2025 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN MrsSD - The Joy of Decluttering

retiredinfrance

Same here with the hospital underwear notion from my gran who also had a drawer full of her hospital clothes ,including brand new slippers. 

Decluttering continues in the garden. @Liverpool-Anne, you are so right about the gardening being good for mental health .
Hugs for all who would like them.

Yoshimi2025

@Liverpool_Anne Yes you should, it’s so easy and could net you £40 a month x 

Decluttered 3 Plants out of the garden and chopped a lot of branches back and composted, thought I’d been in the garden about 1// an hour but 2.5 hours passed in the blink of an eye x 

Florenceem

Blue_Doggy - thanks - I am not a good patient - being ill is so annoying.
Liverpool_Anne - I think this virus has hit me hard as I am run down.
Mystery solved about R not hanging her completed velvet curtains - she went for a long run on Sunday as it is nearly time for another marathon. R had Laura Ashley fabric curtains made by me which I then added silk to when she moved to somewhere with longer windows. R wanted to stop light getting in so was going to have blackout lining but the chap in the fabric shop said that she only needed ordinary lining with velvet.
I had forgotten that I was meant to make tie backs so another job to go on the list.
Still feeling poorly - in my pjs!
I have been sitting and hand sewing the curtain hems. Daughter K is coming down to collect them at the weekend. I need to go and buy heavyweight interfacing for her tie backs.
Mr F has noticed that his handwriting has changed - he gave up trying to write a letter yesterday. He has also managed to shut himself out of his computer!

GrannyKate

Lovely to be out in the garden and exciting to see what actually comes up in what has been a very neglected garden.  The greenhouse is cleaned and ready to go.  I got some shelving this week and some heavy duty weed control fabric.  DGS4 has planted some sunflower seeds in a tray and I have cucumbers and tomatoes in the kitchen.  DGS4 helped me resurrect our mini pond and Mr and Mrs Toad who were hiding nearby have already moved in. Some pots emptied and tidied, random stuff in bin, small utility/outhouse tidied out and seat cushions fit perfectly in the black box which I assembled last week.  Rhubarb which I bought with me put into a large pot as not sure yet where it will live permanently. A very long way to go but I've made a start.  I will contact fence man as I have not heard from him this week as expected.  I know he had a very large job on.

The rest of the skirting primer done early this morning - DS2 will try and come and paint ceiling for me.  I started stripping kitchen wall paper (dining end only as the rest is tiled).  

330 Skirting primer done
331 Kitchen ordered and serious money decluttered for deposit
332 Four old kitchen stools sold and collected £10 to savings
333 Greenhouse cleaned
334 Random stuff in garden binned
335 Collected and bagged up bits of gripper strips left lying around as dodgy if you stand on them.  Left by one workman I guess. 
336 Garden cushions collected up and put away in new store. 

I may have a quick nap now although I have urgent frogs to do. 

Floss

GrannyKate said:

Lovely to be out in the garden and exciting to see what actually comes up in what has been a very neglected garden. 

If you can bear it, wait 12 months before you plan any changes, just so you can see what is already there & where the sun hits.

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

1. Write a daily To Do list - only 3 tasks
2. Concerted effort to sort out sleep patterns - Realistic targets: bed by 2:00 a.m. & up by 10:00 a.m 
3. Continue dealing with mail & email on a daily basis
4. Don’t put it down, put it away + deal with mini tasks as soon as they are noticed e.g. refill olive oil pourer or salt cellar, stitch up a hole in a garment etc
5. Commence ‘Operation Frog Tickling’ using the acronym - I.R.I.S. (Identify, Research, Implement, Sign Off) - One per quarter
6. Continue to keep kitchen clean & tidy - before going to bed

Saturday is another bright sunny day with a forecast high of 15°C & a low of 7°C DH has given the front lawn its first mow of the year + has zizzed up scraps & fed the worms. 

453 - 455 Cardboard box x 2, paper packaging - recycled 

Wednesday2000, hopefully the craniosacral therapy is having a beneficial effect 🤞Shame about the sandals being uncomfortable ☹️ presumably an expense you could do without ☹️ Reading on I see that you are having 2nd thoughts about the craniosacral therapy 🤔 Whatever you decide, it will be the best decision for you 😊 I was pleased to see Dilly back on SYLO - although she didn’t seem so strict this time 😉

