68 Things I NO Longer Need

Yesterday I quickly gathered up the items that were sitting and waiting to be delivered to our Salvation Army and Liv and I dropped them off just before they closed for the day.  It’s getting easier and easier to get this taken care of.   I don’t know why exactly it’s become easier; maybe I’ve just developed a proper routine where this is concerned.

Here are the 68 items that can now go live with a new family!

Magazines.  Always, my magazines.

Liv went through her vast, and I mean vast Barbie collection – about four YEARS ago – and decided what she would keep for posterity.  None of these made the cut.  And they have been sitting in my bedroom in a box in the closet ever since.  You seriously don’t want to see my closet right now.  I had no idea that they were there.  Side note:  those really tall, bald Barbie’s make me think of the alien from Prometheus.  Yes, I know not all of these are BARBIES, but all dolls that look like this are Barbie’s at my house.  Just like all soft drinks are Coke.

Or these.  Some little kid will be happy. 

I am still working my way through the piles and piles of clothes that Liv discarded when she had her last major clean out.

It’s so much easier at tax time if I donate them a few bags at a time.  Do you itemize?  It can be overwhelming if I donate it all at once. 

More clothes!

And last but not least.   A pad of grocery lists.  I find that most of the time it takes me longer to shop with a prepared list like this because there is so much on it that I don’t need.  I just keep myrunning list in a notebook from week to week.

My wireless mouse.  I hated this thing.  I bought a new mouse with a cord and now this one can go drive someone else insane with the number of batteries it eats.

Okay, that’s what I hauled away yesterday.  Are you getting rid of things you no longer need?  I would love to hear about it!

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Declutter With Me: My Nightstand

As we have already established over here in Tracie-land, I am a piler.  If it’s a flat surface, my brain takes that as an opportunity to find something to put on it.  My nightstand is a perfect example.  I have things on it that I actually want on there and that are useful to me.  My lamp, an art piece that Liva did for me, a book that I’m currently reading as my go to sleep book, you get the idea.  But I also have deposited things that have no business being there because all they are doing is calling to other things that have no business being there either.

By the way, if you know where you can buy antique keys (the metal piece that hold the mirror onto the dresser) please let me know.  I bought this little dresser at my Goodwill about three years ago for $7.00.  Can you believe that?  If it was for sale today they would put $50.00 on it.  When they loaded it into my car, they lost one of the keys, so for the past three years, it’s had a screw in it.  I’ve already checked my local mom and pop places, my True Value and all of the antique stores around here.  Never mind!  I asked Mr. Google as my uncle Wyatt says and found a place that I think might have one!

Isn’t this great?  Liv did this for one of her watercolor projects in Art this year and she gifted it to me when she got it back.

I also love this guy.  I have no idea how he survived the kid’s childhoods, but he did.  I think we found him at a flea market years and years ago.  It reminded me of the one that we had when I was in Kindergarten.   I cannot imagine making something like that with 25 five-year-olds, can you?  My Kindergarten teacher was the best.  Love you, Mrs. Crabtree!

Yes, that’s a baseball bat in the corner of my bedroom.  Don’t you keep a baseball bat by your bed?

You all know my love of baskets, especially baskets that have lids.  One of the downfalls about them though is that you can close it and forget about it.  Well.  I closed this one before Christmas.  Let’s see what I haven’t missed.

Good grief.  I have looked everywhere for my change purse.  Except in this basket. 

A shoehorn, candy, purse-sized hand sanitizers, a bookmark, a shell that belongs in Liv’s room and Barbie accessories which haven’t been played with in – oh – eight or so years.  Oh, and a string, since that really belongs there.

My missing change purse, pens, my fake leather pen holder that holds my pens so they are not lost in the abyss, tissues that belong in my purse, a flashlight I’ve been searching for and the screws to hold my footboard onto my bed frame.  Yet another project that needs to be completed.

The sleeping mask that I obviously haven’t missed,  two different body lotions that I thought Liv had confiscated, my cocoa butter petroleum jelly I use as lip balm that I have turned the house upside down looking for and a reed diffuser that I bought in July 2017!

