2026 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN Mrs SD - our Year of Redistribution

oceanspirit

Mrs SD, I’m so sorry I forgot to thank you for my gold star in my last post, so thank you. It sounds like you had a lovely trip catching up with your friends. I hope the soreness from being on the back of the bike for so many miles has eased.

I had to deal with a bit of an overwhelm wobble this morning but managed to pull myself together and keep going - it was technology issues that set it off and the general ridiculousness of the hoops we have to jump through before we are actually allowed to do anything these days. I just don’t have the energy for it. Eventually I calmed down, took a deep breath and laughed at the situation before carrying on jumping through the hoops.

In between the hoop jumping, more old accounts papers were shredded.

TC77

@oceanspirit well done with coping with the overwhelm wobble!

Sorted some paper and bra out 467

Ttomorrow I'm going to try and set aside a couple of hours for frogs and them some tidying.

Clothes wise there is the coat hanger idea where you turn clothes you've worn around so you know what you don't. Thinking that when i use something from a drawer it goes somewhere and then anything left in the drawer after say 3 or 4 months and I can't face wearing goes out . We'll see I'll find a variation on this to do.

Floss

@suzeesu2000 the bill for your mum's funeral would be due from her estate, the funeral directors expect that to be the case so your early payment would be appreciated but not usually expected.

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

Tuesday continued: stayed cloudy for the rest of the day. DH trimmed the hedge, mowed the lawn & cleaned the car 👏 DSis went out at 15:30 for a doctor’s appointment & then decided to go to As*a. Still not home at 17:40 due to serious delays with the buses 😞 Eventually got back about 18:30. Managed to get the dry washing in just as it started raining. All folded ready to put away. Dinner was sausages, mash, baked beans & tinned tomatoes. Wudupa

796 - 799 Kitchen recycling, drinks cans, 2 plastic bottles - recycled 

800 Kitchen detritus - binned 

regnbue, what an interesting way to prevent travel sickness when travelling by car 🤔 

Lovely to see you MadamMim2013 👋 Great work tackling the garage 👏 & well done on the Tip run & making a pile for a car boot sale 👏 A medal 🏅 is on its way.

oceanspirit, great news that you have a buyer for your house & that the survey has been done on your potential new home 🥳 Some great decluttering so far 👏 a medal 🏅 is on its way. 

Dizzycap, you certainly got a lot done before & after your nap 👏 Love that Babyface makes you laugh every day with her daxie antics 🥹

Excellent decluttering from the garden, vulpix 👏 What a common sense approach to driving by DD2, as you say if you live in a city you can generally manage without a car 😊 I hope the trip to the mill antiques place isn’t too onerous 🤞 Your South Wales holiday sounds great 😊 Enjoy your robot building with DGS1 ☺️ would love to see a photo 😉

Florenceem, I was thinking about you as we drove through Ramsgate 😊 DH took a photo of the Monument (next to the anchor) at the harbour side. Pleased to hear that you had another pain free night 😊 I see that young J was busy again 👏 he is a diamond 🥹 Hopefully you had a restful afternoon 🤞

Soontobeoap, excellent decluttering at the car boot sale 👏 So many people in one place is my idea of hell  😱

BlueJ94, nice to see you 👋  Hope you had a relaxing afternoon 🤞

Excellent work Green_hopeful 👏 A busy & successful day 😊

Florenceem, good luck creating space in the garage 🍀 Please, please be careful moving ‘stuff’ from the large RoD 🙏 Those gloves are certainly bright - little chance of them going astray 😉

TC77, excellent & eclectic work 👏 Pleased to hear that you interspersed all that work with watching some dramas 😊 Thanks for the mention of the TLC Carriage & the sleep pods 👏

weenancy, I now have this vision of you racing everywhere ☺️ I am hoping you have added a bell to warn people that you are coming & that they should move out of your way 🙊 

suzeesu2000, pleased to hear that you had a relaxing weekend ☺️ Hopefully the paint rollers will arrive soon & you can start your furniture painting project 🤞 Your roast dinner sounds delicious 😋 

Will continue with the cheerleading tomorrow & will hopefully make more of a dent 😉

Sleep tight 😴 

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

DH Awards: 🏅🏅🏅🏅

DSis Awards:

Decluttering Target 2026: 800/2026

1p Savings Challenge Running Total: £165.11

TC77

Morning,

with the latest phase of mega frog out of the way and no work ahead I have to face the chaos my house is in. Far too much stuff from my dad's from sales and the CS - just glad I stopped wombling. Writing this down to hold myself to account but do not want to have to climb over stuff or have to move piles to get to other things or sit down. A different tack is needed!!!

Thinking I either have to accept more goes to landfill, for things CS can't take (some vintage things) If I don't want them good they go to any home even if I believe that I can get more pennies than anyone wants to pay so just freecycle of put for fewer pennies , and think what do I want to keep rather than what do I want to get rid of , and probably do all of these.

