Freecycle Saturday!

So it has been a while since I have actively freecycled....and the seams of my house feel like they are busting again.  Today I had planned to help sort and freecycle at someone else's house (you know who you are), but it was called off due to a nasty cough by the homeowner.  I can respect keeping your germs to yourself.  Hope you are feeling well and got some sorting done on your own.

Since I was geared up to get grubby, I dug into my own messy belongings.  In my usual ADHD approach to organizing it went like this.

Sitting at my desk researching some products for furniture refinishing (yes, I'm getting closer to trying to...gasp...paint my oak bedroom furniture!) I realized how filthy my windows were.  So I got out the windex and paper towels and worked away at all of the front windows of the house.

Then I got bored with that.

So then I sat down on the living room floor and dug into my double trunk/coffee table and pulled out about 100 magazines and papers to recycle.  This took me on another journey to the garage for the recycle bins.

But to get to the garage I needed to go through my basement.  And what I saw there dismayed me.  It was the creeping outward of the junk piling up on my shelves that were an organizational project last January.  So I started reorganizing shelves and then realized I needed to get on some shoes (still in my nightgown and barefeet). 

Back upstairs where I passed the living room and realized I had (a) left all the recycling scattered on the floor and have never picked up the bin and (b) that the vacuum was sitting in the middle of the floor with a snaking cord just itching to trip me up.  So I ran upstairs and got my sweats and shoes on and determined to be a little more direct in my approach.  I immediately went for the paper bin (still outside from last pickup) and piled in the magazines and papers.  Then I finished with the vaccuum and put it away and took the bin back downstairs to the garage.

The garage!  Another project!  I moved some of the random piles of summer furniture and Hubby's lodge storage (hopefully going to its own storage location soon...or I'm going to start charging rent) and began breaking down all of the cardboard boxes I've been tossing in the room and ignoring for the past several weeks.  Garage fridge still needs a mildew cleanup, but that space is about as good as it gets.

Back to the basement I start to collect items to freecycle.  I run up to get my laptop and bring it down hoping to be efficient (for once) and plug the items in as I stack them...but the signal is not strong enough so back up I go and back down with paper and pen. 

But now I'm making progress.  I offer a few items up and realize to offer the suitcase, I need the other pieces of the set, so up to the guest room I go and starting digging things out of the closet.  45 minutes later I have more items to Freecycle and a small pile of randome items scattered around the room that need to find a home again.  But with the closet empty I can now (since it IS November) get the A/C's stacked away until Spring 2011.

All in all...while it was a circular route, I've made some solid progress.  I haven't left too much of a mess in my wake and I've identified the following to offer on Freecycle:

Variety of table/floor lamps (some of these I've been hauling around since college folks!) - TAKEN
Two bags of women's clothing - TAKEN
1 4-plate rack - TAKEN
1 6-wine bottle rack - TAKEN
1 Suitcase set (4 pieces) - TAKEN
1 canvas port-a-crate for medium size pet - TAKEN
1 hoover vacuum cleaner - TAKEN
2 pet feeders (water/food) - TAKEN
1 roll of wallpaper blue/rose pattern - WAITING FOR A HOME....

I'm running out of steam now, so I'm taking one more pass through the house to make sure I didn't leave too much debris and half-done cleanup.  Will do the minimal to close the loop on activities (trying not to go backward by sticking things back willy-nilly) and then I foresee some couch time in my near future.

Nothing like shedding a few pounds of belongings to feel free.

Post-script: Hubby just arrived home bringing with him several boxes of china from his mother.  Tomorrow I'll be washing and sorting those pieces and looking for the best place to store them...I anticipate a kitchen tear-up and re-pack starting at 9AM tomorrow.