Last but not least, my flashlight that has a dual purpose that I thought was gone forever and a one hundred dollar bill.  Do places where you shop take $100 dollar bills?  Even our McDonald’s won’t take them – actually I don’t think they will take $50’s either.  I’ve had this one lurking around since before Christmas, needing to take it to the bank and have it changed out for smaller bills because we literally can’t spend it.  Isn’t that crazy?  I could spend it at our Wal-mart, since they are the ones who gave it to me in the first place as cash back, but it’s just not worth the hassle I would go through.  You would think I was trying to use a coupon!  Heaven forbid.  But that’s a completely different story.  * FYI – don’t try to use coupons at Wal-mart.  *

So I’m sorry basket, but you’ll have to go live at someone else’s house now.  Have you decluttered anything lately?  Did you find something that you thought was gone forever?  Do tell!

Here are the books that are part of my To Be Read pile in no particular order:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe

Ask Suze….About Wills and Trusts by Suze Orman

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

Calamities & Catastrophes by Derek Wilson

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler

Beautiful Creatures by Garcia & Stohl

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Have you read any of these?  What should I hurry to read next?

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150 Things I NO Longer Need

I spent a couple of hours this past week gathering together things that I knew needed to go live with someone else.  Liv also had an itch to clear out some more things from her closet.  So I hauled it all down to our local Salvation Army this morning.  Where they were having a YARD SALE of all things.  It was really bizarre.  The store was open to customers, but in the back parking lot they had stuff piled everywhere and were hosting a yard sale.

If I had to take a wild stab in the dark as to WHY they were having a yard sale, it would be that the store is literally overflowing with stuff.  I’ve noticed over the past year or so that my local thrift stores have started to price their items like they think they are a retail store.  You will notice on my blog that I have actually bought very, very little from thrift stores over the past nine months.  The number one reason is that I am truly conscientious about what I bring into our home now.  I mean come on, this post is about me hauling stuff out of our house!  The pricing, however, is another deterrent.

Here is a perfect example:

Now I don’t know who has their hands on the pricing gun at my local Goodwill, but when someone can buy a brand new Garnier styling gel for $3.42 and have it shipped to their front door, I don’t know why they would pay $2.99 for one that has been partially used.  Especially when I can things like this for practically free.

Granted, I give things like this to my salvation army all the time.  If I try a shampoo or something that no one likes, I’ll take it to Vicky who runs our store and she’ll put it up front at the checkout desk with a price of about $0.25 to $0.50 on it so someone else can try it to see if their family will like it.  It freaks Denton out, but I just think it’s so wasteful to throw something like that away just because we didn’t like it.  I love to go through that box at the checkout desk because there is usually nail polish in it that someone has tried once and didn’t like.  I love finding $30.00 Chanel nail polish in the box.

Anywho, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant from me about thrift store prices.  On with the stuff we gave away.

Shirts that Liv decided she could live without.

More clothes that she doesn’t want to have around anymore.

I cannot believe that she gave up her Harry Potter shirts.  Or her Mortal Instruments one either, but with that one, I believe that shrinkage from the dryer was the culprit.

Dresses.  Liv hates dresses and I don’t blame her.

Poor Little Mermaid.

More hated dresses.

And, even more dresses.

I loved that canister, but it turned my brown sugar into cement.  No matter how much I love something, it has to do its job or it has to go away.

Glasses that don’t bounce do not live long at my house.  So these survivors can live out the rest of their lives with someone else.  Goodbye, beautiful butter mold.  It’s easier for me to keep my butter in the original wax paper it comes in.

Yet another food processor.  I tried to give this one to my brother, but he said no thanks, LOL.  This bread box is lovely, but my family thought it was invisible.  I would find the bread sitting in front of it every single day.  I hope someone else can figure out its true purpose.

You guys.  I am a cookbook hoarder.  Seriously.  I have at least 400 cookbooks.  And if you follow my posts about what we eat each week……well you know that I am not using them.  I gave away two today!  Yay for me. My magazine collection.  I have no problem with donating these each month when I’m done with them.

More.

And even more.

