A few old chestnuts.

Literally. Cleared out from T2's drawers and pockets.

Emptying some drawers

Some things to the orange bin, some to the clothing donation.

Gathering it together

Gathered together things to give to a friend for her daughter when we visit over the holidays.

Some out of our current closet (she will have to wait a year to use them) and some from the boxes I have neatly packed in the Kellar (which I need to think about passing on in some way) which I hope she will be able to use this year. I hope she enjoys them as we did.

A few things

I still wonder how it can be possible to pass stockings down: my girls can barely make it through a season with them. To the orange bin.

A crafts project dissolved and a bow to the trash.

More Clothes

These clothes are all in good enough condition to donate (but not appropriately sized to give to friends).

And I just can't get the stains out of the below, so off to the orange bin it goes.

If it can't be worn in public, out it goes.

November 26 through 30th.

Out-grown and worn-out clothing, to the Orange recycling bin. Tat to the garbage.

On the way out.

Before we get to Disney, it's important to know exactly how many Princess shoes we have in stock: it would be silly to get a pair that we already have. Here are two left shoes and a right, all unmatched, all too small: into the Orange bin they go.
Below, a bag of stones gathered from various jacket pockets and doors: into the garbage.
And a few torn and out-grown clothes, also to the orange bin.

Tidying Up

It's been a few months since we have done a thorough tidying in the girls'room. Since we are thinking about what they will need from the US, it seemed like a good time to go through and see what is actually still of use and what needs to be discarded, recycled or given away.

• So, here's a piece of electronics that is too young for the girls and
• too technologically obsolescent to be desired: one day outside with a note saying" Free for the taking", then the Orange bin.

Here are the crayons and pencils that I cleaned out of their art box.

• This entire bag is filled with broken pieces of toys, tchotchkes from Überaschungeier, toys from fast food chains or that come attached to children's magazines, and the equivalent.
• 
  

Here are various odds and ends, broken school materials, broken headphones, more tchotchkes.

• Here are magazines, catalogs and other printed material that has been cluttering up my shelves

Worn Out.

Cleaning out the drawers, starting to pack for a trip, clothes to discard. The German is packing half his suitcase with clothes he plans to discard in the US and replace with new purchases.

Sifting through the piles

It seems that whenever I sift under T1's bed, I pull out a goodly bit of material that can make its way into the Greenpoint bag for plastic discards: too many packaging discards.

And here is some paper that isn't the day to day recycling: these items were saved and had already made their way into long-term pileage before I pulled them out to discard.


The clothing either had holes or was dingy to the point of embarassment: if you can't wear it in public, it may be time to hit the Orange recycling bin: gone!

Empty Boxes

Going through the seasonal turn over, getting rid of the broken boxes. In total, we took four of these to the recycling station.

Memories...

Good lord, I have had this nightgown for thirty years. My mother bought it for me in a small boutique in Cape Cod (that's the "Cape Cod tartan"). I even thought about repairing it, but the material was just worn out and it was randomly disintegrating (that is, not tearing on a seam). Good quality to last so long and wear so well!

And a few other clothes, also worn out. All to the orange bin

One day later

and there's more.

• Paper recycling
• Orange bin for worn out clothes
  

Half a week

Sometimes I just find it amazing how much waste can be generated in half a week.

The more amazing part is that although the majority of this would enter the waste stream in the US, here only the small blue bag in the foreground is restmüll (waste). The box in the back goes back to the car (to hold groceries), the yellow bag is grünepunkt, the cardboard box goes to paper and the plastic inside to grünepunkt, the red bag holds paper, glass, bio (in the blue plastic bin and the pot): all will be recycled.

Not bad for four people.

On the street where I live

No pictures (unless I google some) but a lovely chrome garbage pail that would stick, annoyingly, and a vacuum cleaner that has been replaced by my (adored) Dyson stopped cluttering my hallway and were placed outside (with a note saying free to anyone) when the German went downstairs to grab a box of winter clothes from the Kellar.

15 minutes later when we went to the car (on the way to the Bauernhof)they were gone. It's great to pass functioning items along so easily and to aviod increasing the refuse stream.

A few more clothes

All to the orange bin.

The past month has not been without decluttering but the main items have been paperwork put into paper recycling and just being extremely busy. I have some gathered clothes to gift and some to donate and I'll hope to get them out of the house before Yom Kippur starts tomorrow evening.

These shoes were used for walkin'.

I'm still not certain how anyone can hand shoes down— our girls certainly manage to wear theirs out! (Orange bin)

Seasonal Change-over

Doing the standard seasonal change-over (as our heat kicked on this week) is a great time to pull clothes out that aren't worth packing away. All the clothes went to the Orange recycling bin.

• T2's favorite yellow dress bites the dust as I can't remove the paint stains after four separate attempts (with all kinds of stain removers)
• 3 more stained dresses
• 3 frayed outfits and
• some hand-me-down underwear that I felt was both too dingy and inappropriate for the age group
  

And here were a few damaged odds-and-ends of toys. I pulled them out of circulation for a few days to make certain the girls wouldn't notice then they went into the trash.

