 Gamel82. Hi, how are you? Hey guys, we are live from the clutter corner. This is so exciting. I'm so glad that you joined us today. I have a couple of folks with us already on. We've got Rita and Sally that are on camera with us and we have Grammar82 and KOS that have just joined us. So guys, welcome. This is going to be so much fun. As we begin, for those of you that are brand new and you are just joining us for the first time on the clutter corner, what we're going to do is a quick recap on the last couple of weeks of some of the things that we have had discussions about and then we've changed our relationship with those things. Now, it's easy to get caught up in a world of clutter where you just go, oh, it's so overwhelming. How am I ever going to figure this out? But if we take one item at a time and we just kind of discuss about how we feel about that item and how it's showing up for us in our lives, then we have an opportunity to either keep doing the same thing or to change what we're doing to get a different result. So I'm super excited that you guys have joined us on this mini journey of just changing our relationship with stuff. I want to go back a couple of weeks to where we were talking about nail polish and I would love to hear your updates and your stories. I know that Sally jumped in and joined us last week and shared some updates of how she dumped all of her nail polish out and she made just a beautiful mosaic design, almost like finger painting and she made a commitment that the stuff that was old, that didn't represent where she was in her life anymore, she was going to say goodbye to and that put me in touch with my own nail polish and I wear gloves most of the time as I clean and so I don't wear a lot of nail polish and so I too went through my nail polish and I got rid of everything except for this one bottle of clear polish and I said, you know what, I should paint my nails and so I made a commitment back to the use it or lose it idea that I was going to use it and so it's still good. I mean it's not dried up or anything so I painted my nails. I've got like a nice clear polish but that's it for me. I'm not doing any colors and so I took out all of my colors and I'm just going with clear for this stage of my life. Now, when you make a commitment to something like this, you're just having a conversation for right now at a later date like five years down the road, I might decide that I want to go colors again and then I go to the beauty store and I buy all kinds of colors and I do that at that time but I'm not going to hang on to nail polishes for five years if that doesn't represent where I am in my life right now. So I'd like to ask you guys, what is your experience with nail polish and did you guys get rid of that or did you use the stuff that you have? I'm going to look through our notes here. Hi from the Netherlands, hi from Wales. Oh my goodness, we have you guys from all over. This is fantastic. Welcome and thank you for joining us. Does anybody have an update that they want to share with us on nail polish before we move to our next topic? Our next topic coming up are our t-shirts, our commemorative t-shirts. Sally, how are you doing? Have you missed your nail polish? Having made a commitment to getting rid of it? Yeah, keep my update. No, I don't miss it. Like I said, since COVID, I never use the nail polish anymore, so I dump it. I mean, all is expired I believe. So yeah, I don't miss them. I'm good with that. I had extra space under my sink, so I'm good with that. So it's been a couple of weeks since you said goodbye to it. Have you had any moments of regret where you thought, oh man, I made a huge mistake? No, I don't think so. Life is so busy. I don't even think about them, so I'm good. Yeah, I'm glad I get rid of them. All right, so now getting rid of it, did it release a burden? Like, oh wow, I just made a decision about something that I got rid of in my life. Oh yes, I'm happy and I got extra space under my sink. Like I said, yes, I'm happy. Yeah. So then my next question is, and this is kind of one of the fun things because it seems like when we make a decision about something in our lives, even if it's not a big thing and nail polish, we want to start with the simple things because it's not like a huge life or death thing. If you made a huge mistake and you have to go out and repurchase it, it's not going to break the bank. You know what I mean? It's not like getting rid of your car and oh my goodness, I made a mistake. I now need a new car. It's not like that. But if you got rid of something, did that trigger your ability to make decisions about other things in your house? Oh yes, definitely. I start looking like the thing that I don't use anymore. I feel like oh this is like be sitting there for so long. Yep, I start to like clean up more and donate more and throw it up a lot more stuff in my house. Awesome. Okay, cool. I'm super excited about that. I do want to, oh we've got a note here from Cool CPA that said I had so much unopened polish. I gave over 30 bottles of unopened butter London and Deborah Litman to the local shelter for women. Oh my goodness. That is fantastic. I just want to say congratulations. I love the fact that we're having these conversations together and that we're asking these questions of ourselves. And again, you don't have to be a hoarder to participate. But what's cool about these conversations is it gives us a safe place to kind of discuss, yeah, I haven't been using mine for very long. Maybe I could get rid of it. Cindy B says I just joined and I have over 500 bottles when I got interested in doing nail art. Cindy B, I am super curious to know are you then still using what you have or do you have too much and is there a declutter issue there? I would love to know was it a mistake or is this like a business for you? This is really exciting. I love having these conversations. I've discovered even more nail polish. Lau came on our first show and she shared with us her commitments to making a change and she did get rid of some of her nail polish. And she said but now I can pass in front of the nail polish stand at the store and tell myself I don't need it. And I love that about these conversations because once you're clear about how you feel about something, it forever changes the way that you either accept it as a gift or you buy it or you just hang on to it because you paid a lot of money for it and you're afraid to let it go. So these conversations are awesome. All right, we will continue the nail polish conversation in our Facebook group. And if you're not a member, go over to Facebook, search for groups. It's hoarding world. And we're posting before and after pictures of all this stuff. We're going to move on to a commemorative t-shirts. I know that Rita has joined us today and she was on our very first call and she got rid of some t-shirts from school and she had about 50 t-shirts and she was going to narrow it down to about 15. She decided that for her lifestyle and she usually wears really fancy clothes to work but wearing t-shirts and stuff to bed and to work out in. And so Rita, tell us your updates on your t-shirts. How are you doing getting rid of the other shirts that you had? So our conversation kind of inspired me to go through my whole t-shirt collection because on our clutter corner I only went through six but it's been a bit slower going than I thought because I have a lot more t-shirts than I thought. I also recently moved and so I just have this like huge pile of clothes kind of like sitting in this giant bag that I need to sort through, put on my dresser and then there's all these t-shirts that I need to get through. But I'm imagining I'm probably going to end up donating a lot more than what I initially thought I was going to donate and we had talked about setting a goal for how many t-shirts I want to save and so I think I'm going to keep about 15 of those shirts and then do away with everything else. So what is the time frame? Are you giving yourself a time frame for when you want to have gone through all 50 of them or do you have space for them and it's not causing any problem if you keep them? So I know some people also operate like this but for me when I have like some sort of pressure like I know people are going to be at my house or something it kind of like gives me that little kick to declutter and we're actually having a party this weekend for my roommate's birthday and people are going to like see my room so I want to have all the t-shirts and stuff cleared out by then and have everything put away so that's kind of my time frame right now. And the reason I asked the question and I'm glad that you're having a conversation about that. I'm going to have it done by this weekend. Many times and this is where it gets really