One of the benefits of living in a city

We decided that there was no place in the apartment for this rather attractive clothes hamper, but I hate to discard something that still serves its purpose,a lthough no longer my own. So we put a note on it saying that we would discard it on Monday if no one wanted it and put it outside our building under the roof overhang (it's Berlin, it's raining).

It was gone within the hour. Win/win: someone has something to use and I don't need to add to the waste stream (although recycling of metal in Berlin is pretty easy)

Well Used

A decluttering post that is German-focused.

Gaily wrapped and passed along

I love re-gifting. We had another birthday party this weekend (finally one that was not ours) and I had the chance to regift something given to T1 three years ago (and carried along to Germany from the US in our container, never opened and never given to her).
Although I forgot to take a picture, inside the larger gift is a Barbie set of dress, shoes and bag: I'm not a Barbie fan (although I think the animated movies are in some cases very well done, I dislike the doll) and my girls always had more than enough costumes. The smaller package is new and is a Princess-themed school set, with calculator, ruler pencil sharpener, pencil and eraser.

Hand me downs

Going through another bag of hand me downs (for which I am always grateful), washing them all and examining them: T1 doesn't like these and they move along to the Kleiderspende.

Passing things along

When I was at Discworldcon it looked as if someone (perhaps Sir Terry) was unloading piles of DW novels in just about every language they had ever been pubbed in. The English were long gone, as were the French, so I grabbed Deutsche for the German (started with 2, but as the con progressed and they languished I took one of each— he's now on the second) and Polish for a friend here in Berlin. I've just passed the bag over but I thought I would share the covers: they are pretty great (though the Estonian and Latvian ones were also pretty nifty!).

On the walls

As we consider staying in Germany even longer, I am bringing some of the personal possessions that we left behind back in suitcases each time we visit the US. I always liked these two.

The Children's Room

One of the biggest issues in trying to decrease the clutter and chaos in my environment is that the kids are like entropy: they increase chaos wherever they are. This is actually the first weekend that we have spent home in the last 9 weeks so, to celebrate, we went through the children's bins and boxes and took out everything broken or used up or useless. A total of four bags.

In celebration, I reorganized their bookcase.

It's not just getting rid of things

The thing about de-cluttering is that it's not just about getting rid of things. It's also about finally getting things done and organized, about finding ways to display things one wants to display and store things that one wants to keep.

It's only been about 7 months since we moved in and we have finally gotten the last two lights up. There's a bit of a story to go with that: it's not that we have been stumbling around in the dark for the last half year: we have standing lights.

We had a lovely 3-light halogen for over our dining table, but it just didn't work in the new apartment: rectangular and the new room was already wired to a central point. In addition, the bedroom had a (bare— I know!) bulb hanging from the ceiling so we did have some overhead light when desired. The ceilings ranged from 12 to 14 feet and our ladder was a bit low, the German doesn't do electric and we didn't want to spend real money on a dining room/living room light when we couldn't find a buyer for the old one.

This summer was pretty darn hot for several weeks, though, and I was panting. There aren't a lot of good looking ceiling fans in store here in Germany, as I have noted over the last few years.I'm a person that likes air, so we also have standing fans but this spring's heat wave simply overpowered them. I found a ceiling fan/light combo that we liked on Amazon, set up an installation date with our handyperson, got it in, and then C blew us off twice. We set a new date for after the summer and then we left the country and came back 7 weeks later. When C couldn't make that date, we gave up on him, which is too bad: he was hreat for a while.

However, one electrician later, we have a great ceiling fan/light and a new (only 2.99€) light and cover in the bedroom. I'm really glad that we used a professional, because the living room ceiling is dropped (from 14 to 12 feet, don't ask me why people do this) and he was able to affix it properly, something I am always concerned about with ceiling fan.

Yeah! If you look carefully, you can see a gap: that's because the lights in the apartment were originally gas-fed and the fittings are a bit different. It really makes a difference that we hadn't really noticed as lacking before.

Sorting

A friend just handed me two bags of clothes and shoes as hand-me-downs.

First, I go through a preliminary sort to see if anything is damaged beyond repair. Nope, D has already done that. Then I wash everything (because T1 gets contact dermatitis from scent and other laundry detergents). Then I take a look and decide what she won't like (sometimes I check in with her on that) and that goes into the donation basket.

Starting back up...

When we got back from the US, we left 90+F (around 32C+) and arrived here in Berlin at about 16C (or 61F). Then we drove south 7 hours, which was a bit warmer, but nothing to write home about. So when I finally got back to Berlin, after getting back from the UK, it was time to start pulling out the boxes of cold weather clothing and doing the great seasonal switch. It seems that I did this only a few weeks ago, and really– I did it the week before we left for the US. The annoying part is that weather will be variable for a bit, so I need to leave some warm weather suitable clothing out for a bit. That means that I have 8 large plastic boxes using up bits of my floor right now. Oh joy. The strumpfhose on left go in the garbage as I have repaired and bleached them past use. The clothes in the middle on the right hit the donation box, as T1 just doesn't like them any longer. I thought it was particularly amusing that she said the shirt on the right felt as if spiders were crawling on her, because she keeps asking for toy spiders and I keep saying "no": if she likes them so much, she should enjoy feeling as if they are with her!