Friday, July 30, 2021

Making Space...

Another week, another haul!   It was kind of a disjointed purging this week, and I missed taking pictures of a few things before their leaving, but it was a good week of getting rid of!
I started in the game closet and I realized the situation in there is complicated.  I store blankets on a high top shelf, but I had allowed some blankets and afghans to stack up in front of the large shelves the games were on.  I had completely lost track of what I even had in terms of blankets.

So first I sorted through all the blankets and decided to rehome an old chenille bedspread and a crocheted afghan.  And then everything else was either deemed completely practical or too sentimental to donate.   We have a number of hand-quilted blankets that I'd never dream of just getting rid of.  If I can find someone in the family someday who wants them, I will gladly pass them along, but I consider these keepers (for now, at least).  I just have to figure out how to store or use them better.

Then in looking at the games I remembered we had culled through them all a couple of years ago and our sons took a fair number of them.  We still have more than we probably want to hang onto, but I found myself struggling to figure out what to get rid of.  So I came up with an idea!

I am going to encourage hubs and I to play these games - maybe a couple of nights a week, make a date to sit down after supper (or we could do it in the afternoon, for that matter!)  and play a game.  We ought to be able to whittle down some of our inventory of games that way, and we might have some fun.  Of course, it if proves to not be fun, the idea will be a bust, but I think we're going to try it out.   

I did come up with a few things in that closet that were easy to purge:


When our boys were little, they had hours of fun with these, and I hung onto them for a while thinking future grandchildren might enjoy them, too, but I finally decided to let them go.  We've donated things like vintage fixtures in the past to a local salvage store, but we recently came to learn they take much more.  I'm happy to say they took my cookbooks and these old tape players.  This particular salvage store uses the money from selling items to apply toward restoration of some historic buildings in our little town - like our very vintage movie theater downtown.  It's easy to let things go when our cast-offs can go toward something we can feel good about.

I also found a mesh bag of old pool toys, a Connect Four game we're not likely to use again, and some Brain Quest cards we're not using.

On to other things - making a dent in my old Taste of Home (and other cooking) magazines, these 27 will soon be outta here.

As hubs has been scanning slides and pictures, these photo albums have become empty and in need of a new home:

We are concluding that any pictures worth keeping (which is relatively few compared to all the photo albums that contained them) can be more efficiently stored in photo boxes - after being digitally scanned.  We're making back-ups!  The pictures are automatically scanned onto a smart card, then downloaded to the computer and an external hard drive. Some would put them into cloud storage, and that may happen in the future, but that's for another day if we do that.  

There may come a day when someone wants to put photos back into some sort of album or scrap book, but these (that we're getting rid of) are not the best things to use. We have found in the ones we have that the plastic grows brittle, and the books themselves are just really inconvenient to store - says she who still has a long, and very high, closet shelf full of photo albums, and they are a pain to get down to look through.

FWIW, I did pull out a few of the photo albums to possibly save recipe cards in.  We'll see how that goes and I may report on that in some future post.  Or maybe you'll see those binders show up in another decluttering haul.


And then 19 random books and a DVD got pulled off the shelves and will soon be headed out the door.  I'm getting bolder and braver about deciding to get rid of books.  It's a process.  

One thing that helped me this week was to make a decision to not hang onto books that I only got part way through before laying them aside.  If I haven't picked a book like that up in over a year, chances are there is no way I can start where I left off.  And there's no way I want to start all over reading a book I didn't stick with the first time.  So I'm stopping that silliness and just moving those partially read books along and out the door when I come across them.  

Then with some of the above books, when I read the description they didn't seem to appeal to me anymore.  And to be completely honest... yes, I do sometimes judge a book by its cover.  If I'm not drawn to the book because its cover is unappealing, and its description doesn't compel me to read it, why am I hanging onto it?

I don't have pictures of everything purged this week, but I did keep track on paper and I know this week saw at least 71 things either gone, or on their way out!



Making Space Week 41:  495 things gone!




20 comments:

  1. Doing good, Becki. Hubby has been cleaning out his work area and hesitated on some things he thought I would be sentimental about. It was easy for me to say donate/trash it because I wasn't looking at the things or handling them. Have you found your kids are not interested in "heirlooms"? I have 2 kids that kind of care and 2 who could care less. Nieces asnd nephews don't care either since most of them are minimalist. Grandkids are too young to realize this is their history.