interesting. We have the space in our homes and so there are organized porgers who have gobs of things. I cleaned house for a girl and she had probably 500 t-shirts but she had a place for them all. They were on this huge monster closet. They were all organized. They were all well put away. Some of them were folded in these like interesting looking drawers that she had and she had a space for all of them and so having a space for all of them and because they're up and they're off the floor and they're tidied and they're put away that's good but that doesn't necessarily mean that you need them all. And our conversation when we started to help her to clever hers was how many of these t-shirts do you wear? And she said well I wear a t-shirt like five or six days a month so then we tried to figure out how many years is it going to be if you only wear one different t-shirt every time. How many years is it going to be before you get through these? And she had kind of a collection of them even though she wasn't using them really she wasn't wearing them a lot. So are you going to miss half of these if you got rid of half of these? And she had the space so there was no there was no pressure to get rid of them. So the question is do you have to get rid of it and if you are that's that's fine but if you don't have to get rid of it then what would be the reasons for keeping it? And sometimes we're hanging onto stuff and it will never go out of style and it's traditional and if that's the case and you have space for it that that might be fine for you. I know that there are people who have like and we're talking about t-shirts but there are people clothes in their closet for example and the clothes in their closet fit them 20 or 30 years ago and so they're hanging on to them because one day they're going to lose the weight they're going to get back into those clothes but then the question becomes when you get back into those clothes aren't you going to want to celebrate the new you not the old you from 30 years ago right? We're we're running from our 30 year old version of us we're running towards the new updated version of us right? So are you hanging onto old clothes because you're going to get you're going to go back and wear old 30 year old style clothes or is it time to just get rid of those and then when you lose the weight you have a new and new you you're going to get clothes that represent the new you right? And so the question is not just about our clothes but about everything that we're talking about does this whatever this is that's in my house right now does this represent the best version of who I am becoming not who am I right now but who am I becoming because as we're moving towards a better version of ourselves some of the stuff that we have if it was free and it was given to us we wouldn't take it now and yet we paid good money for it so we won't let it go we're just going to hang on to it dear life right? Anyway it's an interesting concept all right moving on uh last week uh two weeks ago we talked about school books and I was curious to know if anyone has gotten rid of school books I know there was a big conversation about some of the school books that we had were 30 40 years old and so is the information that we were referencing is that available now online and if we were to get rid of those old books are there newer versions of those books that we could access and again we were going back to I was hanging onto the reference books because I paid a lot of money for them and some of those books were $35 at the time and so to hang on to the means that we're holding on to those great ideas right but now that information is easier to search instead of flipping through a whole big book and hoping we land on the right page or going through a long table of contents we can now do a quick google search and access the same information in seconds versus hours inside a book so uh quick quick uh uh grandma 82 so she threw out 10 years last night was that of t-shirts or was that of nail polish or were those books I want to I want to hear the rest of that that's that's epic um and Lau threw out some and Lau's been working in the closet you guys this is awesome I'm so excited about this uh Jen Jay says replace those t-shirts with food on the shelf I never wear t-shirts and they're hot and they look bad on me what whatever the reasons are they're valid for each of us and they're different right the reasons are different for all of us all right moving on from the school books uh grandma 82 says we give to half price uh we also give to half price books um half price books and ebay um I sold I sold a lot of my books on half price books and ebay for years and then I got to the point where I realized I was making about a dollar to two dollars per book by the time I figured out the shipping and with the time and the investment and the packing supplies it wasn't worth it to me and so I ended up just giving them away but if you are a bookseller um a bookseller oftentimes will take a big collection of books like you have five six eight ten boxes of books they will take those books from you and they will give you a small check and say small it's not going to be a lot it might be thirty or fifty dollars or something like that but then they can turn around and they have the time and they have the resources and they have the store set up or the infrastructure that they can resell those books so if you know somebody that's a book reseller I know that in the city where I live uh I think it's called second Charles they have games that they resell and books and I shouldn't tell you guys this because it will make everybody on this uh call a little frustrated but they also sell Legos so if you're sick of tripping over your kids Legos you can pack them up and take them there they will buy your Legos from you they've got these great big monster bins of Legos where you can buy them by the pound it's just it's a resell store so it's kind of awesome um we've got lots of really good comments coming in you guys this is so cool I have an entire box of school books this is from Romy in my attic I want to get rid of them and I'm ready for it even though they were so expensive but I mostly don't know what to do with them they're so heavy I want to stop for just a second and tell you about a guy that I helped move and he was in his 80s and he was moving to an assisted living center and as he was moving he had an attic and a storage unit out behind his house like a shed that were full of books and because he hadn't monitored the books and because they weren't they were not in the attic or the garage in the in the shed in a climate controlled environment and because of the moisture and the humidity I'm in North Carolina where there's a lot of moisture and humidity in the air uh what happened was the pages stuck together and so when you tried to open the book it not only tore the pages but there were lots of mice that had chewed through some of the pages and there were spider webs that had like built spider webs around that and nests so there were the books were basically destroyed and he had gobs of magazines that had all been stacked together and books and when we pulled out all of these boxes he's like oh I want to keep these all well obviously he couldn't take them to the assisted living center where he had because they only gave him a small bookshelf and he had two areas like a full attic and then this full shed behind his house and a part of me a little part of me died because I was really sad that they were valuable books and they had good research information in them and there was a time of his life he could have regifted those to somebody who could have used them knowing that he probably would never use them again and so there we found ourselves putting them in a dumpster because he couldn't use them he couldn't take them with him we tried to donate them to a local library because we said we would make a call the library said if they have rats and spider nests on them and the pages are stacked together and they have not been in a climate-controlled environment we don't want them and we can't use them and so they refused to take them and so we called a local church and said is there any way you guys would want these in their life we don't want your stuff so it was really unfortunate we ended up tossing them all in a dumpster and we tried to do it when he wasn't around because we didn't want to hurt his feelings and I mean he knew they were going to go bye bye but it would have been really great at a time of his life when they were still useful to have made that decision at that time so anyway I hate that we have school books but my husband was the first to donate his he said it's been 30 years since I've been in school let's get rid of all these books I don't