2026 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN Mrs SD - our Year of Redistribution

Pennypincin

Hello everyone.

Apologies for being awol for so long.

Earlier in the week i had 8 items come in, 2 were t-shirts that I am keeping.

The rest, plus a suitcase and a largish carrier bag full of bits I took to a charity shop.

I've had 4 large drinking glasses leave, and have 2 bath towels leaving tomorrow.

Hopefully soon I will have a plant leave, a plate/bowl set, 7 storage bags, and various rolls of brown, clear or fragile sticky tape.

Esit to add that I've 2 books come in as a birthday present, 3 books for myself to read, plus 2 puzzle books.

Brambling

it was such a lovely day today that I spent a while in the front garden and managed to fill the wheelie bin before packing up. I'm afraid to say that it's not obvious that I've done anything as there is still a lot to do there.

I forgot to put on sun lotion so my face was a little more flushed than I would like meeting ex work colleagues for a lovely meal this evening. Three out of the four of us took early retirement and we try to have sympathy for the one still working especially as she's not yet forty so has a while to go😁 she does end up treating us like parents and actually listened to the advice we gave her last time and looked a lot less stressed so that was good.

Tomorrow I will need to see where I moved my pale coloured linen trousers as they weren't where I expected them to be and no time to search tonight

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

1. Daily To Do List - written the night before
2. Sort out sleep patterns - initial targets: bed by 03:00, up by 10:30
3. Don’t put it down, put it away + deal with mini tasks as soon as they are noticed e.g. refill olive pourer or salt cellar, stitch up a hole in a garment etc.
4. Commence ‘Operation Financial Frog Tickling’ using the acronym - I.R.I.S. (Identify, Research, Implement, Sign Off) - One per quarter
5. Continue to keep kitchen clean & tidy - before going to bed
6. Plan & Execute ONE Major Project - 2026 New Bathroom
7. Target 2026 items out

Saturday was another bright sunny day with a forecast high of 20°C, gentle ENE breeze & a low of 5°C Had a very short chat with neighbour V as it was a bit nippy in the shade 🥶 DH is currently watching the Spanish MotoGP qualifying races. The reason I forgot to post yesterday is that I noticed a mistake in the pattern of the scarf I am knitting & had to unpick 60 rows which took longer than I anticipated ☹️ I have spent the day knitting & am back to where I was when I discovered the mistake 😥 Dinner was sausages, mash, baked beans & chopped tomatoes. Wudupa.

762 - 764 Kitchen recycling, drinks cans, plastic jar - recycled 

765 Kitchen detritus binned 

DSis & I watched the first semi final of BGT & thought the correct two acts got through to the final ☺️ We also watched the last episode of A Touch of Frost, first time for DSis. Even after all these years, I am still a bit upset/annoyed at the ending 😢 😖 

Deb4, sorry to hear that you have been feeling so unwell 😔 Hopefully you are now on the mend 🤞 Congratulations on finishing & passing your college course 🥳 Excellent work with all the laundry 👏 & wishing you continued success with sales on vinted/ebay 😊

Florenceem, very sorry to hear that your short run of pain-free nights has come to an end 🥺 Excellent work emptying the small RoD 👏 Not sure what to say about the card from the officer 🤨 They have let you down at every turn 🥺 

Lovely to see you QueenJess 👋 Very impressed that you you are managing to delegate at least some of your work 😉 Excellent work using up & keeping clutter out of your home 👏 Typical….. I missed the chocolate cake 😞 

vulpix, I will keep my fingers crossed that you do get an early date for your knee operation 🤞 Sorry to hear about the insomnia 🥺 

Florenceem, sounds like both the Js have been busy 👏 Pleased to hear that you have slowed down a little & have been trying to eat a bit more 😊

Excellent work in the garden dND 👏 Sounds like you are making great progress but please don’t overdo it 👏 I like the sound of your Erc0l 2-seater, sounds perfect 😍 Fingers crossed to a successful & profitable conclusion to starting to deal with the missing accounts frogs 🤞 Not very impressive customer service from Karch3r 😖 Sorry to hear that you didn’t sleep well 🥺 Sad to say that there are several members of our Declutterati family who are struggling to get a good nights sleep 🥺

Floss, that is a good price for a jet washer 😊

Willowtree222, that is great news 🥹 & such a relief 😮‍💨 

Florenceem, hopefully the prescribed milk shakes will help you to gain a little weight 🙏

Lovely post TC77 😊 Hopefully you will recover from your jet lag over the weekend 🤞 Looking forward to seeing a few photos of your Australian holiday ☺️ Good work dealing with tadpoles & frogs 👏 Hopefully the people you are waiting on will pull their fingers out so that you can finally get rid of the cane toads 🙏 Any chance of decluttering a couple of the printers 😉 especially as they do take up quite a lot of space 🤔 

