Meg Evans

I’ve been discovering all sorts of random stuff in odd places since my daughter moved out of the house in November. My latest discovery is a pair of small speakers tucked away in a corner of an otherwise empty cabinet. Presumably they still work, but I have no idea what they might have been connected to when they were last used. I asked my husband, who didn’t know anything about them either.
 

Oh, well, there’s no need to test whether they work or otherwise concern myself with them. I’ll just bag them up and toss them in that heap in the basement that my daughter was supposed to take with her. So far, I haven’t bugged her too much about it because she took most of her stuff, and she has had a lot on her mind—starting a new job, moving into her own place, and getting her anxious little dog to feel comfortable in a new place. Eventually, though, all that stuff will have to go!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Because our daughter played soccer in college, my husband and I bought hoodie sweatshirts with the school logo to wear at the soccer matches. We had great fun going on road trips and cheering on the team! She graduated in 2014, however, and all those sweatshirts are still hanging in the bedroom closet.
 

We wouldn’t want to get rid of them because they have such good memories, and it’s possible we might wear them to alumni soccer games. Still, they don’t need to occupy a preferred location in the closet, which I suspect has been giving me subconscious feelings of not having anywhere to put new clothes. Better to fold up those sweatshirts, put them neatly on a shelf where they don’t take up much space, and leave myself a nice welcoming open spot for new fashions!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

My husband’s hairline started receding when he was in college. Several years ago, he decided to shave off his fringe and go completely bald. He still left a bottle of men’s shampoo in the middle of our shower caddy, though, in between my hair products. Keeping his shampoo wasn’t totally absurd at first because he used it occasionally, whenever he did not get around to shaving his head for a few days.
 

As he got more in the habit of shaving his head regularly, the shampoo got less use. Last week he realized that he hadn’t touched it in ages, and he wondered out loud, “Why do I still have this?” Of course, there was no good answer—that’s always how it goes with clutter!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

I wrote a post in October about the closet under the basement stairs, which has been much improved since my husband went through his piled-up junk, threw away some old boxing gloves and other things, and put the remaining items neatly in bags (yay). I had thought there wasn’t anything at the back except some old suitcases and freebie sports bags; but when I actually went in there and looked around, I found more stuff.
 

The large white plastic bag has leis and other Hawaiian-themed stuff from my daughter’s 21st birthday party; there are old T-shirts in the small white plastic bag; and the other bag has a fold-up tent which, if I recall correctly, was left over from when my son was in Cub Scouts long, long ago.

It all looked pretty useless to me, but I never did get rid of any of it. My husband apparently felt that he had thrown away enough for one day. He said that he wanted to keep his old T-shirts, so I moved them to another closet; and then he said we might as well keep the tent because there was nothing wrong with it.

So, I just put the bag of Hawaiian party stuff in a corner of the basement with some of my daughter’s other things that need to get out of my house. Sometimes cleaning up clutter is slow going! The closet under the stairs looks much tidier now, though, so I would say it’s going well.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

When my daughter was a teenager, she bought a comfy plush chair with a sparkly blue fabric. For a while, it was her favorite place to sit and read novels; but then she went away to college, and it didn’t get much use. Later it ended up in the basement, in a corner of the home theater, so that she could fit more friends in there to watch a movie when she came home.
 

It’s not as plush as it once was, or as bright and sparkly; and it definitely wouldn’t fit the color scheme of the home theater even if it still had the original blue, rather than being faded and dusty. I’ve been meaning to buy some new folding chairs anyway. Even if it was pretty once upon a time, my daughter’s old blue chair has long since outlived its usefulness.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Long ago, my mom gave me a cheerful ceramic bear holding an artificial rose, with the words “I Love You” across its chest. I had it in my kitchen display cabinet (shown here) for a while, but then the rose started to decay and it didn’t look as good. I didn’t want to throw the bear away because it was a nice gift full of positive emotional energy, so I put it on top of a box in the basement.
 

I noticed it again while tidying the basement recently. The cardboard box lid was strewn with little bits of fake rose that had fallen off. This time, the energy was more along the lines of “poor forlorn little piece of junk.” So, the bear just had to go. Sorry, Mom.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Tomorrow my daughter starts her new job in Cleveland. She came home for a year and a half after graduating from college, while she got some work experience and saved up money toward getting ready to move out. We did not charge her any rent, but she tried to help out by doing some grocery shopping. She tends toward impulse buying, though, and my freezer is now full of random stuff that never got eaten.
 

I think it’s very unlikely she would want the ancient Fla-Vor-Ice that’s buried under one of those heaps, and I am sure she has totally forgotten about most of what she put in the freezer. Still, just to be polite, before she gets on the road this afternoon I’ll ask if she wants to take any of that stuff with her. I expect most of it will be on the curb tomorrow evening for Tuesday’s trash pickup, though.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

One of the decorative items in my family’s previous house was a tall clock that looked like an antique grandfather clock, though it was really just a cheap replica. We brought it with us when we moved, but the color clashed with the woodwork, and anyway it didn’t last very long at our new house before the machinery broke. My husband put it in the basement. He looked at it a few times over the years to see whether he could fix it, but had no success, and it wouldn’t have been worth paying for repairs.
 

We finally got rid of it last week after it had been taking up space in the basement for over a decade. Although it wasn’t in fact a cuckoo clock, the word “cuckoo!” came to mind anyway when I thought about how we had left obviously useless clutter sitting around for that long!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Many years ago, my kids played Nintendo 64 and Xbox games in a comfortable nook in the basement, sitting on beanbags. The old TV that they used is long gone. More recently, my son helped himself to the TV stand, leaving an empty spot in the basement. But it’s not quite empty, because there are still old squashed beanbags, disconnected speakers, and game stuff down there.
 

I’ll ask whether anyone in my family wants the beanbags and speakers before I get rid of them, but I tend to doubt it because they’ve been in the same spot without anyone using them for so long. More likely, everyone just got used to seeing them in that area and paid no attention to them—which is, of course, the usual way that a house ends up with clutter!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Various family members (who shall remain unidentified in this post, although I can tell who the culprits are from their shoe sizes) have been leaving shoeboxes and other assorted boxes piled up in a corner of the basement, apparently thinking they might be useful for something one day. Or, more likely, not giving it much thought at all.
 

This odd habit of shoebox-hoarding goes back more than a decade, when we bought Microsoft Encarta every year. My husband put it under the Christmas tree with the other presents for the kids. They didn’t have much interest in opening it, of course, because they already knew what it was. So he started wrapping gifts for the kids in shoeboxes to disguise what was inside. It turned into a game, to see how long they could open presents without picking Encarta.

I got rid of those shoeboxes long ago, after we stopped using them for Christmas presents; but despite my best intentions, more showed up. Because my daughter will soon be moving to an apartment, I’ll leave the boxes there for now, just because I am curious whether she’ll actually use any of them. If I were a gambler, which I am not, I would take heavy odds she never thinks about them while packing, and that stack doesn’t budge in the slightest. After that, they’re going directly in the recycle bin. Shoo, clutter!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!