One Good Thing

Last night, preparing to welcome in 2011, I was pondering New Year’s Resolutions.  I still make them, though over the years I have learned to make concrete, do-able resolutions rather than broad sweeping ones like “get fit” or “get organized.”

In that vein, I started to contemplate.  I recently read some “best resolutions” in a magazine and one lady said she vowed to try 3 new recipes a week.  I thought, “that’s a bit too much, but what about one new recipe?”  Then I got to thinking, “I’d really like to clean my office out this year and make it more of a haven, but how to do that?  Maybe clean up and get rid of one thing a week?”  Could I do anything else, one thing at a time?  Eventually, my resolution crystallized into “one new thing.”  I plan to try to do at least one new thing per week this year.  It may be a new recipe or signing up for a cooking class or a new fitness move from a magazine.  Small or large, it doesn’t matter.

Then I thought a little further.  What would these new things do for me?  Hopefully they’d be good.  Maybe I should call it “one good thing.”  Then I thought, heck, good things happen every day, maybe I should resolve to take note of them.  That’s when I decided to go out today and pick up a  pretty journal to keep next to my bed and every night look back on the  day and make a quick note of the “one good thing” I could say about that day.  It’s not a gratitude journal, it’s just an acknowledgment that every day brings SOMETHING that’s good, no matter how tired and cranky and down we might feel sometimes.

Of course I will pursue “one new thing” as well.

What’s your New Year’s Resolution?

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Progress!

It’s difficult but the destashing/decluttering continues and progress is being made.  Yesterday, after waffling a bit about the handspun yarn I had, I emailed the middle school art teacher to find out if she wanted it.  She was thrilled to have it so I grabbed the box that was stacked behind my chair and went digging in the closet to find two more. Hey, what are all those notebooks in the closet?  Log books from my soap making days.  I kept the most recent one (probably the most refined recipes) and tossed the rest in the trash on my way out the door to take the yarn to school.  I was not going to allow any time for second guessing!  It felt really good.

Today I went through 3 boxes of of fiber and yarn and posted them for sale on a Yahoo group for buying and trading fiber related stuff.  I did have to stop and fondle a particularly soft batch of wool and silk mix, but then reminded myself that I really don’t enjoy spinning anymore.

The piles are getting shorter and I am happy.  Just packed up a book I sold online – out of print and the lady is thrilled to find it and I am thrilled to send it off where it can be loved:).

Time to go work on dinner.  I bought a pork loin on sale and need to go turn it into the correct shape for pork stir fry.

Best,

Lynn

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Reality sets in…..

Yesterday I posted my grand plans for “a box a day….”  Seemed so simple, so straight-forward, and it is, but it does require a bit of an attitude adjustment.  Yesterday I tackled box #1, which held a bunch of framed pictures in 1980’s style frames, which seem a little garish now, along with things like patches from grade school summer camp, prints I had bought on vacation over the years intending to frame, and a big file with every piece of paper associated with my study abroad trip in college.

Pretty easy to go through really – study abroad papers trashed, pictures taken out of frames and frames designated for Goodwill.  I struggled a little with the prints, but realized that if they weren’t on my walls 20 years after purchase, they weren’t likely to go there anytime soon and don’t really fit my decorating style now anyway, so into Goodwill they go.  The patches were also a struggle, but I really have no use for them.  If I ever get around to scrapbooking my 1970’s era photos, they COULD go in the scrap book, but would make them lumpy so I am just going to let them go.

Today I moved on to the next box.  A box filled with handspun yarn from my days of spinning.  There are at least a half dozen boxes just like this one.  I really wasn’t an expert spinner and spun small varieties of stuff, so I really can’t sell it, but i am so through with fiber arts.  Now I am struggling where to donate it – I am not sure it is something that works for Goodwill.

I read an article recently describing several of the ways people think when they are trying to declutter.  One personality is the “perfectionist” – the person who has to find the optimum way to get rid of the thing, whether it’s to get the best price for it, give it to the right charity, or dispose of it in the most green way.  THAT IS SO ME!  It can be paralyzing.  I think I am going to email the middle school art teacher and ask if she has a use for the yarn.