Dizzycap, very sorry to hear that you are in so much pain & struggling to sleep 🥺 The garden sounds like it is coming along nicely & pleased to hear that you are managing to populate it with free flowers 🥹 Lovely to hear that Babyface is up to such mischief with her “furry life like rat toy” 🤣

GrannyKate, Mr Sox is a little devil stopping you having a lie in 😅 no wonder you are not recovering from your travels as quickly as you would like 😉 Great decluttering 👏 although a pity that no-one has taken the old radiators 😞 Hopefully the electricity company’s scheme will save you some money 🤞

Soontobeoap, well done getting started on clearing your Room of Doom 👏 thus preventing it becoming a cane toad 👏 Good luck with your listings 🍀 Hopefully you will sell enough that you will have enough room in the car to take the rest to the car boot sale 🤞

Excellent decluttering Florenceem 👏 Good luck sorting the stuff in your craft room 🍀

vulpix, now that you have confirmed that you are allergic to morph based tablets perhaps it is time to hand the rest of them to a pharmacy 🧐 A pity about the no drill blind but at least you tried 🙂 Good luck with the curtains 🍀 I am just wondering if there is a facility to hire a heavy duty sewing machine (similar to hiring a carpet cleaner) 🤔 As to getting more plants for your garden, are there any local sites where you could post asking for free plants? Enjoy your road trip ☺️

Willowtree222, an excellent day 👏worthy of a medal 🏅 which is on its way 😊Congratulations on your new job 👏🥳 

Lovely to see you Pennypincin 👋 Some excellent decluttering, you are on a roll 👏 A medal 🏅 is on its way 😊

Brambling, it may not be obvious but YOU know how much work you have done 👏 Sounds like you have a lovely evening planned 🥹 Good luck finding your linen trousers 🍀

Excellent work today Dizzycap 👏 Keeping everything crossed that Mr Sandman remembers to visit you tonight 🤞

Sleep tight everyone 😴 

MrsSD Awards: 💐 🙏💐💐🌟⭐️❤️💐💐⭐️💐❤️ ⭐️🎖️🥇 

DH Awards: 🏅🏅🏅🏅

DSis Awards:

Decluttering Target 2026: 765/2026

1p Savings Challenge Running Total: £165.11

TC77

Morning,

Managed to get more of a lie in! But woke with a v sore throat.

@ brambling and others who retired early or in retirement some tips over the coming months for me.. I will declutter my work at the end of this week... very odd as part of a major cull and most people in my wider group have already gone. My little team will hopefully be TUPE'd and this is easier if i left now than the summer which i was hoping. We'll ust go out with my small team who hopefully and one of them is moving on as kept getting v short contract extensions. So while beyond the age I thought i would retire when I started working still a few years before formal pension age. I am slightly wary that living on my own i will decline in many ways. I should be fine for a few months as major frogs ongoing and will have only weeks til dd2 home so you should see a flurry of decluttering as keen to set an example. Also the weather is good, so yesterday took myself for a lovely walk and saw a friend en route.

I've started a beginners sewing class as i am incompetent with a sewing machine, i hope to rediscover the camera i bought last year which i know is somewhere and i have looked at u3a and have some friends not working so looking forward to doing things midweek in town.

Dd2 rang upset that she is procrastinating with uni work and I explained a human ( family) trait and offered some tips. Eg putting the timer on for say 20 mins and thrn sometimes youve got into the work or tidying. Having said that I haven't dealt with my priority frog which needs submitting tomorrow ...

Mrs SD I have a computer charity who will hopefully take the printers as they work but not with my laptop and I contact them after some other key frog deadlines. Also holding off offering items as a distraction but did have a shelving unit picked up yesterday, and will take back jeans bought yesterday as not as nice as several pairs i already have! Smart trousers in cs bag ( and more work clothes should follow) , and 5 under garments in textile recyling. Bought a few things when i was away and trying to ensure they are replacements and not additions. Found a garden trough rusted with the bottom separated so binned and some other gardening and some paper recycling.

oceanspirit

@vulpix, please write your book soon - I can’t wait to read it.

@TC77, lovely to see you back. I think you’ve already answered your own question with the sewing etc. Finding things that you really love to do and then ways to do them is the key. My friend laughed at me because I said I wanted to take Latin GCSE. Well, why not? I also want to do something musical.

@Willowtree222, great news on the health front.

