Its Simplifying Saturday!
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Ronstar
Moderator Emeritus
This week:
11 college textbooks ranging from accounting to great reads such as "Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective"
2 dell desktop pc's and my old Imac
2 - 3 gallon jugs of peanut oil
11 college textbooks ranging from accounting to great reads such as "Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective"
2 dell desktop pc's and my old Imac
2 - 3 gallon jugs of peanut oil
bruce1
Full time employment: Posting here.
OK this week I broke down my old huge TV stand and replaced it with an antique table that was just sitting in the corner, took two boxes of books and one small box of mixed nick nacks to the thrift store. I also sorted four boxes of papers which my forefathers had saved resulting in a large garbage container of old paper. I will also be giving away a few DVD's.
freebird5825
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
You are AMAZING!
Yes, it is identical to the one I have. Now I have a basis for its age and value when I talk to the antique stores. Heeheeheee, let the buyer beware the informed seller.
Welcome to the forum and many many thanks for your discovery.
I have a pile of stuff ready to go and I'm feeling annoyed at myself that it's still here. A huge bag of clothing, several old suitcases, and a box of household cr*p. I wanted to drop it off at the thrift store yesterday, but was reluctant to drive and park there with all these mountains of snow still everywhere. It's a tricky parking lot to navigate normally, and I thought it might be downright dangerous with mountains of snow shielding visibility.
Next week, it's got to go!
A huge bag of clothing, several old suitcases, and a box of household cr*p. I wanted to drop it off at the thrift store yesterday, but was reluctant to drive and park there with all these mountains of snow still everywhere. It's a tricky parking lot to navigate normally, and I thought it might be downright dangerous with mountains of snow shielding visibility. Next week, it's got to go!
Yes, it is identical to the one I have. Now I have a basis for its age and value when I talk to the antique stores. Heeheeheee, let the buyer beware the informed seller.
Congratulations, Freebird, it looks like you have a bit of a treasure on your hands!
If the antiques dealers don't make you a fair offer, you could always try Craigslist or even eBay.
powerplay
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2008
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- 1,608
This week I went through my closet and actually enjoyed pulling out 35 items that I don't need/want and some still had tags on them. It is a good feeling to get rid of these things. I also gathered another 14 misc items and all have been dropped off at Goodwill. Looks like GW is going to be one of my frequent stops for the near future.
I admire those who decide to sell things on Craigslist and e-bay. Most of the time I look at the items I have and figure for a few dollars it's not worth the hassle factor. There are a few bigger items ($ wise that is) that I will eventually seek to sell.
There is a pile of 78 records in one corner that I'm contemplating what to do with. They aren't particularly valuable as evidenced by some searching I did a few years ago since they aren't rare. I'm considering passing them on to a cousin who deals in all things collectible and antique. His life has been very difficult and he barely gets by so if he can convert them into a few bucks that would be all good. This would also free up a few square feet of floorspace for me. I think it would be a win-win for both of us!
I admire those who decide to sell things on Craigslist and e-bay. Most of the time I look at the items I have and figure for a few dollars it's not worth the hassle factor. There are a few bigger items ($ wise that is) that I will eventually seek to sell.
There is a pile of 78 records in one corner that I'm contemplating what to do with. They aren't particularly valuable as evidenced by some searching I did a few years ago since they aren't rare. I'm considering passing them on to a cousin who deals in all things collectible and antique. His life has been very difficult and he barely gets by so if he can convert them into a few bucks that would be all good. This would also free up a few square feet of floorspace for me. I think it would be a win-win for both of us!
freebird5825
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I will try local antique dealers first, play dumb about its value, to see what they "offer" <snicker>.Congratulations, Freebird, it looks like you have a bit of a treasure on your hands!
There is a huge community of antique dealers based in Bouckville NY that I can get to easily by car. If that fails, I will probably contact the Chicago dealer and see if they want to make it a matching pair of benches.
If it weren't for GreenEyes' research...I may have let it go for $100.
RonBoyd
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Just keep in mind the difference between "I'll pay $ for it" and "I'll sell it for $." The upper end of a 30-50% difference would be normal. An antique dealer normally has a large overhead -- if only because of the slow turnover rate.
DangerMouse
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I donated 14 books to the Friends of the Library.
My bonus was I rolled over my 401k to an IRA with Vanguard, so that is one account closed. Simplifying my paperwork is a major goal of mine. 2nd bonus was I closed my Emigrant Online account. Had very little in there, however, having to wait around to get a 1099 for $2.40 is more complicating than it needs be.
