Another load of books gone

46/49 went

I'm up to 138 books taken from outside the door:-). I had thought we reached saturation point last week, bit was apparently because the sign said only "Bücher Zu Verschenken", not "Englische Zu Verschenken" and no Anglophones stopped to look.

 The coffe maker was left at a "Leave and Take" kiosk and went in 5 minutes (as we watched from the cafe across the street).

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

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.

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(unless I google some) but a lovely chrome garbage pail that would stick, annoyingly, and a vacuum cleaner that has been replaced by my (adored) Dyson stopped cluttering my hallway and were placed outside (with a note saying free to anyone) when the German went downstairs to grab a box of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.

Decluttering my Parents-in-Law's house

Here's a cross post.

Frugality

One of the traits we are trying to cultivate while decluttering is actually using the things we have and reducing as much as possible the number of new things we bring into the house.
Since we have a birthday party this weekend, I think we will have a bit of a setback, although I have told those who asked various add-ons that T2 might enjoy (eg, clothes for her standard sized doll) rather than new toys. Here on the left one sees the attitude of use up rather than bring in new applied to toothpaste (and no one who knows my clutter would believe how carefully I squeeze that toothpaste tube) and T1 with her pencils.
I actually think that's going too far and is effecting her handwriting, so I have taken them away and replaced them with new pencils. Nice thought, though!
On the right we see another of the tchotchke toys that come with magazines in this country: they break quickly and bring tears. I took this br0ken toy to recycling within a day of its arrival.

Clean teeth make the man?

What do I do with these? 4 electric toothbrushes, 2 for children, 2 for adults.

I have already discarded the heads, of course, but the brushes are perfectly fine: we have just upgraded to the "sonic" variety, after advice from my dentist. They work well, but I'm a sad case of extremely efficient calcium deposition and I need all the help that I can get.

I was also glad to be able to reduce the clutter in the bathroom by getting versions that allow different heads to be used with the same bases.

So, you can't donate used electronic at the places that I have looked– anyone know what can be done with them? There's always the recycling Hof, but it seems so wasteful.

Back in the game...

Today a pair of the husband's jeans went. They haven't been in shape to wear "on public" for a while and he considered just leaving them in the US, but T1 wanted the pockets for a craft project and so he brought them back (notice the missing pockets:)). Out they go.

With them go this pair of Regenstiefel (rainboots). We loved them, but one of the seams has given way, a damaged Princess jewelry case, and the half of a matryoshka tin, for which we can't find the other half.

More than an item a day while I was away...

This is part of what we "downsized" while clearing out our house in Westchester. A good number of these items were damaged through our tenants neglect in mitigating the effects of water in the basement. There are: water damaged end tables, swings, changing table chair, a grill that they rusted out somehow, some strange decorations, mildew damaged linens, lots of extraneous lumber we had floating about.

Some of the larger and better items aren't even visible here: we deliberately put them out several days before garbage pick up because there's an active "look through neighborhoods" attitude here and folks swing by and grab things.

A better swing and a kiddie seat went before pick up, as did a huge hanging chandelier (too large for my house) that had been given to me by a relative and never used.

Our prior tenants, in a gesture that I found amazingly typical, sold the Sienna minivan that we had sold to them, but left the 4 spare tires (with aluminum rims!) behind in the garage, with the extra running board we had given them (we had damaged and replaced one; they are only sold as a pair). I guess that whoever bought the minivan wouldn't pay as much as they wanted for the tires/rb, so they just left them for us to discard rather than toss them in. One of our garbage guys took them: at $100+ per rim, I hope he gets some $$$ for them (in addition to the tips we gave for the two extremely heavy pick up days).

There's more to come.