My car is pretty clean on the inside.  John’s car – well that’s a different story!  Here are the things for today that I decluttered from my car.  John will do his when we return from our trip.  I think he will have a few more items than this!

• Old AAA LA Freeway map dated July 2001.  When was the last time we used an actual map??
• a master lock with an unknown combination.  Wonder how long that was in the glovebox??  Who does it belong to??
• random wrappers and 1 business card

More random stuff from the bookshelf.  A botany cheat sheet, resume book, and 2 copies of the GRE test prep software.  Why 2?  Who knows!  4 more items gone!

Thank you Anne!

We finally purchased a new sofa sleeper for the room previously occupied by Kiddo #1.  It’s been a year since her wedding and a year since we moved back into the house after the Great Flood of 2015.  We are pretty confident that she will not be returning to live with us.  She and her husband have great jobs in the Bay Area.  So sad for us!  Great for them!

Ikea is awesome!  Not a paid endorsement!  This sofa sleeper is different than any we’ve seen.  It is deeper than a traditional sofa which we like since we all tend to sit with our feet up on the sofa under us.  The sleeper part is that the front bottom part pulls out and the cushion flips open.  The 2 sofa sectionals together makes a queen sized bed!  Kiddo #2 went with us and sampled each of the sofas and sofa sleepers.

So to put the sofa into the extra bedroom, we got to declutter some more stuff!!

26 items less in our home!!

So our “official” 6 items for the day are 3 jars of jelly that are looking weird, a salad dressing mixing container, an unopened expired box of pain reliever, and a jar of soy lecithin mixed with citric acid that John mixed about 10 years ago when he was on a bread making kick.

To make up for the week we are going to miss, here are the 20 items: 2 lamps, 2 light bulbs, 4 hangers, 1 set of kidney stone x-rays, unopened package of pads, 1 down jacket, 1 pair of shoes, another camera case, 2 sweatshirts, 1 tshirt, 1 sleep pants, 2 compression stockings, 1 wallet.

Thank you Anne at MinimalistSometimes for suggesting a challenge for the month of September!!

So here we are – a Saturday decluttering spree!  Kiddo #2 flew in last night and this afternoon went through a small section of her former closet!  7 more items gone!!  On top of these 7 items, 21 extra hangers are leaving the house!  Guess I’ll start working on the week I’ll be missing in reverse this week along with the scheduled days.

3 dresses, 3 shirts, 1 deflated exercise ball and the 21 hangers!

It’s amazing what you can find in 15 minutes to get rid of.

John found 2 magazines on his dresser last night.  He was also willing to part with his ground coffee container.  He just puts it back into the bag he brought the beans home in now. Barb found 3 old school related books on the shelf.  These books were 3 textbook adoptions ago and are copyrighted 1993 before she started working at that school.  An old camera case with no camera but an ink pen inside. And the pen that wouldn’t work when we went to add the camera case to the donation list.

Very productive 15 minutes!

I would like to add that doing a reverse count down on the days has been so much easier.  When I’ve done this type of challenge before, by the end of the month I’ve removed so much more than the required items I scramble to find items.  So glad I tried it this way.  Thank you Anne at Minimalist Sometimes for the challenge!

And why does it keep rotating the picture???

John is very supportive of the decluttering happening in our home.  I started the 21 14 day decluttering challenge suggested by Anne at Minimalist Sometimes on last Saturday.  Today John decluttered 9 old magazines that were sitting on his desk!  It does rub off!  Thank you Anne!

Why do we have 11 of these report covers in the desk?  Oh yeah, we had kids who had to do reports and we made them reuse them.  Since the kiddos are now 27 and 29, one in her last year of medical school, the other done with her PhD, I don’t think they will need the parentals to get them a report cover!

And a broken stapler.  12 more items gone!  Thank you Anne for the challenge!  (See the challenge post here at Minimalist Sometimes)

This basket sits on the shelf outside the girls’ bathroom.  Granted, neither has lived here full-time in over 4 years.  Guess we can declutter these 13 items!  (day 2 of the decluttering challenge set up by Anne at Minimalist Sometimes)