How often do you declutter

[Xenia]

How cluttered are your surroundings? work, home, car?

Are you a person that likes to keep things or someone that gets rid of stuff regularly.

In our house, if it has not been used in 6 months it's out! - donated to charity organizations. Even kids toys are donated as they get soooooo many of them. I personally don't like clutter and everything in my house is there because it is used.

anyone else do this?

 

[lizzie]

constantly - if it is something i do not used, is outgrown or i do not love it's asthetic appeal, it is put on the "charity" shelf in my cupboard.

when i get enough for a plastic bag full - it goes to the charity bin.

unfortunately i live with a hoarder, but he is only allowed to hoard outdoors. endless bits of timber, nails, bolts, hooks, door knobs, screen doors, windows, half used paint tins ... i drew the line at the old toilets we pulled out.

i looooove council pickup - and he hates it.

 

[Peter Parker]

i looooove council pickup - and he hates it.

Wouldn't he love it as well - for the chance to pick up even more stuff (for nothing)?

 

[lizzie]

Wouldn't he love it as well - for the chance to pick up even more stuff (for nothing)?

haha - he does - the stuff i've put out!

 

[kathryn d]

Usually every 8-18 years...whenever we move (not often)

Since starting this housesitting thing,we never really need to shop, unless we can eat it. It's amazing how little you really need to be content with.

 

[Xenia]

so you are constantly house sitting Kathryn? Love to hear more about that.

 

[kathryn d]

so you are constantly house sitting Kathryn? Love to hear more about that.

We are just finishing our 5th housesit in the past 8 months. We fly back to Canada from May 1-Sept 4. (2 weeks before we leave)
At the moment we have 3 months booked, and another month tentatively booked for 2011/2012.
We had 3 days unbooked, when we visited Rob's mum, this time around.

All home owners provided us with a vehicle, but we are contemplating buying our own when we return. Maybe a camper van, or at least something we can sleep in, if we want to travel somewhere. Not having anywhere to go, can be somewhat nerve wrecking..and visiting rellies is not a long term option.(a couple of days is fine)

The homeowners have been very good to us. Most have picked us uo and taken us back to the airport when possible, or at least to the bus/train station when they couldn't.

We usually buy staple groceries and use the homeowners supplies when required.(salt/pepper/vanilla flavoring)

At the moment we have a sick alpaca, so we are in phone contact with the owner.She seems a bit better, and hoping for a speedy recovery.The baby chick died a few days after we arrived (had a deformed leg)

We budgeted $1000 month and we proudly stuck to it. This included our flights/travel..dentist/doctor...food/entertainment.

All of the bills were paid by the home owners, including the internet. We didn't make any long distance phone calls.

Anyone wanting free accommodation, and willing to pet sit, we highly recommend it.

 

[BayView]

How cluttered are your surroundings? work, home, car?

Are you a person that likes to keep things or someone that gets rid of stuff regularly.

In our house, if it has not been used in 6 months it's out! - donated to charity organizations. Even kids toys are donated as they get soooooo many of them. I personally don't like clutter and everything in my house is there because it is used.

anyone else do this?

Being an Aquarian, I am automatically inclined to want order and organisation.

I chuck stuff out after one year it it hasn't been used mostly. Not much clutter or pack-ratting here.

 

[RumpledElf]

I get rid of clothes that don't fit when they start to overflow the clothes-that-don't-fit box (currently needs emptying, yay season change). I have a cupboard full of clothes in sizes 8-12 and its nice to be finally getting rid of all the bigger ones and slowly getting back into my old clothes, its been sooo long with two sets of clothes I just got rid of all the outgrown baby stuff and the bassinet and capsule to some young pregnant thing.

Got no room to collect clutter really, we're about to go on a binge replacing older furniture with new that will leave almost an entire furnished house behind (but will buy new linen and whitegoods, used linen has that squick factor), and the idea is pretty much to leave all the doubles and extras and older stuff in the old house and rent it furnished. Otherwise its going to be one massive garage sale.

Toys aren't really an issue, by kid #3 noone really gives you toys, they give you money. Except for the people that give trucks. So far this baby has been given 4 trucks and nothing else, all of which have been swiped by his older sister, who REALLY likes trucks

There's nothing in this house I'd currently like to get rid of. I've already got rid of everything that isn't in use. Plenty I want to upgrade though ...

 

[Ocean Architect]

I'm a hoarder, because I somehow manage to collect little bits and bobs worth a fortune that are highly specialised (circuit boards, high end audio equipment etc) and difficult to dispose of, yet no charity will use the items and they'll get binned - hence a giant shipping container sitting in the yard filled with enough stuff to build a space shuttle. I need to ebay dammit.

