March Minimalism Wrap-Up

I wish I had thought to pop everything on the scale daily - would have been interesting to the impact on our Household Goods Weight Allowance!

March Minimalism Game - Day Thirty-One - THE END!

This is the next task...the garage.  I doubt there will be much minimaling going on since I am married to the pack rat extraordinaire when it comes to tools and guy-stuff.  A quick whiz 'round, however, before he got home yielded stuff that I know we are not going to use in this lifetime and so off it goes.

What a  mess!

I managed to minimalize the following - five speakers, two pieces of electronic stereo equipment (don't know what they are for but they've been sitting in the garage for two years so how useful do you think they are?), one cooler, one beverage cooler, seven pieces of looks-like-crystal-but-it's-really-plastic servingware, one thermal jug, one basket with liner and one extra liner, one mini food chopper, three books, one coin purse, one keyring, two nightgowns (no clue how they ended up in the garage!), and at least a dozen pieces of foam piping from the Rhode Island house.  How many is that? 28 + 12 = 40, yippee! I met the goal plus some.

April is Paper Minimalising Month for me - Vic has a mountain of documents (no doubt some in triplicate) and there are things I've been hanging on to for years.  Can you believe this?  I have every tax form since I entered the workforce - 1978!  Hello, Pamela, you keep them for 7 years, not 36!!  Let the shredding begin.

March Minimalism Game - Day Thirty

Blurry picture (probably from all my tears) of thirty of my magazines - Sandra Lee, Cook's, Tea Time.  Full of recipes I never tried, tablescapes that were never set...great ideas, but just never got around to carrying any of them out.

Still catching up on the March Minimalism Game - Days Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, and Twenty-Nine

Such a crazy few days and honestly, these things were gathered and forwarded to their respective new homes - consignment shop, donation bin, or trash - but I just haven't had a moment to get the posts up.  Without further ado...

Day Twenty-Six - Twenty-five pieces of Chief Petty Officer insignia and one stray LTJG bar.

Day Twenty-Seven - Eleven pieces of wood that once belonged to an entertainment center plus eleven items from Sophia's room - two framed pieces, one plate, two necklace hangers, one Math dictionary, two CDs, one luggage tag and two key rings - and five pieces of clothing that I forgot to photograph before they hit the donation bin.

Day Twenty-Eight - Twenty-eight copies of This Old House magazine.

Day Twenty-Nine - Twenty-nine assorted woodworking and home energy magazines - if you think I'm being unnecessarily cruel to my better half by pitching his stash, my Sandra Lee magazines will be culled next!  Have to worry about that as-yet-to-be-determined household goods weight allowance and magazines weigh a lot!

I have to admit, having a good clean-out is very liberating.

Catching up again on the March Minimalism Game - Day Twenty-Five

Searching for something for Vic led me to a storage tub that revealed, among the useful stuff, this pile of useless items.  Clockwise from top: one grey sweatshirt drawstring, one USS KAUFFMAN rubber bracelet (made as a fundraiser during a deployment - I think I was going to cut it open and scrapbook it but it's developed a nasty, sticky texture so off to the trash it goes), one key ring, ten items in a bag marked "unknown", one bag of bits and pieces marked "Sophia's closet hardware", two markers and a pencil, odd pieces of craft foam, one silver dollar (can't see it too well, it's in the plastic bag under the craft foam - it was sent to Vic by a friend to be used as the silver dollar for his First Salute after commissioning but it's dated 2008 - probably wouldn't have mattered but I had already purchased new ones), brown shoelaces (from Sophia's paddock boots that we no longer own), a blue drawstring, and below that, a red ribbon from a giant Christmas ornament (how do I remember these things?), a red stretchy thing that I think is the bracelet part of a keyring (ring nowhere to be found), a thumb drive case, and a bookmark/photo-holder.

I shudder to think what's in the box marked "Destroy 2015 - cords, wires and stuff of undetermined origin or use" that I just spotted in the closet but that post will be coming up soon.  It's marked Destroy 2015 because that is when we were supposed to be moving but since the move date has been moved up, so will the Destroy date.  It's been sitting in the closet since June 2012 so it's unlikely that we will have a use for anything in the box.