need these I've not looked at them once since then so we took a whole great big load to the the semi truck and we dropped them off does anyone have any uh book book stories that you want to share with us before we move on through our next update um I have something to share yes after the I mean textbook session I went back and checked I have a lot of old magazines I'm not sure why I keep them I just it's there I mean it's a lot so I kind of recycle them all it's all like something 10 years 15 years so I get rid a lot of old magazines so I'm glad and on that as well so question about magazines are you still buying magazines uh not anymore but I used to long time ago it can be anything because I have some points I collected from a recycle book and then I found a point and then I kind of ordered the magazine it's free of charge so in the mind my mindset is free so I ordered them but not every book I read really I kind of just came through and I keep them one day I will read it kind of thing it can be recipe book can be newsweek a good housekeeping no it's just sitting there I'll say oh one day I'll read it so it's just stack up stack up over the years it's a lot so I'm glad I get rid of that after the your textbook session yeah so I get rid of it and recycle them you know yeah that's an interesting point that you bring up um accepting the magazines because they're free and we won't talk about magazines today but I want you to be thinking do you have magazines that you are still subscribed to because they're free but you're not reading them so we'll throw that question out we won't answer it today but I want you to start thinking about that because that question is going to come back around and there are there are valid reasons to accept free magazines but a lot of those magazines are now available online and so we'll just be thinking about that in the back of our minds um I did want to highlight the fact here that Judith Fowler says look look for a local literacy group to donate the books to and if there's an opportunity where you can donate those books and they're still in good shape and they're still current and the information is still relevant that is an excellent idea because there are groups that maybe don't have the resources to buy new research manuals and stuff like that and if you have something that's fairly fairly recent I love books I'm a big collector of books but my rule is this once I've read the book is there something about the book that I want to save and if there is with my smartphone I can now take a picture of the page I just want to remember that one moment of of whatever it was and now with my pictures you can highlight right there on the on the screen that I just took a picture of so I can have a copy of it and I'm good with the book and I've stopped marking up my books because now my intention is as soon as I read this I'm going to give it away and I call them hot books so now that I've read a book the minute that I'm done with it the object is to get rid of it within 24 hours and so as I'm reading the book I think in the back of my mind who do I know that would love this book and it's like brand new somebody just sent me this book or I just got this book it's brand new for me so it's just it's it's only been out for two weeks right who do I know that would love a copy of this book then when I'm done I write a little note and I wrap it up and I send it to them as a gift and I say hey Rita I was thinking about you and this book reminded me of you I just read this I thought that you'd enjoy it as well enjoy and pass pass it on and so that way I'm I'm just sending it as a gift to somebody that I think it would mean something to and then hopefully they'll read it and they'll pass it on or what have you so I love the idea thank you Judith for bringing that up because I think it's really important that we have conversations about what to do with the stuff that we're using all right moving on last week we talked about grocery bags and this was a really fun topic during the week over in the hoarding world group we got lots of people that gave us really great suggestions for reusing our grocery bags and what we're talking about are these plastic grocery bags that we pick up at the Walmart or the Harris teeter or the Ingalls or whatever the grocery store is where you shop and for me this put me in touch with a lot of my own or my doing with grocery bags and I'm going to ask you guys in a second if you if you did something different with your grocery bags from last week to this week I'd love for you to jump in the comments and tell us that we're we're open for that right now with the discussion the thing that I did is I have one of these pretzel containers these are pretzel containers that we get at Costco and I fill it up because it has the wide the wide mouth I fill it up with grocery bags and my commitment to myself is that I have one of these in each of the linen closets in the bathroom for restocking the small garbage bag the small garbage bins they look like this the small garbage bins that fit the the grocery bag and I keep one of those underneath every bathroom sink in the house and so in the linen closet of that bathroom I have one of these containers with the bags and then inside my pantry I have one that I use for a small little bit bin that I have in the front office now the reason that I'm keeping one in each of those areas is so that I have enough that I can replace them as liners for my bags but I got rid of all of the extras so I don't have warehouses and great big bags stuffed inside bags I don't they're not piling up anywhere because we talked about last week and this is really interesting how many is too many too many as if I don't have them fitting inside one of these containers that's too many and at any moment any moment I can swing by a Walmart because we're in and out of Walmart's once a week every two weeks or whenever and they have a grippy recycling bin and I can pick up more from the recycling bin when I'm there they're clean they're just packed in there right as you walk in the door you can just put it on your shopping list on your way out of the store pick up some extra recycled bags right and they let you have those for free and so there's no sense keeping them there's no sense storing them there's no sense letting them hoard up in the house if you know that at any moment you could swing by and get more for free and that's the object is get the stuff out of the house and let them store it for you so my commitment was to get rid of all the extra bags that I wasn't using and if they don't fit inside the container it's too much for me so that was the commitment that I made to myself all right I'm going to look over here at our comments see what other comments Sally I know you were getting rid of some containers not containers but bags how did that work out for you I don't keep a lot of plastic like I have the same rules like you I have one big container so that's where I feed all my plastic bag grocery bag so I use them for our trash so I can run out very fast so I just same thing I just feed that that one bean that's it and then come to clock back I just keep two in my car just to use the rest whatever I don't need I just donate it away or give to friend or when I give them food or anything I just put it in there and just give away to them we come to shopping bag or anything like that I don't keep those as well I come back and I'll put in stuff and why not just give away to people or recycle it well thank you for sharing that cool CPA says give them to food charities they need them for distributing food and that is really interesting because if they're giving food out how do you carry it and if they don't have bags then they have to buy them and so if you have extras this is a really great opportunity to pass those along and I know that we were talking about cloth grocery bags as well and somebody brought up during the week the concept of and it's this concept of giving them to food charities or homeless shelters because there are a lot of people that are homeless that end up with supplies given to them on a daily basis but they don't have any way to carry them around and so those cloth recyclable bags are also a good use for them where the homeless shelter or the food the food center can pack up a few things for them and send them on their way and they've got a little a little bag to you know put their stuff in and so that's a great way to recycle that thank you guys for sharing that with us Romy says we usually don't have any plastic bags because there are now rules and regulations around it but with takeout you sometimes get them and I use them for trash and somehow make them useful and I think that's really important again we're having a conversation about how is this