Dizzycap, a very busy Thursday 👏 Enjoyed your Sainsbury’s tales especially the first one about the cardboard boxes 😅 What a brilliant saving on your shopping 🤩 - so impressed that I am awarding you a medal 🏅 Hopefully your surveillance equipment will pick up how many eggs Mrs Swan has laid & also deter any ‘idiots’ from trying to steal the eggs 🙏 It still isn’t warm enough at night to be chasing people away whilst in your PJs 🥶 especially as you are still recuperating 🥹 I do hope you got some rest in the afternoon 🤞

Nice to see you Duchess2 👋 Excellent work decorating the bedroom 👏 It might have taken/be taking longer than anticipated but it sounds like you are doing everything thoroughly so that when you have finished you will be able to move onto your next project without looking back & wishing you had done something differently 🥹 Fingers crossed that the weather stays fine & that your first car boot sale is successful 🤞

Brie, your gardener sounds wonderful 🤩 You have every right to feel “virtuous by proxy” after all you hired him 😊 This “I knew I needed the weed protection cloth and knew that we had some previously but couldn't remember where the remainder had been put or even if we'd used it all up.  Looked in what I thought were the obvious places, nothing there so went off to buy some from the garden centre.  Got home and found the left overs from before, of course.  Now knowing that I have much too much as I'd bought twice the amount needed today I'm going to ask gardening friends if they need any and if not will drop it off at the local charity garden place” brought a rueful smile as it sounds horribly familiar 😉 Sorry to hear about your friend 😞 Is the LL selling up? Hopefully you can talk to your friend & help him him to ask for assistance in moving 🙏 although it does sound like it might be an uphill battle ☹️ 

Yoshimi2025, your cats must be so excited now that they are allowed out 😊 

QueenJess, yippee to the new washing machine 🥳 I hope it wasn’t ruinously expensive 🤞 Excellent decluttering & hopefully your continued vigilance will mean that you can offset the ‘adoption of pencils/pens/crayons’ 😉 Just wondering if you have any friends with young children who need just a few replacements 🤔 

I have caught up one page so will post & make myself another drink before my next session of cheerleading. DH is currently on the phone chatting to his DSis & my DSis is in her room. Late lunch for DH & I will be lo linguine in creamy bacon & pea sauce (from the fridge) Hope everyone is having as good a day as possible 😊

MrsSD Awards: 💐 🌟 ❤️ ❤️ 🏅 💐 💐 💐 🏅🥉🏅 🎂 🌟

DH Awards: 🏅 

DSis Awards:

Decluttering Target 2025: 455/2025

1p Savings Challenge Running Total: £41.00

QueenJess

Mrs_Salad_Dodger said:

QueenJess, yippee to the new washing machine 🥳 I hope it wasn’t ruinously expensive 🤞 Excellent decluttering & hopefully your continued vigilance will mean that you can offset the ‘adoption of pencils/pens/crayons’ 😉 Just wondering if you have any friends with young children who need just a few replacements 🤔 

Not quite ruinously, but incredibly expensive nonetheless and then to add insult to injury, nursery are putting up their prices by £50 a week!  Fingers crossed my work contract gets extended for a while to pay for all this stuff!

For the pencils, I will donate to school/nursery if I need to.  DD is a little artist, so I am expecting she will get through a fair bit of this stuff eventually.  In the meantime, I remembered DS didn't like the pack of pencils I got him ages ago as he prefers hard and not soft colouring pencils.  So later we will sift through and he will take the ones he wants to use and I'll store his to give to DD once she's gone through some of hers.  So it might not have been a complete mistake!

I have tried to redeem myself slightly today and am playing a game of trying to get rid of 1 thing in every room in the house this weekend.  It's pretty hard when those rooms include a downstairs loo, but I'm giving it a go.  It's a good chance to have a quick look through everything without pulling everything out needlessly.  Anyway, I have done all of the downstairs rooms today successfully and it's reminded me of a few things which need to be used up along the way.  Hoping to manage the upstairs rooms tomorrow.  It's quite fun and I might do that more often, although I think I'm going to have to give myself a pass for some rooms as it's unrealistic to keep finding something in every room!  Maybe I could do X items from downstairs and X from upstairs instead.  The garage looks horribly cluttered to me, but that's DH's domain and nothing to do with me.  I will have a peek in it when I can muster up the courage to check if I have anything of my stuff that's been lost in there (I do keep a few plant pots in there).

I won't be able to reverse my +ve figures any time soon, but I shall remain vigilant and continue using things up.  At least with things on Buy Nothing I often leave them outside and so I shall be able to use up some excess packaging bags!