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    1. My boys are a mixture of sentimental and not caring much. I'm not overly concerned about them wanting anything in the future, but I'm realizing that as long as I'm living I will probably feel compelled to keep some things - unless I pass some things on to someone I know will enjoy them. There is very little of this sort of thing I actually own, so I don't feel too burdened by that. After I'm gone, I don't think I'll care what happens. ;^)

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  2. My son loves small old, to him antique, items that belonged to his dad. That's a tiny fraction of what I winnowed.

    Will the quilted blankets work as throws on sofas or outdoor chairs?

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    1. That's an idea. At one time, in another house, I had displayed some quilts an aunt made in ways that no one was able to touch them. We had a small landing at the top of a half-flight of stairs and I would hang a quilt over the railing at the top - it was a perfect way to display them without fancy hanging equipment. I'm (mostly) over the idea of keeping these things as artifacts. Honestly, now I want to actually use these things. I appreciate the suggestion that gives permission to that idea.

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  3. It is a process. Over the past 7 years I have gone through each closet and a little more comes out each year.

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    1. Don't I know it. I think you've given me an idea for a future post! Thanks, Sandy!

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  4. Be sure you play Connect 4 before giving it the boot. 🙂

    Well done!

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    1. lol. I thought we should just to say we did.

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  5. Seeing the toy players melts my heart.
    You've done well purging. Maybe vacuum bags for blankets will free up help storage space?

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    1. Those cassette players are a real piece of nostalgia. Vacuum bags sounds like a great idea, but I understand that quilts should be allowed to breathe. I have them in some plastic bags that are not air tight. Hopefully, that's safe enough for the time being.

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  6. You’re doing so well with this clear out. I wish I had a relative with a handmade quilt to give/leave to me, hopefully someone in your family will want to have them in the future. The game night my DH and I tried and the games we played we enjoyed and kept and the games I couldn’t get him to say yes to playing ...we also kept...hopeless! We have 3 chess sets and he refuses to have me teach him or to get rid of them. We have a great version of connect 4 that is a grid of 4 x 4 (16) rods with 2 colours of beads you thread over them and so can connect 4 in loads of directions. I’m explaining it badly but it’s my favourite of all our games. Enjoy your game nights.

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    1. LOL. Not exactly what I expected to read about the games. I had a bunch of chess sets once upon a time as I hosted a chess day at the library when my boys were younger. I still have two or three that are kind of unique. I should put chess on the docket soon!

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  7. 495 things is quite impressive! Kudos to you!

    The Fisher Price cassette tape player stopped me in my tracks. My older two children had one and it provided hours of entertainment. Such happy memories! I can still hear those little voices . . .

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    1. I thought some of my blogging buddies would reminisce about their kids and those cassette players. :) Thanks for sharing, Cheryl.

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  8. You are doing so well, how about storing your quilts in a suitcase. I have lots of my youngest sons games and books from when he was small but I daren't get rid of them without his say so, trouble is he's never here so they stay stuck in the cupboard taking up space I could really use for other things. xx

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    1. That's not a bad idea at all. But mostly, I just need a better storage cupboard. I have a plan for the game closet becoming a blanket closet as we slowly empty it of games. :)

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  9. I just bought two more photo albums (wish I lived closer to you...would have helped you store some of yours!) for grandkid pictures. I have toyed with going to boxes rather than the albums but then I remember the fact that boxes are bound to get spilled and all the photos would be out of order and that would drive me crazy. So...albums. For now, at least.
    I recently winnowed (and of course neglected to remember this challenge or I could have posted about it) a set of ten cups and saucers and a teapot from the set belonging to my mother. I hate drinking from cups and saucers and they have been shoved in the cupboard since my mother died. Keeping them out of a sense of nostalgia and obligation is just plain silly but how many years has it taken for me to realize that? I gifted them (asked for permission first!) to our #2 daughter-in-love who enjoys having tea parties with her friends. She will use them and enjoy them. I'm now eying 6 matching coffee mugs (same set) that I think will be heading her way before too long. I have used them and like them but they simply don't work with our Keurig machine....the large setting is too much and the cups overflow and the middle setting is too small and it looks as though somebody has siphoned off half the cup of liquid. Goldilocks!

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    1. You do make a good point on the boxes. Reminds me to label (on the back) any pictures I've put off 'till now. How nice that your mother's tea set will be enjoyed by a daughter-in-love.

      Your Keurig comments make me wonder if a machine is worth it. Every once in a while hubs suggests getting one, and I remind him we have a coffee maker and also little carafe with a filter holder when wanting to make just a cup or two. I'm not much of a coffee drinker so truly I don't see the value. I'm open to being convinced, though. ;^) And hubs would enjoy a new gadget.

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  10. Oh, the vintage toys! ❤️

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