My bonus was I rolled over my 401k to an IRA with Vanguard, so that is one account closed. Simplifying my paperwork is a major goal of mine. 2nd bonus was I closed my Emigrant Online account. Had very little in there, however, having to wait around to get a 1099 for $2.40 is more complicating than it needs be.
freebird5825
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I spent most of today going through 2 medium size boxes of assorted papers - tool manuals, yet more w*rk related papers, old bills and paper bank statements, consumer catalogs I wanted to "keep"...all circa 2006.
Why oh why do I throw papers in boxes for "later", let it ripen for several years
, and then have to go through it all because it has personal identity information on it? 
I have a file cabinet.
I'm resolved to turn a new leaf here..no, make that an entire treeful.
Why oh why do I throw papers in boxes for "later", let it ripen for several years
, and then have to go through it all because it has personal identity information on it? I have a file cabinet.
I'm resolved to turn a new leaf here..no, make that an entire treeful.
Another 18 books to Goodwill.
Canon F1.8 50mm lens with a broken alignment pin. Useless- in the garbage
Two old cameras that I picked up over the years. Film no longer available, and neither camera was working anyway - out you go
In the spirit of freebird (above), I shredded every useless old bill and silly record, anything not legally required to be kept. There wasn't a whole bunch of this as I had cleaned it all out a couple years ago. AND, since all the bills come electronically now, I'm gettin' rid of the shredder! Another several cubic feet of living space, emptied.
Steve
Canon F1.8 50mm lens with a broken alignment pin. Useless- in the garbage
Two old cameras that I picked up over the years. Film no longer available, and neither camera was working anyway - out you go
In the spirit of freebird (above), I shredded every useless old bill and silly record, anything not legally required to be kept. There wasn't a whole bunch of this as I had cleaned it all out a couple years ago. AND, since all the bills come electronically now, I'm gettin' rid of the shredder!
Another several cubic feet of living space, emptied.Steve
W2R
Moderator Emeritus
In the spirit of freebird (above), I shredded every useless old bill and silly record, anything not legally required to be kept. There wasn't a whole bunch of this as I had cleaned it all out a couple years ago. AND, since all the bills come electronically now, I'm gettin' rid of the shredder!
Oh!!! I want to do this too!! What a great idea, especially since I could use more space for my files, and since I just bought my first shredder in January. Thanks!
Moemg
Gone but not forgotten
I sold one of my dresses today on ebay and I have a big bag ready for Goodwill on Monday !
One of the leadership lessons I learned from the submarine force was the three "D"s:
Decide,
Delegate, and
Disappear.
We had an interesting Hale Nords family dinner conversation earlier this week about Simplifying Saturday, and our kid is someone who sees cleaning as a most excellent way to procrastinate on homework.
So this week our "Goodwill closet" filled up with toys that she hasn't touched in a decade but were being held for sentimental reasons. Apparently that sentiment is inappropriate for almost-college-student teens.
Spouse also threw out an entire file box of at least a decades' worth of carefully preserved and labeled photo negatives that hasn't been touched in a year.
I've been [-]disappearing[/-] laying low and getting ready for next Saturday's e-waste community collection day.
Decide,
Delegate, and
Disappear.
We had an interesting Hale Nords family dinner conversation earlier this week about Simplifying Saturday, and our kid is someone who sees cleaning as a most excellent way to procrastinate on homework.
So this week our "Goodwill closet" filled up with toys that she hasn't touched in a decade but were being held for sentimental reasons. Apparently that sentiment is inappropriate for almost-college-student teens.
Spouse also threw out an entire file box of at least a decades' worth of carefully preserved and labeled photo negatives that hasn't been touched in a year.
I've been [-]disappearing[/-] laying low and getting ready for next Saturday's e-waste community collection day.
kyounge1956
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 2,171
Here are my items for the week:
- discard mop head I no longer have the handle for
- sort through a box of photos and discard more than half (more will go later)
- discard refill kit for inkjet printer cartridges, either it was no good to begin with or sat too long before I used it.
- recycle more old sales literature from dead home business and sales materials I got at a presentation for a different home business; discard DVD from a "business opportunity",
- discard two ballpoint pens, refillable but the springs are lost so retracting mechanism no longer works
- recycle cardboard box from a "hide-a-key" thermometer. I dropped and broke the thermometer a long time ago.
- discard three packages from fridge, new foods I was going to try, never did, now they're so far past their pull date I'd be afraid to eat them!