Oh - nearly forgot, but I had a big chat with DH last week on what things to give DD for her birthday in a couple of weeks.  We have a new to her desk that's been hiding in my library since January (a fab charity shop find) and a free chair for it from Buy Nothing.  He was erring on the side of less rather than more and so I think he might finally be coming round to my point of view (he even handed me something to get rid of that I didn't even know he owned)!  DD doesn't care about stuff anyway and she doesn't want anything.  When I ask her what she wants for her birthday the only thing she thought up in the last 4 months is some unicorn socks.  That's the way to be!  DS on the other hand would write you out a massive list   DD could do with a few more socks, so of course she will be getting her beloved unicorn socks .

Things to use up in this house include, some shoes (me and definitely DH who has a massive stash), stationery, kids craft supplies/colouring books, bathroom stuff (does anyone remember me mentioning the 5+ years worth of floss my parents gave me before my sister said "oh good, you can have my stash as well"?!), cleaning supplies and probably more things I've forgotten about.   I shall also be working hard on not bringing too much in or at least pushing out as much as is coming in!

Digital:
6 - photos deleted

Physical:
6 - extra puzzle pieces (recycled)
1 - small box (recycled)
1 - baking tray very scratched (bin)
1 - recipe book I don’t use (charity box)
1 - jacket I never wear as although I like it, it doesn’t go with anything I own (Buy Nothing)
1 - DD too small wellies (Buy Nothing)

New total 813
Use it up total 48
Net physical things in/(out) +142

Onwards and upwards!  On the plus side, I am loving the spring vibe outside today and am enjoying the lovely daffodils out everywhere.

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

1. Write a daily To Do list - only 3 tasks
2. Concerted effort to sort out sleep patterns - Realistic targets: bed by 2:00 a.m. & up by 10:00 a.m 
3. Continue dealing with mail & email on a daily basis
4. Don’t put it down, put it away + deal with mini tasks as soon as they are noticed e.g. refill olive oil pourer or salt cellar, stitch up a hole in a garment etc
5. Commence ‘Operation Frog Tickling’ using the acronym - I.R.I.S. (Identify, Research, Implement, Sign Off) - One per quarter
6. Continue to keep kitchen clean & tidy - before going to bed

15:45 DH went out for a walk with a pocketful of monkey nuts for the squirrels 😅 & I will carry on with the cheerleading:

Brie, quite a dilemma 🤔 I do hope you can help him 🥹

Great decluttering QueenJess & yes I think you have redeemed yourself 👏

Florenceem, sorry to hear that the cold has fully manifested itself ☹️ Please, please get some rest 🙏 although I see you had a very busy Thursday morning 👏 More curtains 🤩 you definitely love your new sewing machine 🥹 Since you unpacked it, you seem to have been using it every day 😉 

GrannyKate, congratulations on the Premium Bond win 🥳 I imagine it was especially welcome at this time as you are renovating the kitchen 🥹

Yippee, now about to start the cheerleading for Friday’s posts 🥳 

Good luck with your new listings Dizzycap 🍀 Was it ever in doubt that Babyface is in charge 😂 Your Thursday was very busy & you got such a lot decluttered 👏 Not sure that there was much mention of having any rest though 🤨 so I do hope you haven’t overdone it 🙏 

Liverpool_Anne, another one of our Declutterati family who had a busy Thursday 👏 I do hope that you didn’t do too much & haven’t delayed your recovery from your bad back 🙏 Lovely cheerleading 🥹 I hope you managed to get back to bed for at least a couple of hours after such an early start on Friday 🤞

florianatwobob, This “Decluttered my old set of desk drawers this week. I popped them outside the front garden with a sign saying ‘free’ and they magically disappeared!” is excellent decluttering of a larger item 👏 You must have oodles of space now 😉

charlies_tribe, lovely post 😊 & I am so pleased to hear that you survived Tuesday’s shopping trip 😉 Please accept 💐 for This “DGD decided she was staying again (I absolutely won't say no my children dont really know their grandparents)” I always think it is so sad when children don’t get to know their grandparents (for whatever reason) 😢 - I have so many wonderful memories of both sets of my grandparents. Completely different from each other so I count myself very fortunate 🥹 Just wondering how old is DGD & what prompted the question about babies? Good luck with the tidying up 🍀

Dizzycap, hopefully the cards will arrive on time 🤞 You have a very busy Friday planned 🤩 - I do hope you have factored in some time for resting 🙏 Very impressed by how much you have got done & all before 9.00 a.m. 👏

Another page caught up 🙂 although now I need to put my iPad on charge. See you later 👋 

MrsSD Awards: 💐 🌟 ❤️ ❤️ 🏅 💐 💐 💐 🏅🥉🏅 🎂 🌟

DH Awards: 🏅 

DSis Awards:

Decluttering Target 2025: 455/2025

1p Savings Challenge Running Total: £41.00

Jellybaby

Hi all, I’ve been lurking on your thread for a very long time and feel as if I know you all very well but think the time has come to join you in person so to speak!