Since I felt I hadn’t “dealt” with the yarn,  I went through a box of craft books and listed them for sale on a craft group.  If they don’t sell, off to the library, except the one that is out of print and likely to be worth a good $40-50.

So, I am making progress but it is a little hard going.  Let me know how you are doing.

Best regards,

Lynn Zentner

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A box a day….

Regular readers will recall that last summer I did set out on several decluttering attempts.  Made some progress, but still have way too much junk.  Last week, despite fighting a rotten cold for almost 3 weeks, I set out to clear a bunch of boxes out of the garage that have been there since our basement remodel 2 years ago.  We had a big outdoor bash this past Saturday and we had some concern that it might rain, so I set out to clean the garage so that the party could move in there if necessary.  Naturally, my cleaning resulted in a beautiful sunny day on Saturday and no need for the garage, but I am still glad I got to it.

There wasn’t much time to sort through things, so for the most part, I moved all the boxes that I needed to sort into my (very small) office.  They are now a towering wall behind my desk chair.  One of my summer goals is to turn my office into a relaxing oasis and I can’t do it with the wall of boxes behind me.  So yesterday I told my husband that my goal over the next couple of weeks is to go through a box a day and trash, donate, or sell whatever is in that box.  I started yesterday by listing 13 pounds of plastic tri beads for sale on the Yahoo group, AbandonedCrafts.  I used to make girls beaded socks to sell at Craft shows, but haven’t been to a craft show in years and my major client, my daughter, lost interest in the beaded socks years ago!  Today, my goal is to go through a box of old “desk stuff” that seems to have followed me around in that box since college.  If it hasn’t been on a desk in over 20 years, I think it’s time to get rid of it!

I figure that in about 2 weeks, I should have conquered the wall behind my desk.  I was recently given a gift card to Target and my reward for a clean office will be to use that gift card to replace something in my office with an object that better fits my “Oasis” theme.

Wish me luck!  By the way, I will surely be Freecycling some of this stuff.  I highly recommend you check out your local freecycle group (mine is on YahooGroups) for getting rid of things that may be usable by someone else, but may be something you can’t sell or drop off at a donation center.  Last week I was able to give away a nice oak fireplace mantel and surround as well as a gigantic piece of shower board that my husband had used as a dry erase board.  The people who picked the items up had a use for them and I was glad not to send them to the landfill.

Please join me in dejunking – try a box a day or even a box a week, if you are busy with work.  Just think, you could be 52 boxes lighter by this time next year!

Best regards,

Lynn

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Keep digging – one day I will be able to see the garage floor!

I have to apologize – I started back to work last week after a summer off and found that putting up a daily blog post was getting to be harder than I thought.  Sometimes I can get to one during my lunch hour, but otherwise I end up posting when I get home from work and am dead tired and not entirely coherent!  I will keep trying, but if you don’t hear from me for a few days, I am just swamped.  Meanwhile, if you are a regular reader and enjoy my posts, shoot me a message to encourage me to keep it up.  My blog stats show that people are visiting my pages, but it would help to know that people are reading and actually finding my posts interesting or helpful.

Beautiful weekend here in the Midwest, if you like it on the cool side, which I do.  I am trying to get out into the garage each week to do a little decluttering.  I have set a goal to be able to pull one vehicle (the car I drive to work) into the garage before the first frost.  Last year I was scraping frost off the car each morning and that is pretty stupid when I have a perfectly good garage.

I have been going through a lot of things that have been dragging after me for 20 years or more and evaluating whether I really need to keep them.  Since I am a University professor, I am having a hard time parting with old engineering textbooks, but I have been trashing all the old notes from classes unrelated to my area of specialization.  I think I will cut down on some of the textbooks and notes I have kept eventually, but Peter Walsh suggests thinning the easy stuff first.  I have also destroyed boxes of old files related to my thesis research.  I have the theses themselves and have not had a need to go back to all my old notes ever since I graduated, so I figured I did not need them.

