The Declutter Checklist: 2026

Hope To Have Done In 2026

These will be marked done but this part of the list will only be up for 2026. Hopefully none of these crossover to 2027.

Clear The RSS Feeds

current count: 120, mostly videos, but one video feed is so long that my reader only lists the last 50. Might be high for awhile. Hoping to watch one a day plus stay caught up on articles and webcomics

Clean out under the pinball machine

It’s a mess under there. This mostly means organizing my VHS tapes and other things that ended up under there.

Clearing behind the toybox

This one I don’t know if I’ll complete or not. I can’t get to the storage alcove because the door is behind where I have my toybox, where I now change and store my shoes, and there’s a bunch of stuff between the door and the box. I want to see if anything can be done with at least some of it.

Go over my microphones

I have a bunch of old and (thanks a friend) newer microphones. I want to see what is usable, and then figure out what to do with the ones I can’t use. You’d be amazed what there’s a market for when it comes to old gear for the reasons I want to see what I can make work.

Go over my art supplies

All my pens and paper’s mostly. Most of my art lately has been digital but I want to do something with all the papers I have. Even all the below lists will require the right notebook, and I want to redo the art supply drawer dividers. What’s there now is a good proof of concept but I need to alter the design and use stronger cardboard. I can’t do that until I go over what I have.

List all my games

Apart from the PC games I have an Atari 800, NES, GBA, CD-I, and some old LCD handheld games. I kind of have partial list with my old high scores list but I really want to have a definite list.

List all my software

I’ll be making lists of various games and other software and divide them by operating system. Then I’ll see what I do and don’t need and choose my next options.

How many wires do I have?

HDMI, audio cables, who knows what else? I organized them but I don’t have a list of all the stuff I have that I can easily go through without digging the bags out. I want to check at a glance what I have in case I need to use them.

Long Term Goals

I would be surprised if these are done this year. At least I hope to make progress on them, but if I do complete one, that will be very cool.

Clear out the YouTube backlog

Long term goal. Still too many to count

Selling off comics I don’t want

This might end up getting done this year, depending on whether or not I can sell off the ones already partitioned off and if I want to add to it in the next run-through.

Selling off toys I don’t want

Mostly Transformers and action figures. Once that’s done I’ll look into making a place to display the figures I’m keeping so I can create a different diorama every month.

Complete list and scan of every comics I own

I want to know every comic I have after I sell them and have digital versions of my collection for my own use. I won’t upload them for pirating but it would be a benefit to my other site. This includes scans of comics I want to get rid of just because of the other site.

Complete list of the music I own

I have enough for this year’s goals, so I’m putting a list of all the records, tapes, and CDs I own.

List all my home videos

VHS, DVD, and a few video CDs plus anything I recorded myself in various formats. I want to know all the videos I own before I decide what to do with them next.

Quick Report> Home Video Inventory Complete

It took longer than I thought, came with distractions, and caused me some frustration, but I finished the home video inventory and organizing. It also gave me a chance to dust the VHS boxes, as they’re larger than the DVDs and collect more dust.

It was done last week, but I was so tired and so up to the deadline that I had to wait for this week to report a successful project. I didn’t take any pictures of the sorting process, so enjoy the old video pictures when I need them. The problem was that while most of the videos were already organized I did get a few new ones since the last time. Additionally, I had some videos in more than one format, stuff I recorded from television, stuff mixed around, and all of that needed to be figured out.

I used Google Sheets, as my old Microsoft Works wordsheets don’t have the ability to create multiple lists in the same file, or at least I haven’t figured out how to do it. I broke the list down into Video Name, type (movie, box set, collected episodes, stuff I recorded from TV, direct to video, and so on), and then which format or formats I have them in. Not being a cinephile I didn’t have every format out there. No laserdisks, no Betamax, and because I don’t have the latest play, no Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, or whatever else they have now. I also didn’t count anything on the computer or online. This was just about the videos I physically own in VHS or regular DVD, plus the three videos I have on Video CD. (That requires a computer or my CD-I. In fact one of them came with a game I have on CD-i, Thunder In Paradise.)

From there I made a PDF copy for my computer using Bullzip PDF, as I couldn’t download the spreadsheet itself, again as far as I’m aware. This gives me a copy that doesn’t require me to run to the internet. Bullzip is an old copy so hopefully it’s still out there and still working. As mentioned in a previous project it creates a PDF using the computer’s printer setup.