All caught up on the March Minimalism Game - Days Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

Day Twenty-Three - More stuff from here, there, and everywhere - MacBook Pro and iPad boxes, three boxes of sales receipts that I thought I needed to keep for tax purposes, three little drawer boxes each containing wallet-size photo albums, four Royal Albert Old Country Roses placemats, one pink cafeteria tray (Sophia loved eating her lunch off this when we were homeschooling), two striped platters, one black plastic tablecloth (left over no doubt from one of Sophia's Twilight parties), three Virginia state CandyMelts molds, two pairs of glasses, one Prince of Persia Christmas ornament, and one CrockPot cake insert pan.

Day Twenty-Four - God is smiling on me today!  Pulled this bunch of cutlery out of a cupboard and guess what? Exactly twenty-four pieces!

Catching up on the March Minimalism Game - Day Twenty-Two

Breaks my heart to part with my Jell-O molds but my days of sending snacks to preschool and elementary classrooms are over.  I think the concept is being phased out in these days of food allergies and liability issues, so I'm sure it won't be any different by the time I have grandchildren.

Six Jell-O molds, one American flag mold, three packs of snowman treat boxes, four each of tropical leaf plates, flower bud cups, and piña colada glasses.

Catching up on the March Minimalism Game - Day Twenty-One

I'm still behind but today is the day to attack the garage so stand back to be amazed at what I find there!

More bits and pieces - three more shirts for the donation box, Persona shipping box (sniff, sniff, so sad to see this one go), two Wii games, Zumba belt, Bunco glass, Staples Easy button, four pillowcases, one purse hanger, two coin sleeves, one gold combination cover band (picked up the female by mistake and when Vic went to use it, we'd already thrown the packaging away so it couldn't be returned - the consignment shop on base takes uniforms and accessories so it will find a home there), and four LTJG insignia items - that's twenty-one!

Catching up on the March Minimalism Game - Day Twenty

Another crazy combo - Shake Weight, pair of Birkenstocks, One Direction quiz book, Fabulous sign, SAT flash cards, four shot glasses, three mirrors, MK key ring, night light, martini glass, stuffed toy, jewelry pouch, fanny pack and a small bag.  Bits and pieces but they might bring a quarter or two at the consignment shop.

Update:  have to count each Birkenstock as one item since I added up the list above and there were only nineteen items!

Catching Up on the March Minimalism Game - Day Nineteen

An assortment today - ten pieces of clothing + four candles + five pieces of Longaberger pottery.  Some headed for the consignment shop, a few for donation, and a couple for the trash.

March Minimalism Game - Days Seventeen and Eighteen

Ta-da!  21 pieces of clothing + 5 pairs of shoes + 9 uniform items = a two-day total of 35 items.  Now what do I do with all these extra hangers???

March Minimalism Game - Day Sixteen

Thought I'd take a quick look through a bag of clothes Sophia came up with when she cleaned out her closet - what a deal, there's exactly sixteen items in there.  Off to the donation center.

March Minimalism Game - Day Fifteen

Longaberger dinner plates and luncheon plates - eight of each - yes, that's sixteen on day fifteen but it didn't  make sense to hold one over to tomorrow's post!

March Minimalism Game - Day Fourteen

Took a break from the kitchen to put away a few things in the upstairs closet and found this little (not) treasure trove.

I didn't count every single one of the headbands as an item, I grouped them into skinny headbands, thicker headbands and the thickest headband, but I did count each one of those blue massager-things as well as all the other hair paraphernalia (yikes, definitely had to spell-check that one!) and the oddball bottle of Off! that's been around for a hundred years...well, almost.

March Minimalism Game - Day Thirteen

Continuing on in the kitchen and it's the dreaded junk drawer.

Eight different mini-cookbooks and catalogs, one set of Mardi Gras-colored stick-on beads that I used to decorate my Bunco glass, one lone cupcake box, and three sets of assorted plastic cookie, candy, and treat bags left over from when I was in charge of baking for new guests at our church in Rhode Island.  Not really junk, but definitely things I won't use again.

March Minimalism Game - Day Twelve

The lure of Saturday's yard sale sent Sophia scavenging through the corner cabinets and we agreed that the following things can be sacrificed in the name of the vacation fund.

One Land of the Free, Home of the Brave candle/photo stand, four different dog figurines, one deer figurine, one Playmobil nun, three red pillar candles, Christmas set one red (still in plastic wrap) and one white votive candle, another Christmas set of two green votive candles, Fall set of three pumpkin votives, and one pumpkin tart.  Can't take the candles when we move so they may as well go.

March Minimalism Game - Day Eleven

Back to the kitchen cupboards/drawers.