showing up in our lives and how are we using it so I appreciate you guys with your feedback on that we're going to skip over to today's topic which is really exciting and lots of fun but again a conversation about weird stuff that keeps showing up in our lives and one of the things that I want to talk about I don't know if I have one here I do are these little things right here when you go through the drive-through or the fast food place or these eat out takeout places oftentimes they give you little packs of things we're going to have a conversation about this so I want to open up our conversation to you guys if you have something like this that maybe is filling up the glove compartment of your car maybe it's stuffed in the console of your car maybe it's stuffed in the doors of your car or maybe you just bring them in the house and you open up a drawer and you just put them inside how are these showing up for you in your life Sally let me throw this over to you I know that you you were talking about this last week so share this with me how has that shown up for you in your life yes I have two girls okay they love to eat Chick-fil-A's so they always come back with all this sauce and stuff and not only that it's sometimes with the plastic ware if they go somewhere with the salad the one not so they give all this or the Chinese food I would say the Chinese food is the worst they will give a lot of all this soy sauce and dark sauce I don't know whatever sauce so they come back a lot so my house I used to keep in the container and sometimes they overflow it's too much and I'm not sure how long they can keep I'm not sure the expiration date so now I make a rules in my house if you don't use it don't ask for a lot so when they drive through the max depends on your food they just ask for two you the thing you don't need like like Chinese if I go you all the Chinese who I'll tell them I don't want it so they won't put the stuff inside there and come to utensil all this plastic utensil I keep them I kind of saw them I have a lot today I keep them in the container so it's full of all kind of utensil in there the plastic oh my goodness show us show us that again so we have a lot say I have all this so somewhere that is without the plastic okay some is with all this all this thing okay and I keep in a container and we have a gathering quite a lot and sometime in my house I'll make use of this or if I have to go to any of our friends house or whatnot I offer to bring all this so we can use it up so for me it's that's it I'll try to use it so we recycle it pretty well pretty quickly I'm glad on that and the sauces is my doctor they always keep they say oh maybe we have their own thing their chips they will eat it so my thing is I'm not keeping more than 10 per I mean one I mean one type of sauce so once I keep for if a man nobody use I will throw it away I mean I know it's a waste that's why I try to tell them not to take a lot if possible and Chinese I just tell them that I don't want it and I try to maintain so I won't overflow with sauces and this kind of sauce I used to keep them for a long time they don't keep long well because the end will peel up and then the sauce will just oozing out by itself that's the reason that I only keep them for a month and when you keep them do you put them inside the refrigerator or do you leave them in the car so that you have them available to you if you're going through the drive-through again and they didn't give you some I put in the container on the table actually so they can see it very easily but the thing is when they my kids when they go to drive through again they will just grab me one again they forget that and we have all one at home but they will keep grab so even though they take two or three at the time I still will add up because they come by most of the time they only use once I mean one container and then they're done so I will have extra at home yeah it's interesting that you bring that up because it is it is easy every time you go through for them to just give you sauce packets and they're the little sauce packets the kind that you rip open are hard for me to use while I'm driving and I don't go through the drive-through a lot but if I were to get some fries or something which I love fries um and then they give you like these little ketchup packs and you got to rip them open like how are you supposed to like get a french fry and like dip it in there without like getting it all over your hands and stuff and I don't like doing that while I'm driving if it's in a little cup like this and you can just peel the the lid off I'm pretty talented but I have to like hold it with two fingers and then hold the steering wheel like with my other three fingers if I'm driving and then I can take a break like oh yes okay the traffic is good grab a french fry and dip it in you know while I'm eating while I'm driving kind of like this but the little sauce packets I can't I can't figure that part out I'm not smart enough to do that and so for me if I'm going through a drive-through and they say would you like some ketchup with that if it's coming in one of those little ketchup packs I'll just say don't give me any at all I'm not I'm not smart enough to be able to do that while I'm driving if I'm the passenger maybe that's okay maybe I'll do it in the car then but for me the rule is if I'm driving no to the little ketchup packs I can't do that and then there are certain um there are certain packs like this where they give you like two or three well you did not give me enough fries to to use for two or three I don't I don't put gobs of it on there you just dip it in right and so I will give them back like well you gave me too too many and I'll give them back right then at the window so that I'm not taking them home because I don't want them and I'm not going to put them in a cup like Sally does Sally's really organized she's got a cup in her you know in her kitchen that says to the family hey these are extra take what you need and I guess if you were to pack lunches and stuff then you have them for lunches and that would be good because you could then reuse them um but if that's not the case and you're not reusing them then there's no need to bring them all to keep them right yeah that's true talking about the packet ketchup though I don't know it's a hack or what but my heart is how my daughter you they put double napkin they open up the saucer the packet they squeeze on the napkin a pack of two so as they they just leave on their car as they drive that's how they eat it on the sauce is on the napkin so you don't need to hold the packet and eat it so you'll be like a lamo sauce on the napkin that's how they do it so do you end up do you end up like eating part of the napkin as well yeah well that's gross I mean if I'm only going to have one or two meals a day I don't want to be eating part of the napkin along with my ketchup but I guess that's the way you do it Liz Garcia says I reuse and when we're out of ketchup or try a new recipe I add sauces to do something different okay so if you're reusing them I love the fact that those would those would be a good use somebody added a note here this said the sauce packets last about nine nine months if that's the case we probably have and that's Lynn Gallia from craft Heinz okay she's a spokesperson ketchup packets and most other sauces last for nine months okay I know many people I was guilty of this for a while we did have those in the car and as I'd clean out the car I'd bring them in and I don't know what I thought maybe we would use them one day and they went inside a drawer and for probably two or three years after we were married we had like a drawer full of the silver the not silverware but the plastic where packets that Sally was showing us and then also the sauce packets and we never used them and so then when we cleaned out the drawer we decided not to have them again in the house because we don't use plastic where and even though I do to this day I pack my lunch every every day I pack my own lunch and I pack the lunch for my husband and we use real silverware I don't know if we're just snooty now and we don't use plastic but at the end of the day we're going to wash it and we're going to recycle it and use it again tomorrow and so even if we're going through the drive through I've got my lunchbox in the car I'm just going to use my regular silverware which is like made of silvers you know and it's uh I don't I don't need any silverware at all so if that's the case and you don't need to have it somebody here in the comments made a comment that you could give those to the homeless shelters as well and if there are that would be a great idea if there are homeless people or there are shelters of people that are staying there temporarily that present