Daily Archives: January 3, 2018

Declutter 2018: Two broken unicorns

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Back in my youth I collected many things including crystal unicorns. Most of them were broken in an incident involving a bookshelf, a child and a stool.

Dean just had Clare go through her many boxes of memorabilia in the attic and she pulled out two crystal unicorns, both broken. I am pretty sure she pulled them out for me, not her, but I don’t want them anymore. I don’t care about crystal unicorns and these are broken.

They are sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be tossed tossed in the trash ((they cannot be recycled, can they?)) as long as Clare doesn’t want to keep them.

Now that I look at them, they resemble the Moonlit Merry-go-round horses a bit.

Declutter 2018 count 11:

    • 2 crystal unicorns, broken
    • 9 letters from Sue

Declutter 2018: Letters from Sue

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I met Sue in 1974 when we were scheduled to host British high school students for a month, then go to England to be the guests of our hosts. We hit it off right away and are still friends, although we have not seen each other in 15 years. ((even though she lives less than 4 hours away for goodness sake!))

Back before email I wrote a lot of letters and received as many in return. Sue was one of the most prolific writers of letters and I still have a few of them, mostly from her days at the University of Illinois. She went away to school, but I didn’t so I loved reading about her experiences. She wrote about studying for exams:

“…so this weekend will be very busy, besides beginning to study for my comprehensive exam in zoology on Tuesday.”

attending concerts:

“Last night was the Beach Boys’ concert. I had the most wonderful time. I even danced! There were more than 8000 people there… I really wish everyone I know could have been there to enjoy that concert! We were in the 18th row in the front and middle! We could see them perfectly! I just love the drummer (Dennis Wilson) there. What I would give for a guy with his looks, his talents (his money!!).”

and romance:

“My Mister Right has not yet come along. However I am dating a really good looking guy named Tom. We’ve been going out for a couple of weeks. In fact last night we went for a 2 hour walk, tonight we’re going to a movie, and tomorrow we’re going to see Dimitri, a famous pantomimist and clown in the auditorium. He’s (Tom) a year younger than me, and he’s been going out with a girl for 3 years (marriage is more or less understood). She goes to Bradley and they both go out with other people to be certain they want each other.”

I’ve written Sue a late Christmas letter and am going to enclose the letters she sent me so many years ago. I figure she will get more out of them now than I would — and I didn’t want to throw them away after keeping them for over 40 years.

Declutter 2018 count: 8 9 ((Added one more because I threw away her Christmas letter, having answered it)) letters from Sue.

Declutter 2018: 2018 things

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Last year’s declutter project was haphazard at best. I didn’t count how many things I tossed, gave away, recycled or donated, but I know it was a lot. If you count everything that I wanted to take from my mom’s house that was sold, given away, recycled or donated — that’s even more.

This year I hope to be more organized and keep track of what leaves the house. ((I am also trying to not buy things that I don’t plan on eating or using. I admit to having a small addiction to the website Woot.com and have bought items that seemed to be exactly what I needed, but were exactly what I didn’t need.)) Thanks to Kate/Indigo Bunting, I now have a chart on my refrigerator that will track how many things leave the house in 2018. The goal is 2018. Because I am still going through my mom’s stuff, I am pretty sure I can meet that goal.

My rules are simple:

Nearly anything other than food or meaningless scraps of paper counts. Letters, photographs, old Christmas cards in addition to more substantial items such as furniture, clothes and other objects count.