One of the benefits of living in a city

We decided that there was no place in the apartment for this rather attractive clothes hamper, but I hate to discard something that still serves its purpose,a lthough no longer my own. So we put a note on it saying that we would discard it on Monday if no one wanted it and put it outside our building under the roof overhang (it's Berlin, it's raining).

It was gone within the hour. Win/win: someone has something to use and I don't need to add to the waste stream (although recycling of metal in Berlin is pretty easy)

Well Used

A decluttering post that is German-focused.

Gaily wrapped and passed along

I love re-gifting. We had another birthday party this weekend (finally one that was not ours) and I had the chance to regift something given to T1 three years ago (and carried along to Germany from the US in our container, never opened and never given to her).
Although I forgot to take a picture, inside the larger gift is a Barbie set of dress, shoes and bag: I'm not a Barbie fan (although I think the animated movies are in some cases very well done, I dislike the doll) and my girls always had more than enough costumes. The smaller package is new and is a Princess-themed school set, with calculator, ruler pencil sharpener, pencil and eraser.

Hand me downs

Going through another bag of hand me downs (for which I am always grateful), washing them all and examining them: T1 doesn't like these and they move along to the Kleiderspende.

Passing things along

When I was at Discworldcon it looked as if someone (perhaps Sir Terry) was unloading piles of DW novels in just about every language they had ever been pubbed in. The English were long gone, as were the French, so I grabbed Deutsche for the German (started with 2, but as the con progressed and they languished I took one of each— he's now on the second) and Polish for a friend here in Berlin. I've just passed the bag over but I thought I would share the covers: they are pretty great (though the Estonian and Latvian ones were also pretty nifty!).

On the walls

As we consider staying in Germany even longer, I am bringing some of the personal possessions that we left behind back in suitcases each time we visit the US. I always liked these two.

The Children's Room

One of the biggest issues in trying to decrease the clutter and chaos in my environment is that the kids are like entropy: they increase chaos wherever they are. This is actually the first weekend that we have spent home in the last 9 weeks so, to celebrate, we went through the children's bins and boxes and took out everything broken or used up or useless. A total of four bags.

In celebration, I reorganized their bookcase.