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A Thing A Day: 2011 Challenge

(4679 posts) (144 voices)
  • Started 1 year ago by happymonkey
  • Latest reply from pkilmain
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Overall Rating: 9 votes

Tags:

  • a thing a day
  • ATAD
  • decluttering
  • decluttering daily
  • donating
  • eco-bag
  • FEW.
  • glass
  • green bag
  • high school
  • home workouts
  • home workouts review
  • junk room
  • mug
  • reusable bag
  • save money
  • stuff
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  1. cjhaab
    Member

    HA. That's one way to get rid of a goldfish!

    Not as much done today, but I did two mending jobs: shortened a knit camisole which came down below my upper thighs (???) so had required inventive waistline folding and tucking techniques to make it useful, and repaired a dress hem for my little granddaughter.

    Tonight I am going to ask DH if he is ever going to send two beautiful cards I recently found in the kitchen, which he bought in August for our daughter when she graduated from a summer program. I know they would be late, but I think she would appreciate them still, and they are not really suitable for any other person or occasion (one says special congratulations, and the other is a lovely poem to daughter on how wonderful she is.) I hate to throw them away as they are very pretty and were fairly expensive as cards go. But if he doesn't want to send them, I might send them anyway and say, "Dad bought these for you last August, but then lost them" or some such.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  2. Trish
    Member

    A productive day here! The car is loaded up with another big load of items to go to Goodwill.

    Highlights of today's purge:
    - A computer program and special cables for converting VHS tapes to DVD. Taking it to work, someone will be sure to want it.
    - A formal dress I haven;t worn in about 6-7 years and doesn't flatter my current style OR body shape.
    - My big jewelery box. Ever since I got rid of our big dresser last year, it has been sitting on the bedroom floor. Annoying! Having purged the jewelry yesterday, I went to Target and bought a lovely *small* canvas jewelry organizer that fits neatly into my nightstand.
    - A big bag of Splenda sweetener. My mom sent it to me. *sigh* Someone at work will use it.
    - A set of Anime dvds. Another gift, but it's the middle set of a series we don't care for.
    - My huge wedding portrait. It's just of me in my dress, and I don't care for it on my wall anymore. I know my mother or grandmother will be delighted to have it, so I just need to find an appropriate box so it can leave.

    Now I am watching Sunday night football in my fabulously clean living room. :D

    Posted 1 year ago #
  3. pkilmain
    Member

    I'm still enjoying my lovely clean office. Nothing out today except a cake mix which was recycled to the church for coffee time. :) Nothing in either....

    Posted 1 year ago #
  4. bandicoot
    Member

    i emptied out a lovely bowl that sits on our coffee table and it was simply full of.....rubbish.
    small weird bits of metal. dead batteries. dead pens. dead dental floss containers. out out out, all of it.
    but i kept the small change...

    Posted 1 year ago #
  5. 750sf
    Member

    Today I took all the food out of our kitchen cabinets and threw much of it away because it was ancient. This turned into cleaning, caulking and repainting the cabinet interiors, not to mention pulling up the shelf liner that was tacky in the bad way. This was immensely satisfying, even if it means the remaining food won't get put back till tomorrow.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  6. lazycow
    Member

    @bandicoot, you crack me up! Love the goldfish story. Plus, I can't get over the fact that you are so decluttered, but always find more stuff to let go. You're my inspiration!

    I'm on another roll here. Got the children to go through 2 wicker baskets of their toys, and I tackled my daughter's room, which really NEEDS to happen every school holidays (will find the 'children and clutter' thread and post in more detail there).