Two prints that were in the frames that I bought.  Someone will enjoy them.

Last but not least, a cheese plate that I have used for the past 15 years to hold up more plates.  Really.

Okay, that’s what I hauled away today.  Are you getting rid of things you no longer need?  I would love to hear about it!  Also, have your thrift stores lost their minds about pricing too?  Inquiring minds want to know.

 

 

Clean and Organize the….. Spice Cabinet

My spice cabinet was out of control.  I would reach for something only to discover that I didn’t have any.  This is terrible news when you need garlic powder to make your homemade garlic bread.  Especially when you can’t SEE everything.  Things were hidden behind other things and it has been utter chaos.  Time to take care of this monstrosity.

After taking everything out and putting like with like, I discovered that I had five (FIVE) containers of minced onions.  No garlic powder, but plenty of minced dried onions.

Several years ago I put some of my most used spices in small half pint mason jars (does anyone else have a longing to go watch Little House on the Prairie right now?).  I put labels on the tops and left it at that.  I loved having my spices in these jars because they will hold the entire contents of most spices you buy in the store, but I could never see at a glance what was what.

I laid ALL of them out so that I could see exactly how much of everything I had and what I needed to add to my grocery list for next time.  See!  Why do I have two containers of Old Bay?  We do not have low country boils here at our house, so what am I going to use this for?  Do any of you have any tried and true recipes using this?  Send them my way.

After determining what I actually had and what I needed to add, I scrubbed out the cabinet.  How do these things get so filthy?  I’m not preparing food inside this cabinet so I just don’t understand how it could be so grungy. 

Then I transferred everything into my beautiful little jars.  I seriously love them.  They are a great size, each jar has a slightly different pattern, but still uniform enough to fool your eye until you look closely.    And they bounce when you drop them on the floor.  This is important at my house. I used these labels for the sides of the jars.

Printable labels from saltandpaper.com | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Aren’t they lovely?

All of the bulk items go onto the top shelf where they are accessible but not in my way and the middle shelf are things that I can’t put into my jars like the maple syrup that Liv puts on her eggs.  That’s the only way for years that I could get her to eat eggs after her six hour allergy test when she was ten.  I’ll write a post about that later.

First I tried to arrange all of my spices in one of the small drawers next to my stove.  It would be convenient, but it was way too small.  I also did not like the quick labels I made for the tops.

Then I decided that I needed to utilize one of my big drawers because I have so many spices.  I dragged the three pans I was storing in here out and put them into another cabinet and cleaned everything.

I found this vinyl liner at my local Dollar Tree.  It is amazing.  It’s slightly padded and it keeps the jars from sliding about.      Next I wanted clearer labels for the tops of my jars. 

$1.00 for 60 at the Dollar Tree.

Now!  It’s not perfect but we all know that’s not going to happen at my house.  And I know that it will evolve like always.  But, I am very happy with it.  Hayden laughed because I am a control freak and put everything into alphabetical order.  It just makes sense to my brain.  Now I don’t have to spend ten minutes looking for the garlic powder.  I know it’s in the G section.

I can finally check this off my to-do list.  Yay!  How do you store your spices?

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184 More Things I NO Longer Need in My Home.

I finally made it out of my house with all of the items that my family has been stepping over for the last two weeks.  I’m glad it’s all gone and the Salvation Army is happy to accept it.

I honestly feel like I should be running out of things to pass along to other people.  But, every time I open a drawer, or the kitchen cupboards I find more things that I just don’t want to move aside or clean anymore.

Things like this digital scale that has never been out of its box.  Yes, it’s an awesome thing.  A thing that someone else may actually use.

I have three food processors.  Seriously.  Am I going to need to make enough coleslaw for 200 guests at my house anytime soon?  And if I do need to do this, will not ONE food processor do the trick?

Which one of these things is not like the other?  My sheers have been mismatched for the past 10 years.  This past week, I updated them and hallelujah they all match now!  No, it won’t save the world or create world peace, but matching sheers in my living room makes me happy.

70 magazines.  They will go to a good home.  What the Salvation Army doesn’t sell, they will donate to the schools for projects or the nursing homes in the area.

