SPRING-Clean Declutter - Need Help

Thanks for the thoughts about my daughter @Faith-and-Hope I'll pass on the info when I get it - she just had an ultrasound this morning

Ice-cream containers are so easily recyclable - I have them around the place to collect rubbish near my T chair, my bed, in the bathroom etc - and so easy to throw out and start again with a new one

I like to recycle - I started taking my cloth bags to the supermarket - amazing how 4 bags like that is enough when with the same amount of shopping I will come home with maybe 10

But then - I do need plastic bags for the kitchen bin and the cat litter - but we do our best - yes

Dec

@Owlunar- are you in a position to set up a worm farm or compost bin for food scraps? They're mostly what makes bins gooey, and once they're not going in with the rest of the rubbish, bin liners are less of an issue. There's a way of using newspaper instead, which won't hang around for however long like the plastic bags.

I've been doing a fridge clean out today. We've deliberately opted for a bar fridge instead of a full sized one, because when we had a full sized one it was usually half empty. This means there's less danger of things getting forgotten and going off, but I still found a few surprises for the worm farm.

Am doing it partially because the mini freezer had iced up badly, and partially because I'm heading up to my parents' place for a week to sort and work on the big declutter there. I want the fridge to be easy to manage for Hubby and daughter while I'm away.

I find the trips hard. The sort out job is pretty huge, and it's difficult knowing where to start... particularly for someone like me who hates to toss things and would rather re-home them. I don't have much internet access while there, otherwise I'm pretty sure I could be moving things on via the buy/swap/sell FB pages.

Big aim at the moment is to sort and box up enough stuff to bring a small hire truck full back to our home sometime around April/May, and therefore there's a matching aim of clearing enough room at this end to recieve it. Will be prioritising the things I'm going to be keeping, but if there's spare space, I'll try and bring back a few things that will be easy to sell or pass on too.

Trust that all goes well for you @Smc

How do your parents cope with that process?

I know when I was trying to help my parents I had too much conflict with my dad, not what I wanted in his last days. In the end it ws all left and turned into a diaaster trying to do it all over an easter long weekend after he died and after new owners were suposed to be in posession after the place had been sold. Big fire in the back yard and lots of loads to the tip in the end.

@Determined, Dad has dementia, and I think he assumes it's all gone already. We took in some of his things to the aged care home, partially for his enjoyment, partially as memory joggers, and partially as things to tell a story about his life for the staff.

Mum is slightly hazy, but much more difficult to deal with. She frequently asks us or a friend to bring her something from the house, but a lot of the time things are not where she thinks they are. Even if they once were, so much has been moved around in the sorting out process that they're unlikely to be there now. She's got too much in her room, and it threatens to spill out onto walkways. We've taken in tubs to hold her craft bits and bobs, but her preferred storage method is plastic bags. We removed two large bagfuls of plastic bags from her room when we brought the tubs in, and she wasn't happy about us taking them away.

We've lately been refusing to bring things in unless she gives us something that she's not using in exchange. Also makes her unhappy/angry. She got really cross with me when I insisted on sorting out a small stack of books, despite the fact that they were all stacked in a way that she couldn't see what they were.

And for that reason, we were never able to make much headway into sorting through things while they were still living at home. It will be a relief when the house is sold, but there's a lot still to do before that happens.

Welll @Former-Member, @Former-Member, @Smc, @Determined, @Owlunar

I have given away shirts , and other things in the bin

threw out a few things of mums from her place

But things are starting to overflow again on the spare bed, kitchen table and the puzzle on the verandra table still there

I purchased a new laptop today for uni and before we got home my darling was getting worried about what I was going to do with the boxes.

LoL poor lady, I usually have a habit of hanging on to boxes and packaging, no idea why but have found it hard to throw such things away since childhood.

So have promised I will sort it all out and in bin/ recycling before I go to bed.

Have our new oven and cooktop coming on Thursday somore boxes to get rid of.

Also have to work out what to do with the old oven and cooktop. Cook top is fine but controlls are on the oven that needs work to be servicable so basicaly useless, I just hate dumping stuff that may be servicable. So again have promised if I cant find them a new home in a week or 2 they will go to the dump.

@Determined, maybe ask the tradie fitting the new stove if there's any reclamation or recycling available for the old one. If nothing else, a scrap metal merchant may be happy to take it.