A few weeks ago, I started listing things on eBay that I knew I did not want, but that may have a bit of value.  I decided not to overwhelm myself, but to try to put up 3-5 listings each Sunday.  Sunday is a good time for me to spend the afternoon listing things (it takes longer than expected even though the process is MUCH easier than it was 10 years ago when I first signed up for eBay) and is a recommended time to have auctions close, since more people have time to surf eBay on a Sunday afternoon.  Before I spend a lot of time and listing fees putting things up, I do a search for completed auctions on similar items to get an idea if it’s worth the time and energy to list my items.

Last week, my first auctions closed and I got bids on 2 of 3 listings for a total of $26.  This week I have 7 listings up and currently have bids on 2 items totally about $60, but I hope they go a bit higher before they close.  I have a few things up for auction that I would not have expected to have any value and are doing quite well.  That is always a nice surprise.    Yesterday one of the shades of our kitchen pendant lamps broke (cheap pieces of junk, it turns out), so we’ve decided to replace them with nicer ones that unfortunately are also more expensive, so I’m hoping for some good eBay outcomes to help pay for those.

This afternoon’s task will be to find 5 more things out in the garage to list on eBay and also go through a few more boxes.  Slowly but surely I am making progress.  Let me know how you are doing.

Best regards,

Lynn

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Garage Cleanup Update

If you are a regular reader, you know that I have set a goal to clear out the clutter in our garage enough to pull a car in before the first frost.  Progress has been slow, but we keep chipping at it.  Yesterday, though it was quite hot, I spent about an hour out there going through boxes and trying to consolidate – things I want to keep, things I want to sell, and things I need to get rid of one way or another (trash or charity or Freecycle.)

My main goal was to start collecting anything I thought might have some value on Ebay and start getting things listed.  In particular, I wanted to gather up all the Nancy Drew and other series books, which have been packed in many boxes and were scattered all over the garage, and get them into decent lots for Ebay.  I think I did find them all, but before I start in on the Nancy Drews, I thought I would experiment this week and list some of the lesser known series, so I put up three auctions and we’ll see how they do.

I also realized that there are still about 6 heavy boxes of college textbooks and notes out there – most of which are mine – I think my husband already dealt with his.  As Peter Walsh says, treat them with respect or get rid of them.  Since they haven’t come out of their boxes in the 14 years I’ve lived here, I need to get rid of them.  I have already dug out anything I thought would be helpful for teaching the classes I teach now at the university, so my next task is to go through those boxes and junk the notes and give away the books.  I don’t think our library likes donated textbooks, so they’ll probably go on Freecycle.

The piles are getting smaller and I feel like I have a plan, so that keeps me motivated to keep at it.  How are you doing with your garage cleanout?  My husband cleared a huge amount of junk off the basement shelves in the last couple weeks, so once we do decide what to keep, we may actually have a place for it!  Then again, I am trying to reclaim my office and it sure would be nice to get all the Christmas decorations out of the office closet so I would have more room to organize craft supplies….

Will keep you posted.  Next week – daily pantry tips.

Best regards,

Lynn

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You Gotta Love Freecycle

As we continued our decluttering and cleaning this summer, we noticed the old wooden play set in the backyard.     With two teens in the house, no one has been on it much in the last couple years and the path out to it is overgrown with weeds.    My husband and I discussed what to do with it.  Pull it down and throw it out?  But aside from some discoloration of the plastic swings and slide, it was still in OK shape.  I said that first I would try putting it on Freecycle.

So yesterday afternoon I posted an offer of a free wooden play set to anyone willing to come take it apart and haul it away.  I thought I would be lucky if I got one or two responses.  Within an hour of the moderator approving my post, I had 8 emails in my mailbox!

The nice thing about Freecycle is that it is up to the person with the item to decide if they want to give it away first come, first serve or pick someone randomly, or whatever.  I generally go with first come, first serve, but try to avoid people who will be “no shows” or decide they don’t want the item.  Once I post it, I’d like to get rid of it quickly.