The final act was to pull stuff I have more than one format for. DVDs are better quality and take up less rack space, so if I have the DVD and VHS, or an official copy and a TV or fansub recording I pull the unofficial one since I have something of better quality, and the DVD looks better than the VHS, provided it doesn’t suffer from disk rot. I plan to watch all of these to make sure of that and to see if home videos will join the Clutter For Sale in the future, but after sorting, organizing, finding a place for each of them, and recording it all for inventory I was bushed by the end. Remember, this isn’t the only project I was working on, as I mentioned in the previous report. This was supposed to be a free time project, but with company coming I needed the sorting table out of the way.

So now I just have to find my VHS cleaner and do that, since I haven’t turn the thing on in years. DVDs right now I have to watch on the computer, while Video CDs I have the computer or the CD-i. I still have cassettes scattered to six different spots: both racks, one kind of broken rack, four storage boxes, and two spaces on the entertainment center. I’d like to cut that down if I can while still having a physical home video library I can enjoy. We’ll see how all that plays out.

A Primer For Transformers Collecting & Reviewing

I plan a big declutter project this week that I knew I could work around…and then every other @$%$#% thing has to happen and suck time away! I won’t even be able to report on it until next week and I may have to cut this week’s comic review because I also have company coming over, we had to install a new washing machine, my dad needs help with a few other things, I got a bunch of comics sold…which was going to Canada (and the US postal system being what it is we’re still waiting for them to arrive) and this already was a bigger project than I was intending. Any one of these and it wouldn’t affect my schedule. All of them combined and I don’t think I’m going to make the fair I was hoping to visit and get out of the house to do something other than shop or something medical related. I hate this week!

That means that this buffer, which I planned to hold longer than a week, gets to be used today. I am not having a good week, but hopefully it will be interesting. If not, see me next week and you’ll see what a pain this was.

One of the other things I want to do with the filler buffer is get back to reviewing Transformers toys. Those have been rather popular according to my stats but I haven’t been able to do a new one since. I stopped collecting the toys (mostly, as every now and then I have a bit of cash and there’s a must have like the Origins Bumblebee) even before I lost my job because I was running out of space. Now I want to get back and going through them, maybe adding some more to the Clutter For Sale section, while the ones I want to keep will have their reviews in the buffer.

Before I resume, considering I have time to add reviews and photo sessions to my work schedule, I stumbled upon a video going over most of the important collector terms and issues. Paper Melon did miss a few things, but he’s also getting a lot of terms into one 40 minute video. So follow along. There’s a handy chapter guide on his page or possibly in the embed if there’s a particular term, portion of Transformers history, or part of the collecting experience you’re curious about. He also tries to keep it interesting and entertaining. Hopefully this helps you understand stuff I’ll be saying in future reviews. If you want more focused discussion on Transformers toys and lore I recommend checking around Chris McFeely’s YouTube channel and his series Transformers: The Basics. This makes a good primer, though.

Quick Report> Home Video Inventory

 

A quick and easy inventory project and I couldn’t even get that in today, waiting for someone that took too long to do what I needed to do to get further in the project.

This week I wanted to start an inventory of my home videos. There are time I’m sure I had something I didn’t. So starting an inventory of video tapes and video discs, whether it’s DVD or Video CD, was my goal yesterday. I started it on Friday, knew it wasn’t going to be done because I had some other projects I also had to do today, which didn’t get done during the week while shaking off a night of insomnia that really threw off the rest of my week and is the third Tuesday in a row (not having that issue the other days, always a Tuesday) I had that, and somehow I still didn’t get as far as I wanted to. That gets on my nerves. This isn’t even the right image. It’s one of my old comic spreadsheets because I need to rush this report.

My actual layout is Video Title, Video Type (show, movie, box set, recorded from TV, etc), and three spaces to check DVD, VHS, or the fewer in number Video CD. I used Google Sheets so I could create subsheets by letter rather than have a whole long list. Sadly, my older spreadsheet program appears incapable of that.

I got as far as the early Fs before I needed to stop, write this, and then get to other things I need to do today. Because of the waiting (it’s a long story that will bore you and I’m not mad at them or anything), I didn’t even get to finish one shelf of home videos. During the week I’m hoping to get time in to do more, if not finish the whole thing. I’ll slip an update into next week’s report if I get to do a different project, but that’s my lame report for the week.

