Its Simplifying Saturday!

My files were getting ridiculously large, so this afternoon I went through them and shredded a lot of papers and receipts that are definitely no longer necessary. The result was about 50 gallons of shreddings, as well as fewer papers to store, file, and take with me on hurricane evacuations.
 
I cleaned out our pool storage yesterday . I threw out an old kiddie pool , several floats and an old inner tube . After our company leaves Gary & I are attacking the den .
 
20 years ago, before Home Depot & Lowes came to the islands, you saved every scrap of material because you never knew what you'd need. These days we sort through our supplies boxes, look at the various options, make a plan, and end up going to a store.

This week we had occasion to haul around our "hardware supplies" and "plumbing supplies" boxes a half-dozen times, so we decided it was way past due to clean them. I must have put over 200 small slot-head screws in the recycle, along with dozens of old rusty bolts. (No worries, we kept mostly Phillips-head screws and we have plenty of new shiny bolts.) Turns out that we also had four kits of toilet bolts, two broken shower heads, more escutcheon plates & faucet handles than currently in use. But we kept our spare spring-loaded toilet-paper shaft. You never know.

Remember when a 1970s adolescent was only cool if his bicycle had a bright orange flag flapping from a five-foot fiberglas pole mounted on a bracket attached to the rear axle? I don't remember what happened to my own flag, but yesterday I finally decided to part with that bracket.

Soon we're going to go through the "sprinkler parts" and "hanging parts" boxes. I don't think I'm mentally or emotionally ready yet for our "electrical" box.
 
Decided to get rid of clothes and shoes that are too small for youngest child. Organized the 7 fishing poles and all the tackle boxes that I have. There are only 4 of us who fish, good thing I have enought tackle for 20!!
 
During our recent trip to Australia we finally got around to dealing with "stuff" we had in storage. One lot had been in storage for 15 years, the other 5 years. These things were held in different locations.

I dealt with the 5 year storage lot first. I managed to reduce 150 boxes plus furniture to 8 boxes. A lot of the "stuff" was donated to relatives and I did hold a garage sale, something I will never do again. Must say it was a bit emotional dealing with some of these things, however by time I got to box 100 I was able to pretty much deal with it in a rapid manner. I was so over the entire process. I had so much paperwork to take care of, most of which needed to be shredded. There was not a bulk facility I could pay to do this on my behalf, so many hours were spent bent over a shredder. Luckily I have a 12 yo niece who was willing to enter my employment for the purpose of doing the dirty work.

2nd house lot had been in storage for 15 years. Once again had about 100 boxes plus furniture to deal with. Donated all the furniture to a cousin who will shortly be moving out of home. Found someone who was down on their luck who was happy to take the rest off our hands. By the time I had to deal with this lot I was well over the entire process and kept a total of 2 boxes of goods. All I kept thinking was what bad taste we had and why did we keep it. Think it helped us to make decisions in a split second on this lot because we were going thru it in the garage in the middle of winter and it was far too cold to spend too much time on.

So I think we have done really well in disposing of all these things that were weighing us done. Of course this has now given us the itch to go thru the things we have at our current location with the idea of downsizing. Going to give ourselves a break for a few months, but intend to get stuck into the paperwork which is a dead weight.
 
I sent off a box of winter coats and sweaters and tshirts to someone who moved from FL to CO.
Because I will never be 110# again.
 
I did the ultimate declutter operation...ex-dh2b showed up and removed all of his belongings FINALLY. I had been allowing him storage while his new abode was remodeled. 6 truckloads of furniture and odds and ends and it is ALL GONE.:clap:
 
We've been going through the garage's project boxes... so far we've cleaned out "Hardware", "Plumbing", "Hanging", "Sprinklers", and "Casters & Knobs".

I think we've dumped over 10 pounds of formerly valuable bits & pieces of just about everything.

Next up are "Electrical" and "Extension Cords". And wait until spouse discovers the repair supplies for 1980s vinyl car seats...

Next week we're going to the local elementary school with craft supplies, redeemable containers, Boxtops for Education, and laser toner cartridges. One way or another, six full bags aren't coming home.
 
We took several huge loads to Good Will this week. Now, I only have 20% of the amount of stuff in my kitchen cabinets and drawers, that I had last week. :dance: I also threw out several bags of things that weren't good enough for Good Will.

This morning I went through my household chemicals, since apparently the Parish (=County) has a site where we can take household chemicals for disposal for free. About half I might use between now and moving day, but there are a dozen or more that will not be needed. We will probably try that later this week.

Tomorrow I am calling the Salvation Army to pick up my china cabinet, dining table with leaf and six chairs, Laz-y-boy sofa, coffee table, and end table. That will be a huge step in the right direction.
 
More Simplifying Saturday

Now that Black Friday has kicked off the holiday season, spouse and I essentially avoid the crush of traffic and humanity by not leaving the house until January. Except for critical surfing expeditions.

This affords an opportunity to pause our busy lives for thoughtful reflection... on all the excess crap we've accumulated. I bought spouse a TV Ears speaker box for the holidays, so we started rearranging the livingroom TV wall unit.