    Donate:
    - 20 books (daughter's, am SO proud of her. They are all books she's outgrown, and just taking up valuable space on her bookshelves. Yes, she has more than 1!)
    - 4 coat hangers
    - plastic safety outlet plug
    - pair winter pants which will be too small next winter (had to sneak them out as she loves them, but I HATE them)
    - photo album
    - various plastic army men, dinosaur eggs and bionicles (son's)
    - plastic kaleidescope

    Toss/recycle:
    - police poster (from Scout's)
    - plastic bag full of lolly wrappers, chip packets, food!!! (new rule: no food in bedroom, or no pocket money for the week)
    - school diary
    - address book (has 2)
    - 4 x friendship books/journals
    - woodwork dolphin (still has other woodworked things she made last year)
    - completed maths workbook

    They wanted to get rid of the "Kerplunk" game but I wouldn't let them. I was denied it as a child and want to have it now, dammit. Though if we don't play it by the next holidays in April it will be leaving the house. I'm tipping it will go as we haven't played it in years.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  7. Kaz in Oz
    Member

    New Year's Day: filled box trailer with assorted crap from the garage to take to dump.
    Sunday: Took crap to dump (stinking hot and smelly!).
    Today: Cleaned out 2 baskets of stuff under my desk. Filed some important work stuff (self directed learning packages and interesting journal articles). Shredded personal papers, binned the rest excluding the stationery which will be useful in the new school year. About to tackle 2 desk drawers.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  8. bandicoot
    Member

    i should tell you all about the goldfish.
    he lived outside, in the middle of my white garden (all white flowers and silver and white foliage) in a big concrete bowl, with some miniature waterlilies and miniature papyrus.
    it was all working well.
    i cleaned the whole thing out periodically and my goldfish got bigger and stronger.
    the cats would spend hours watching and drinking, but never catching.
    then one day, i cleaned the bowl out and i suspect that it was all too clean and the goldfish caught the attention of a bird.
    we have lots of kookaburras and currawongs and butcher birds and other voracious birds around here.
    anyway....the goldfish was there one minute and gone the next.

    lazycow, i truly am decluttered to a degree i didn't think possible for myself, 2 years ago.
    but yes, i keep my beady eyes open for little tiny overlooked pockets.
    and i am simply more ruthless than i used to be.
    and of course, as time ticks along, i look at things and realise, hmmm, i haven't used YOU in over a year. out you go!
    AND, the more i get rid of....the more i want to get rid of.
    so, even as i declutter, my idea of what is "decluttered" is actually changing.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  9. lottielot
    Member

    I'm suffering with allergies right now and am uninspired to unclutter till dh and the kids are out of the house...
    Anyway, dh uncluttered 4 bags of rubbish from my car (I'm pretty sure a LOT of it was his, he is anal about his car but will happily leave a McDonald's bag or two in mine). My car is habitually filthy though, the kids always seem to leave stuff in there, I don't drive much and I don't care if it's dirty :) Whereas he hates driving a dirty car and is going to borrow it for the next week, so he cleaned it out! Well, he has to have SOME uses...
    I'm saving my energy for tackling my bedroom this week. It's a big job involving much juggling of furniture, painting some furniture, ripping up the carpet and possibly painting the floorboards, buying a desk from Ikea, painting the walls etc etc. It will be worth it to have a nice, uncluttered haven of a bedroom but the work is a bit daunting! I've already chucked out a lot of stuff from the room so that will make life slightly easier :)

    Posted 1 year ago #
  10. ninakk
    Member

    I forgot to add for yesterday that I changed the fire alarm battery. Or rather checked the situation a few days ago, noticed that the alarm very intelligently has been without battery since forever, tested a battery found of correct size but concluded that either battery had run out or alarm was broken, bought a new battery without installing it though. So yesterday intelligence finally won and it was concluded that alarm worked fine, old battery was empty and new in good shape. Sigh...

    3.1.2011:
    A good day. I've been scanning for hours already and since we don't have a scansnap it's slow. On the other hand I name files correctly at once and also chuck them in the right place, instead of simply scanning and ending up with a huge folder of chronologically numbered files. Warranties and other paper work are ready to be chucked out.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  11. ninakk
    Member

    That is, old warranties. New ones have been scanned, named with end date, and archived.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  12. DanielleandTom
    Member

    Haven't done anything today yet, but yesterday I eliminated 1 full shelf of books.

    Wanted to do more, but H claimed to be emotionally attached to a whole bunch of religious books. He's never read them, I believe they came from his grandmother, I'm not sure he'd notice if they were gone. We haven't gone to Mass on our own recognizance (aka without family coercion or a wedding attached) in ages...I told him I'm guessing his grandma would rather us go to church and chuck the books than keep the books and chuck the Church. He was unpersuaded.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  13. irishbell
    Member

    Finally, the recycling cart was taken today- filled up entirely on Christimas day, easy to do when you have 12 people opening presents all day long (and feeding them all for an entire week).
    Glad to see that mess go. Yay 2011!

