Not quite a horder - decluttering

Hotand cold - Same thing happened to me. Lost my butt, gained some stomach, legs like toothpicks. I tried on some size 14s today and they were so big!!. I am just afraid that I will gain weight from some meds and then need some of these size 16s. I must be crazy because I am a solid size 12 right now.

Sciencegal - Very smart to get rid of that stuff. I dumped all that rads stuff too over the winter.

That is so great, Sciencegal!  Maybe there's hope for me too!

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I have one cactus that I dug a hole in the ground outside and planted when I moved here in 04. It goes dormant every winter and in spring blooms and keeps growing. It is the only one that seems to survive outside.

Ok we have been quiet for a bit. I am wondering what everyone is up to. I have been sifting through all my fall and winter clothes to see what needs to go out. I have a pile started on the bed. It is amazing how many black sweatshirts I have. My winter standard wardrobe is jeans, boots, sweatshirts and a black bandanna. I have 10 coats so time to get down to 5.  

Teka - How you feeling?

ScienceGal - How are you coming along?

RunFree - I know what you are doing. Don't scratch!!

Wren - I am down to 4 big plants. Nobody can believe the size of my Fern. It sits in the corner on my moms table and looks like a shrub. I need to trim it but not sure how. It is huge. We repotted and thinned my rats tail cactus and it seems to be adjusting.

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Teka - You are right but where does it all come from? I really thought I had gone down about 50% of my stuff and moms and then I look around and it seems like so much more. I guess compared to what I started with it is a lot but still I have way more than a 2bed/2bth could hold unless I had 9 closets.

RunFree- Next week????????? Lets see the last one I had I hired my cleaning lady for the day to sit out there. I had 2 long tables and all that leftover art stuff went fast. Cookie Jars (still have 35 I think) clothes, kitchen stuff. I did not have kids stuff but I would say put them all together in an area because moms like to rummage through that stuff. Do you have a hanging rack? If so display your nicer stuff so they see it when they drive by. Furniture? Price it low as you can. Mi people love tables and stuff they can put in the car. Not sure what sells in your area. What have you done so far?

Well, I finally have my office nearly cleared out.  Since I've been back, paperwork has been absolutely beyond me, and I've had piles and piles of stuff from the home office and client files and to do stuff all mixed together.  I've been moving things from one side of my desk and back, over, and over, and over again.  Finally, I acknowledged that I can't do it myself.  I handed it all to my assistant (usually she just makes phone calls) and asked her to just pile all the things that look alike together, and anything with client info in another pile.  "Feel free to use the floor," I said.  In a couple of hours, she had everything neatly corralled, with similar things clipped together, and all the client folders in the file cabinet.  Now, all I have to do is grab one category at a time and decide what to do with it. 

I cleared off my desk completely, and also the table where she works, rubbed in the lemon oil, and left an office I haven't seen in months.

Good gosh, all it took was a couple of hours and, for months,  it had been totally beyond me.  Post rads brain fog has real power!

Brookside, can you please send your assistant over to my house???!!!

I had my yard sale today and it was rather disappointing.  The town-wide map thing was a fiasco.  A new person was coordinating the yard sale and she was in way over her head, somehow just did not get what to do at all.  Many people who'd paid for official signs never got them, and worse, the maps were essentially not available--only for sale at one remote non-logical location, and even there, someone told me they had to ask six people and run around for half an hour before they found the one person who had the maps.  So the traffic we got was all by happenstance, which means we didn't get much, since we live on a little circle that hardly anyone knows is here.  I would say we sold maybe 20% of what we put out.  We did get rid of a couple of larger things but have several left over, and a lot of kid stuff left too.  Grrrr--been gathering stuff for two years and I did NOT want to see it again! 

There was one part that was actually a bit traumatic.  My parents bought a really good quality Danish modern couch in around 1967, when they were super poor.  We had it all through my childhood all the zillion places we moved.  My mom reupholstered it, a huge job, in about 1983.  All four of us kids have had it in our houses at some point.  But none of us wanted it anymore and I got the OK to sell it, though we all felt rather sentimental about it.  It's been in my attic for a while, and I found that it had some mouse poop on it--I'm thinking hanta virus!--and was in sorrier shape than I remembered.  One missing cushion, rips, fades, missing straps on the bottom.  I would know how to fix it, but then it would still be a couch I didn't want.  I put a sign on it that said "Vintage 1967 sofa, needs some rehab, please ask, $25."  And nobody even looked at it!  Again, that was partly because there was no map so the college students didn't know to come to my house.  So after the yard sale, my husband and I loaded it into the van and took it to the recycling center, where people often leave furniture and it's picked up by others.  But the guy said to put it in the "mashing room" which was full of food garbage and wet sofas and actual trash and smelled like it too.  It was a degraded end for a proud and storied item.  I wish I'd let my husband take it by himself.

Think I have some hoarder tendencies?  I'm giving myself the Circle of Life talk....circle of life.....

Brookside - Keep the assistant!!! Sometimes we just can not get to that kind of stuff. Rads brain etc does it. bet you feel better now.

RunFree - That is disappointing. That is what happened to mine too. Long hours to prepare, had someone sitting there and sold very little. Had people coming back waiting for me to put an end of the day sale price on stuff. Never happened. I donated it all. My mom had one of those sofas too. Low to the ground...long and had been upholstered several times. She loved it. She was 5ft2. My dad and I were too tall for the thing and would get stuck sitting on it. I gave it to her gardener for his basement when he moved to a really large house. He is very handy so he recovered it again. There were these little Henry the 8th chairs too. All donated to friends etc. Yes you have hoarder tendencies. Most of us do. It takes time.  

Oh phooey Wren!  I would LOVE to have given it to you.  Too bad you don't live in central NH or I'd go get it back from the recycling center, trash smell and all.  Bunkie, it's amazing that your family had a similar sofa.  Ours was low but not sinky as long as the webbing was tight, so even my dad, who was 6' 1", didn't have any trouble with it.  The way you got rid of yours is so much what I would rather have done, or passed it along to Wren.  I wanted someone to fix it up properly and love it.  But we just could not face lugging it back up the stairs and having it again take up so much space in the attic, so away it went.

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Wren - speaking of IKEA they had a chaise lounge a couple years ago. I just got the new catalogue and it is no longer there. I always wanted a chaise for my bedroom. Drat. All my furniture from Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn is well made and I like it. However I refuse to pay that price for a bedroom chaise. Still looking. Saw that one at Ikea and thought I might try it. Could not afford it at first and then last year with BC forgot about it. Oh well. There will be another that will come along. Who knows. It might not have fit in my new place anyway. I already have 2 sofas, 2 big chairs, and a lot of tables. I dragged a Mexican coffee table from Cali when I moved and now it just looks so worn and the stain is gone. I guess I could have someone stain it....darker. Too much work.

Brookside - Too funny. Bet you won't declutter again. Haha!!

Blessings - What kind of a write off do you get for Turbo tax? A good one? Do you have to itemize it all or lump it into one claim?

RunFree - How you feeling? Better or worst? Did you at least clean out some space?