"Dunging out"

My mother called it "dunging out." I call it decluttering. I do get a small charge out of using my mother's term occasionally, though.

I suspect the term comes from cleaning manure out of a barn.

That's not what I am doing, but I certainly am getting rid of much unneeded accumulation of "stuff."

Ken joined in to help, briefly. I cleaned out one desk drawer of pens and pencils accumulated over my thirty-six years of teaching. Ken used a systematic approach, as he does with all things. First he grouped the pens and pencils by type, then he patiently tested each one to see if it still works.

I haven't donated the useable ones yet, but I will this week. Also, I haven't mentioned to Ken that I have another desk drawer full of pens and pencils....

Here are some unneeded items from two upstairs closets: a crocheted afghan from who knows where, some blankets, a large beach towel, and many, many bath and hand towels.

Most of these items went to a collection box for a local animal rescue facility in our area.

Fabric! Tons of it, or so it seems. I parted with a lot of fabric sample "books." I used to make little Wonder Wallets for Alpha Delta Kappa to sell at various events. The little wallets sold like hotcakes, and I must have made at least sixty of them, but I'm not about to spend the rest of my life making more Wonder Wallets. The fabric for the wallets came from these fabric "books," and they were given to me by an interior decorator friend.

These fabric samples are now in the hands of the folks at Goodwill Industries.

My pantry. My cluttered pantry. Ken built a wonderful walk-in pantry for me when we moved into our new home in 1999. The right-hand side of the pantry has open shelves and this unit, which consists of three walls of shelves (like the two shown here) behind closed doors. The left-hand side of the pantry is a series of open shelves hidden behind sliding doors. It's a fantastic pantry,...but it invites clutter.

I've now cleaned and sorted out and reorganized the right-hand side of the room. (This photo, of two sections of the walls of shelves, was taken before I tackled the job.) The left-hand side of the room will get done this coming week, I hope.

I have also "dunged out" a large, walk-in closet behind the upstairs bathroom. That closet/room had become stuffed to giddy proportions. I removed rolls of unused or partially used Christmas and birthday wrapping papers, way more pre-made bows than I could possibly ever reuse, old curtains, old Christmas decorations, you-name-it. Now it's possible to walk the length of this walk-in closet. I won't say it's now 100% organized and clutter-free, but it's looking a lot better than it did two weeks ago.

There's something very freeing about pulling into the Goodwill drop-off location, unloading boxes and boxes of unwanted belongings from my car's trunk, and speeding away before Goodwill can call me back to reclaim the stuff.