Spring Cleaning Complete... Now What?

Okay, so I finished the big Spring Clean yesterday. Ahh... I'm revelling in my clean house! It's sparkly, shiny and smells so good. I'm thrilled with how well just plain hot water and vinegar worked for most jobs. I even used it to rinse the carpets after shampooing them and it seemed to pull up any residue left from the soaps.

Now, what to do?

Well, in cleaning I gathered a large pile of t-shirts and jeans to re-purpose. Today, after taking care of household business (paying bills) I will go through them and search the internet for ideas on what to do. Now, I'm not frugal to the point of saving everything. That just becomes clutter and I forget what I have, where I put it, etc. If I can't find something meaningful to do with this stuff... it will go out. I removed a truckload of old clothes and other items to charity and several bags of trash. I probably could cull even more, if I could get hubby to go through his things!

Sometimes, I think people use being frugal as an excuse to hoard things. Or, maybe they start on a mission to be frugal and become hoarders. Really, how many ziplock bags and bread bags must one keep on hand? It's okay to throw things away if you have no meaningful purpose for them and/or no room left in your house! Personally, I only re-use ziplock bags that have had cookies or such in them, never raw meat or even prepared foods. I'm too afraid of foodborne illness and it's easier to just toss them than to sanitize them properly. I don't use them that much to begin with. I much prefer sealed containers. But there again, if you have too many butter tubs... it's okay to throw the excess away or give them away (if anyone wants them).

I don't want my frugal life to end with me surrounded by mountains of carefully saved aluminum foil, plastic bags, butter tubs, etc which my heirs will come in and promptly deliver to the dumpster. I've seen this happen all too often with the Depression Era generation. I've cleaned too many little old ladies' homes when they needed to move to long term care and found the same thing several times. Years of collected "stuff" stored and kept "just in case", much of it no longer of any value or use, had to be tossed out.

So, my mission today is to look at the items I didn't toss out during my cleaning marathon and determine if I have meaningful purposes for them. One only needs so many aprons, grocery bags, pot holders, etc. I'll look for ideas to create gifts also. Then, in the next few days... I'll get to work on some fun projects. Re-purposing is very gratifying work. I'm looking forward to starting on some projects and posting the results here.