates change! Still more to do, esp in the multipurpose room, where I can meddle to my heart's content. This was going to be this afternoon's project but other things needed doing.

As i was unpacking from our trip I went to put a winter hat away (call me optimistic!) and realised I have 3. I selected one to go but then tried all 3 and changed my mind. So one in CS bag, with a scarf, other 2 back in their mushroom punnet in the allocated cupboard

* just looking round the living room and realise that the 'new' selection of paintings and prints look really good. I finally have a more sophisticated look going on in here I wonder if the rest of the house will ever catch up?!

Pooky

After 2 or 3 full sweep through the house I thought I was mainly done.....then DDs who moved out last year have both asked to move back in the summer! DD1 is saving like mad for a deposit on a flat and has been to the bank for mortgage advice etc so we are more than happy to have her back whilst she saves hard (wish I had been that savvy at 22) and DD2 has not enjoyed the living away from home experience as much as she thought, she has just changed jobs and has a bit of a commute now too so moving home will knock another 20 mins off her journey.

But this means my office space and spare room need to be stripped out ready for their pending return. The office room has a large built in wardrobe that has been used for storage and naturally because of its size, the stuff to be stored has grown to fit the space. A black sack of clothes, 80 odd spare hangers and a box of 14 picture frames kept for Justin have been removed to the car for a CS run today. I thought of a few more things to add to the box which I will dig out later and there is a pile of bits to advertise on local FB page and some for !!!8364;bay too.

They have a large 2 bedroom flat full of stuff to try and fit in here so some reshuffling will need to happen.

GreyQueen

Thought this might raise a smile amongst the kondoistas:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/the-11-items-youre-keeping-to-sell-on-ebay-that-are-worth-fk-all-20180309145679

Karmacat

That is *so* real :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: for a few years, I got sucked in to science fiction collectioning, and bought things I'd never even contemplated I could afford it, in that I didn't go into debt to do it, but it was *such* a waste. Postage stamps too, which I'm now using up.

GreyQueen

Yeah, one thing my pal with the juntique shop hates doing it breaking it to peeps (or their heirs) that the collections that were bought from ads in the Sunday supplements etc were grossly overpriced bits of nonsense at the time of purchase and which are nigh-worthless now.

Basically, if it's being advertised as a collectable, treat is as a money-pit where you will not even making the asking price back, never mind see any appreciation. Only collect things if they amuse or add value to your life NOW, don't expect that marketed collectables will have any value in cold hard ££££.

Pal also differentiates between collections and accumulations and a lot of what people describe as the former are actually the latter.

A collection (of whatever) is where someone is actively interested in a field, researches it, is knowledgeable about it, hunts down the best examples of whatever within their price bracket, searches out rarieties, joins societies, reads books, goes to meet-ups etc.

An accumulation is just a bunch of random stuff. The odd semi-interesting or semi-valuable might end up in an accumulation by chance, but mostly not. Just because it's old (even if it's a couple of centuries plus old) it doesn't automatically follow that it's worth anything.

If you're holding onto stuff for a big one-day cash in, you might want to check the value now, because it may not be worth giving house room to bulky items which are worth less than buttons.

DawnW

Very wise words GQ - as a fellow 'juntique dealer' albeit on a smaller scale, I also get to have those conversations

GreyQueen

DawnW wrote: »

Very wise words GQ - as a fellow 'juntique dealer' albeit on a smaller scale, I also get to have those conversations

Yeah, even after 50 years in the trade my pal, a kind-hearted soul, still doesn't like telling people that their 'treasures' are nigh worthless. Some of them storm off in a huff and tout them around all the dealers in the city centre before finally believing that they're being told gospel; they (or their old dad) were royally had.

I've also seen chazzers struggle to shift those printed porcelain plates with pics of trains/ birds/ fairies etc for £1 a piece.

Every year, he ends up scrapping several tens of kilos of brass thru'penny bits and pre-decimal pennies and ha'pennies for about £2-£3 a kilo. Every second person through the door has some of these among the general old toot.

At a guess, I would say utterly-valueless old stuff outnumbers modestly-valuable old stuff at about odds of 1000:1. And real newspaper story undervalued valuables are much much rarer than that, which is why the story is in the newspaper anyway.

IRL, it would more like: Perfectly ordinary person buys vase from bootsale for £5, researches it online back home and discovers the going rate is 0.50p and that there are hundreds of unsold examples out there.

DawnW

My advice would be only to buy the vase if you love it, and will use it

Pooky

Several items listed on local FB pages resulted in a flurry of activity yesterday and stuff was disappearing out of the house at a decent rate. My purse is £50 better off which is a good result. A couple more bits are due to go today and a box of CDs is set to be dropped off at the couriers for trade in with music mag pie. The ones they did not want have been added to yet another big bag of stuff I sorted out for the CS (4 big bags dropped off yesterday too).

Had to laugh at one item I put on FB, it was a bit of furniture that is only really suitable for upcycling (I never got round to it) so I put it on at a low price to get rid, I had over 45 messages for it, one woman even offering 4 times the price as she wanted it so badly, she was not impressed that I would not accept her price but I already had someone on their way to collect. It is not all about the money!