15 minute fling

I still read my Flylady e-mails to help me keep up the fight against sinking into clutter and here is the accumulation of a week of trying to read through and get rid of paper that masquerades as something I need or want to keep. The reason it takes some time is that I am actually reading the magazines and I tend to run behind depending on what my external life is doing: they are bundled and sent over once a week, so they come in a bolus.

Well loved clothing

Unlike the clothes that I donated yesterday, these were well loved and the spots would just not come out, even with laundry treatments. So into the trash they went. But they were hand me downs from my brother's girls, so they have been used by at least three and perhaps 4 children: Carter's has amazing quality and GapKids once did as well .

Sammeln

The girls' school is collecting clothing and shoes: I wish they had given us some notice, because then I wouldn't have handed bags worth over to Humana. These are what I was able to winnow out in a day and are all in good enough condition that I feel they are worth donating as opposed to discarding. A few of my shirts that I find too scratchy to enjoy wearing and some clothes that my girls have outgrown or don't like.

The Fridge

After having weekend guests, my husband felt today was the perfect day to clean out and scrub our refrigerator. I'm not certain why, but I'm happy with the result. Not only is the fridge sparkling clean, but we took the opportunity to examine all the food and condiments inside and to get rid of the out-dated or bad items. Those are in recycling now, but the discards included about 16 glass jars of condiments that were tremendously outdated or clearly moldy (ugh!) as well as foodstuffs that had been pushed behind newer ones. No photos, because by the time we had washed out the glass, squeezed out the metal tubes, and cleaned out the plastic, everything had been scattered between the multiple recycling containers.

Hopefully the clean and ordered refrigerator will make it easier to rotate food properly and reduce waste.

A good day's work

Sometimes when I start going through the girls' things, I am absolutely amazed by how rapidly they accumulate small pieces of trash, toys given away with magazines or with Happy Meals or with Überaschung Eis or yogurts. Empty game boxes, dried out pens, broken and used up crayons and pencils and general trash wasting their limited space. This took about an hour of work by both the German and myself, while distracting the girls with a new movie (Heidi on DVD).

And back

I couldn't stand the clutter on my regular blog, so I am moving these posts back here.-- If T1 doesn't like it and I don't like it, in the donation bag it goes.

Odds and ends

Another attempt at taking a specified time and decluttering, along the lines of Flylady. I'm going to attempt to do this at least several times a week.
The shoes on the right are similar, but not the same: one each left of different sizes, it's been almost a year since we have seen the other half of each pair, so time to discard them. That should mean that we find the other half in a week or two, of course.