Generally though, the stuff inside the house consists of clothes, shoes, laptops, cooking equipment, a filing cabinet full of paperwork and thats it. If I dont use it within 6 months (unless it's fishing gear or guns - they stay there no matter what) I donate it to someone who I know will use it, or to the red cross. Bout twice a year or so, or in bits and pieces.

After having lived with a notorious hoarder for years, keeping stuff worth maybe $2000 in a storeroom worth $25000, I try to keep the material stuff down to a minimum. Having too much stuff is a curse

 

[pennyk]

I dont keep so much stuff.... although I have some heirlooms and "precious to no one but me".
but I find it really hard to throw away papers/ documents etc, and I never delete emails..... the number of times I've needed to access emails from years ago means that I'm reluctant to get rid of anything. From my business, which closed nearly 7 years ago, I have 3 filing cabinets of stuff in my garage. I'll be able to throw stuff away soon after the 7 years.

 

[skater]

Iut I find it really hard to throw away papers/ documents etc, and I never delete emails..... the number of times I've needed to access emails from years ago means that I'm reluctant to get rid of anything. From my business, which closed nearly 7 years ago, I have 3 filing cabinets of stuff in my garage. I'll be able to throw stuff away soon after the 7 years.

Paperwork! I hate paperwork and yet I find I hang onto it and it is always a mess. I've just spent the last few days in my office doing a heap of paperwork and you can nearly see the desk. That is an achievement!

Like Penny, I have stuff from an old Business too. Difference is that I CAN throw it all out now, and I have done with most of it, but I still keep finding stuff every so often that was a part of that Business.

Hubby does not like to part with 'stuff' which would be fine if it was all contained out in his shed, but it isn't. He will bring something inside to use and I will find it sitting somewhere. If asked to put it away, well, I get into trouble and it really annoys me. I often chuck his 'stuff' outside under the entertaining area, but that is looking quite bad at the moment. At least then it's not in the house.

My eldest daughters' bedroom looks like something out of 'hoarders'. She buys 'stuff' then more 'stuff', followed by more 'stuff' and just does not get rid of anything. Oh, and I mean ANYTHING!

I would go into her room when she was out and find all kinds of garbage that she had kept under her bed. Empty drink bottles and the wrapping for any new purchases. Although messy, at least this stuff was clean and she wouldn't notice that the pile never really grew that large as I would remove most of it without her knowledge. When I started finding food stuff, well the arguments got a bit nasty!

She is getting better with what she has in there now that she is older and regularly tells me she is tidying it, but I know that is a lie. There is no longer food in there, and there is a lot less of the clean rubbish. She now has a shed of her own that is nearly full of bags & boxes of her 'stuff' that she still will not part with, which means there is less 'stuff' in her room. When she moves out it is expected that it all goes with her because I will not be storing it for her.

 

[Perp]

Paperwork is the thorn in my side, too, when it comes to clutter. I've said several times before on the forum that we have a totally electronic filing system, keeping originals only of birth certificates and other legal documents.

I used to recommend Papermaster Pro, but unfortunately it's no longer being supported, and the .efx file format is not so useful.

I've now changed to just scanning everything and putting it in a file structure on my hard drive. I have a particular format for naming scanned files so that I can find them fairly easily; every file starts with "yyyymmdd", so that when I sort by filename, the files are also filed chronologically. Next comes a few key words which will enable me to find that file.

eg

"20110322 CW VISA" - statement for our Commbank VISA card of 22nd March 2011.
"20110410 Tim's term 1 school report"
"20110320 Matiz registration renewal"
etc

To replace Papermaster Pro, I'm trialling some simple, elegant, freeware called Tagged Frog, which allows you to add tags to any kind of file (including pdfs, which is one of the harder file formats to tag). I'm really not sure yet whether I need it, or whether my file naming system alone is sufficient.

The benefit of tagging is that you can add tags which group things in multiple ways, eg add a "statements" tag to all account statements, and then you can easily find all statements between two dates - handy for mortgage applications. Or tag everything relating to one institution, or one property, or business vs personal, etc.

Then after it's scanned and backed up (offsite), all the paper goes into my new auto-feed shredder. What I love about it is that you can put in up to 100 sheets and walk away, and it'll feed them through a few at a time while you do something else, instead of having to stand there and feed the paper yourself. It takes a while to shred, and admittedly sometimes stops feeding and needs a "nudge", but it still saves me a lot of time.

