Mini Mission Monday is about finding ten minutes a day to declutter. To make it easy for you, each Monday I set seven declutter missions, one for each day of the week for you to follow. It takes the guess work out of decluttering and makes it easy and "fun" for you to achieve some quick decluttering. There are definitely specific items that, in excess, make your home harder to keep tidy, organised and efficient. For today's mini missions I will make some suggestions of items to declutter and why they can have a negative effect in your home when in over-abundance. Most of the items I mention Continue reading
The easy things to declutter
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In order to write this post today I took a look back to Day 64 of my declutter mission. This was the day that I first began to blog about my resolution to declutter 365 things. Since then I have often written that the simplest way to begin decluttering is to start with the easy things. Looking back on the photos and list of items I had decluttered prior to blogging proves that this is exactly what I did. Many of these items had never been used, hadn't been used for a long time, I didn't like for one reason or another or I had too many of. The items came from places all over the house, from Continue reading
Deprivation
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Since I have brought us back to the subject of being open minded, now seems as good a time as any to write a post about our state of mind when it comes to stuff. I was reading a post this morning, which I will link to on Friday, and one quote really stood out for me... "Most of us have so much – much more than the majority of the world at least (and more than our primal ancestors ever dreamed of), yet we live with a misplaced sense of deprivation." ~ MARK SISSON This statement puts into words something I wonder about often. I think about it from all aspects. There is the "Have" side Continue reading
Too Hard Basket
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Today's mini mission is to declutter something because it requires dusting and you don't like it all that much anyway. Have you ever considered how much time you spend cleaning things in your home that aren't even necessary to your happiness or survival. Or perhaps you avoid this task until the dust is causing hay-fever, someone is coming to visit and it looks embarrassing or the humidity is turning that seemingly innocent dust into a breeding ground for mould or mildew. Or perhaps you don't even realise that this dust could be causing health problems. My son's bedroom used to be a huge Continue reading
From the Archives ~ Reassess what need is
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I brought this blog post up from the archives to once again make the point of what need really is as that is the theme for today's mini mission. I mentioned many time how little we really do need as opposed to what we "think" we need. We really only need food, water, shelter and love, it is a little more complicated than that but not as complicated as we tend to make it for ourselves. You only have to look at the photos of all the things I have decluttered from my home to see how much stuff we had that we thought we needed or wanted, only to find that sooner or later we discovered we didn't Continue reading
These are only so many hours in the day
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We all know there are only so many hours in the day. How many of them do you want to spend… ...looking for things you need but can't find among your excess stuff. ...looking for things you didn't put away where they belong. ...choosing what to use or wear among an overabundance of stuff. ...moving things in order to clean your home. ...running around like a mad thing cleaning up every time someone is coming to your home for a brief or long visit. ...dusting trinkets that aren't even really that special to you. ...struggling to make things fit into, what ought to be, your more Continue reading
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom – Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom I live in a neighborhood where the houses are all about 50 years old and are between 1500 and 2000 square feet. Most have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a 2 car garage or carport. Almost all are one-story houses. The house just around the corner was a bit smaller than most and had been poorly maintained. When the original owner decided to move last year, it wasn't long before the new owners knocked the house down to the ground and scraped away the foundation. A few months passed and contruction began on the new home. The architect left the house plans in the permit Continue reading
Over catering for guests.
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Most people enjoy having visitors occasionally, family or friends who stay longer than just a fleeting few hours. As a result we also like to be able to cater for those visitors with enough room and household items to keep them comfortable during their stay. A comfortable bed, clean linen, bathing facilities, crockery and cutlery items and food to keep the tummy grumbles away. There is nothing wrong with this in fact it is preferable to not being able to keep your visitors happy and comfortable or worse, not being able to accept visitors at all. But my experience is that many people over Continue reading
Space Goals
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One of the areas of my home that I have been working on regularly since the very beginning of my declutter mission is my craft room. At the beginning all I knew was that I had too much stuff and I didn't really have an ultimate goal aside from to keep working at it until I was satisfied I had gone far enough. As I have slowly gotten closer and closer to that point my goal started to become clear. I wanted what I owned to fit into the craft organising cubes that I had long ago purchased for the task. No overflow into other rooms in the house, no stuff in other items of furniture, no stuff in Continue reading
Want v Want
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I received the following comment from Whisper last week which I think holds an important lesson when it comes to decluttering. Whisper wrote... "A month or so before my move, I tried a half-cull of my jewelry (suggested in The Minimalist Packrat) – getting rid of a piece for every piece I was keeping. I don’t think I managed to be completely 50/50, but it really helped me reduce to a more manageable level. This was after 3 or more less than productive culls where I just looked for things I didn’t want. It took the irritation of my unproductive attempts to try a new way. Another example Continue reading