So I read through all the emails and was struck by one lady who said she had been looking for a play set for her son for over a year and she said they could pick it up in the morning, so I offered it to her first.  She emailed back right away and said how thrilled she was.

As promised, she arrived this morning with her husband, her boy (adorable), and a trailer.  They had it pulled apart and loaded in about an hour and I could tell her little boy was just tickled to have it.  Her kids are about the same age mine were when we put up the play set many years ago, so that was kind of cool.  I even found the instruction booklet in my files and gave it to them, though her husband seemed pretty handy and probably didn’t need it.

So our play set is gone in less than 24 hours since I first posted to get rid of it and to a really nice family to boot.  Now I need to think about what to do with the enclosed, sand-filled bed out in our woods where the play set used to stand.  It’s just a tiny bit sad to see the thing go since it signals the end of an era, but I’d rather have my clean yard and have someone actually using the thing.

I highly recommend your local Freecycle group for anything you need to get rid of that might still be useful to someone but may not be suitable or easy to donate to Goodwill or another charity.   I have found new homes for a surprising number of things that otherwise would have just been thrown out.   I have even given away a dozen of the plastic buckets that cat litter comes in.  They are handy for a lot of things, but one family can only use so many!

Look around your house and see if you have anything to Freecycle.   Because you usually handle things by email, you can respond in your own time, rather than having the phone ring off the hook, as happened to us when we put a “free” ad in the newspaper.

Best regards,

Lynn

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It’s a Decluttering Day

I have been working on my pantry lists and will post those soon.  But today I want to comment about how our home decluttering is going.  Last week, my daughter finally got around to cleaning her room – something we’ve been asking her to do for a while.  She is a bit of an odd bird in our family – because of her sometimes impish behavior, we occasionally tease her that we found her under a car at the hospital after a band of pixies left her there.  But sometimes I am more convinced that she is the long lost love child of Peter Walsh and Niecy Nash!    You see, everyone else in the house has packrat tendencies to varying degrees, but my daughter, while not always the neatest person in the world, regular goes through clothes and belongings and purges what she no longer wants.   She doesn’t seem to develop the kind of sentimental attachment to things like the rest of us do – when she is done with something, she is done with it.   Every two months or so, I come into my bedroom to find a mountain of things on my bed that she has purged for Goodwill.

So it was no surprise that while cleaning, she decided to do a major purging.  She decided she was done with her toy chest full of stuffed animals, so we hauled that out of her room and she now has space for her guitar and saxophone, both of which she practices regularly.   Her interest in stamping and scrap-booking has waned, so out rolled a sterite cart full of supplies.  Unfortunately I have not entirely abandoned interest in those crafts, so that cart rolled down the hall into my office to at least be sorted through.   I did go through it a bit already and found alot of old grade school supplies that my kids have outgrown but are still in good shape.  I will ask the 2nd grade teacher across the street if she can use them.  Otherwise, I’ll try to give them away on FreeCycle.  We certainly don’t need 5 bottles of mostly full Elmer’s School Glue anymore!

My daughter also took the time to go through her clothes and filled a bag with cast offs as well as another bag full of old toys, books, and knick knacks.  She even gave up a pretty doll given to her by a dear former neighbor – my daughter knows what most adults are still figuring out – she didn’t need the doll, which was collecting dust and didn’t fit in with her vision for her room, to treasure her memories of our neighbor, who moved away several years ago and who was like an adopted grandmother to my daughter.

I was able to lock my dear Roomba vacuum in her room the other day for a couple hours and let it have free run of the floor, getting in the first good vacuuming that room has seen in quite a while.  I can do the same in the dejunked and staying that way master bedroom.  Daughter is enjoying being able to work at her desk and sit in her easy chair again.   I am enjoying being able to walk in and drop off laundry without tripping over things.