prevents them from having to do dishes so I can see where they would get a lot better use out of it than someone like myself who's not you know a real fan of the plastic where Taco Bell recycles any used any used sauce packets or any unused they recycle the used sauce packets you can mail back here used packets for free through TerraCycle oh my goodness okay TerraCycle I got to interrupt you for a second about TerraCycle TerraCycle is this really weird recycling process where they're recycling all kinds of things you would never suspect that they would recycle and it's a way that the manufacturers are able to feel good about producing this extra packaging of stuff and I know one of the things I'm most familiar with are like the Swiffer Duster used mop heads where you mop your floor and now the mop pad that like fits into the Swiffer Sweeper and it's all icky and mucky because it's like cleaned your floor you let it dry out and then you pack it in this container and then you ship it to TerraCycle and you recycle them along with your used Swiffer Duster heads which are those yellow ones that go in the back in a back pocket when we're cleaning they recycle those as well I mean like who knew and now today I learned that they recycled used Taco Bell packets what do you know TerraCycle it's a small world okay blue sky says oh hey Angela be careful of driving while doing all these other things we're all sure we can but neuro studies with FMRIs are showing over and over again that our brains aren't going like that you know that's so true it is so true and if you can if you can be careful while you're driving that's always a preference I try not to do too many things while I'm driving because you have to pay attention to the road and if you go through drive-thrus which are in the US really really popular I've noticed in other countries that it's so weird they don't just they don't just go through a drive through and grab food and eat on the go they don't they sit down at a restaurant and they eat and then when they're done they get up and they leave the meal they're done with eating now and they don't cart it across the road while they're walking or eat on the go or eat in their car and all those other things I don't know why I think this is an American thing and we do we always have food in our hands and we're always eating on the go but I love the concept of having a designated mealtime and not eating in between Sally were you going to say something no I just reading the comment kind of fun it's funny Lau says my home we used to keep sauces in the fridge but they end up gathering there and no one using it mostly because we don't like the flavor we should just throw them right away and that's really interesting why are we saving them if we don't like them in the first place that's a great question all right so let's make a decision let's make a decision what we're going to do about sauce packets if you're using the sauce packets that's fine if you're eating them with your meal that's fine if you're going to reuse them for lunches that you pack that's fine too but if you have extra sauce packets that you're not using why are you bringing it home in the first place so this next week our challenge for this next week is I want us to stop and to say hey how is this showing up in my world and do I need those sauce packets am I going to am I going to dip my fries inside those little sauce packets while I'm driving and blue sky says don't do that it's not a good idea I'm going to agree with that it's not a good idea so let's go ahead and say no to that if we're not if we're not the passenger in the car let's make sure that if we're not going to use them that that we don't bring them home and if we need an extra sauce packet let's ask for an extra sauce packet let's not say can you give me some extra ketchup let's be very clear and say can you give me two ketchup packs please so that we're limiting it because a lot of times we've got people that this is their first time ever going working through a drive-through and so they don't know what does that mean here's a person and I want to be I'm a people pleaser I want to make them happy let me give them a whole handful of ketchups not knowing that the whole handful of ketchups were probably 35 to 65 cents a piece and they're going to get chunked in the trash at the end because nobody used them and so let's make a rule that if we need two we ask for two and if we don't need them let's say no thank you I don't need them and if we have extras I know Sally just showed us this amazing display of plastic wear if you have plastic when you get up from the meal at the restaurant and you didn't use them let's not even put them in our purse and take them home even though they're free or technically paid for them if you don't need them let's not bring them home if you have and Sally I'm not picking on you I'm using you because you showed us this amazing bin of plastic wear that you have but how how many is too many how long will it take you Sally to use all those plastic forks the good thing is that me and my some family friend we have a lot of gathering for all kind of functions so we use up pretty quick so that that one thing I'm I'm glad yeah we use up pretty quick and then even if I have some extra let's say I kind of have a box full at now I'll make sure when they eat dinner I tell them don't use the stainless steel wear use plastic use it up and throw because I have this thing I feel like it's brand new I don't want to throw it away kind of ways but if they use it once I'm okay to throw it away kind of thing so I double use the plastic first before the take whatever out from the drawer yeah we've got a couple comments thank you for sharing that with us Sally one of the comments says I save the plastic forks spoons for hurricane season in Florida sometimes after a hurricane we don't have to wash we don't have the water to wash silverware and that's a really great thing that you may want to add to your survival kit or your food storage kit or your safety kit or whatever you call it for a hurricane season or something like that and you might decide how many how many you're going to keep of those and it might be that you say 100 packs is enough and then you save 100 packs and it's packed up in that packet and then once you have your hundred or whatever the number is the magic number for you and your family that then you don't bring anymore on we're not just collecting them to be collecting them in case of a rainy day there's another comment here that was really good also from blue sky I started carrying a set of bamboo flatware in my purse it's very lightweight and easily washed I think that's an excellent idea because if you have a recyclable set that you use when you get home and you're emptying out the receipts from your pocket book and you have your flatware maybe you wrapped it up in a napkin and it's now back inside your purse you can wash that put that back in your purse and you've just you've just kept one of those plastic forks and and that out of the landfill so that might be a way to do that if you're not going to use it someone else said since covid one trouble is that you can't give them back through the window it's a shame and they build up in my working truck my they build up in my work truck and are such a mess I end up throwing them away which is sad and so the the answer to that is then let them know I know that you're going to give me a spoon for my smoothie or whatever but I already have one so I don't I don't need it go ahead and keep it and you can make a conscious decision then that I don't need it or if you're at a place where you're inside I know lots of the places they're still closed like the dining areas are closed but you can if you're right there and they give you like a tray that has stuff on it say I don't need the silverware or these extra little ranch packets or whatever you can take those back and because you haven't touched them yet you can hand the tray back and let them pick off what you don't need and the same is true with extra napkins I know I know sometimes I'll give you like this great big stack of napkins and if you need them that's fine but if you don't need them why are you taking them away from the restaurant and this this is not to be like penny pinching but to run a restaurant is actually really expensive and all of those packets you have to be paid for and I know they buy them in bulk but the napkins the flatware the salt and pepper the ketchup packets the mustard packs mayonnaise packs all these different packs that they buy those all cost money and so every time that somebody comes through if they take all these extra sauces that they don't need that's just it's it's wasteful for everyone and so I just want us to have conversations about do I