Tackle Six Rightsizing Projects

Part of my Sixty@Sixty list. Back on my 60th birthday, I made a list. Ten different categories. Six things in each one. The last one. Rightsizing projects.

I finally culled down the list of all that needs to be done around here and came up with these items. Here is the list. And, below, the progress made in each one of them.

1. Books
2. Clothes
3. XMAS decorations
4. Pantry and Kitchen
5. Pictures and collectibles
6. Travel Souvenirs

Big items. Not something easily achieved, but after moving 42 years of things out of my MIL’s house when she went to a retirement apartment I know these are things we need to address. I mean, how many T shirts from other places do we really need in this house?

I have made some progress in each category, but there is a long way to go. Highlights.

Books — I have way too many cookbooks and magazines. I haven’t tackled that puppy yet, but I will get there. I mean, Great Dinners from Life? I don’t want to know how old that book is.

I did put together three grocery bags full of work reference books, old fiction, paperbacks and hiking books. They went off to the book bin. There used to be one at Glenwood but it is gone. My husband found another one, and it got a hefty deposit. Besides the donation to the bin, I gave my mom all sorts of old paperbacks, mostly Patricia Cornwell and Tom Clancy. She took them to her friends at church. They pass around books to read.

Clothes — this one started last fall and is still a priority. I put together two huge plastic bags full of work clothes and other things after Hurricane Sandy. Gave them to HoCoRising’s SO to take to Jersey on her trip to help hurricane victims.

After that great beginning, I have donated to the boxes at Kendall’s, four more bags of work clothes. After all, I now live in blue jeans or shorts and only need a few nice items in my wardrobe. Besides, getting rid of all my larger sized clothes is my incentive to keep losing weight. I am almost finished with my stuff. Time to tackle my better half’s closet full of things he won’t be wearing much anymore. Does he still need five suits? All those management suits and ties. Really. He could keep two, one summer weight and one winter. The rest. Need a good home for someone new to the workforce.

XMAS decorations — this was one royal pain to do. We really need to throw away things we no longer use. Since no charities want them, they go in the trash. I dumped quite a few tree decorations, and we went through all the lights and the wreaths and deer to only have good strings of lights left.

Besides fixing the lights, I also made a vow. No more Christmas card buying. There are more than enough all over the study. I consolidated everything this year and will not succumb to those post Christmas sales anymore. I have at least ten years worth of cards around here.

Travel Souvenirs — Besides the dozens of T shirts I have given away, there are the other things. How about volksmarching medals? We used to do volksmarching and collect medals. I donated them to the Conservancy for a geocaching event. There is another one in March and the rest of the medals will go there. The children loved getting medals when they finished the challenge. They also loved the foreign coins in one of the boxes on the trail. Both came from our souvenir stashes. In March, I am also contemplating donating all our postcards collected on travels. The children really have fun finding treasures in the boxes at the geocache sites.

Pantry and Kitchen — I have cleaned out the spice containers and made rubs, herb mixes and spice mixes. Some I gave away at Christmas. The rest I am plowing through in my cooking. No more industrial spice and herb purchases. Except for garlic powder, salt and oregano, which I use quite a bit.

Getting a cleaned up pantry is a priority, and I am nowhere near completion on this one.

As for my last item, pictures and collectibles, I haven’t done much other than organize. Now comes the hard part. Downsizing it. We have stamps from my husband’s dad. Dolls and pictures from his mom. Pictures from my mom. Depression glass. Doilies! Yes, a blanket sized plastic zip bag full of hand crocheted items from his mom. My grandmother’s china. All these things. Never used anymore. What to do with them. They have no real monetary value, just sentiment.

Beyond the fun things on my Sixty@sixty list, these are the hard ones.