DCOTD:

Sunday there was much tidying, including the eviction of a very large population of glass bottles that had been hanging around for weeks.

Target: General tidying

Casualties:

• Wine bottles, ginger beer bottles, beer beer bottles, Coke bottles, root beer bottles. Glassfest!

Bottles: Recycled!

Photo: By Paulame. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Tidying away the tree

The tree went away today, and all the ornaments into their tidy little boxes. It's sad, but there's more space in the living room.

Target: The Christmas decorations.

Casualties:

• Old tissue, broken ornaments, bent hangers, saved wrapping paper, etc., etc.

Christmas scraps: Trashed! (And recycled.)

Photo: By SOLOXSALERNO. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Christmas Chaos Again

Christmas isn't cleaned up yet.

Target: Packaging, all over the house.

Casualties:

• A stack of boxes and the packaging material (bubble wrap, those puffy things, etc.) in them. Flattened and recycled, and the plastic stuff trashed.

Packaging: Recycled! (Well, and trashed.)

Photo: By HornM201. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Post-Christmas Miscellaneous

Not much excitement, but it's stuff gone:

Target: Post-Christmas chaos.

Casualties:

• Christmas package boxes.
• A gift bag. We tend to keep these until summer and then declutter them; this time, I decided to eliminate the delay.
• Yams and duck and brussels sprouts eaten. Seriously. We have a bad habit of keeping leftovers until they turn furry. So I'm giving myself credit for eating these before the fur arrived.

Pending:

• Three self-help type books.

Lessons Learned:  

• If you know from experience that it's going to go, dump it before it gets dusty or furry or buried deep in a box. It's much easier that way.

Guilt Rejection:

• I've never yet found gift bags when it was time to use them. So, feh. Toss 'em.

Boxes: Recycled!
Gift Bags: Trashed!
Food: Eaten!

Photo: Kelvin Kay. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Christmas cleaning continues

Target: That last messy room.

I should note that when I say "last", I don't mean that the decluttering effort is done just as I start the blog. Far from it. We've done a lot of decluttering, but there's still tons of stuff in the garage and "attic" just waiting to expand into the house.

And the storage areas of the house are all full to the gills. My goal is to thin them to at least thirty percent empty at least once a year. That way, they can slowly fatten up between thinnings, without spilling over into other areas.

Casualties:

• Bunches of Christmas light boxes. I never fold the lights up all nice into the box at the end of the season anyway, so I'll just stuff the lights into Ziplocs at the end of the season.
• Boxes from flats of bottled drinks that we've been keeping junk in. Apparently I thinned the junk sometime in the past few months, because I was able to compress a bunch of half-empty boxes into full boxes and break down and recycle the resulting empties.

That's about all. None of this feels like "real" decluttering, because it's packaging, but, well, it had volume, it wasn't everyday trash, and it's gone.

Packaging: Trashed and recycled.

Photo: Copyright BrokenSphere. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Miscellaneous again

I spent much of today cleaning and tidying, without a lot of focus on decluttering. The master bedroom and the back room are tidy and dusted and draped with little white lights. The kitchen is decent, though more work is needed tomorrow. The tidiness of my den and the living room have been maintained. I'm one room and one bathroom away from Christmas tidiness.

But, again, not a lot of decluttering focus. I had to study the overflowing trashcans to see if I dumped anything that qualifies.

Target: Everywhere

Casualties:

• Bubble wrap, brown paper, and cardboard that's been packaging something that's been waiting to be unpackaged and used. Unpackaged and used happened. So does it count? I decree that it does.
• Um... well... that's about it. Oh, there was other packaging, and recycled soda bottles, and cardboard, but that's all normal everyday disposal. So I'm not counting it.

Packaging: Trashed and Recycled.

Photo: Smial. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Cardboard

So what are the rules of this game? Does getting rid of recently arrived packaging count? Does getting rid of stuff count if I didn't do it all myself or it wasn't all mine?

I decree that anything counts if I know, from past experience, that that thing might sit around the house for a while. And if I helped at all in getting it out of the house. So, yes. I may raise my standards later. Or I may not.

Target: Garage

Casualties:

• A whole bunch of recently arrived cardboard boxes. Yes, Himself pushed to get them into the car trunk for recycling. I'm taking a share of the credit anyway. So there.

Boxes: Recycled!

Photo of papier mache masks by Doron. Wikimedia Commons.