really need that and it goes back to the concept of free idus free idus is where you take stuff just because it's free and it's okay I mean it's not like you're hurting anyone by taking stuff that's free it's just that it consumes a lot of space in your own personal life and it it consumes you and so finally you have all this free stuff but if you're not using it then it does it becomes cluttered it's just excess stuff at what point are you going to make a decision to get rid of it because like the packets that that we mentioned if they only last nine months are you going to keep inventory of that chances are you're not so two years five years down the road have you ever done this you go to your pantry and you look at the expiration date on something they're like holy smack it expired in 2014 and now it's 2022 what on earth is this still doing here right but like those little packets they don't have expiration dates on them for the most part so how long have you had them and if you've had them for five or six years they probably should be tossed right anyway just food for thought I have to throw this out here it's a little off topic but Marjorie says nope nope nope the magazines I love this it's a conversation that's going to come back we got to have the magazine conversation all right moving on we talked about the the flatware and we talked about the the ketchup and mustard packs and things like that I want to talk for a second about cups and mugs cups and mugs are one of those things that even if you have a really organized kitchen and this goes back to the people that have all the space in the world and they got lots of cupboards and everything is up and out of place and it's out of sight out of mind but when you open those cupboards there are probably a few too many mugs or cups what's going on inside your cupboards Sally I'm going to toss this one to you it seems like you do some cooking and baking what's inside your cupboards you got cups or mugs if you ask me today today my cup and mugs is very organized I only have one cupboard I only have about six glass I have about 10 to 15 coffee mugs before that I used to have a lot but as I get older I try to I mean downsizing try to get rid of a lot of stuff so now I will say that I'm pretty good so think that I don't need yeah maybe it's the memory is there I just look at it and I keep asking myself well I really need it I'm just like one person how many percent would use I mean a day we would I mean you use it you wash it you can reuse it again we don't need a lot so I get rid a lot I don't need to out a lot so when my oldest move out I give her some I give her some and then at home no I don't have a lot I don't need that a lot so today I can say that I only have one cupboard three shell that's it I don't have more than that yeah go Sally all right Sally you're going to be a shining example we're all going to be like you this next week Rita you're still on camera share with us what your experience is and I know you just moved did you have the cups and mugs that you need or did you have to buy some or did you bring some with you and you just have extras now or what what do your cupboards look like so I don't know if anyone else finds this to be true but mugs make great gifts and I also used to travel a lot before COVID and they make great souvenirs as well and so I was the person who like every city I would go to or every country I would go to I'd buy any mug just like represent that country um and then I always got mugs as presents for like my birthday for Christmas it's like an easy thing people buy for secret Santa and stuff it's when I moved I realized I had a ton of mugs like I had mugs like from Italy and London and then I had like cat mugs because I'm a cat person so I had all these different mugs and I did end up holding on to just about all of them because of I guess the sentimental value and also I drink coffee every single day and so I just try to like make sure I use a different mug every day so I don't usually end up using the same exact mug until like a week or two weeks later but my roommates have the same issues so we have two cupboards full of all of our mugs and they're all different and unique and cute I'm so glad that you are very clear about where you are with your mugs and that you have made rules with your roommate about how you're going to display those in the cabinets and how many you're going to keep it comes down to if you're using them awesome and like you said they make great gifts and there are I want to stop for a second on the great gift part there are a lot of businesses and they use them as they call them ad specialties like here's one for example and it has like a logo on the front of it and this is a clear mug and I like this one for the fact that and I say it's a mug it's not really a mug it's a cup but it has a screw on lid and it has a straw so you can actually see what's in it and if you were to have a smoothie in there you can tell how much is in there and I'm a really big fan of like the clear the clear mugs or the clear glasses or the clear cups because I can see how much is in there I know that if I have a container and I think I have one here I have in there there are two things that I want to say I've got a clear mug here that with a straw but I have a can here and this is like a thermos cup that holds about the equivalent of a water bottle I have a water bottle here as well it holds about the same amount but I don't like this as much and I thought I was going to like it because I thought it would replace the plastic recyclable you know the ones that don't recycle very well and so that's what I bought this originally for and I paid for this this wasn't a gift and it's not really a mug it's kind of just a water bottle but it's not really a thermos either it's just like a tin cup and so it doesn't keep your water hot or cold and so it's just kind of lukewarm all the time so that kind of defeats the purpose if it was a thermos and then because it's not clear and I can't see how much is in it prevents me from restocking and I say restocking where if I have a cup like this and I'm going to be out and about wait there's only this much left in the bottom of it I need to hurry and fill that up again so that I don't run out and get thirsty while I'm on the road right so I'd want to fill this up at my next stop and so having something like this while it made perfect sense when I bought it I haven't used it more than a couple of times and so it's not technically a mug but it falls into that same category of a drink a drink and as I look at the drinks and the way that I'm consuming drinks this is hard to clean a regular bottle brush doesn't go this far down a bottle brush is designed for a baby bottle that's only about this big and so by the time you get the handle all the way down there you have no leverage to try to clean it out and so it doesn't clean out very well if I have like my spinach smoothie in it and then because I can't see how much is in there I tend to shy away from this so one of the things I'm going to do this week is I'm making a commitment to go through my my cabinet and I'm going to get rid of the stuff that once made sense this once made sense to me I was like oh yeah I can replace the plastic drink jugs by having something like this but this ended up not being a good option for me because it's difficult to clean because I can't see what's inside and because it doesn't it doesn't have any thermos power to it it doesn't make it hotter or cold it's just kind of lukewarm so it doesn't it's just kind of a glorified water bottle but not a very cool one at that so I'm going to get rid of this and there are probably about five that I think I could get rid of this week I'm like Sally where I do this on a regular basis and I kind of go through and look at the last of the really cool things that I have and I'm like oh this is so cool and at one point it made sense or somebody that I like gave it to me or it was a gift or something I wanted to highlight this one this one made sense at the time and it's one of these that has the the it's like a little straw that pops out and then there's a straw that's on the inside I don't know if you can see this or not but I've got a whole bunch of chia seeds that are stuck in the little ridges of this now I don't know how all those chia seeds are this has been through the dishwasher and while it went through the dishwasher and it's dishwasher safe whoo it didn't get out the chia seeds so I'm scared to put more spinach smoothies in here although I can see them because I don't feel like this bottle is getting very clean right and then how how does the straw get clean because I don't really have I know they have these look they're like little pipe cleaners that you can clean the straws but if