Cleaning Under The Pinball Machine

I’ve been wanting to clean this up for a while now. Until I can really go over my video library and get rid of some stuff, something I want to add to my scheduling which I’m only just starting to figure out, I still want to get this looking less like a pile of junk. Aesthetics aside, I would like to be able to plug in and use my pinball machine, so I have a reason to at least stand up on breaks. (I can’t afford a standing desk and that would cost me some storage that I can’t give up currently.) I also need a short extension cord because the plug for the pinball machine is one of those big boxes that would cost me an outlet.

That doesn’t mean I have to let this sit there. This week I decided to do something with this pile, even if I can’t whittle it down. I can at least organize it better, which is something.

I’m not sure how else to pad out the intro without being boring, so apologies for those of you on the homepage seeing the opening paragraphs. There’s more to talk about inside. Come join us.

Stupid Power Outage

 

Friday night we lost power. I’m writing this on Saturday night, having spent the day doing stuff I couldn’t do last night due to not having light as well as sleeping in late and getting other things done. So I didn’t get to declutter, and I didn’t get to make more buffer articles so I wouldn’t have to make a post like this just to let you know I didn’t forget this week.

Nothing I can do about it, but this gives me further incentive as a blogger to have articles at the ready for emergencies like this…though how I could schedule it without power is up for debate. We had plenty of battery powered lights, a working radio, and I even broke out the Game Boy Advance for the first time in years…which showed in how badly I played. Not having AC in around 80 degree weather and rain was a problem but it came on in time to go to bed late. It just left me no time to do anything for this project, and I’ve missed too many of those lately.

The mission continues…but I’m sick of the obstacles.

Carnival Vs Clutter

Carnival rides at sunset by mdburnette is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

I have not been out of the house for anything other than shopping or doctors in a long time. So when a carnival came to town this week I took advantage of it. My legs were sore the next day and probably still sore when you read this. And I’m hoping to attend a fair at the end of the month? Point is I helped my dad with his computer set up and spent the rest of Saturday tired and not willing to do anything.

Essentially this is a non-report because I used up my buffer. It’s good incentive to finally get my creation schedule decluttered, and maybe I can do that this week. As a creature of habit it’s tough for me to get into new habits, so with half a year to go and hoping to clear something in my goals for the year, that’s something I seriously need to fix. Between this and cleaning the bathroom a couple of weeks ago I’m getting a good showing of just how out of shape I am, which I also need to fix.

I hope to have a better report or review next week. I’m saying that too often and it annoys me, but it’s not like things aren’t getting done this year. They just make for boring articles.

Comic Report: G.I. Joe Vs The Transformers Finale

 

 

This week I finally cleaned my bathroom, dusting the shelves, washing the floors, and cleaning the toilet, sub, and sink. Even splitting up in consecutive days wiped me out, so I have to tap my last buffer article. I better work on that.

So now one last look into the world of G.I. Joe Vs. The Transformers. This was the fourth and final mini-series set in the JoeVTF Universe, but I forget why no more were made. Devil’s Due still had the G.I. Joe license until recently, when it went to IDW and now Skybound, also the current Transformers publisher, both of whom pushed them into a shared universe with other Hasbro properties.. It could be they lost the rights to the crossover, or maybe Devil’s Due didn’t think it was selling. However, rather than let the series end on a cliffhanger, they took what would have been a four-issue mini-series and produced a two-part comic, each double-sized so there was no stuffing things in. Sure, you had to pay more for a 48-page comic, but considering how many companies right now are giving you less for more (at least DC is trying to make up for it), it’s not a major complaint.

This is the last of the crossovers reviewed for my old website. The original version of the review is here, and BW Media Spotlight has a lot of Transformers comic reviews (and a very small number of G.I. Joe’s comics with Transformers as I don’t have any without the old ones except for the G.I. Joe Extreme comics) if you’d like to read those. I’m not bringing all my old comic reviews here. Just ones I thought would make for good filler. So back to whatever’s keeping me from doing a new report.

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G.I. Joe Vs. The Transformers: Black Horizon #’s 1-2 (Devil’s Due, January -February 2007)

WRITER: Tim Seeley

ARTIST: Andrew Wildman

COLORISTS: Wes Dioba & Art Lyon

COLOR ASSISTS (issue 2): Timothy Straub

LETTERER: Brian J. Crowley

NEMESIS EDITOR: Mike O’ Sullivan

various cover artists: again with the slagging variant covers!

Background information:

About partway through writing the synopsis, I realized that anyone not steeped in Transformers or G.I. Joe lore won’t have a clue what I’m talking about half the time. So rather than put up links all over the place, here’s the important information for this series.