Meanwhile, yesterday I noticed that my dear spouse was no where to be found until I heard lots of noise from the basement storage area.  He continues to go through the accumulated office junk on some of the storage space down there – some things that have not been taken out of boxes since we moved here almost 14 years ago!  The garbage can is filling fast as is the pile for Goodwill.  I will load the van today and take a load over tomorrow.  They have inspired me to do some work in the garage today.  My first goal is to get the donation pile loaded into the van and then bring in a load of Nancy Drew books to list on EBay.  I looked the other day and it looks like they may be worth a little bit, so I will try selling rather than donating them.  If I have time after that, I will do a little more sorting in the garage.

All this dejunking also makes you think of keeping things clean around the house.  We regularly sit at the little cafe set on the front porch, but I have been bugged for at least a week at the cobwebs under my chair.  So today I hauled everything off the porch and hosed it off, then swept and hosed off the porch itself.  It will make sitting out there alot nicer and probably took less than a half an hour.

It’s a beautiful day out, but it will be even nicer if you can clear some junk out.  Join me in doing some dejunking today.  Let me know how it goes.

Best regards,

Lynn

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This Week’s Garage CleanUp Report

Yesterday afternoon, I spent about 2 hours in the garage and did make some noticeable progress.  I decided that first I would look for the obvious junk to toss or donate.  My clean up did not start well when one of the first things I found to deal with was a bag of my spouses old rockets.  I went in to ask him if he was keeping his rockets -yes.  Did he want to keep this one – yes.  Where were the other rockets he was keeping – no idea.  Since he was in the middle of watching a golf tournament, he really had no interest in what I was doing and I ended up storming back to the garage in a snit.

But after I calmed down, I got back to work and soon filled our big trash tote to the top with junk I could not believe we had kept all these years.  I was a bit sick of dust, dead bugs, and spider eggs (fortunately nothing worse) and was about to give up and go in, satisfied with filling the trash can.  But then I remembered walking by a house around the block from us last week, where the man had pulled everything out of his garage and was power washing the floor.  I said to him, “that looks like a big job.”  He replied, “yeah, but I like to do it every year – I think it keeps the rodents out.”  I was mighty impressed that he could even fit all the stuff in his garage on the driveway and even more impressed that there was enough time in the day to pull it all out and get it all back in after washing down the whole garage.  Let’s just say we’d need at least a couple of days at my house!  Then again, this guy could actually fit a car in each bay of his garage!

So, I got to looking at the spot in our garage directly next to the door into the house.  It was cluttered with tool boxes, loose Halloween decorations, beer cases, hoses for the shop vac, bowling balls, etc.  First, I thought, “what a mess!”  and then,  “I wonder when the last time that area was swept?”  I decided to pull everything out of that 3×6 foot area and just sweep it really good.  Next thing I knew, I was looking at what was there and thinking again, “this is prime storage space – what really belongs here?”  Clearly not our bowling balls, which we do use, but only once or twice a year.  As I told my sister later, it’s not like we are going to decide on an emergency bowling run and have to fly out the garage, swooping down to pick up a bowling ball and make a quick getaway.  Somehow, I think the bowling balls could go someplace slightly less accessible.  And so it went until the only things left in that space were my son’s lawn mowing shoes, a ladder, two tool boxes, a saw, the foot pump for the bikes, and a couple cases of beer.  More than half the floor space that had been occupied was cleared and it is a lot nicer to walk out to the fridge and freezer to get things without tripping over boxes.

I will continue next weekend and I have to say that already I see a bit of an attitude adjustment.  One of the things I have to deal with in the garage is a very old collection of about 250 Nancy Drew books.  I have long ago figured out that my daughter doesn’t want them, I don’t need them any more, but I have just not had time to put in the effort to put them on Ebay.  I concluded this weekend that I will do a quick check on Ebay to see if it’s really worth trying to sell them, but if what I think I can get for them doesn’t seem worth the effort, they are better off donated – they are on my “deal with” list for next weekend.

We have company coming soon for an informal dinner – I need to go cut up fruit for the “make your own fruit salad” buffet.