A few more for the bin.

I expect socks to wear out (although I'm still confused as to how we inherited so many in good condition), but I thought it amusing that T1 and T2's matching socks sprang holes the same week.

• 3 pairs of socks to the orange bin
  
• an undershirt with a permanent stain ditto
• and a mailing envelope to paper
  

Another day, more recycling

• 
• 4 shirts (orange bin)
• 1 pair pants (orange)
• kids' magazines (paper)
• odds and ends (paper)
  

The hardest thing

The most difficult thing about posting here is not finding things to de-accession on a daily basis. The hardest thing is to title these posts. Since this blog is really just to serve as an aid to my tidying, I'm just going to use numbers when I can't think of titles. Which would make this post 73.

• magazines: overflow to the kita
• worn out socks and torn ribbon: to the orange bin
• checklist from a pokal: to paper
• tchotchke: to the garbage

Binned

Going through the drawers while considering seasonal change over

• 11 pairs of girls underwear: too small and too worn to donate
• 1 of my shirts— so dingy that I won't wear it anymore, which means extremely dingy
• one child's shirt with a stain that I can't remove
• one child's skirt too dingy to be worn

All into the orange bin for recycling. Germany makes it so easy to do the right thing.

I also threw in

• a plastic bag, (green point)
• face mask, (paper)
  
• poster with a nasty crease (paper)
  
• and a tchotchke from an überaschungei (green point)
  

Another day, another pile

Going through piles of paper in an effort to make them smaller and to know what I need to do.

• Volkhochschule bulletins for the past year,
• Children's magazines they haven't missed (from the overflow)
• magazines from BEA that I have finally finished going through to determine what I missed, what I want to read in the next year, and what is happening in publishing,
• more miscellaneous paperwork

Then a few more odds and ends while I am trying to tidy up the children's DVDs (and some of my own):

• A tchotchke squirreled away from the children (orange bin)
• Obsolete DVD and cracked jewel case (orange bin)
• rag so grungy I don't want to use it for cleaning any more (orange)
  

Another walk through...

If one spends some time taking a look at what one can sort and discard, the job sometimes seems never-ending. I think doing it for only a limited time a day helps with the seeming endlessness of the quest.
Paper recycling:

• A case for a camera accessory that 's not needed as it has its own case (paper)
• A review manual in a 3-ring binder for a course that the German taught, which is too out of date to be passed to someone else (greenpoint for the plastic, paper for the contents, but I kept the binder for my American 3 hole punched papers)
  
• and some review materials still new enough to be passed on to people

and trash:

• an insert for an electric toothbrush that's not needed (greenpoint)
• a broken child's stethoscope (green point)
• a moisturizer I didn't like (emptied then greenpoint)
• a deodorant ditto (emptied then greenpoint)
• old balloons retrieved from under T2's bed (trash)
  

Another pair.

• Sometimes I wonder how we received so many hand-me-downs in such great condition while my kids burn through socks and stockings. Are my girls wilder than others or are they just slow-growing? (orange bin)

The Holey City

That is, while in Rome I discarded this holey pair of socks. :)

The daily discard is becoming addictive. Or, it's simply that when one does not buy many clothes, the ones worn actually do wear out.

Keeping on keepin on

I'm currently so in the habit of spending some time every day decluttering that I am even doing so at my in-law's house. (It's our stuff that I am working on, of course)

The German recently passed a certification exam and these are the study books left behind. They are too out of date, he thinks, to pass on. So these went to paper recycling, with their attached information. (As did some SAP security controls worksheets.)

Decluttering the Kellar

The thing I miss most about the US right now is having a garden. This was a bit sublimated when we had the roof terrace, but now that we have been here in our 3rd (4th) floor apartment for over a year, the cellar is a bit crowded with all the pots and garden things that used to be in active use and no longer are. One of the things that we did this year was till an area at the kita because they wanted to start a garden. We also gave them a few of our pots for the back area and I enjoy seeing them put to use.
There are actually "Kleingarten Kolonies" here in Berlin, but they aren't the community gardens that I am used to in the States, leased at a nominal fee and actually used for gardening. The ones here seem to be permanent temporary summer residences, usually with a building taking up much of the square footage and where Germans sleep and grill and live during summers (electricity, water and satellite dishes seen on the roofs). They range from 6,000€ to 34,000€ and really are not possible if all one wants is to raise some tomatoes. If we actually stay in Berlin long-term and don't get a small place back in the US for summers, we will probably start looking at one of these.

(crosspost to other blog)

Culling Files

Now that the computer has been recycled, no need to keep the original invoice, the replacement invoice, the warranty and a few other papers found while wandering through the files (as well as the usual bits discarded from the kids' stash of Überraschungseier toys.

Looking in the corners

A few more items. Broken bits and no longer used boxes and odds and ends.