Unicron: A planet-sized Transformer whose origin varies from continuity to continuity. Introduced in Transformers: The Movie, a theatrical release taking place in the future of the original animated series, Unicron exists by consuming other planets. It was the last role for Orson Wells. The character really took off in the comics, thanks to constant use by Simon Furman. He recently resurfaced in the joint continuity of Armada and Energon.

Cobra-La: Also introduced in a planned theatrical animation set in the TV Series, Cobra-La is the last refuge of a group of near-humanoids who utilize a sort of “organic technology”, where living creatures replicate technology. However, they claim that our tech is a perverted form of their “tech”, and that humans forced them underground in the mountains. Now their leader, Golobulus (voiced by famed actor Burgess Meredith in the movie) plans to wipe out the human race and repopulate the earth with his own people. Pythona is his second in command, and Nemesis Enforcer is his ultimate soldier. There’s more, including their connection to Cobra, that really aren’t important to this series. G.I. Joe: The Movie was never released in theaters (blamed on low numbers for their robotic counterparts’ film), but was released on home video.

Pretenders: Another Transformers reference, the Pretenders were one of Hasbro’s gimmicks to continue the line. The robots hid in humanoid (Autobots) or monster (Decepticon) shells to hide their robotic nature. Only Bludgeon, a character also made popular in the comics, and the Monster Pretenders, whose robotic alt modes were also monstrous in design, appear in this series.

The Adventure Team: The one of the first spin-offs of the original Joe action figures (back when everyone was Barbie-sized) featured our heroes leaving the battlefield and going on amazing adventures. Joe Colton (aka G.I. Joe) and Mike Power, the “Atomic Man” were two of those characters. Colton leads the team, and Power is an atomic-powered cyborg, to capitalise on the whole Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman craze of the time. The team would also be joined by super hero “Bulletman”. The others were relatively normal, but you can see where the later, non-military oddities of the “Real American Hero” version got their start.

And now you know the rest of the back-story. Good day! No, wait, now comes the comic itself.

Quick Report> A Pulling Myself Together Week

I’ve been a mess the past ten years. That’s maybe five years longer than I should have. The surgeries of 2016 (and the blood clot between them) and the hernia I got from them that was finally removed in 2021 shouldn’t have that much recovery time. However, I think all of that kind of beat me down, and maybe a bit of still getting over losing my mom just as all of that hit, and remembering her medical issues. I had this belief that the stuff I do online could turn into a career, or at least some manner of income, but just when I figured out how I could do it I had my own medical issues and I got too used to others doing things for me.

Well, I’m finally sick of being a burden enough to try to change my life’s course, and this week, my usual birthday time off, was when I chose to do it. I turned 53 on Monday, which means I’ve been in this rut since I was 43. The past few weeks I’ve been trying to so some self assessing, but I’ve been assessing and reassessing too much and not doing anything about it. So I took the week to get some minor projects done that will hopefully have a major effect on finally pushing past the previous decade and being what I should have been already. Rather than use up my last buffer for articles on this site, I thought I’d share them, because it’s a good list that’s been long overdue.

• Buffer Articles: I was kind of hoping to have feature articles for both sites ready to go for this week, which would have been last Sunday, when Clutter Reports drops a new report, to today. I didn’t. To keep my other site alive I kept my shortest postings, a daily video of stories or story discussion, going and took the time for the rest of my content creation to relax on my birthday and do everything on this list for the other days. A couple of bad sleep nights got in my way, and I’m one or two articles short of that goal, plus not making any more buffers for this site, but it should lighten my load, as will the next decision I made.
• Lightening my schedule: This one doesn’t affect The Clutter Reports directly, but over at BW Media Spotlight, my other site, I was doing three posts on weekdays, two on Saturdays, and one on Sundays along with the week’s report. One of those was a daily comic review, but my rotation has ended up with a lot of anthologies somehow. Writing a review of anthologies from the Golden Age of comics is a much longer article than I usually need for a comic review. (Check the individual reviews for the first G.I. Joe/Transformers crossover. One of those is my usual length, or at least was.) That format doesn’t work for an anthology, even with quick one paragraph reviews. So for the time at least I’m dropping that to a second Sunday review, leaving me two articles a day over there and the weekly “here’s what I cleaned this week” over here. I decluttered my time, leaving me room for more decluttering, learning how to use my stuff to make other stuff, and maybe find a source of income, be it a job or improving my Clutter For Sale section.
• email build-up…again: My emails had started to pile up again, so I tackled that as well. Got everything read, at least. There’s some leftovers I need to go through, as well as in my RSS feed. I was hoping to do more damage to that but I do have a schedule that will allow me to hopefully avoid another pile up and keep up with important mail, both electronic and ye ol’ paper.
• browser bookmark organizing: We all bookmark pages to read later, either regularly or every now and then, or an article we don’t have time to go over. My just kind of ended up all over the place because I just dropped it into the last folder I was using way too often. So between Friday and Saturday I took the time to properly sort them, even managing to check a few to see if they still existed. No sense having one that no longer works. I should have an easier time finding one I want, going over all the articles that built up like my RSS feed and emails do, and finally clear all that out. With my new creative schedule I might have time to do that as well as learning how to use my software and some hardware.