I have arranged for a lamp and 2 bedside tables to be collected by BHF and ringing the computer charity about the 3 spare printers and cables etc. DD1 has now offered me her printer - she got for uni but never set up so I will take it set it up and give it back to her - the exchange with her will be mid June when she moves and I am putting a box of things for her - she's said she'll take large casserole dishes. DD2 is back in 7 weeks.

I have just taken a picture of my dining room, which I will tackle today as lots of papers, some clothes I bought for DD2 as she needs smart clothes for an event the day after she gets home.

I will report back, motivated by all the amazing things being done by the declutterai recognising that surviving another day sometimes is a marvel…

Green_hopeful

@TC77 we find it hard to chuck things away. We did a survey of charity shops and have found different ones are better for different things. We have a retro Sue Ryder that takes stuff i wouldn’t give to an ordinary charity shop. We also have a posh Sue ryder for nicer china and clothes.

I also found people who refurbish or sell old stuff and are willing to take items for the price of the postage. I had a Swedish slide projector with a 500 watt light bulb and a very home made plug arrangement. I found a chap on Etsy who refurbishes them. I offered it to him for the postage. There is no way i wanted to be involved in selling it but he could make it safe. If he makes a bit of profit then fair play.

Moorviews

I really appreciated reading the family history discussion as I have been meaning to ask about it myself. It is something that I am very interested in getting started on but probably not until the winter now.
GrannyKate, I hope you have a better week and enjoy the upcoming holiday.

Due to the weather being more suitable I have been doing lots of weeding, interspersing digging out the tough kind (bindweed, creeping buttercup, brambles, nettles and couchgrass) with easier to pull annual weeds. Hopefully, I can avoid doing my back in by alternating like this 🤞

Our big filing cabinet has been weighing on my mind. If anything were to happen to us it would be very confusing for our children; there is so much obsolete stuff in there. They wouldn’t know where to start. We have been consolidating and simplifying our pensions and savings over the last few years. On Monday, I got the bit between my teeth and completely emptied many of the files. Old bank and credit card accounts, insurance, pension, payslips, property sales, vehicles we no longer own etc. now almost all gone. There is more that can still go but I had filled the sack! I feel so much better for it and it is a relief not to see it all when opening a drawer. Although, it wasn’t exactly a fun day 😂 We have another cabinet with the paperwork from the estates we have been dealing with but that being separate, could just all be disposed of easily into a confidential waste sack.
Other urgent frogs are doing our LPAs and reducing the number of bank accounts we hold and seeing what else we can tidy up.
We also need to start making a list of what money we have, where it is and how to access it. That way it could all just be dealt with relatively easily. I don’t want my children to have the miserable time that we had trying to deal with many institutions, whose main things in common seemed to be an extraordinary lack of efficiency and knowledge. This kind of organisation doesn’t come naturally to either of us but we need to make the effort sooner, rather than later.
We are planning a day out at the coast today which will be a very welcome change and blow away any mental cobwebs. Hope you all have a good day 😊

Moorviews

@TC77 - good luck with your dining room. I think considering what to keep is often a good way and less overwhelming.

Just a reflection on my thoughts currently and really what I have learned through joining the Declutterati. I don’t think it is good for most of us to be buried alive in belongings as it limits what we can do every day. We need to be free to live our own lives.
Some recycling centres have a reuse area where you can put things aside rather than in the skips. It is worth searching one out for those serviceable items that nobody seems to want but seem too good to put in skips. I would also let many things go for nothing if the money isn’t really needed. It is extremely difficult with parents and other loved ones. We want to still do our best for them, however the value in their belongings was for them, in their lifetime. It is good to be thoughtful and rehome what we can but ultimately what we don’t need or want for ourselves must go. It is a process of learning not to tie ourselves in knots about every decision and to make these more quickly. They really aren’t the most important decisions in our lives and disposing of something isn’t likely to be one of our biggest regrets. I speak as one who can agonise over the smallest of objects and is very sentimental!

TC77

@Green_hopeful thank you and I think I need to offer for upcycling more. A couple of years ago I did this and someone took a 1960s hairdryer - a table top version of the ones you sit under (in original box) and was going to convert to a lamp.

Only one layer of stuff on dining table but have 4 lots of paper in recycling, seat pad for textile recycling and book for CS, also updated meter readings and put about 20 items in rightful home.

Trying a version of the pomodoro system which is meant to be 25 mins focus and short break, last week it was 15 min and 15 min but put my timer on for 10 /20 min and sometimes keep going abit more then a break and maybe start a new area if I'm abit bored of that area!

TC77

@Moorviews so spot on! I look round and want time to read some of the books, go out with my camera etc.

We don't have a reuse section at our tip and I don't have a car anymore but there is one at my dad's and we've taken lots more.

I do have to sort other rooms to move office type stuff out of the dining room - 🤣