A bit of background, i hit a big birthday last year and took early retirement which I am thoroughly enjoying. Widowed in my late 40s it’s taken me a while to adjust and do things on my own. I’ve family all around the world and I’ve just returned from an extended holiday. Whilst away I’ve come up with lots of plans and ideas 🤣

The biggest plan involves moving house! So, I’ve been following @GrannyKate journey with interest. My current home is tidy and clean but open a cupboard or drawer and it’s a different story! I don’t think I will count things coming or going but will just do a weekly update on what I’ve done.

I tend to read and lurk a lot on MSE and only really interact on one other thread (declutterring weight 🤣) but find you all very inspirational.

dND

Oh my goodness, time flies, I can’t believe I’ve been AWOL so long!  😱 Thank you for my star Mrs SD. 😁

There’s been a steady declutter of everyday things such as the recycling.  The mega declutter has been money.  My year anniversary has just gone through, so all the annual bills are landing on the mat, (cat insurance being one 😱), plus getting the roof fixed.  Next up is the removal of the old back boiler from what will be the dining room.  It protrudes onto the floor so nothing can be placed there.  I’m also getting TRV’s fitted to all the radiators at the same time – the top floor of the house cooks while the downstairs shivers.

On the positive side, while the roofers were here, I got them to take down the redundant aerial strapped to the chimney stack – less stress on the stack in the gales and removal of something that was beacon for a lightning strike.  I popped that at the top of the drive and as I hoped, one of the passing scrappies removed it.

Since then, DS1 and I spent 5 hours carefully dismantling the decrepit greenhouse and transporting the glass to the garage for disposal later and getting all the aluminium pieces to the drive.  I’m now hoping that will be collected as well.  The glass will wait until I get a skip – it’s a 17-mile round trip to the tip that will accept that.  I can’t get rid of glazing glass, wood or black bags at my local tip so I think a skip will end up as the most cost-effective option even if that means I have to live with the junk until I’ve collected it all together and finally have time to empty out the sheds.

The garden has also taken over my life as I try to get all the spring things done.  Five of the seven fruit trees are now planted on what will be my orchard wall.  All will be either cordon, fan or espalier but the peach and the fig are still to go in as they will be behind the new greenhouse once DS1 and I have the time to construct it.  I’ve managed to get 3 raised beds in this year. Two are planted, the raspberry bed and the blackberry bed.  I’m still in the process of filling the third one, which will be gooseberry and strawberries this year, so still need to excavate a lot of soil from other areas of the garden.  The beds ‘declutter’ some of the garden waste and some of the cardboard in the bottom and some of the plastic compost bags as liner to reduce evaporation on the sides – the beds are 40cm high, hence taking rather a lot of soil to fill.

There must be a lot of other decluttering going on as I always seem to put so much out each bin day but I never remember what it is. 

I’m hoping to declutter my French bank account as well – it’s been a bit of a nightmare that was turning into a rather large frog.  Firstly, the French government kept taking my tax fonciers during 2024.  Once I’d cancelled the DD myself, (I was told it would happen automatically), and not panicked when I got the letter from the tax office saying that they hadn’t been able to take the payment, I then had to wait until the start of the next tax year to get the refund.  That duly came through in January.  I then contacted the bank and got the list of all the documentation I needed to send through, which included my client number for the money transfer company.  I tried to get into that account but somewhere with it being transferred to my UK email account something happened, and I was not receiving the codes to access it.  After three weeks of looking at it, the IT department set it up so I could transfer to yet another email account, (luckily, I have more than one), and finally I could access the account.  So back to the bank…….and they now needed to speak to me. 

I looked at my phone contract and apparently I should be able to receive international calls, but no.  What they don’t say on their blurb is that I can receive international calls from France if I am in France!!  Once I’d figured that out and bought the international calls package I got through to the bank and you’ve guessed it, I needed yet another form.  So, the ball is now back in France; the English-speaking department has instructed my local branch to come up with a final balance and I am waiting on that.  I guess that’s where a lot of time has been decluttered, chasing stuff and checking and reading around takes so long.

I’m sending my love and thoughts to all who are going through difficult times at the moment, 💖 my saga is just frustrating and hopefully transitory.

Well done to all the declutteri, 👏👏 I read and take heart from all your gains, no matter how small, and in fact the small gains are the ones that inspire because they look achievable, and it gives me hope that one day I get to where I want to be.

Love to you all. Dx