Mainly clothes

My very favorite (although fake) bag- so worn and leather-bare that I am actually too embarrassed to carry it any more. Shirts and t-shirts and a pair of shoes that are too worn: all to Orange bin recycling.

A piggy bank and a sweater that I will put out this weekend to see if anyone takes (and if not, will go on Friday to the "Give and Take" kiosk, a skirt and a shirt that are too worn and are off to the orange bin.

Kinderfahrrad

I don't know know why people need to use Freecycle in Berlin: this bicycle was gone within 30 seconds of our putting it outside.

Art

Admired, displayed, photographed, and recycled.

Clothing

These to the donation bin

And this to recycling (orange bin).

Lots more things

Lots of "stuff

Here are a lot of odds and ends- a hairbrush that pulls hair- to the garbage, ice cube tray whose cubes I don't like, to greenpoint. Odd shoes, stretched out bathing suit, shopping bag with a hole: all to Orange bin.

Clothes to Kleidespende

More paper to recycling!

 These clothes all went to the Kleidespend (donation box).




Lots of catalogs and pieces of paper found while going through bins (still looking for tax papers).



A very nice pair of patent leather shoes from T2. The toes were scuffed and if they were mine, I would have spent the 10€ to repair them. Since they are too small for T2, I decided not to repair tham and they went into the Orange bin.

Treasure Kiste

Thing1 made this treasure chest at a party and used it for several years. Now the hinges are stripped and she has a new jewelry box and this one heads for the Orange bin, where small pieces of wood go.

Recycling clothes

All to recycling in the Orange bin

I blacked the shoes up a bit and then they
all went to the Kleidespende (clothing donation bin).

Tidying Up

Sometimes decluttering is not just about discarding things: sometimes, it means organizing them. The girls' hair ornaments are a constant struggle. Today, I made a small dent.


I started with everything here, and what remains is this one, organized, group. Everything else was discarded as either broken, unnecessary, or causing damage to the childrens' hair.

A bit of this and a bit of that.

 A bit of this and a bit of that. T2 constructed a tower and we took a photo before it "went away".









A bit of electronic debris to the Orange Bin.




And some worn out clothes to the Orange Bin as well.

Schulranzen

Ouch. This expensive item went to the Recyclinghof (where I hope someone rescued it and can repair it).

A schoolmate of T1's "tried it out" and carried it by the handle, which is strictly verboten and voids the warranty. I was pretty angry, because we started every day reminding her that the bag is not carryable by the handle, she never did so, and the "friend" who carried it "for her" wanted one herself (and wound up getting one a few weeks later).

She never apologized properly and the girls have not been friends since: a sad result.

And then we had to purchase exactly the same thing again, because T1's school books are so incredibly heavy that she must use a rolling bag and the cheaper ones barely last a few weeks.

Sigh.

Pens and paper

We went through the children's school and art supplies and these pens are dry. To the garbage, with the broken tchotcke as well.

More paperwork pulled out of the piles for the recycling bin.

Artwork, paper and clutter

Sometimes I look around and wonder how I can keep decluttering and yet the apartment is still full of clutter. Then I look around at the artwork that the kids create every week (not even considering my own bills, magazines, and books!) and realize where it comes from.

Here on the left is 2.5 weeks worth of the children's creations. These are the finished works, worth keeping, not the drafts or errors. I separated them by child and placed them in art folders. I have one for each child for last year, one for each for this year, and this helped me remove some of the hanging artwork, put it in folders and replace it with newer art.

The three pictures below are my own paperwork, bills, magazines dealt with yesterday and today and ready for recycling, as well as some of the kids' draft artwork or first thoughts, that they don't want to keep. All to paper recycling.

Odds and Ends

• Some worn out clothing (to the Orange bin).

• Some tchotckes from the kids to the garbage.

• And a broken timer to the Orange bin as well (love that Orange bin).

Donation and recycling

And herewith I stop counting. Because, does a pair of shoes count as a single object? The bag that I pack them in? Socks? What about a pair of tape rolls? I'm going to try to go back to getting rid of approximately an object a day and I will feel better about it.

• Here you see two rolls of a specific type of tape that we don't like. Bought when we painted the apartment, we didn't like them then and wound up actually using a different type of tape. The spouse put them outside our building door with a "Zu Verschenken" sign while dropping the garbage in the basement and they were gone before he left the cellar.
  

These all went to the Orange Bin.








These were donated in the clothing donation boxes.

Here's another bag of foam letters. Also "Zu Verschenken", although it took a few hours.

And here's a broken suitcase that went to the recycling hof.

Trolley and Telephone

This numbering system isn't really working for me. So now I find a bunch of photos that I haven't posted, but they would be numerically incorrect if I posted them where they belong. I'll have to consider what to do about that. So, this would be 63,64, 65? A broken child's suitcase/trolley, a broken handy and the concomitant attachments. These went to the recycling hof, where the usual folks took the electronics (I assume to refurbish and resell).

20-61. Clothes and more.

20-22. A belt, a pair of pants so unfashionable s to not be donatable, and a pair of pants (sob) that T2 has outgrown just since January!

23-32. 3 bibs, 2 burp clothes, a baby hooded towel, 2 baby washcloths and a crib mattress cover. To belisted for donation.

33. A broken carry-on, dropped in the recycling hof.

34-60, and 61: 26 foam letters :-), and a memory game to be left outside with a Zu Verschenk sign

Bags and more (6-11)

• 6-9. Bags given to my daughter's kita. I won't count the many plastic bags seen here, in the canvas bag- I accumulate them and pass them along to the kita on a standard basis. I'm counting the 4 permanent bags, including the canvas one in which they are packed, which I passed on today (after asking if they would like them).

• 10. I wouldn't normally count this (plastic container), but since I have had it here in Germany, brought from the US, for 4 years and emptied it out into another, permanent gift wrap container, I will.

• 11. One might think this was normal trash, but since the girls held onto it for 6 months, removal counts as decluttering.
  

Starting 2012

Starting the year off with a reinvigorated decluttering drive, I thought that I would take a page from another blogger who wants to de-access 2012 items in 2012.

I'm not going to make rules as stringent as hers, because this blog is meant to hearten me as I deal with what seems a never-ending accumulation of possessions: there are 4 of us and we have a small place. My goal is to strengthen my resolve by looking at what I have removed from my surroundings while sometimes feeling as if what I do will never end nor improve. But it clearly does.

So, I think I will count some of my discards, but I certainly won't count every item in a pile of paper. I won't count normal recycling and consumables, but I will count what I consider abnormal ones.

• 1. Recycled paper, but not just ordinary inserts, also menus and other long-term paper pulled while clearing drawers.
• 2. Recycled paper, including instruction manuals (in Spanish as well!) for cameras I no longer have, associated ownership materials, business survey research materials and magazines- which I will include because I accumulate them until I actually read them (and get them in chunks, rather than at news stands).
• 3. Recycled fabric- clothing and other cloth items stained, burned and used up.

• 4. Annoyingly chintzy, came in a children's magazine, toy that I persuaded my daughter to part with:-).