 

[pennyk]

Wow, Perp, that sounds ultra-organised.
My biggest problem is that I set up a "system", but dont follow through with using it on a day to day basis. Then I end up with a huge amount of work to do to either file or throw etc..... I need a secretary at home to do all this stuff for me!!

 

[Xenia]

We are just finishing our 5th housesit in the past 8 months. We fly back to Canada from May 1-Sept 4. (2 weeks before we leave)
At the moment we have 3 months booked, and another month tentatively booked for 2011/2012.
We had 3 days unbooked, when we visited Rob's mum, this time around.

All home owners provided us with a vehicle, but we are contemplating buying our own when we return. Maybe a camper van, or at least something we can sleep in, if we want to travel somewhere. Not having anywhere to go, can be somewhat nerve wrecking..and visiting rellies is not a long term option.(a couple of days is fine)

The homeowners have been very good to us. Most have picked us uo and taken us back to the airport when possible, or at least to the bus/train station when they couldn't.

We usually buy staple groceries and use the homeowners supplies when required.(salt/pepper/vanilla flavoring)

At the moment we have a sick alpaca, so we are in phone contact with the owner.She seems a bit better, and hoping for a speedy recovery.The baby chick died a few days after we arrived (had a deformed leg)

We budgeted $1000 month and we proudly stuck to it. This included our flights/travel..dentist/doctor...food/entertainment.

All of the bills were paid by the home owners, including the internet. We didn't make any long distance phone calls.

Anyone wanting free accommodation, and willing to pet sit, we highly recommend it.

Impressive. What a great creative idea to increase your cash flow. rent out your home and house sit for others.

You get to experience your life as a holiday along the way too. Genius!

 

[kathryn d]

Impressive. What a great creative idea to increase your cash flow. rent out your home and house sit for others.

You get to experience your life as a holiday along the way too. Genius!

update:
The vet came out yesterday afternnoon to check on the sick alpaca. We thought she was getting a bit better,but she died last night. Her baby is about 4 months old, and so we need to supplement it's food with a baby bottle, and special formula.
The owners feel bad, but she wasn't in the best health when we arrived, and she was already pregnant with another (very common).They have organised a burial for this afternoon with one of the neighbours. They were more concerned about us having to deal with the death.
And one rooster almost killed the rooster..so we had to put him in jail for assault (aka broody box) until he makes bail in a couple of days.
So life is never boring down on the farm!

 

[goonandtell]

Another hater of paper works comments.

I am with you, i went electronic a few years ago, but i fell off the band wagon so started to get a build up, recently as the complexity has increased (e.g. seperate company, projects,etc...) i have been building a custom access database which accepts the PDFs and attaches them to the transaction. Its not automated but it means i know exactly what each PDF is so now i don't need to look at the PDFs i just have the transactions and if i ever get queried by the tax office i can burry them in supporting documents.

I do have one draw of hard copies of copy of will, birth certificate, other key documents.

 

[Perp]

I used to recommend Papermaster Pro, but unfortunately it's no longer being supported, and the .efx file format is not so useful.

I've now changed to just scanning everything and putting it in a file structure on my hard drive.

Both "Tagged Frog" and the auto-feed shredder - didn't auto feed, basically - have gone by the wayside, but I've had my Fujitsu Xerox ix500 for well over a year and I love it. It can do OCR as it scans. Under $600, e.g. Techbuy

Then I just file the scanned pdf under a folder structure on my computer (and have multiple on-site and off-site backups). If I can't find it under the folder structure, searching for key words will find the OCR'd words from the document.

If anybody knows of an autofeed shredder that actually autofeeds rather than just stopping all the time, at a home office price (<<$500), I'm all ears.

 

[MTR]

update:
The vet came out yesterday afternnoon to check on the sick alpaca. We thought she was getting a bit better,but she died last night. Her baby is about 4 months old, and so we need to supplement it's food with a baby bottle, and special formula.
The owners feel bad, but she wasn't in the best health when we arrived, and she was already pregnant with another (very common).They have organised a burial for this afternoon with one of the neighbours. They were more concerned about us having to deal with the death.
And one rooster almost killed the rooster..so we had to put him in jail for assault (aka broody box) until he makes bail in a couple of days.
So life is never boring down on the farm!

Hi Kathryn
Just curious, what are the chances of the baby alpaca making it, even with supplementing its food?? I am hoping very very good.

 

[kathryn d]

Hi Kathryn
Just curious, what are the chances of the baby alpaca making it, even with supplementing its food?? I am hoping very very good.

As far as I know, if they are bottle fed, or adopted by another lactating female, the odds are good for survival.

That post I wrote was back in 2011.