Best regards,

Lynn

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The Summer Garage Clutter Challenge

It’s a beautiful Saturday here in the Midwest.    I hope you are having lovely weather too.    This morning I am pondering what to do with my day.  I was the first one up and set Roomba to work cleaning up dog hair on the first floor and promptly came up to my office to hide – I love my Roombie, but he is quite loud on the tile floor.  The upstairs bathrooms have been neglected for a couple of weeks, so I think I will clean them first and get the powder room downstairs tomorrow.  But what to do with my afternoon?

Recently, I have been checking out Peter Walsh’s website.  If you are into the clutter or organization shows, you may remember him from Clean Sweep on TLC.  I believe he now appears regularly on Oprah.  I got several of his books from the library (read once, return – no clutter!) and as I read It’s All Too Much, I am realizing that we really aren’t too bad.    If I look around my home, all rooms have an easily defined function, which they meet.  Dining table is clear and ready to be used as a dining table.  Kitchen table is cleared and we eat off of it.  Family room functions as family room and people can sit on any surface intended for sitting.  So overall, I feel very pleased with myself, but I still am aware we have too much stuff.  The easy stuff test question for me is:  how would I feel if we had to move to a new house?   Would I be happy to take everything with us?  The answer is certainly no.

The biggest clutter place in our home right now is certainly the garage, followed by closets and storage areas.  My office could use some work, but it doesn’t upset me or make me stressed to work in here.  Kid rooms are messy, but when pressed, they can get them looking presentable, and a long as they are not a health or safety hazard or total eyesore, I figure the kids are both teens and can deal with their own stuff, though occasionally I will do a quick junk sweep or tell them to do it when I can no longer walk from the door to their bed to deliver clean laundry.   In the grand scheme of things,  the garage is without a doubt the biggie.

Our home has a two car garage that fits two cars exactly, with little extra space.  When we built the house we did not consider that we could make the garage oversized, as the neighbors did, and did not think we could afford the cost of including a 3^rd car slot on the garage.  My father-in-law told us we should have a 3 car garage, but we did not listen, and as in most cases, my father-in-law turned out to be correct.  Now the cost to add on another bay to our garage would easily be 4 times what we would have paid the builder to add it on initially.  Oh well.  Hindsight is 20/20, of course.

Anyhow, on and off, we have managed to actually park cars in the garage, but not for the last year.  It was terrible last year to get up to go to work and have to scrape ice off my car for 15 minutes or more before I could leave.  So I have decided it is time to deal with what is stored out in the garage.  It has slowly been thinning down over the last year, but not fast enough.

My goal for my summer garage challenge is to spend at least one afternoon per weekend working on clearing out the garage from now until fall.  I want to be able to get our best car in the garage before the first frost.

Are you with me?  If you have a cluttered garage and can’t get the car in there, think about how nice it would be to not get into a steaming car in summer or have to clear ice and snow in the winter.  Then post a comment and make a commitment to join me.  I will try to post an update on my progress once a week.

I will start by saying I made a good start last week.  We have about 8 feet of wire shelves running across the front of our garage on the wall that joins the house.  Top shelves are completely occupied by gas heaters we use regularly outside on cool evenings.  Bottom shelf is completely occupied with canned goods and pop, sort of an extension of our pantry.  Middle shelf was a mess of old sports balls, craft kits, and who knows what else.  I spent about an hour last week working on that middle shelf.  I figured this was prime storage real estate and did not need to be cluttered with basketballs that were never used, my son’s wood burning kit that he hadn’t touched in 5 years, or much of the other stuff that accumulated there without much thought.

When I was done, I had collected all the citronella candles in one place (so that my spouse would not think we didn’t have any and go out and buy more), put the air compressor for pumping up tires front and center where everyone could find it, and ended up with about  5 feet of empty space.  I called my spouse out to see and said, “That is prime storage space – what BELONGS there that we use often?”  His only thought was the tool boxes, but they are too heavy to have to haul up and down from a high shelf.  So we decided to leave the shelf open until we get a really good idea of what we want to put there.  Wow, open storage.  It’s a good feeling.

Best regards,

Lynn

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