Glasses that do not bounce on my floors don’t live long at my house.  Don’t ask me how many of those I have destroyed so far.

Multiples upon multiples.

I have finally started to cull out my cookbooks.  Yes, it was physically painful, but it’s necessary.  Don’t worry, I still have around 400 more.

Ask me how many times I’ve used that electric can opener in the past three years.  That would be a big fat zero.

More and more extras.  How many crock pots do you own?  I’m down to one large and one small.

That concludes this weeks edition of Tracie Becomes Less of a Hoarder.  Tune in next time to see what else I’ve found to send away to enjoy life with someone else!

Have you been decluttering too?  Are you down to a manageable number of things or are you a secret hoarder of crock pots too?

Why Can’t I Throw Away Garbage?

I have been on my decluttering journey for over three six years now.  You would think that I have this down to a science.  But I still find myself agonizing over the stupidest things.  Things you shouldn’t agonize over.  Things that are obvious trash and need to go into the garbage. Things that cannot be donated to go live a more wonderful life with someone else.  Because they are trash.  Things like this:

That my friends, is a Princess House, 2 quart, made in France, pot.  I loved this pot.  It served me very, very well for years now.   And I will miss it because it did exactly what it was supposed to do superbly.

Earlier this week, I noticed that it had a crack on the outside.  Not a very big crack, but I knew that I couldn’t use it again.  I wouldn’t take the chance that it would explode and kill someone.  It could happen.  Maybe.  Probably not but I wasn’t taking a chance.  But, I didn’t put it in the garbage either.

I warned all of the family not to use it.  “Hey, that middle pot has a crack in the side of it.  Don’t use it because it could explode and kill you”.   But I still didn’t put it in the garbage.  Why?!?

Is it because I have the whole set?  Now it won’t be a complete set?  I don’t think so.  I have other things that I know aren’t a complete set and it doesn’t keep me up at night.

Is it because they cost the earth?  Nope, because you know me!  I didn’t pay the earth for them and it didn’t bother me one whit to use and enjoy them since they only cost me $12.00 for ALL of them.

I seriously think it’s because I truly have a difficult time throwing things in the garbage.  Not garbage garbage.  Used tissues.  Bags that have had meat marinating in them.  Things like that go straight into the garbage bin.

But, you knew there was a but, right?  I have a very difficult time throwing things away that I have convinced myself that might have another useful purpose to someone.

Recycle is one thing.  I have absolutely no problem every day putting things into the recycle.  That milk jug is going to recycle heaven to be repurposed into lawn furniture or a piece of playground equipment.  That cardboard box from our beloved Coke is going to become a cereal box, or writing paper.  Hundreds of times a day I toss stuff into the recycle bin and never bat an eye.  That might possibly be an exaggeration.

Anywho, I have come to the conclusion that I just have to buckle down and get over myself.  Some things cannot be recycled.  (Ceramic and heat treated cookware are just a few of them.  They can ruin an entire batch of recycled glass because they don’t melt at the same rate as container glass – I checked!)  And they are garbage.  Therefore they need to go into the trash.    Like my well loved and well used Princess House pot, since when I picked it up to move it to get to another pot that didn’t have a crack in the side, it broke and sliced my finger almost off.  That too might possibly be a slight exaggeration.  It was really deep and did bleed for a couple of hours though, and aren’t you glad I didn’t show you that?

Do you suffer from these dilemma’s too?  Do you want to own a lovely set of Princess House pot’s?  Here is a link where you can still buy them.  I will caution you that they do cost the earth, but if you are looking to invest in beautiful and functional pots and pans I love these.  Just make sure they don’t have cracks in them before you pick them up.

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180 More Things I NO Longer Need in My Home.

We are well into the new year and last week (02.10.18) was the first time this year that I took a load of stuff to our Salvation Army.  I can’t even remember what it was!  Let’s see.

Oh yes.  You can tell it won’t be missed, since I didn’t even recall what it was until I saw the pictures.  The white boxes have our old door hardware in them.  There is nothing wrong with the old doorknobs, I just updated ours and I love the new ones.  I’ll do a post about it soon!