    Posted 1 year ago #
  14. Charity
    Member

    Xmas tree went outside to be collected by the council whenever they get around to it. Could be any time in the next 3 weeks, and in the meantime I have my annual problem of getting the buggy around without being forced to go into the road or having the poor child poked in the face by somebody's tree. People are very selfish and block the whole pavement with their monsters.

    Charity bag: snowglobe that plays WInter Wonderland and is incredibly annoying. Thanks MIL... A shoe-shaped tree decoration (thanks MIL again) - what is festive about high-heeled shoes? And an ugly Nutcracker ornament that plays another annoying Xmas tune (yup, MIL again). Finally, pile of 9 Greek language kids DVDs that we don't watch and nobody wanted on Freecycle (guess who bought those for us?)

    Because the snowglobe was massive, the Xmas stuff is now down to one crate plus the pannetonne tin (which was also from MIL but is actually useful LOL). Not sure what to do with the now spare crate, will think about it.

    I think my aim for 2011 is to have more stuff in my house that WE chose than MIL gave us. That's actually a big challenge! She checks up, and complains we don't appreciate her gifts - at least once a week she moans that we put a (valuable, apparently) painting of a chicken in DS's bedroom instead of giving it pride of place in the living room. DS is not quite 3, he likes chickens a whole lot more than we do!

    Posted 1 year ago #
  15. Charity
    Member

    Used up: bottle of laundty liquid I bought unintentionally (was a substitution on an online grocery order). Was a PITA to use as I had to measure into a plastic ball thingy and put that in the machine. Much too faffy. Ball thingy has gone too, hooray!

    Unsubscribed from half a dozen email newsletters and blocked 2 Facebook games that were stealing far too much of my time. That was very hard to do.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  16. Mimi
    Member

    happy new year to all of you!
    i´d like to join the ATADthread for 2011- and i hope i still have more than 400 items at home ;-)

    1.1.(day 1): a book (#1)
    2.1. (day 2) a belt (#2)
    3.1. (day 3) 2 broken energy-saving lamps (#3)
    ...i tried to recycle them into the municipal recycling bin, but they don´t take them anymore! a women asked me to take them back home… what do they expect me to do with them, throw them in the woods?! got really angry but finally found out that ikea takes them back even if i didn´t buy them there, have to go to ikea anyway.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  17. djk
    Member

    donated:
    new, never-worn bra

    trash:
    pair of DH's old trousers.Too big for him now, and worn thin.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  18. Mimi
    Member

    oh, thank you, djk, for a reminder... :)

    2.1. (day 2) a belt (#2) and a new, never-worn bra (item #4)

    Posted 1 year ago #
  19. susanintexas
    Member

    Working on: Dumped the big tub of miscellaneous caca from under my desk onto the home office floor so that I have to deal with it today. Some is trash (already isolated a small pile, including a broken clipboard); some to be donated (into the goodwill pile so far, a packet of 216 4" letters and numbers -- can't remember why I bought them); also some stuff that needs to find a home and (oops!) a few things to be worked on. Have a couple of meetings today and a graphic design project for the homeless transitional facility that I promised for Thursday, so will have to squeeze it in as I can. It it SO irritating to see it spread out, though, that I think I can work through it relatively quickly.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  20. JuliaJayne
    Member

    My husband got a comedy DVD this xmas from my brother. It was a strange gift because comedian was from our parent's generation. Neither of us were interesting in watching the DVDs, so we decided to give it to my husband's father with the instructions that he could get rid of the discs at any time.

    Yesterday - went through the container drawer and got rid of mismatches. Only 2 things, not bad. Lazed around yesterday eating left over party foods. I suppose you could consider that decluttering.

    Today, tossed a quilting project I started last year. I thought it would be fun to make a quilt out of men's cotton shirts from the thrift store. That was until ironing the squares brought out stinky odors. It smelled like smoked sausage, which is not something I want a quilt to smell like.

    Posted 1 year ago #

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