Not so great this week but here goes:
1. Bag of 4 year old pretzels
2. Two Sweatshirts
3. Old watch that does not work
4. 7 Travel toothpaste tubes picked up from various flights
5. 5 Travel toothbrushes picked up from various flights
6. 1 Credit card account closed (they were going to charge a $60 per year fee).
7. 1 picnic basket
Not so great this week but the house is beginning to look cleaner and becoming more organized.
1. Bag of 4 year old pretzels
2. Two Sweatshirts
3. Old watch that does not work
4. 7 Travel toothpaste tubes picked up from various flights
5. 5 Travel toothbrushes picked up from various flights
6. 1 Credit card account closed (they were going to charge a $60 per year fee).
7. 1 picnic basket
Not so great this week but the house is beginning to look cleaner and becoming more organized.
Urchina
Full time employment: Posting here.
This weekend we:
Donated 16 books to the Library;
Dropped +/- 1 gallon of unusable wood sealer/stain to the community hazardous waste collection site (it had irrevocably congealed in the cans due to my very poor storage of it)
DH went through his closet and cleaned out about 8 T-shirts and 4 buttondowns.
I went through the joint closet and am getting rid of 2 tote bags we haven't used in years.
Have been doing this for a couple of years, still have SO FAR to go! But onward!
Donated 16 books to the Library;
Dropped +/- 1 gallon of unusable wood sealer/stain to the community hazardous waste collection site (it had irrevocably congealed in the cans due to my very poor storage of it)
DH went through his closet and cleaned out about 8 T-shirts and 4 buttondowns.
I went through the joint closet and am getting rid of 2 tote bags we haven't used in years.
Have been doing this for a couple of years, still have SO FAR to go! But onward!
FUEGO
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2007
- Messages
- 7,746
Tossed 2 computers in the trash. 2 large kitchen trash bags of miscellaneous filed away things, old bills, bank statements, etc (shredded if necessary). DW's notes from grad school. Some kids toys. Old boxes and packing materials were tossed out. Our 96 gallon trash cart is now completely full of our junk we threw out, and we still have another 1/2 trash cart load to put in once the trash is picked up.
The best thing we got rid of was a camcorder that uses miniDV tapes. $70 on craigslist!
In the process, we found 2 pairs of lost scissors, 1 tape dispenser, other miscellaneous items that had gone missing, and trade confirmations from those 17 shares of Nortel we bought for $1008 back in 2000 (worth about $220 as a tax write off now).
So that is around $300 "profit" from our cleaning activities.
Oddly enough, this thread wasn't the motivation for cleaning. DW just has the cleaning bug on her mind (springtime??), she decided to give some things up and I lent a hand.
The best thing we got rid of was a camcorder that uses miniDV tapes. $70 on craigslist!
In the process, we found 2 pairs of lost scissors, 1 tape dispenser, other miscellaneous items that had gone missing, and trade confirmations from those 17 shares of Nortel we bought for $1008 back in 2000 (worth about $220 as a tax write off now).
So that is around $300 "profit" from our cleaning activities.
Oddly enough, this thread wasn't the motivation for cleaning. DW just has the cleaning bug on her mind (springtime??), she decided to give some things up and I lent a hand.
I did not do so well this week. I put 1 pair of pants and 1 pair of boy style new underwear (don't tell me that they don't ride up-I threw away the other 2 pairs that I tried) in the Goodwill bag and put 6 old magazines in the recycle bin.
freebird5825
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I just got done boxing up a complete set of books and workbooks for a distance learning course for becoming a CFP. My online enrollment date was June 2004. I did get to deduct part of the tuition cost on my taxes that year.
I never completed the curriculum because...I had no choice but to go to Plan B, i.e. stay in my current career field.
I haven't looked at the books in 5 years, so out they go.
I am going to donate the collection to the local library as reference books for investment, estate and financial planning. Their collection is very slim in these topic areas.
Lemonade has been made once again...
I never completed the curriculum because...I had no choice but to go to Plan B, i.e. stay in my current career field.
I haven't looked at the books in 5 years, so out they go.
I am going to donate the collection to the local library as reference books for investment, estate and financial planning. Their collection is very slim in these topic areas.
Lemonade has been made once again...
I just donated another half-dozen books to the public library.
I'm a readaholic. I have a book list. It's 10 pages long.
When I was growing up I filled two walls of a 10'x12' bedroom with floor-to-ceiling paperbacks-- mostly "Golden Age" sci-fi and murder mysteries. USNA contributed lots more textbooks and history books. I spent most of my Navy career improving the collection because the military moved them for free. Eventually libraries became better at interlibrary loans (and I wasn't going to sea anymore!) so I started cutting back on new purchases while filling in the gaps. A couple years ago I started a serious book downsizing of 1980s murder/drama paperbacks. Today I have "just" five 10-foot shelves of books.