I've got spinach smoothies in here I don't feel that this is getting very clean either and so as a result of that it's kind of the gross or the factor cool concept but it didn't work out how I was hoping that it would and so I'm going to get rid of this as well I'm not using it because of it doesn't come as clean as I'm hoping it would come between uses and so are there things that at one time made really good sense for you and here's where it gets really interesting when we have conversations like this with ourselves I know for a fact if I get rid of this I'm never going to go out and buy another one like that and for the reasons I'm getting rid of it so if I ever see one of these in the store a part of me is going to go oh look that's so cool and I'm going to walk right on by right and if anyone gives me something that's like this even if it has their logo on it or even if it's fancy or whatever I'm going to go you know what those ridges are probably going to catch my chia seeds and I'm going to walk right on by I'm not going to buy it I'm not going to accept it so if somebody's trying to give me a gift I'm going to go oh thank you I'm good and just politely say no because they paid money for it and if I'm not going to use it I don't want to bring it home I don't want to have to at one point say thank you I don't need it now here's another mug my husband brought this home from work and somebody came through the car dealership where he works and they gave this to him as a gift and it's a really nice mug it just has a screw on lid and it probably holds coffee uh Raider this reminds me of you this might be something that you would enjoy because I know you drink lots of coffee I don't drink coffee and so I don't know that I would ever need a coffee mug this might be a good water bottle replacement except I can't see how much is inside right and so again that goes back to am I going to use it probably not because I can't see what's inside I don't know am I full or am I empty if I'm going to run out and run errands and I'm going to take this with me am I going to get halfway down the road and then I'm going to be thirsty again because I ran out because I couldn't see how much I have so for that reason I'm probably going to get rid of this as well but along with that making new rules because I don't drink coffee because I can't see how much is inside I'm probably not going to use this and while it's in my house I'm probably going to get rid of it but with the new rule if another person comes through and this one was brought to me by my husband somebody gave it to him at the car dealership but if someone were to give me this I'd say no thanks I'm good and then they can keep their ad specialty and they can give it to someone else who's going to give it to somebody like Rita who can use it because they do drink coffee or they're going to keep it at their desk or what have you so the the conversation is how are these things showing up in your life for you and if you have them or you have them for a reason and if you're not using them for a reason you have a reason to let go of them and that's the next question how are you going to get rid of some of this stuff and if you're just going to get rid of it but you make no rules about it then when the next person comes by and they give you an ad specialty and they go oh hey here's this really cool cup then there's a tendency to go um well thank you and then you take it you never use it right um Liz says I've started to re-gift things that I know I will not use and I feel bad saying oh no because they take it as I didn't like it so there will be someone I can re-gift it to I want to stop for a second talk about the re-gifting it's a brilliant idea if I am going to re-gift something I'll put a post-it note on it I'll say Liz gave me this particular mug so that I don't re-gift it in Liz's circle of friends right but if there is somebody I know like if I know Rita drinks coffee every day and I'm going to re-gift it to someone who does if she doesn't already have too many that would be a good re-gift give it to someone outside the circle of where you where you were given it and then I also put the date on it like was it a birthday was it for Christmas and what year was it because even if I hang on to something for a little bit and it's on a re-gift shelf then I want to make sure that I don't re-gift it um in a place where it's going to be seen or if in the event that they come over and I want to pull it out like oh hey we're using this I still have it for a minute right so there are there are rules to re-gifting Kimberly says the ick factor is applicable to Starbucks cups also when cleaning take off the rubber seal and wash that there seem to be some something similar to black mold on them oh that is an ick factor that's like big ick if you got mold grown on your coffee cups please wash them and I didn't know that the rubber seals come off so that's very cool let's talk for a second about the reusable mugs because I know there are a lot of gas stations where you can get like a discount on your coffee Rita maybe you can answer this one do you go through like the refillables where you have your own mug and then you show up at either a Starbucks or a gas station or something then they refill it for a lesser price because you brought your own mug yeah so I know Starbucks does that and a couple local coffee shops that I go to um my sister actually just recently bought me a Starbucks mug for my birthday and I used to also have way too many of those like thermos tumbler type of things and I got rid of most of them and now I only have two like really good quality ones and so I use one like when I'm leaving the house and I use one in the house and that's kind of like my rule for myself I leave one in the house I wash it when I need it and I only used out one basically and then when I'm leaving the house in the car or going out I have the other one that can be refilled at Starbucks or whatever and I will have it my car take it on my car and wash it and that's it so I just have those two for myself so that's uh that's a really interesting point um I know that there are a lot of programs at gas stations and coffee places where there is a discount and so that comes down to the factor of reusing instead of getting like a cup that you're just going to throw into a landfill when you're done so if there is a way that you can reuse it and I love Rita's idea thank you for sharing this with us about how she has two and so one's at home and one's in the car and then when she comes in they switch and that way she has one in the car a clean one in the car and then the one that she brought in from the car that then goes inside the wash and that way she's recycling those two but then saving money and not leaving it out in the car where it's going to get that black mold around the rim because that is super gross I'm glad somebody brought that up because that makes me think twice about those um I know um Liz says I boil them like I was taught to do with baby bottles and that's an awesome idea so if you can if you can boil them if you can clean them if they're dishwasher safe and if your dishwasher will run on a hot cycle and it will sanitize them I I totally believe that having a recyclable mug is the way to go there are some exceptions to the rule um ever since I've been um a house cleaner for probably 25 years I've been doing a lot of smoothies and this is a smoothie for me and it's got all kinds of really fun stuff in there from chia seeds to spinach and it's really hard to clean on any container so what I do is I do buy the bottled water and I hate that I do this because this is my my sad contribution to the landfills and I don't I try not to go overboard on it but I do drink the water out of it first then I rinse out the container and I have a little plastic um it's not a plastic but a silicone water bottle cleaner that cleans it around the rim and I can get three or four uses out of this so I'll drink this all day and then I put my juice in it and I say juice it's my chia seed water banana smoothie um and you can see like even right up at the top here how it's like all kind of gunked out there it's going to be really hard to clean and so after it's been through the spinach smoothie cycle is usually when it gets tossed um because this stays with me all day and so by the time I get down to the end of it the whole bottle is kind of like ick on the inside it's hard to clean it doesn't work in the dishwasher um I don't know a better way to do this I've tried all kinds of different containers that are clear and it's it's hard on the go to get them clean there probably is a magical way and it might be a stainless steel thermos that has hot cold features to it that can then be washed and washed with maybe a regular