A waterfall thingy.  It’s beautiful and the cats loved it, they used it as a water fountain, but the sound it made drove me crazy.  A mirror that Batman would.not.leave.alone.  He constantly wanted to use it as a scratcher.  Never mind that we have at least eleven more throughout the house.  Lot’s of other things we don’t need anymore.

I just noticed that if you look into the mirror you can see where I pulled all of our carpet out of the living room.  Yay for progress!

This is everything that was in the basket.

Lot’s and lot’s of clothes.

Socks, socks and more socks.

Magazines that have already been read.  Now someone else can enjoy them.

More miscellaneous things.  Liv has had her braces off for over a year, two years? and I still keep finding more bands!!!  Why in the world do schools buy strange things like beer cozy’s to give out at prom?  These are the questions that boggle my mind.  What a waste of money.

Okay, that’s it for the first donation of the year!  Have you been to your donation center lately?  What did you decide to give away to make more room for things you love?  Do you even remember?  Inquiring minds need to know!

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A Place for Everything. The Shred Pile.

It’s that time of year isn’t it?  Everywhere I look someone is talking about how to organize and clean, or purge things.  Which I love.  But, sometimes things can be a little or a lot vague.

As we all know, I need a plan to follow or nothing is going to be accomplished.  I can say all day long, I need to organize all those papers……  Unless I have a direction and a objective for getting those papers organized, I might as well just leave them sitting in the pile.

So!  I thought I’d share one of my practices that keep me from being buried alive by all of the paperwork that comes into our house.

I have a large filing cabinet that I keep in my living room.  It looks like a piece of furniture and I love it.  It boggles my Mama’s mind.  She says I’m just like my Papaw Calvin.  One of the many, many reasons I loved that man.  He was a keeper and a filer like me.  That’s where anything that I need to keep ends up.  Tax paperwork, school records, the last years bills that I still get in paper form, things like that.

Someone very close to me told me that they don’t keep their month to month bills.  They look at the amount, pay the bill and throw the paperwork away.  That gives me heart palpitations.  What if your next bill comes and it’s wrong!  What if you need to call and give the people in Whoville a piece of your mind because they overcharged you for whatzits that month?!?  These are the things that can keep me up at night.  I’ll keep my monthly bills for a year thank you very much.

Eventually those things go into the shred pile.  Especially if it has an account number on it.  I can’t imagine why someone would want my water bill with the account number, but still.

Also, I don’t throw anything away with our name and address on it.  I can only imagine some crazed mail stealer waiting for me to throw away a piece of mail with our name and address on it so they can use it for nefarious purposes.  Denton constantly reminds me that our name and address is listed in the local phone book.  I don’t care.  I’m not taking any chances.  Anything with our name and address, anything with an account number, all of those things go into the shred pile.

My shred pile used to overwhelm me.  I had a beautiful piece of furniture to store all of my records in, but the shred pile just sat and stared at me from across the room.  Who has time to shred things all day long?  Not me.  So I put them into a pile to accumulate and I would shred all of them at once.  Usually every couple of months.  Sigh…..  I decided to do something about it.

My shred pile used to sit in that beautiful tray that now houses our air purifier.  And it would grow and grow and become the equivalent of Mt. Everest in papers that needed to be disposed of. So I put them into a container.  Once the container is full, I need to take care of it.  It is also hidden to the left of the filing cabinet.  It’s still very handy to shove all of the papers into, but out of direct site lines of the general public in my house.

See? You don’t even notice my pile o’ papers, do you?

Do you have a shred pile at your house too, or do you just chunk yours in the garbage like Denton does when I’m not looking?

104 + More Things I NO Longer Need in My Home.

With the holidays, everything has been completely off kilter…in a wonderful way.  We’ve slowed way, way down, and just been together.  It’s been awesome.

I did however, right before Christmas take another load of stuff we no longer need to our Salvation Army.  Want to see?

Some of my Food Network magazines.  I absolutely love them, but I almost never refer back to these and they were collecting dust.  And, my library has them if I ever need a specific recipe from one of them.  Also, there is this thing called the internet……  It wasn’t painful at all to let them go.

