Declutter

I'm not sure if anyone else feels like a good old fashioned clean up session but I certainly do at the moment.  I'm not doing things on a GRAND scale.  Just bits and pieces here and there so I can still have fun with my family while they are on holidays.  Yesterday and today I tackled recipes and warranties/instruction booklets.  Here's how it went:
1.  I have decided this year I want to downsize slightly; basically get  rid of what I haven't used in the last 12 months.  You see, I am a collector by nature.  I try really hard to have a simplistic household-it just doesn't happen.  It runs in the family as well.....
2.  One of my 'collections' is recipes.  I used to collect cookbooks and in the last couple of years I have reduced my cookbooks to one third of a shelf on my bookcase.  Even that is probably too much as I rarely use them.  So instead of collecting cookbooks (not consciously of course) I changed and took up collecting recipes from magazines and printing them off of the internet.  So now, if I buy a cooking magazine or print a recipe off the net, when I have finished with it, I then go and put all the recipes I think I might use again in binders like these: http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Office-Supplies/Document-Filing-Storage-and-Presentation/Document-Presentation/Display-Books
3.  I read a handy hint about filing warranties and instruction booklets in ring binders and was going to go straight out to buy new ring binders when I thought about recycling and re-using and thought about all the display books I had upstairs with recipes in them I had never used.  So I spent probably 4-5 hours yesterday throwing out all the recipes I have never cooked.  I also tried to keep only healthy recipes (except for in the dessert & cakes folders) that had plenty of vegetables as that is how our family now eats.
4.  I did the last of the folders this morning.  It was a ring binder and had plenty of loose leaf refills in it.  By the time I was done, it was empty along with about 8 other display books.  I then got out the bag I keep all the warranties and instruction booklets in and went through them.  I tossed out the ones for old appliances (that had gone to appliance heaven!) and refiled the keepers into the pockets; a pocket for each appliance, gadget, toy, etc.  I now have one display book for toy warranties/instructions, one for kitchen warranties/instructions and a ring binder that holds all other instruction books and warranties neatly and so if I am required to look for something it will save me a lot of time!
I'm not sure what you store your warranties and instruction books in; a drawer, a bag, all over the place.  I hope this simple and cost effective idea helps to get some of your house sorted in 2011.