Saturday, February 14, 2015

Yedidya Bazaar Decluttering 1

Two years ago I discovered The Yedidya Bazaar. The most amazing idea and a win-win-win situation for the three groups involved: The local families de-cluttering and spring cleaning for Pesach, residents of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas who can come and buy everything and anything for 2 shekels an item (that's 33p), and the charity that gets the proceeds. They raised over 10,000 shekels last year which means over 5,000 items rehoused from places they were not needed to places where they are needed. As I said win-win-win.

The 2015 bazaar is only four weeks away! I've been putting stuff aside all year as it becomes obsolete to our needs and storing it in an empty top of a wardrobe cupboard. This is now full so I already had up to two bin-liners ready when I decided to get serious. I was motivated by Elaine's amazing efforts this week, and also by the fact that we are hoping to rent out our flat while we go away in a couple of months and I need to take pictures.

I started small with books. It was hard at first but it got easier as I went along. There are some books I've owned for years because I want to read them but haven't got round to it yet. Some I kept because I do still want to read them, but most I didn't.

One-third of a shelf of the remaining books are waiting to be re-gifted as I like to pass them on to readers when we get invited for Shabbat.

My three teenage nephews all have specific and different areas of interest - economics, geography, and classical civilizations. I happen to have books on all those subjects that I'm happy to pass on. In fact, and amazingly coincidental, those are the exact three subjects I did for A Level!

The before and after photos don't look very different considering I have about 80 books in bags ready to go to the bazaar. Before (top) and after (bottom)

Four top shelves double layered

Only top two shelves double layered (The double layer on the middle shelf are books for re-gifting)










As I said, not much different to look at but these must have come from somewhere:

About 80 books now bagged and ready to go

Jerusalem people, are you getting ready for the Yedidya Bazaar?
  

8 comments:

  1. Ohh this sounds a great idea, I hope you get some wonderful bargains and great the charity get the money x

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  2. Thanks. I'm actually looking to offload stuff rather than accumulate. But you are right, I usually do come away with something.

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  3. I love decluttering, and even better when it becomes a win win win thing!

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  4. Ooh this is an excellent incentive to actually get stuff done that can be permanently shelved (pun intended!). Love the win win win thing and what a lovely coincidence about your nephews!

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    1. About the nephew thing - I only realized the coincidence as I was typing about the books here. It never occurred to me before that I had books for each of them because these were my subjects.

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    2. Just shows how you're all related really and how these things are so much more than physical :)

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