Over the years I'd scour book bestseller lists and reviews. I used to clip newspapers or pull magazine pages and file them. Eventually the "To Read" file was several inches inch thick and, ironically, I wasn't reading it.
About a decade ago I started typing it up. About five years ago I discovered "strikethrough" fonts to mark the books I'd read or that I'd decided were no longer worth the effort.
These days I'll cut & paste text from a website review (or from an old-fashioned magazine) onto the list. New book ideas go on the second page and scroll on down as newer books are added. Every few weeks I'll browse our state library's website and order a dozen or so. I've learned to strike a balance between non-fiction & fiction because a healthy vegetarian diet is boring without chocolate.
The first page of my list is reserved for books that the library doesn't have in stock after two years. If I've been looking for it that long and I still want to read it, then it moves from page eight or nine to page one. Eventually I have a half-dozen books or so on the page-one list and I "treat" myself to a bulk purchase from Amazon.com. I read them and donate them to the library.
Eventually I'm going to re-read and then say farewell to some of my old (and literally moldy) classics-- A 1950s/60s set of Ian Fleming "James Bond" paperbacks. I'm still on the fence about my collection of 1960s Heinlein/Asimov and 1970s Jack Chalker & Harry Harrison, but in a few more years the pages will crumble as I turn them.
I'm skeptical, however, that the libraries will keep me supplied forever. I can see that someday I'm going to want to buy an e-reader just to be able to download all of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series or David Weber's "Honor Harrington" books, where I can re-read them to my heart's content without having to be a pest-control expert...
I'm a readaholic. I have a book list. It's 10 pages long.
When I was growing up I filled two walls of a 10'x12' bedroom with floor-to-ceiling paperbacks-- mostly "Golden Age" sci-fi and murder mysteries. USNA contributed lots more textbooks and history books. I spent most of my Navy career improving the collection because the military moved them for free. Eventually libraries became better at interlibrary loans (and I wasn't going to sea anymore!) so I started cutting back on new purchases while filling in the gaps. A couple years ago I started a serious book downsizing of 1980s murder/drama paperbacks. Today I have "just" five 10-foot shelves of books.
Over the years I'd scour book bestseller lists and reviews. I used to clip newspapers or pull magazine pages and file them. Eventually the "To Read" file was several inches inch thick and, ironically, I wasn't reading it.
About a decade ago I started typing it up. About five years ago I discovered "strikethrough" fonts to mark the books I'd read or that I'd decided were no longer worth the effort.
These days I'll cut & paste text from a website review (or from an old-fashioned magazine) onto the list. New book ideas go on the second page and scroll on down as newer books are added. Every few weeks I'll browse our state library's website and order a dozen or so. I've learned to strike a balance between non-fiction & fiction because a healthy vegetarian diet is boring without chocolate.
The first page of my list is reserved for books that the library doesn't have in stock after two years. If I've been looking for it that long and I still want to read it, then it moves from page eight or nine to page one. Eventually I have a half-dozen books or so on the page-one list and I "treat" myself to a bulk purchase from Amazon.com. I read them and donate them to the library.
Eventually I'm going to re-read and then say farewell to some of my old (and literally moldy) classics-- A 1950s/60s set of Ian Fleming "James Bond" paperbacks. I'm still on the fence about my collection of 1960s Heinlein/Asimov and 1970s Jack Chalker & Harry Harrison, but in a few more years the pages will crumble as I turn them.
I'm skeptical, however, that the libraries will keep me supplied forever. I can see that someday I'm going to want to buy an e-reader just to be able to download all of Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series or David Weber's "Honor Harrington" books, where I can re-read them to my heart's content without having to be a pest-control expert...
CuppaJoe
Moderator Emeritus
I sometimes "release books into the wild" but was surprised to see that there is a website to formalize the practice, and track the books:
BookCrossing - The World's Biggest Free Book Club - Catch and Release Used Books
I usually drop a book or magazine at a nearby laundromat. Anyone else do it that way? People in my neighborhood also put out boxes full of books, marked, "free" and others paw through it taking only what interests them.
BookCrossing - The World's Biggest Free Book Club - Catch and Release Used Books
I usually drop a book or magazine at a nearby laundromat. Anyone else do it that way? People in my neighborhood also put out boxes full of books, marked, "free" and others paw through it taking only what interests them.