bottle brush or something um I do like this because I can see how much is in it I can see what's left and then I can see if if it's been a while and I'm halfway down I know it's going to start to turn sour on me so I better hurry and drink it before it gets it gets gone I know with the ones that are opaque that I can't see through I have a tendency to not drink them soon enough and then I get halfway through the day and then they've gone sour on me and it's so gross to drink them at that point so that is that is kind of my my I'm I'm ashamed to say because I still use the the clear bottles for my smoothie drink um but that's kind of where I am with that um do we have any comments on the uh on the cups before we move on cups and mugs I know Laos says one of the reasons I have too many mugs is that I'm lazy instead of washing my mug and reusing it I just grab a clean one from the cupboard every time and I make a cup of coffee and I drink a lot during the day and I think that's typical for a lot of people I think a lot of people are like hey this is just the easiest thing to do right now and then just put it in the dishwasher you know as long as you're not leaving them out and scattered around the house that's an easy way to do that so that you are still washing them and you're using a clean mug Cindy says you can also fill them with different things wrap them in cellophane and give them as gift I want to make that that's a fantastic example I want to make that as a quick comment I know that in the house cleaning industry one of the things that we did is we would always work the homeowners association meetings and so one of the things that we did is we would take mugs that people would give us and we would put like a Charlotte sticker on it I live in the city of Charlotte so it would say like welcome to Charlotte or you know lovely Charlotte or something like that we put a sticker over the over the design like this we put a sticker over the top of it and then we would fill it up with chocolates and we would wrap it in cellophane then we would go to the homeowners association meetings and we would hold a little basket and then as people would come in the door we'd say I'd say hi I'm Angela I'm the local house cleaner in the area and I'm giving away this little container of chocolates do you have a business card because we're going to have a drawing and they go yeah here's my business card they throw their business card in this back in the days when everybody carried business cards and then it's a hey here's one in exchange they just gave me a business card here's one in exchange now they have my business card for house cleaning then they would sit down and then before the thing would begin before the meeting would begin the homeowner association person would say hey Angela how about that drawing and I'd say awesome and I get up and I would say hi I'm Angela I'm the local house cleaner in the area which was like a free commercial for me because I was now speaking to the entire group I gotta tell them who I am and why I'm here giving away this door prize and so today we have a drawing thank you all for entering if you didn't now's the time to give me your card a couple people come up and they give you the card to go hey here's one in exchange okay great if you ever need my service give me a call all right all right our drawing for today and then you would have a drawing and you would give the free mug of chocolates away well what you did was you got good will from the people it's a targeted audience because that's the neighborhood that you work in and then now you have all their business cards so you can follow up with them and they all have your business card as well so I love that concept thank you so much for bringing that up about re-gifting them because it was an excellent way to just get in front of everybody and then introduce yourself and then often after the homeowner's association meeting was over people would come up and they're like hey tell me about your service and then they would ask questions and you could just answer questions and they may not buy from you then they may not ask for a walkthrough but now they've put a name with the face so when they are ready for house cleaning you're the person that they call all right Judy's bakery and test kitchen says how about taking pictures of the mugs and making a collage so that you put them on the wall that way you can declutter there and maybe a week's worth and enjoy seeing the mugs if you love the mugs and they're super decorative mugs I would say yes I do have a series of mugs in my house I've got a little coffee bar for when employees come over to the house and I've got six mugs they're all decorative designer one of a kind mugs and I love them and they're so cute and so I just have those six and that's that's all I have and I'm going to keep them because they're cute and because they get used from time to time all right is that it for today I've kept you guys on the phone for a while and I want to be respectful of your time there is a Facebook user that says Angela the Tervis tumbler is awesome and you can use it for either hot or cold and it's easy to clean all right so my homework assignment for this next week is to look up the Tervis tumbler and find out if that's a good replacement for my water bottles in the meantime I'm going to personally commit that I'm going to go through my cupboards and I'm going to get rid of the stuff that I'm not using and for the reasons that I mentioned today that's going to be the the mugs that are like this that I'm not using for whatever reason and I'm going to make new rules about that I'm also going to get rid of the ones that are really hard to clean that I'm not using because they're hard to clean or the the gifts that were passed along that I will probably never use it never was going to use they were just somebody just gave them to me and I I opened my cupboard literally and they were just there whoa how did this get here oh somebody brought it through the dealership and give it to my husband and he brought it home because it was free free does not always mean free sometimes mean free means it's consuming time and space in your life that you then have to make decisions about all right so until next week our our hope is that we take a look at the sauce packets that are in our lives let's make some new rules about that how many do you need and if you don't need them let's not even bring them home let's give them away before we drive through the drive-thru and thanks for adding this up Paris for accountability you can get an accountability partner in our facebook group over at porting world please come join us this is a really interesting series of conversations because here's what happens when you start having conversations with yourself about things like this other people in the family start to pay attention and you may not change them but they're starting to pay attention and we learn from watching the world around us and if you only say oh please give me two ketchup packets okay when they go through the drive-thru they'll say please give me two ketchup packets they start repeating what you do the people in your house will jump on board eventually and start doing what you do because that's the new norm what we're looking for is a new norm and so have these conversations what are you going to get rid of and why and so this week we're focusing on all the stuff that we talked about in the past from the nail polish to the grocery bags to the sauce packets to mugs and cups and um extra napkins and silverware or flatware things like that all right i want to hear your progress i'm going to be over in the facebook group this week and i want to see pictures i want to hear what you donated i want to hear your solutions and if you're keeping stuff what is the reason why maybe we can learn something from that as well all right so uh we will not meet next thursday we're going to take a week off because i'm going to be out of town and i'm not going to be where there's internet service so you guys are welcome to carry on without me in the facebook group i will be in and out of the facebook group during the week but we won't be here this time next week but we will pick up the following thursday and we will announce that both on our facebook group and our youtube page so until then have a really great week and uh saline thanks for joining us on camera today and thanks for sharing my pleasure and rita thank you for joining us as well this was really awesome and we have lots of people that joined us in the chat i'm going to try to catch up with you after this because i would love to just say hi and thanks for joining us but thanks for joining us today this was really cool and we'll see you guys in a couple of weeks take care bye thank you