So, the frog that ran away with itself has now become 3 projects. Project 1 (selling my static caravan) now complete. Project 2 (buying a new permanent home a long way from my current home) now under way. Project 3 (selling my current home) starts today with a tidy up and further decluttering. It will take time as if I try to push through my fatigue I end up crashing for days, sometimes even weeks, so energy levels have to be managed carefully.

Lots more went to CS and recycling centre last week. I have been keeping the best from the van and will now choose the best from home so I don’t keep too much for the new place especially as it has less storage space than here although it does have more space overall. I really don’t want to clutter it up so will need to be more ruthless.

The reason for the move is because I spend way too much time home alone and need to get out and about more. There are no longer any buses from here and I am a long way from nearest town. I have struggled to drive over the last couple of years (since my last car was written off after a rear end shunt and whilst the new one is lovely I just haven’t got used to it) so I am looking forward to being able to do things when I am able and not having to wait for help to do so. I can’t afford to buy anything around here close to transport and I love the area I am moving to (although my favourite part of that area is too expensive, I can at least get there by bus). There also trains just 3 stops on the bus so am well set up. The running costs of the new place will be higher so I shall have to watch the pennies more carefully but I have plenty of practice under my belt on that one.

daisy_1571

Tc77 retirement means many things to many people. I'd looked forward to it since the first day I started work so I transitioned very easily when I retired at 50. I think some of the couple of hundred folk they got rid of when I also left, struggled a bit more.

Having said that I couldn't wait to be no longer working, for the first year it definitely feels like you are on holiday and will be due back at some point. Generally I've found people use that first year to busily get on with lots of things they never had time for when working, decorating the house, gardening, tidying the attic or garage etc.

I personally found it odd that I should be doing 'enjoyable' things just for me. Gradually I got used to not thinking I had to 'justify' my time to myself. I joined a daytime choir for example but it took quite a few months before I really relaxed into it and didn't rush back home straight after but went for a coffee with new acquaintancs who became friends.

Its the second and subsequent years that are more 'normal retirement', when all those little jobs have been done and the months stretch ahead. Thats when patterns emerged from the folk I kept in touch with and retired folk I've met since. Some folk enjoyed having something to do every day and found clubs and activities for each day, others happy to read or be more solitary, a few got more into particular hobbies, some were enjoying time to explore several new plus revisit old hobbies. Theres certainly plenty to do. U3a often has 40 or more groups depending on your local branch(es), the oddfellows is another organisation, the rotarians and Probus are similar, locally you might have many volunteering opportunities, I was talking to someone yesterday who is now a swim buddy and another who goes into the local library as part of mcmillan to talk to other cancer patients, I go to a pet rescue place to cuddle cats every week, Mr d is looking into being a reading volunteer at local primary school. Theres likely to be loads of things going on locally you had no idea existed when you were working.

If you don't want to go out theres telephone befriending or sometimes I classify things on a website- zooniverse - I've scanned pictures for wildlife in Africa (the thrill of opening the next picture and theres an elephant 🐘 in the wild !!) and Canada/usa (I saw a mountain lion staring right at me) plus looked for orca fins and flutes in pictures of the sea, I've transcribed record cards from WWII pow camps, counted seals on the shore lines in the arctic and looked at pictures of the stars all from the comfort of my own home 😀

The ones who struggled most I think were people who missed the social aspect of working or perhaps the 'status' of being part of the workforce working but weren't willing to look for other things to fulfill that role. So its definitely a mental shift.

I've found that now that I've got time, I'm able to feel more organised in general life. I can lay my hand on items or particular photographs or book/dvd etc nowadays. But the time when I actually needed to be more organised and have better systems was 30 years ago when I was too busy working full time and had no time to organise myself lol 😆 😅 😂

Dxx

Brambling

@TC77 i think you are retiring at the right time of the year with the summer ahead of you. Be prepared for your brain to take a while to get its head around the fact it no longer has to work! It took mine a short while to process.

Don't try to do everything at once you have the time now to stop and smell the roses, if the sun is shining that cupboard can wait until tomorrow to declutter.

If you are happy to make a commitment there are lots of volunteering roles out there i volunteer once a week on Friday and my NT volunteer role is every other Saturday and the occasional spray during the school holidays this also gives me a free NT membership and six free visits a year to take someone to Petworth. I also know several people to join U3A.

At my dinner last night the three of us who all retired early were all saying how did we find time to work 🙂 and remember if you have been saving for your retirement you will be retired and now is the time you have been saving for so don't feel guilty for spending some of it and in my case for the first time in my working life not saving monthly

vulpix

Hi, yet another beautiful day.

