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!

As I was packing

for a weekend away, what could be better than getting rid of a broken suitcase?

This is not only de-cluttering, but also a comment on something I really miss: specifically, American-style customer service.

An odd assortment

I've been hanging on to this dress since it was given to T1 as a hand-me-down. When it was given to me, it had already had the damage you see that shifted the blue to pink. I'm not certain if it was light exposure or chemicals, but the dress had actually never been worn. It was so cute that both girls have actually used it as dress up material. But now that they are growing to the point where it would have actually been wearable, it clearly isn't. So out it goes.
A hand-me-down bikini that T1 isn't comfortable wearing. It's a little plasticky. Into the donation bag it went.

Double duty.

A post pertinent to Germany that fits in so well here.

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.