I've been doing a lot of cleaning out and decluttering lately. My kitchen cabinets were overstuffed and just about bursting at the seams. It was hard to get to ANYTHING I needed. Plastic containers with no lids. Sports waterbottles with leaky caps. Five -- count them FIVE cheese graters!. Four completely different sets of mixing bowls (not counting my super big stainless bowl or the one that attaches to my Kitchen Aid mixer). Five pie plates (and I rarely make pie). Silicone bakeware that I never use. Sheesh.
So I've cleaned out the cabinets --- gone are the mismatched plastic containers. And the waterbottles. Good riddance. The other stuff was divided up into what I use and don't use. The stuff I use was reorganized back into the kitchen cabinets and drawers. The rest was divided up. The bulk of the duplicates went into a plastic storage box. This stuff will be saved for when Princess Penelope gets her own place. While she will not have an apartment her first couple of years at school, the dorm we are hoping she gets will have a kitchenette and she will need some basic kitchen equipment there. It seems foolish to have duplicates now and get rid of them to only turn around and buy them again in a year or two or even three. So that stuff is now in a storage box clearly labeled --- Princess (kitchen) which has found a home in the basement.
The rest of it has been divided into a box for donation and a few things are going to a friend who has just gotten a divorce and is starting a kitchen from basically scratch. The easiest thing, of course, would be to just throw it ALL in a box and haul it up to the curb for the city to take off to the dump. But, that would be SO wasteful! More crap in the landfill, more people purchasing new, more manufacturing, etc. So, by taking the time to sort it all out now, I'm giving the Princess a head start for when she has her own kitchen, I'm helping out a friend on a tight budget, and hopefully I'm helping out someone else that might need a cheese grater when they are shopping at the thrift store. And all of that stuff is staying out of the landfill until it has reached the end of is useful life. That is hopefully a win-win-win-win for all.
Good job on sorting through that. It is a lot easier to put everything in a bag or box and throw it out. But the easiest way is not always the best or the right way. When we are doing decluttering, we set 4 piles: to sell, to keep, to donate (Salvation Army) and to trash.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of someone needing XYZ I am trying to get rid of and being able to to buy it relatively cheap from thrift store. I know my family has had to do that in the past, and it is a blessing finding things in there sometimes.
We need to declutter really bad. Our house is a mess.
ReplyDeleteI'm always decluttering :) We have a get rid pile and every couple of months we take it up to Value Village to donate. I find 99% of the stuff I want to get rid of is still usable so why not let someone else use it. Also any electronic stuff gets piled in the basement and twice a year it goes when the firehall has it's electronics recycling days. My garbage is only one garbage bag a week for 5 people nad I'm trying to get that down to half a bag :)
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I'd love to be able to say my home is now clutter free, but that is definitely not the case! Perhaps if I can focus on one area at a time, I'll see the kind of progress like I made earlier this week!
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