Oh oh, livin’ on a prayer. Bon Jovi, also known as greatest hair band ever, how I love thee. You are the soundtrack to my life, sort of. We are half way there, but we’re not livin’ on a prayer. There being Jen, my blog BFF and genius behind IHeart Organizing‘s 30 in 30 challenge. I know I show a lot of my thrifty (and sometimes not so thrifty) buying, but I’ve never shown what we donate. Well, that’s about to change. Let’s see how we’ve done.
First, we started with the entry closet, where we didn’t get rid of anything. Now, let me explain. Our closet is small, so out of season (winter coats and boots) and seldom used items (my heels and Ben’s dress shoes) are stored in our bedroom. I also sort through that closet regularly, so not much that we don’t use or need stays in there.
So, I moved on to our living room. Again, Ben and I don’t have much that we don’t like or use in there. But, Vincent and Everett do. Toys, toys and more toys. I’m so sick of cleaning up toys! If you follow us on Facebook, you already know that. I attacked the toys, showing no mercy. Anything that hasn’t been played with recently went to the donate pile. Broken toys got thrown away. We don’t have anything to sell because we sent our expecting brother and sister-in-law home with anything worth keeping. No pictures of this because I had to hide everything to prevent Vincent claiming everything as his to keep.
Shortly before this challenge, we donated all the VHS movies we had, seeing as we don’t even own a VCR. I also put all of our music on the computer, so we donated most of our cds, keeping our favorites for road trips.
For week two, we picked up the pace. Kitchens seem to store so much, but a lot is unnecessary for everyday. Things that I’ve been holding onto simply because they were from my great grandma, our old set of plates and glasses, just in case, utensils because we might need them. That had to go. After about 30 minutes, kid corralling included, I had our table filled with items to sell or donate.
Right there, we’ve got 25 items, if we count groups of similar items as one. How about a list?
- 9 large IKEA glasses. We broke three and I can’t stand not having a complete set. Unfortunately, IKEA stopped selling that style, so we bought different glasses about two years ago. Let me repeat, two years ago!
- 9 small IKEA glasses. We broke one, and I decided to keep two because they work well as vases.
- 1 wine glass, the rest have been broken. Are you noticing a trend?
- 6 dinner plates, we had 8 before two were, you guessed it, broken.
- 8 salad plates
- 1 sugar jar. We don’t drink coffee, why do we have this? Oh right, someone gave it to us.
- 2 cake stands, that we never use. Who has cake long enough to put it on a pedestal?
- 6 plastic floral place mats. Grabby handed boys + place mats = food mess on my rug. Not good.
- 6 gold place mats
- 2 children’s place mats
- 2 tattered table runners from my great grandma. I might try to re purpose these. Any ideas?
- 1 rustic wine rack. Ben isn’t sophisticated to drink wine from bottles, only lovely boxed wine. I don’t drink.
- 1 votive holder
- 3 outdoor plates
- 6 matching plastic cups
- 6 green plastic cups. Why is the Target dollar section so appealing?
- 1 salt and pepper shaker set
- 2 small gravy boats
- 1 blender, the base broke and we kept the glass. Why?
- 1 vintage paper towel, aluminum foil, saran wrap, and wax paper holder, from my great grandma. We’ve never used this, but I love the look of it. Sadly, I think it is time to let it go. Unless I can find a use for it in our laundry room? Ideas, creative folks?
- 1 pain in the butt puzzle. I’m sick of picking it up.
- 1 glass candlestick holder
Individually, we’ve exceeded 75 kitchen items! Wahoo! Then, when Ben returned home from work, he chased the kids around. I found even more to get rid of.
- 2 wooden bowls
- 1 glass bowl
- 1 drawer of utensils
- 1 small baking dish
- 1 platter
- 2 colanders/strainers
- 1 salad bowl
- Miscellaneous, mis-matched plastic food storage bins.
- 8 vintage, hand embroidered cloth napkins
I also tossed about 5 every-page-filled coloring books into the recycling and dried up markers to the trash. After all that purging, we have two drawers and one cabinet completely open. One empty drawer opens to the dining room, where we had Vincent’s craft supplies. I put it to better use to store our napkins, which is much more convenient than getting up to go to the kitchen for a napkin.
I always imagined walking down the hall to see Vincent’s art covering my walls and furniture. This should put my fears to rest. Vincent can’t grab his craft supplies without my help opening the cabinet below. Pre purge, this cabinet stored the food processor, waffle iron, outdoor plates and place mats, leaving no room for craft supplies.
If we ever get around to renovating our kitchen, we’ll have less junk to move around.
Now, I have to decide how I would like to dispose of said items. I usually donate everything to Goodwill, but I might list the whole lot on my friend Craig’s infamous list. Though, I could list the vintage items in
my Etsy shop. Or, I might host my first garage sale and try to sell a few larger items, like the Bowflex, Total Gym, captain’s bed, and bookshelf we’re currently storing in the
large basement bedroom. If you are interested in any of the items, please send me an e-mail at
ourhumbleabowed@gmail.com.
Have you made any purging progress? Do you have any tips, secrets, or a process to purge items? When I was younger, my mom made my sisters and I spend an entire day, once a year, removing everything(!) from our closets, throwing things away and organizing before we could do anything fun. Is your mom evil like that? Just kidding, I love you, mom! Maybe you want to be evil like that to your kids (or husband?)? What room or rooms, have the most clutter in your home? Are you a garage sale guru? How do you price the items you’d like to sell?
*Update: We have sold the kitchen organizer and embroidered napkins. Thank you for your interest!
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