Magazines that I read in the last week or so.

Perfume samples that came in the mail.  I knew that I would never use them, so I am sending them off to someone who will.

More books that I know I will never read again.

This past summer I found myself a beautiful little tree that holds my Christmas cards, so all of these can go to someone else’s house.

I cleared out another hidey hole and found four more lunch boxes and an insert.  Liv also took one of her porcelain dolls off the stand to sit on her shelf and declared that she would never want to use it, so off it goes.

In the same hidey hole I found glue traps.  I’ve never bought glue traps in my life.  Which means that these have been in there since the previous owners had our house twelve years ago.   Peppermint mocha anyone?  No one here will drink it.  Random things someone might find useful.

Another breadmaker that was an extra.  I’m down to one!  Yay!

Something that Liv used for a jewelry stand, with jewelry she no longer wanted or needed. 

A crystal tray, a head massager, perfume and miscellaneous.

Bras, books, magazines, magazine holders and pajamas.

And last but not least, a giant candle holder.  It had layers of dried beans in it when I bought it, but, it got knocked over and they spilled and mixed EVERYWHERE.  I hope someone will enjoy it!

Well, that’s it for this weekly edition last weeks things I NO longer need.  I am behind as usual!  Did you clear out any of your clutter last week?  How did you do for the year?  I’ll write it all up later this week.  This is one of my goals that I didn’t fail at this year!  Yeehaw!

 

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88 More Things I NO Longer Need in My Home.

I had Denton help me to haul away last weeks goodies again.  Nothing too big for me to haul, but we had a bunch of errands to take care of and it just make more sense.  He’s still never happy to visit a thrift store, but he will tolerate it for very short stints.  Is your significant other the same way?  There’s nothing more fun to me than to find a thrift store or a yard sale to see if I can find a treasure!

Anywho, this is what doesn’t fit, we’ve already read, or we just plain don’t need anymore.  So, it’s going to give someone else joy now at their house.

My beautiful city mugs.  They just don’t hold enough coffee people!  Apparently, we need at least 12 ounces or people are going to melt down.  Hopefully someone who can tolerate REFILLING their mug will give these a loving home.

A milk glass light fixture.  You know my love of milk glass, but this just didn’t fit anywhere in my house.  I started to list it on Etsy, but inside where you will never see it there is a big chip.  Not worth it to me to list, but someone else will take it home gladly for the couple of dollars they will put on it at my local Salvation Army.  Two Pepsi-Cola glasses.  I am a Coca-Cola girl, but I love the shape of these.  Well, I started out with twelve of them.  Ahem.  They are very fragile and now are going to live with someone who is not as destructive as we are.

A vintage lamp that started out as a set.  Not really.  They are identical except for the fact that this one is etched with grapes.  The other one that I love is etched with flowers and leaves.  I don’t know why I dislike the grape motif so much, but I dislike it intensely.  I have some milk glass in my collection that was gifted to me and I really, really don’t like it.  It sits there staring at me, laughing because I don’t have the heart to get rid of it yet.  Yes, I have issues.  Moving on…..

Three more sets of Liv’s funky footed pajamas that she says, “Don’t feel right”.  I know what she means.  Off they go.

Six paperback books that were absolute garbage.  I’m not even going to show you the author or title.  That’s how bad they were.  My reading time is precious people, stop printing garbage that takes up my mental time and space!

The first of many lamp shades.  I swear these things are procreating in the closet at night when we sleep. 

Otherwise, how do I keep finding more and more of them?!?  Every time I clean out another hidey hole, I find more!

Odds and ends from drawers and more drawers. 

More odds and ends. 

Magazines that have been read and books that I tried to read and seriously couldn’t get into. 

More clothes that “don’t fit right” or just plain don’t fit anymore.  A really annoying photo box.  There are no separators, so you just throw things into the box and it all gets irritatingly jumbled.

Well, that’s it for this weekly edition last weeks things I NO longer need.  I am behind as usual!  Did you clear out any of your clutter last week?

 

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