Addicted to Organization Tools

This is a drawer organizer that I was using to store BB's onesies. Now that he's more likely to wear shirts than onesies, I'm getting rid of it.

I'm also going to try not to buy any other organizational products again. I'm reading Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (and can I say how much I love the use of that odd-to-American-ears verb?), and one of her big rules is that you should not buy organizing tools. There are always things already in your home that you can repurpose as storage--so do so.

So, sayonara drawer organizer. Thank you for your service.* I hope you can bless another home now.



*That's another Marie Kondo recommendation--thanking your possessions as you get rid of them.

Easy Come Easy Go

I sent out a request for a bottle warmer among the local Mom groups back in September. I was going to be out of town for a conference for four days, and J needed to be able to heat up milk quickly for BB in the middle of night since Mom's Kitchen travels with me.

I never got a bottle warmer, but one mom suggested I use a mini crockpot filled with water--and in fact, I was welcome to the one she owned. She dropped it off to me a couple of days before my trip, and it worked great.

We no longer need the crockpot-come-bottle warmer, so I'm happy to release it into the wild (i.e. Goodwill).

Purple Shoe Diaries

I have a shoe problem.

Specifically, in my closet there is a proliferation of shoes that I have worn out/used up/run into the ground.

Running shoes are not made to last forever, and so once you have run your 300-500 miles in them, it's time to move on. I do the moving on okay (I generally buy myself a new pair of running shoes once a year)--I just have trouble with the ridding myself of the useless run-out pair.

That's because I think of all the resources that were used to create my disposable running shoes, and I'm horrified. I know that I can take my shoes to a Nike retailer for recycling, but we're remarkably short on Nike retailers around here, so I have shoes loitering in my closet for years at a time.

The ruffians.

This weekend, I noticed that my favorite daily wear shoes--a pair of purple sneakers that I have owned so long that I honestly cannot remember when or where I bought them--have given up the ghost. The sole is visibly removing itself from the body of the shoe, and I cannot abide a soleless shoe.

So, despite the fact that I have a horror of throwing out my used-up shoes, I marched them right into the rubbish bin:

I don't know if there is much that I can do to find perennial running shoes that could be worn and resoled for years without hurting my legs and joints, but there's no reason my daily wear shoes should be disposable.

I was thinking that I would try to replace my daily wear shoes with something from a company like Naot, which makes very high quality shoes that are made to be repaired and worn for years and years.

While that would not violate my rules--I would be replacing one pair of shoes with another--I realized that there was no need to buy something just because I was throwing something away. In my closet were these gems, which still have years of life in them:

I may still eventually buy a pair of Naot shoes to wear forever(ish) as my daily wear shoes, but it makes much more sense to completely use up the daily wear shoes I already own.

Minimalism for the financial win!

What have you decluttered today?

No, I Didn't Have to Do Anything Untoward to Earn These

Just call me Annie Liebowitz

Blogger conference in New Orleans + Children at home = (blurry) Mardi Gras beads proliferating in my house

Time to get rid of these before they multiply.

There Can Be Only One...

My aunt makes pottery, and several years ago she made lovely initial mugs for all of the adults in the family. LO was wanted to know where his L for LO mug was, and so I asked Robin to make one for him.

This arrived in the mail several weeks later, but Robin also told me that she really wasn't happy with how it turned out and would be making another--which arrived several weeks after the first.

As much as I love them both, LO prefers the second mug and we don't need two. Here's hoping another LO with the same first initial will enjoy drinking tea and cocoa out of this mug.

Why Did I Buy This, Again?

I wrote in it once.

Once!

In 2004.

Feh.

The Stuffed Toy Proliferation Problem

We don't buy them, and yet they multiply.


Neither kid has played with Mr. Walrus or Singey the Monkey in a looooooong time, and stuffed animals have never been particularly well-loved/played with in the first place. 

My thinking is, if they won't notice they're gone, they I can send them to Goodwill in good conscience. It's better to have a stuffed animal-lover actually enjoy them.

My Grandma's Books

Right before she passed away in 2009, my Grandma Betta discovered that she and I shared a taste for cheesy romance novels. I don't remember exactly how we ended up bonding over the predictable joys of Nora Roberts, but I remember sitting in the hospital with Grandma talking about how much we enjoyed particular trilogies written by our favorite guilty pleasure author.

She went home from the hospital after that visit very excited to package up her paperbacks and send them to me. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to do that before she passed away later that month.

But her daughter, my Aunt Robin, knew that Grandma really wanted me to have her books and made sure I got several boxes of them when I came back to town for Grandma's funeral.

When I got home, I carefully wrote "From the library of Arbetta Guy" in each paperback so that I would remember which ones had come to me from her.

I read all the Nora Roberts.

I tried to read several of the others, but many were simply not to my taste.

As much as it makes me sad, it's time to pass these books along to someone else who will read them. I don't need the books themselves to remember Grandma or the fun we had realizing we liked the same author. And my inscription in each book will let new readers know a little piece of my grandmother.

Well, This is Embarrassing...

