More Decluttering In 2020

We have been tackling a few more areas in our home lately.  A couple weekends ago I made another pass through my bedroom closet.  I found a few small items I no longer wished to hang onto, but the biggest thing I purged was my Miche bag and all of its covers.  I'd been on the fence for quite some time as to whether or not to let it go.  I decided in January to really use it for the month and see how it went.  Turns out I don't really care for the bag and I kept catching the edges of the covers and knocking them off the bag.  I gathered it all up and added it to the new donation pile we have started.

The next category we've started tackling is childhood toys.  I've gone through all of my own leftovers from childhood and kept only those items that mean the most to me, however it has been a very long time since we went through the girls things.  This weekend we pulled from storage the bins of dolls they had and went through everything.  It made a huge mess in the living room and took two days to get through the bulk of it.  We are still working on it.  The girls were amazing and they opted to get rid of all the Barbie stuff and most of the other dolls.  Some things went right into the donation pile while others have been photographed and are now offered up on eBay.  We washed dolly clothes, cleaned dolls and groomed them so everything is nice, clean and ready for its next home.  The girls hope to make some extra cash to offset some of the expenses we had last year.  Fingers crossed that these items sell.

Selling items rather than donating does tend to slow down the process quite a bit, however we are pretty much at the end of the major purging projects so we have the time.  Plus it is only February and with the wet and chilly weather not much else is going on around here as far as projects go.  Along with the girl's toys I'm still working on the old inventory from my shop that has been stored out in our garage.  I'm working on getting it all listed to sell and so far have sold most of what has already been listed so I am optimistic about selling off the rest.  I decided to only list a few things to test the waters and now I am ready to get the rest of this stuff sold and out of here.  I will also be donating quite a bit of this stuff too as selling it all would take an enormous amount of time and effort.

Before

After - the pile on the left is shredding

Last month I went through all of our "important" papers and old tax returns.  I was able to purge quite a bit and reduce a lot of what I had been keeping.  I've said it before and I will say it again.  Paper clutter is the bane of my existence.  It drives me nuts!!  But when I can shred, burn or recycle a huge pile of it I feel so good.  Like I've accomplished something really spectacular.  Paper clutter really weighs me down.

On the right is the Miche bag and covers

Cleaned, dusted and re-organized.  Ahhhh.

Purging and decluttering is a never ending process.  I have to keep at it all the time so things do not take over and become overwhelming.  Even a quick five minutes to go through the junk drawer, a stack of papers on my desk or a quick pass through a cupboard or drawer can make a huge difference.  I refuse to let stuff take over.