Not quite a horder - decluttering

Before we were married, DH used to live in the mountains, and a "quick" trip to the grocery store was over an hour round trip. He was a Costco junkie. Had CASES of stuff like canned olives, chili, and - UGH - canned mushrooms in the pantry.

One day I got in there and cleaned everything out, and I swear there were cans in there that were 20 years old. Out they went!

My problem is going shopping and seeing something and thinking "Oh, I need one of those..." and when I get home, there are three of them already on the shelf.

One of our best investments was a Food Saver - a device that vacuum-seals bags of food. We call it the Food Sucker. We've probably reduced the amount of food we toss out by at least 80 - 90%.

We freeze fresh fruits and veggies, cheese, casseroles, soups, BBQ meats, holiday ham or turkey, leftovers... anything. For a hot meal, just drop the frozen bag into boiling water for ten minutes. Tastes as fresh as the day it was made!

RunFree - the FoodSaver comes with different sized rolls of a double-layered material... some kind of heavy duty plastic, like you'd find on frozen, vacuum-sucked fish at the store.

You measure off how much you think you need, let's say, for a hunk of cheese. The cheese can be new, in it's original wrapping, or it can be all by itself, unwrapped.

Then you put the edge of the bag in the machine, and it seals one edge (the bottom) with heat. Then you open up your custom-sized bag, throw in the cheese, and stick the top edge in the machine. It sucks out all the air, and when there's no more air to suck out, it heat-seals the top of the bag. When it's all sealed up, you just toss it in either the fridge or the freezer, depending on how long you want it to keep.

We have one of those French Door refrigerators, where the freezer is in a drawer at the bottom. We also have a small refrigerator in the garage with a teensy top freezer. There's just two of us, so we usually don't have all that much in the freezer at any one time.

Sheesh! I should have just given you the website - http://www.foodsaver.com/ :-D

Also, the FoodSaver bags can be used in a pot of boiling water, or in the microwave. Before I FoodSuck soup, though, I freeze it in smaller Tupperware containers overnight, then FoodSuck the frozen chunk.

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I need to get back on the decluttering. I have some rooms partly done and others getting the junk from those rooms. I think I stupidly volunteered to host New Years party for our Mexican food group. They like to come to our house since we can have fireworks out here. To anyone but a messy 2.5 months would sound like a long time but we know better don't we. (Wink-Wink). It is a lovely rainy day and as soon as DH gets up getting ready for work I must get back to it.

Mandy - your trip sounds wonderful. Wow and in just one week. Your go girl.

Brookside - I have a deep closet made when we claimed the garage for a den when we bought this house 15 years ago. The walk between the lovely (not) gray storage shelves is lined with bins of Christmas decorations which have migrated to the den when water heater replaced in July. Supposed to be going thru them which I will do now that it is not so hot (though it was 98 out here on Sat). DD's room (she has not lived here in 4 years) has become the dumping ground. It has bins of papers I need to shred or best solution of all to haul them to one of those shred-it some comm. hold. DD says I can trash all of her stuff in her room (she's 26) and claim it all for us. I just can't do it because I think she spent about oh maybe 10 minutes going thru it a couple of visits ago. 'Course she has teeny-tiny apt. so nothing going there besides she has her eye on moving to Pacific NW next year. DH cringes when I bring in more bins and those file-a-crate things.

Clothes - I need to make up my mind I will never be a size 12 again. Creeping up to 16 womens Ugg.

But I have hardly stirred from here except to change out the laundry. Make me get off my hiney NOW.

Happy Monday organizing and decluttering.

Luv, ditch the 12's. If you become a 12 again, buy new clothes that are in style.

My son says he's taking the family photos and dropping a match on the way out. Daughter is thinking of traveling the world with a backpack.

I don't think DD has a sentimental bone in her body. Makes me wonder if they switched babies on me in the hospital.

Wren - I think that is close to what DD is thinking. I think she might move with her personals and maybe a cat; ditch all her furniture. Looking for a job in Seattle or Portland after the new year. She works in logistics for a major corp. but no advancement avail. Degree in supply chain management. I think she could work for about any company except maybe in perishables. Could be an interesting new year. I've never been to WA/OR only to MT/WY as a child camping.

luvmygoats - the only crap I really want accessible is my holiday decorations. Where are they? In the attic over the garage, accessible only by climbing the steep ladder I can't navigate. I WISH they were in the den!

Teka - I know DH and I are dreading clearing out his parents' house. Our kids don't seem to be all that concerned about ours. They just have their eyes on the good stuff :-)

Wren - we've thought the same thing about the in-laws' house. Slowly, we are convincing them to let us keep the valuables in our safe. One of the things my mom did for me about 40 years ago was to start wrapping up family heirlooms and giving them to me as birthday and Christmas presents, along with the story of where each one came from. And yes, Mom passed in 2009, and I still have all her treasures!

Just got an email - the new bedroom furniture will be delivered sometime after the 23rd. Yikes! We get home from vacation tomorrow.... Guess I know what we'll be doing as soon as we unpack! At least we'll be getting some extra storage in the new stuff. All the old stuff will be donated.

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