I didn’t say I was able to pull myself together this week. I said I started this week. My schedule, my inbox (even finally dealt with my physical mail rack), my bookmarks…all of that needed decluttering, with more virtual and physical clutter left to do. Finding time to fix my life is also in there, and that requires effort just like the decluttering I’ve been doing. I also found time to finally dust our bathroom, which is long overdue, though years of limited physical labor due to the aforementioned beatdown (and probably my age isn’t helping) means I wasn’t up to doing more than that. The rest of the cleaning will take place over the next few days, but I did the hardest part. Then I have to dust my bedroom and studio, do more organizing and decluttering.

I’m really hoping to push myself back to full recovery, which I don’t think I ever did. I just thought I did by being barely functional, believing it would all come back on its own. It didn’t, so it’s time to force it without hurting myself. I also need to lose some weight. 10 years is long enough. I should be all recovered from everything by now. Hopefully I will be, and some of that may show up on this site even when it’s off-topic because personal declutter is one of my goals. Wish me luck!

Some Alternate Comic Storage Ideas

Behold the noble longbox. For comic collectors this was the usual way to store comics. It’s a simple box with handles in case you need to pick them up and move them around. You also have to move them if you want to get to the boxes below and if you have more than two stacks, which I’ve tried at various locations, it’s annoying. It didn’t help that I had a hernia for a few years after my surgery that I was finally able to get removed, though now I have a hernia mesh and I’m the paranoid type, but it’s not as concerning when it comes to lifting stuff.

I tried wheeled drawer boxes, but the comics were too heavy for them, and the wheels couldn’t take the weight. While I’ve found alternate usage for most of them, this ultimately was not what I was hoping for. What drawers I am using for comics now lack wheels, but I can still open the drawer, pull out a comic, and put back…except I can’t line them the way I want.

Basically I need an alternative and I found two videos that could give me idea. One is actually an idea my dad had but I rejected it for the permanence and that I didn’t think would hold the comics any better. The other is a potential project that might be worth picking up. Let me show you the videos and my thought processes.

Sony Vs Physical Media

 

Here at The Clutter Reports I’ve defended physical media even during the declutter process. That’s one of the reasons I’m repurposing an article I posted to BW Media Spotlight this week…plus it’s the Fourth Of July weekend on the US’s 250th birthday. I’m not sure anyone really cares about decluttering this week. Also, it’s something to discuss when it comes to physical media and why using streaming to declutter isn’t as good an option as you think. Also, happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans.

There are good reasons to own your own copy of something, but the entertainment industry has fought that since the debut of the VCR and the home video market. Now the gaming companies are pushing for the same thing. Sony dropped quite a bombshell to open the month of July, with this announcement from their official blog by Senior Director of Content Communications for Sony Entertainment:

As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.

This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.

We’ll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store. We remain committed to delivering a world-class gaming experience to our fans and we thank you for your continued support.

Whether you play video games on the PlayStation or not, this might affect you. Cord Cutters News is wondering how this will affect home video of shows and movies produced by Sony, and whether that will shift to completely streaming. That means any new content from them or a chance to own a copy of older content might go with the games.

The broader question now emerging is whether DVDs and Blu-rays themselves could face similar pressure next. Sony has already implemented major reductions in its recordable optical media operations. Production of blank recordable Blu-ray discs, along with related formats such as MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes, ended in early 2025 following earlier workforce adjustments in the company’s optical media division. These cuts reflected declining demand for consumer recording media as streaming and digital storage options expanded.

So whether you’re a gamer or movie collector this discussion is rather important.