Some background: In the early 1980s spouse and I were stationed overseas while the U.S. dollar was very strong. "High-end" stereo equipment was so "cheap" that we treated ourselves to gear which we'd never need to replace again. (Turns out we were right, just not the way we expected.) In the early 1990s spouse started recording her favorite TV shows to watch at her convenience. As VCRs [-]showed up on Craigslist and in pawnshops[/-] got cheaper, we eventually ended up with seven of them. (Most of them were displaced a couple years ago by two single-tuner Series2 TiVos, but she held on to two VCRs "just in case".) As the 1990s drew to a close and videocassette rewinders began to disappear from production, I bought Radio Shack's last three on Oahu and stashed them against breakdowns. All of these precious electronic boxes ended up crammed into our livingroom wall unit along with RF amplifiers, spaghetti cords, power strips, and voltage conditioners.

Yesterday, after we connected the TV Ears, we unplugged her 1980s Pioneer "Advanced Technology Receiver" and her 1990s Sony five-CD carousel. Then we unplugged her 1980s four-foot-tall DCM QED speakers ("Hey kids, back then big speakers were a good thing!") and converted them to tchotchke display stands. Finally we unplugged her 1983 Technics turntable. I felt that we could give up the videocassette rewinder stash. We left one VCR connected to the TV (we never know when our grandkids are going to want to watch Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" video) and rearranged everything for aesthetics.

Enough gear disappeared to plug in all the remaining electronics (except the TiVo) into one power strip on a switched receptacle, so we can turn off the vampire loads. I bet the 1980s receiver alone was consuming a toaster-oven worth of standby power. I could probably remove the RF amp too but I don't want to push my luck.

Today spouse is going to move around the wall-unit shelves to more effectively display still more tchotchkes that she'll shortly be bringing home from garage sales. Then we're going to move her CDs (already copied to our iTunes folder) and her LPs to my 1986 stereo rack. It's on wheels so we'll be able to put the turntable on it, add a laptop, park it next to my recliner or my desk, and decide which LP tracks we care about while I'm reading or doing paperwork. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to transfer the tracks with Audacity or just buy the damn things from iTunes. Eventually we'll also dispose of the turntable, a hundred or so LPs, and the stereo rack.

I'm going to go through an entire drawerful of cords, connectors, microphones, and cables. I bet we keep about a third of them and recycle the rest by the pound. The receiver, CD carousel, VCR, and rewinders are waiting for the next e-waste day. I'm also getting rid of a "spare" 1982 Onkyo receiver (remember "quartz synthesizer phase-locked loop tuning"?).

Next up: our audio cassettes. First I have to find a tape player...
 
Since Zenni optical and 39dollarglasses made it much less expensive to buy, I have purchased a lot more eyeglasses. I have prescription readers and computer glasses scattered about. I now have accumulated a number of eyeglasses that I don't use anymore, too weak or whatever. Any place to give these away? Or are they worthless? There must be some people in some third world country with sight as bad as mine and in need of glasses.
 
Martha said:
Any place to give these away? Or are they worthless? There must be some people in some third world country with sight as bad as mine and in need of glasses.
Click to expand...
REWahoo said:
Some civic organization once collected used eyeglasses for this very purpose. Was it the Lion's Club maybe?
Click to expand...
I've been hoarding my broken ones to combine into a new complete pair.

But for unbroken ones that no longer have the "right" prescription, our local library still has a Lion's drop box. I don't know if they do that nationwide.

Costco's eyeglasses dept may also know where to donate.
 
I just packaged my glasses up and mailed them . Several pair will fit in the small priority box .
 
I just emailed the local lions club contact and he told me I could drop my glasses off at his office! Nice guy.
 
Martha said:
There must be something quirky with their search as no locations appeared in the several states I searched. :(
Click to expand...

I think it is very limited. There was one in Washington that showed up, overall not very helpful, sorry for posting that without exploring it first.
 
Retire2014 said:
I no longer need my Toshiba laptop purchased new in 2003. How best to donate/discard this item? Please share your ideas. Thank you.
Click to expand...
I sent my previous laptop to cashforlaptops.com and received $95. It was a 5 yr old Dell. Lots of these type sites around, and they typically send you a box and pay for shipping as well.
 
Martha said:
Since Zenni optical ...
Click to expand...
This is far off topic, but I'll mention that Zenni's default 1.50 index material, probably CR39, is best for my computer glasses, I've found, since the polycarbonate 1.57 index and above give a whitish cast that I find unpleasant.
 
Retire2014 said:
I no longer need my Toshiba laptop purchased new in 2003. How best to donate/discard this item? Please share your ideas. Thank you.
Click to expand...
1. Check your local high school's computer teacher for cadaver donations.

2. See if there's an e-waste collection day in your neighborhood. They seem to congregate around community-college campuses and shopping centers.

3. Stay far away from Gazelle.com. They don't do free shipping from Hawaii, and they estimated that our two six-year-old laptops would net over $100. Upon opening the box at their HQ they "discovered damage" which coincidentally reduced their rebate offer to almost the exact amount of money I'd spent on shipping.
 
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