My Tireless Retirement - Week 48

 

Hello, hello my friends!  Do you know how wonderful you are?  It's true, you are.  I hope everyone is doing well.  And guess what?  Spring is coming.  It really is, I promise.

 

Two bags of shredded paperwork is outta here!

I think paper clutter is a tough one to manage, but I continue to persevere.  I try my best to not even allow it into the house anymore.  I even sort the mail in my driveway and deposit junk mail into the recycle bin before I get to the front door.  Last week I gathered up all of the paperwork from my two week Mayo Clinic visit in 2021 and it was a stack as thick as the New York City phonebook, I swear.  I got everything that could be recycled into the recycle bin and then the rest. with personal information, I shredded so it is no longer in my house.  I filled up two grocery bags with crosscut shredded paper.  That was a lot of paper!  I am really glad it is gone and I no longer have to move it around or store it.

 

I gave away the dresser I used to store my fabric in

I was able to rehome the dresser I used to store my fabric in.  I was happy about that.  I offered it up on the Facebook Buy Nothing Group and the lady that got it was super happy about it.  It was a heavy one so I was glad I didn’t need to load it into my truck and haul it to the thrift store.  I've got a few more furniture pieces I'm thinking of passing along to others that can use them.  They're just taking up space and I really don't need them.  I sure like the idea of less dusting.

 

Teriyaki pork stir fry

By Monday I had finished all of the leftovers from meals prepared the week before so I had to start cooking again.  I shopped my freezer and pantry first and came up with pork chops, hamburger patties and I still had an unopened package of bacon in the refrigerator I had thawed out a couple weeks before.  Plenty to work with.  I ended up making teriyaki pork with rice and veggies, almost like a stir fry, and Salisbury steak with sautéed green beans.  The veggies from both of those meals came from the freezer.  I also made a delicious Cobb salad using some of the bacon and a hardboiled egg later on in the week.

 

Restocking dairy, fresh produce and some goodies for the kitties & bunny

My weeks of not running errands and spending money came to an end last week.  For one I was almost out of homemade creamer for my coffee and with no ingredients left to make more that pretty much constituted an emergency situation.  And the produce drawer in the refrigerator was down to a partial head of garlic, a couple pounds of potatoes and half a dozen stalks of celery so while I was at it I refilled the that too.  I got a lot of produce on sale or marked down so I was able fill that drawer right back up.

 

This skinny little freezer holds quite a lot

I was able to finish moving the rest of the items from the chest freezer out in my garage to the kitchen freezer.  I unplugged the chest freezer and allowed it to defrost.  Once I had it all cleaned out I left it unplugged and I am now pondering whether to list if for sale.  More decisions.  Thank you to all that offered their input about this too.  I really appreciate it.

 

Empty, clean and ready to go

Since December, when I began decluttering my entire house, I've emptied an amazing number of plastic storage containers as well as one and two gallon Ziploc bags.  I've washed them all out and once dry I've been able to reuse most of the plastic storage containers to organize the items I've chosen to keep.  I still have a nice stack of containers with their lids on a shelf in the garage to reuse and a smaller stack of containers and lids that don’t match up that I'll be getting rid of at the end of this process.  And boy is it ever a process!  I will also go back through what I've got left in the bigger stack to see what I can let go of at that time too.  I don't see much point in keeping a gob of extra empty storage containers.  I don't want to fill them up with more stuff just to fill them up, that's for sure.

 

My next project!

I started on an organizing project that is not going to be a quick one, but it is going to be a good one.  It has been a long time coming and involved a lot of "reality checking" myself.  The weird things I get hung up on, I swear.  More details to come as I get this one wrapped up.  I'm still waiting on supplies to show up.  That's okay, slow and steady wins the race, ha, ha, ha.

 

Supervising my progress

My resume was out of date so I took some time this past week to get that little chore taken care of.  Even though I'm retired I still think it wise to keep an updated resume.  You just never know, it may come in handy someday.  Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.

This is how I know spring is coming - black jelly beans!!! No judgement!
I got the gummies for my BFF, black jelly beans don't thrill him like they do me 😉

I hope you had a great week and that this one is treating you well.  Take care and let me know what you've been up to lately.