Dear Friends,

February is Declutter for 15 minutes, and we are going to take full advantage of our time. Monday through Friday this month you will get a new Declutter Mission that follows the Zone we are in. If you have a declutter story or an idea that you have found to be useful please send us an email with MY DECLUTTER STORY in the subject line!

FlyLady Rebecca

February Declutter Mission: #5 – Zone 2

Today declutter your freezer of old food and open containers. Check the dates and either cook or throw away. Take an invenotry of what you have and keep it on the outside of the freezer.

Dear FlyLady,

I am finally getting to sorting through some things that have been “stored” for years. We haven’t moved in over 40 years.  I have trouble throwing things away as living on a farm in Nebraska, it goes into the burning barrel, which is harder than having it hauled away in a garbage sack.  I give away things and recycle as much as possible.

My DS and wife’s large church has a clothing center.  They also have an outlet for “Less Than Perfect Clothing” which is clothes which have missing buttons, broken zippers, stains, etc. and they are given to the homeless or refugees who have nothing.  They also have an outlet for “Clothing by the Pound”, which includes unwearable clothing and is used for rags, quilt blocks, ground up into fiber for carpeting, etc.  This helps to get rid of old sheets, faded curtains, etc.  So I am able to let go of a lot of things that way.

I have been going through some boxes of material scraps from clothing I have made over the years.  The box got wet once so a little mold in some of the material, but I have been washing loads of these fabric scraps to put in the “Clothing by the Pound” bags.  I have to stop the dryer a couple of times to empty the lint trap as so much lint goes into it while doing these fabric scraps.  I soon had a whole trash can full of lint.  Liking to recycle, I thought, “Boy, the birds would sure like this for their nests.”  However, we are in the middle of winter here in Nebraska and quite a ways off from lining any new nests this spring.  I thought I could probably save it until spring.  But then I thought, “What if something happened to both my husband and me and my boys were going through our stuff?”  My boys give me a bad time about keeping things anyway.  But I could just hear them saying, “Look, Mom even saved the dryer lint – I wonder which one of us is supposed to get that?”  So it went into the burning barrel this morning!

RoJean