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: Dead Food

Target: The refrigerator

Casualties:

• Jars of jam and jelly of unknown age.
• Chinese takeout of known but excessively advanced age.
• Tandoori sauce of...you get the idea.
• Barbecue sauce.
• Cookie dough.
• Furry leftovers.
• An inch of olive oil.
• Half an inch of honey.

Dead Food: Trashed!

Photograph: By Liftarn. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Kitchen Cleanout

Cleaning continues. Insufficient decluttering continues. Ah, well.

Target: Kitchen

Casualties:

• Rock-hard brown sugar.
• All those Chinese takeout soy and mustard packets.

Useless Food: Trashed!

Photo: By Lienyearcck. 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: The Den

We're on vacaaaaaaaaation! Woohoo!

For some reason, vacation generally means Deep Tidying. Deep Tidying means that I actually go through entire shelves and drawers and baskets and boxes, and even dust them. Oh, my.

Target: My den. My den is a little room about the size of a medium-sized bathroom. In this room, I store a large percentage of my books. And some fabric and patterns. And my jewelry and scarves. And perfume and decant bottle and funnels and baggies and atomizers. And the boxes for every perfume bottle I own. And some vases.

It's pretty orderly after this evening's tidying, and actually has some (very small) empty spaces on the shelves. I will shortly put up Christmas lights. Yay!

Casualties:

• A half-trashcan of miscellaneous papers, receipts, wrappings, cardboard boxes. Normally I wouldn't count these, but since they've been lurking in the depths of the den for months, I'm decreeing that they count.

Pending:

• One paperback
• One children's book

Both in the pile of books to sell or give away.

Trash: Trashed!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Misc

Panic! Panic! Eighteen minutes! Panic! Something's gotta goooooo!

Target: Hunter gatherer again.

Casualties:

• A nylon compressible backpack thingie with a shredded seam.
• Expired echinacea and Claritin.
• Free Gift With Purchase toothpaste of unknown age.
• A Pack O Bobby Pins. 
• Empty pill bottle.

Lessons Learned:  

• Start decluttering earlier in the day?

Guilt Rejection:

• "You could use those..." Oh, never mind. I can't dredge up guilt about bobby pins or unrepairable nylon. I just can't.

Misc Misc: Trashed!

Photo: By Shakko. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Bathroom Potions

So, let's get right to the decluttering, shall we? Only seventeen minutes to get the DCOTD done!

Target: Bathroom

Casualties:

• Five empty Bath Potion bottles.
• A deodorant stick with an intolerably perky fragrance.
• A lovely and expensive jar of hand cream in one of my favorite scents that has gone bad.
• More stale hand cream, and still more stale hand cream, and a stale Bee Bar. (What's a Bee Bar? Solid hand cream.)  
• Three Free Gifts With Purchase of... hand cream. OK, hand cream, face cream, and body cream. What's the difference? I suspect that I'm supposed to know.
• Free Gifts With Purchase of makeup, powder, lipgloss, blush, and "fine liquid hand wash". Oh, and exfoliator. And lip plumper. I'm keeping one concealer stick. That's as close as I ever get to actually using makeup.

Lessons Learned:  

• I don't use hand cream until the skin on my hands is threatening to peel off, usually only when it's the depths of winter and I'm cooking a lot. So I need to stop buying the expensive stuff, and if I unwarily accept a Free Gift With Purchase, give it away fast if I'm ever going to.
• I don't use makeup at all. Same as above. (So how, you may ask, do I get all those Free Gifts With Purchase if I don't Purchase makeup? It's the perfume.)

Guilt Rejection:

• "You paid good money for that hand cream!" Yeah, and it's stale. The end.
• "You could have donated those to a woman's shelter." There was a Cathy cartoon about diapers that ended with the phrase 'Buy disposable and send a contribution to Greenpeace.' If I feel guilty about not supporting a women's shelter, I will write a check.

Cosmetic jumble: Trashed!

Picture: Wikimedia Commons.