One set of silicone mini-cupcake molds, one snow cone cup, two measuring cups for rice, one giant measuring scoop, two more heart cookie cutters, one red mini-funnel, white scraper thing, one set of corn on the cob holders, the previously mentioned metal measuring spoons and cookie scoop all on top of a silicone snowflake mold that I bought to make snowflake-shaped peppermint bark.  To say I failed miserably is an understatement as it all ended up as peppermint bark snowflake pieces.  Popping things out of silicone molds is not as easy as they say it is.  Off to the consignment shop/donation center after a brief stint in the yard sale!

March Minimalism Game - Day Ten

Taking a short break from the kitchen to declutter the utility closet (where the hot water heater is stored) - cubes of winter accessories yielded excess in the form of two pairs of gloves, two scarves, three hats (two winter, one summer), one fanny pack, one American flag, and one barbecue fish basket.  Off to the donation center they go; well, maybe the fish basket can go to the consignment shop.

Side Note: Blogger consistently shows the red squiggly spell-check line under declutter, so I changed it to de-clutter and voila! there's the squiggly line again.  I'm making an executive decision - it's declutter without a hyphen from now on because the dictionary says that's the way it's supposed to be spelled.

The Things you find when you're Minimalising

Good grief, you'd think I bake all the time with this little collection.

Clockwise from top left:

1.  The orange set of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, combo 1 teaspoon and 1 1/2 teaspoons, and 1 tablespoon is my most often used set.  I love the long, flat shape of the spoon bowls, super easy for measuring, and the way the wording is molded into the handle (more on that later).

2.  White 1/4 and 1/2 - sadly, it appears that the dishwasher heating element may have eaten the other members of this set.   I like these because the bowls are a convenient size for dipping into small spice jars.  The wording is not molded, but the ink has spanned the test of time.  I was going to feature these in a future Minimalism Game post but I think they have been spared.

3.  King Arthur Flour 1 teaspoon and 1 tablespoon - keepers as well - you can never have too many of these measurements.

4.  Coffee scoop - kind of useless since we use a lot of K-cups now but there's just something about it that says "Keep Me".

5.  The mix n' match spoons that are fortunate to have holes in the handles so they can be kept on a ring and in one place - the black one on the right is another coffee scoop but there's no marking on it so I'm not sure how much it holds (I'm thinking 1 tablespoon?), then there is a white set of 1/4, 1/3 (honestly, have you ever used 1/3 teaspoon of anything?), 1/2, 1 teaspoon, 1/2 tablespoon and 1 tablespoon that has the added advantage of having the milliliter conversion as well.  To its disadvantage, the ink of the wording is fading fast.  Next up, also white 1/4, 1/2, and 1 teaspoon, a different color ink but also fading, then a metal set of 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon, and then my favorites (even though I have never used them), a set of dash, pinch, and smidgeon - so cute!

6.  The green thing is a cookie scoop but that was a total waste of money.  The green part is soft rubber so you are supposed to use your finger to push the rubber part up and voila! the scoop of cookie dough pops out.  Sadly, the voila! and popping out part failed miserably every time I used it.  Soon to feature in a Minimalism Game post.

And that is my measuring spoon collection!

March Minimalism Game - Day Nine

Honestly, it's a wonder I can count to nine this morning!  I had to take Vic to the airport at 4:00am which meant that I got up and threw on some sweats at 3:30am which, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, was actually 2:30am!  Since it was one of those "open door, eject husband and luggage to the curb" airport trips, I figured dressing down was ok.  Thank goodness I didn't have any car trouble on the way home or that would have been me, in the snowflake fleece pants, standing by the side of the road!  Can't you tell we've been married 20+ years?  Ten years ago, I would have dressed appropriately for going out in public, parked the car, walked with husband to the ticket counter, pleaded for gate pass so I could walk all the way to the boarding gate, and shed a tear or two as he waved goodbye.  Lol, open door and eject method is so much easier!

Continuing on through the kitchen cupboards and drawers yielded this little stash of junk.

One paper tablecloth, extra medicine cups, one plastic divider for dishwasher basket (that's in the Rhode Island house dishwasher), birthday cake candles (no birthdays before we move so no use for them), one knife sharpener tool, one extra potato peeler, tiny plastic spoons from last year's Easter eggs, paint brush for painting chocolate onto previously-mentioned (and now trashed) chocolate liqueur molds, one horizontal can opener (never did get the hang of this thing!), and Christmas stocking cupcake decorative picks.