2026 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN Mrs SD - our Year of Redistribution

[Deleted User]

Having a lazy Saturday, well as lazy as you can with 2 border collies at home.

Sat down and worked out a payment plan to pay off the car so feeling more organised.

Florenceem

J arrived and got to work painting the outside wall. He used all the 5 litres of masonry paint. It will need a second coat but looks so much better than the grey breeze block colour - I had bought Anthracite.

J forgot to bring a wrench with him to adjust my wonky sewing machine table.

I carried on with emptying the small room of doom.

I have a lot ready for bestie's charity shop. She will pick me up for Church tomorrow but her car is already full. We will probably go early so we can unload the car before the service.

J is back to work on Monday but I will get his mum to call here after school to collect the art & craft bits that are languishing in my hall. His mum told me about the passing of a head teacher - D where she used to work. I was in the same year group at school as D.

I will ask builder J to call here - I need something to anchor the door into the garden as the wind blows it. The gap is too much for a usual length cabin hook. I also want him to look at the skirting board in the small ROD - big gap at the wall. Plus I have a metal sign that I want on the wall in my craft room.

Decluttered - jewellery stand x 2, wooden stamp x 40, scarf, storage tray, pack of 6 pairs of socks, bag of fabric scraps, pkt of Christmas wrapping paper, 19 pkts of envelopes, 3 coils of rope, 3 pkts of tissue paper, embroidered bag, set of 4 pairs of ladies socks, 3 rolls of injury tape, card, pkt of 5 pairs of ladies socks, 5 pairs of men's socks, hot wheels car x 3, cushion cover, white voile fabric, Body Shop soap, plastic bags, bag of foam sheets, magazine x 5, knitting booklet, folder inserts, knitting patterns, greeting card fronts, 3 tablecloths, PVC fabric, 3 stencils.

daisy_1571

Florenceem if you can imagine 3 bits of wood joined in a U shape. I slid that under/along the door so it was held front and back by the wood. One side of the U had a hole drilled through and I used a bit of bent rebar (but you could easily use a tent peg or similar) to go through the hole and down into the ground. That stopped our door swinging about and we could hold it fully open right down to only open a few inches. It swung out over concrete so we had a few holes drilled in it but if it was swinging out over grass it would be even more adjustable

Florenceem

daisy_1571 - there is a 12 inch drop from the open door. When the disabilities man came - he installed a step and a hand rail for Mr F to go into the garden. It is all paving slabs. We are at the bottom of a hill so I suppose that explains the large drop.

daisy_1571

Hmm, I see, that wouldn't work unless it was a very tall capital U 🤔 😉

Green_hopeful

i have sold a sideboard and a polytunnel. They are collecting tomorrow but they have already paid. They are quite big so I think its a good start.

i will keep chipping away at the garage needs a good tidy anyway

We bought a new to us duck house today. The seller said it was put together with nails. Well it was screws, and many had damaged heads and comedy hard to get out. Then she had glued it together with expanding foam. Well that was fun. I thought it would just break but I had to cut it out. Its still in our campervan because we didn’t feel up to getting it back out. There will be a lot of expanding foam to get off before we can put it together. I might start while I wait for my buyers tomorrow. I already have some roof felt to re do the roof.

regnbue

@Deni_debt-free_dreamer I have the same dilemma with my email provider. I've deleted around 6000 emails since they first warned me about the new size limit.

I've had that email address for over 20 years and, like you, I can't find out how near the maximum limit I am.

However I had some stuff to print from my email at the library and on their computer as I hovered the cursor over my details in the top right corner it popped up with the current amount being used - under 20% of the new maximum so well within limit. The provider also sent me an email two days ago telling me I was using less than 80% of the new storage allocation.

Did they send you a similar email?

Yorkie1

@Deni_debt-free_dreamer and @regnbue well done! What strategies did you use to declutter such impressive volumes?

oceanspirit

Potato masher, plastic bowl with 2 matching plates, pair oven gloves plus 2 more plates and bowls for CS. A couple more papers off the reading pile.

regnbue

@Yorkie1 I was just ruthless.

I'm very much a keeper of really old important emails. These related to solicitor correspondence following parents' passing all of which I kept but the more peripheral stuff - distant family members putting in their 2p worth wasn't helpful at a distressing time but originally kept in case sols needed to be involved.

So much time had passed (over a decade) since it had happened it made it easier to delete en masse. Sols correspondence I've still kept but anything else was deleted and, crucially, without opening and reading them.

Also committed to deleting minimum of 200 a day. I've had the email address since 2001 and only have a handful of emails a year from 2015 onwards now.