Making a start

 I've made a start on planning things - I've ordered some strong packaging boxes online and decided which rooms we're going to start decluttering first - the dining room and kitchen, followed by the utility room.  The dining room has a big built-in sideboard thing with a double cupboard above and crappy storage shelves to each side, built by the previous tenant. The cupboard is full of assorted crockery, storage containers, bakeware and glassware, most of which we don't even use nowadays, or only rarely.  So there's no point in keeping it all.  There are a few things I might try listing for sale on the local Marketplace selling page, otherwise most of it can go to the big Cancer charity shop.  I suppose I could offer some of the stuff (dinner service, cookware, glasses) as free for someone starting out in their first home.  I do have a lot of baking tins (most of which I certainly don't need now I've just bought the shiny new ones) and saucepans that I've had for donkeys years, I expect most of those will go to the tip, they're a bit battered and not really good enough for giving away.  I've also got quite a lot of cookery books which I rarely even look at, let alone cook from - if I need a reminder of a recipe nowadays, I generally look it up on the internet on my phone.  So most of the books can go.

The utility room is quite big and is full of junk.....it's not really a proper utility room as such, more a breeze block outhouse stuck on the side of the house as an afterthought years ago, although it had a very small washroom built into it and has no heating.  The previous tenant had put up lots of wall cupboards (mismatched old ones he got from who knows where), he also took out the toilet and basin that used to be in the tiny cloakroom there and instead used the cloakroom as a coal shed! (the house originally had a Rayburn, long since condemned and taken out, and an open fire in the lounge, capped off years ago).  We did up the room a few years ago, a neighbour who's a plasterer replastered the ceiling and laid a new concrete floor (the landlord paid for the work).  We painted all the walls white (it was a very dark room, with only one window), laid vinyl flooring and recovered all the cupboard doors with sticky backed vinyl to make them look better and more uniform.  My washing machine, tumble dryer, large upright freezer and an under-counter fridge and small freezer are all in there.  The tumble dryer gave up the ghost ages ago and the under-counter fridge and freezer, which were both given to us, are old, going rusty and currently unused, so all of those can go to the tip.  I do keep quite a lot of tinned and jarred food, long life milk and juice cartons, etc, in the cupboards and a couple of big plastic lidded storage boxes, but husband also contributes to the junk - tools mainly, much to my annoyance, empty boxes from things he's ordered online, and loads of who knows what else - it's basically several piles of junk!  He can sort that lot out.  I want as much cleared out of there as possible, as we'll need the space to stack boxes as and when we pack up stuff we're taking with us.