I've got a ridiculous number of reusable grocery bags. Back when they first became a thing, I collected them and liked to go shopping with them ostentatiously hung over the edge of my cart, congratulating myself on my moral superiority compared to the lesser mortals using plastic and paper.

(I'm a little insufferable sometimes.)

In any case, I've purged several times, but I still have a lot. So, I'm going down to a half dozen, meaning I needed to ditch three.

Frankly, I'm thrilled to pieces to get rid of the one on the left. It was a swag bag I received at BlogHer 2012 from the retailer Eden Fantasy, which is just what it sounds like. (As for what came in the bag, I'm sure it's been shoved in the back of a drawer somewhere, and no, I will not be posting when I declutter it.)

I always forget that I have this bag--that loudly proclaims "Sexy & Smart" for all to see--until I'm actually in the check-out line and the cashier is placing my eggs in it. (And that's not a euphemism.) At which point I wonder how I could possibly forget the embarrassing bag that I've been meaning to get rid of for TWO YEARS.

Best to send it to Goodwill now, before LO and BB start reading (and getting mortified by Mom.)

I've Only Got Two Ears

After reading this post on the blog Becoming Minimalist about the joy of only owning your favorite of any particular item, I decided it was time to say goodbye to my backup earbuds:

They hurt my ears and the sound quality was for shite. Why was I keeping them again?

Alarming

This is my alarm clock. (And a spot where I need to touch up some paint, apparently.)

I have not used my alarm clock for its raison d'etre in several years. For at least four years, it has been unalarmed, which I'm sure it finds alarming.

No, this alarm clock has only served to give me middle-of-the-night panic attacks regarding how much time I have left to sleep.

Better to let it go to a luddite in need of an alarm. I imagine there is someone just coming to the idea of upgrading to an alarm clock since their professional knocker-upper is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Off to Goodwill you go, alarmer.

Goodbye Kitty

LOVE these shoes. But they hurt my feet, and I never wear them.

Sometimes minimalism hurts, but toe blisters hurt more.

"You Can Just Hem It and Wear It For Parties..."

 
To be sure, my sister NEVER actually suggested this about my bridesmaid dress for her wedding in 2009. It was me thinking that I could wear this bad boy again sometime that prompted me to keep it for five years.

Off to the consignment shop she goes.

I've got lovely pictures of that lovely day.

A Threefer for My Second Day

I discovered after I published my inaugural post that I, in fact, lied to you in it.

We had four spatulas.

I had totally forgotten about this one. Out it goes.

In addition, LO (the four-year-old) managed to break one of my baking dishes. One of those dishes that are supposed to be virtually unbreakable.

After my initial irritation, I decided it didn't matter a whit. I have an entire set of these dishes, and I honestly can't remember the last time I used this particular size. My only qualm is that I am putting it in the trash, when it seems as though someone might be able to find a use for it. (I tend to get a little Great Depression-y when it comes to throwing things out.) Obviously, this can't be used for food anymore, but couldn't someone use it for a dog bowl or break it into smaller pieces for a mosaic or something?

Since those ideas are clearly ridiculous, I'm just putting it in the trash. May that be my worst crime against the planet.

Finally, my sister recently asked me about the Insanity DVDs I bought from TV over five years ago in a moment of, well, insanity. J and I have officially started the program about three times now. We have never gotten farther than, I believe, week two.

(I'm lying. We've never gotten farther than week 1)

Tracie asked me about the program since she's having trouble fitting the gym into her schedule, so I offered to send them to her. Yesterday, I finally packaged it up (along with the Shaun T motivational poster that has been sneering at us from the back of the basement door since 2012) and mailed it off to her.

That afternoon, she told me that she's figured out how to fit the gym into her schedule.

Ah, well. Perhaps she'll be able to find a good home for Shaun T.

What have you decluttered today?

A Minimalist Challenge: Get Rid of 365 Things

Last night, after reading one of several blogs about getting rid of one extraneous item each day for a year, I decided that I, too, need to get rid of 365 things.

I have decided to follow the rules as laid out by the first blog where I encountered this challenge, Old World Garden Farms:

1. For 365 straight days, I must throw out a minimum of one possession each day that I no longer deem necessary in my life.

2. With the exception of food, I will not purchase anything to bring into our home unless it fills a direct need and/or replaces something already in the house.

3. I will attempt to find a new home for useable items or repurposeable items, recycle those that can be recycled, and only truly throw out those items that cannot find a new life elsewhere.

So, starting here on October 15, 2014, I decided to get rid of this:

We have a grand total of three spatulas. This was a replacement spatula I purchased when we first moved to Lafayette, before we had gotten our stuff from storage. I have never particularly liked it, and I only use it when the two spatulas I prefer are both dirty. There is no reason to have this in the house--not useful, and definitely not beautiful. So, out it goes! 

I added it to a bag of donations I had already put together for Goodwill, which I will drop off today or tomorrow.

Onward, ho!

I invite you to join me in getting rid of 365 things over the next year! Follow along on my journey to reduce, and tell me what you got rid of today in the comments.