TC, I retired at 55. Not planned. Due to having a pay cut to do the same job plus still recovering from breast cancer. I still find I have no idea what day it is and Bank holidays take me by surprise. What helps is a routine. This club on a Tuesday, volunteering Thursday, yoga Monday etc. Don't over stretch yourself though, have some days where you can just hang out at home.I also still struggle to go to bed at a sensible time and get up at a sensible time. The first year I bought and renovated a house. I went every week day 10 till 3 like a job. You could perhaps set yourself a day a week for decluttering ?Join some local fb information groups, to keep up to date with everything on offer in your area, Good luck and enjoy.x

Mrs SD, I have to undo knitting all the time because I wasn't concentrating. I look at knitting as my fidget spinner,any knitting will do.I am sure there must be heavy duty sewing machines to hire or even pay someone to alter the curtains but it would pain me when I can do it myself. I will hand sew the thickest bits of the fabric and cut away some of the lining where I can. It is actually like a duvet as the lining. I have also decided to reduce the width a bit too! What I should have done is buy the right curtains in the first place! I am too impatient to wait for the right ones at the right price come along.

There is a local gardeners site on fb which I have given plants from the back garden away on. I will ask for plant donations when my garden is about ready. I don't want the job of potting stuff up and having to water, they can just go straight in the ground. The ferns I was given are quite big and are currently living in bags for life on the drive! I do also have a lot of plants in pots which can go in the ground. I have decided that the front garden shall be pinks and purples, the back green and white and the sunny seating area, yellow, red and orange. I have finally had an idea of how I want the back garden. The question is do I do it before the inside work or not. Hmmm. When I say I, I mean J the builder!🤣

I have wanted to take the tablets to the chemist before but Mr V thinks we should keep them. I can see that if he is in that much pain he should seek medical help, but don't apply that to myself! I will not take the tablets again!

Ocean spirit, I have gone off the boil with the book again. It is about a guy who took kids from a rough city council estate and made them into prize winning musicians. The story will be told through Mr V's eyes and the life long friends he made in the band. It's all researched, The story is in my head, Iv'e had encouragement from some very successful writers I met on a cruise and I am still stalling!

You sound like you have everything in hand.I love it when a plan comes together.

The new blind is up. The new curtains are cut and ready to faff about with. That will be today's job. I want to have them hung before Tuesday as I have friends coming for lunch then and they will need a tour of the recent works on the house!

Collecting the french doors is postponed to tomorrow. The guy damaged his hand playing cricket yesterday and has to go back to the hospital today.

Mr V has gone to get me some paint mixed so I can repaint the bedroom furniture the same grey as the fitted wardrobes. Also getting me block marg so I can make scone pizza base. Fancying some cherry scones whilst I am at it. Diet? what diet?

I had a look at bathroom supplies yesterday. 4 packs of floss in the ongoing bag for DS's family. I think I bought loads for a craft project and didn't use it all. For the food bank a new can of shaving foam, think it came in a gift set.

Another child's jumper sewn up and a new one started. These ones probably for Ukraine via happy Kitties.

Laters Vx

Floss

@TC77 give yourself time to work out how you'd like to spend your time, rather than jumping into something to keep you busy.

One thing I would suggest considering is exam invigilating - I do GCSEs at a high school. It's not all year round, I can pick & choose to suit my health & capacity and it's opened up a new social group for me.

I also meet 2 former colleagues every couple of months, and have a regular coffee date with my BF every week, plus I can now spend time with my DDiL who works compressed hours, without encroaching on their weekends.

@daisy_1571 I'm going to look at Zooniverse now!

@vulpix I would consider which areas of garden might be impacted by builders, and maybe sort one spot away from them?

Green_hopeful

@TC77 i also retired early. Definitely not by choice and i only had two weeks notice. A new boss didn’t like me and just got rid. I was super good at my job and they have had to employ three people to do my job.

Anyway, i didn’t want to commit to anything for a while. I did an upholstery class which was totally lovely. I did quite a bit of stuff around the house and gardening. I try to have some sort of social interaction each week, ironically mostly with people who still work for my old company. Sometimes i have to do the organising but sometimes people contact me.

I also invigilate. I get a little bit more than minimum wage plus holiday pay. I quite like doing it but you have no specific obligation. I am now invigilating at a college which means more regular work than a school.

The strange thing for me is how long it took me to destress. It was about 9 months after i had retired and i suddenly realised i wasnt totally stressed anymore and i felt like a could relax.

It’s good to start your retirement now. I stopped working in mid July and I found it quite difficult to motivate myself through the first winter. Mind you i got into watching Bergerac re runs in the afternoon.

I am now busier than ever. I have absolutely no idea how I ever found time to work.