There is one thing or actually a big group of things in my home that are looking down the barrel of being decluttered before the 365 days are up. The group in question are my old sports trophies. I have mentioned these before and still haven’t done anything about them but the day of reckoning is coming.

Trophies come under the same banner as souvenirs and little trinkets that serve no other purpose but to remind you of days gone by. They scream “look what I did”, “look where I’ve been” and maybe even the sad cry of  “I’m living in the past”. Personally unless your future appears dull and you aren’t likely to create any new achievements or live any new adventures do you really need to live in the past.

No matter what your age or circumstance you always have the ability to make new memories, achieve something new and possibly visit new places. My bad shoulder may have put an end to my softball and indoor cricket days but there are plenty of interesting things to do with my time like reaching out to a world of people with my blog to name just one.

Sure these old adventures and  achievements are worth remembering but they weren’t so dull that you need clutter to constantly remind you of those days. I know I don’t need my trophies to remind me of the good times I had with old friends and the individual set of talents I had that contributed to our sporting achievements. I will always remember those days and the great lessons learned from some wonderful coaches and mentors. I just don’t need to dust those memories every week.

I will however get my husband to photograph the trophies and I may even save the little plaques from the front of each of them but even then I expect I will rarely look back at those photos but they will be there just in case.

ITEM 243 OF 365 LESS THINGS

More of my husbands clothes that have gone to charity

Today I received an email from Barb who had a question about children’s’ art projects. Here is what she wrote…

How have you handled children’s art projects, etc. I have a whole box of them and just not sure what to do!!!!

My response was this…

I have made of point of revisiting my stash several times and been more ruthless with each visit. I am now considering digitising what is left and making a disc for each child. My son was quite prolific with writing “wild” stories when he first started school and they are a classic to read over and over again so I would never part with them but I don’t feel it is really necessary to have the original hard copy. I will ask their opinion on that before I destroy anything though.

This was a simple answer to the question and there is probably a lot more thought that could go into the subject. For instance, with all of the great on-line printing services we have access to these days wouldn’t it be nice to put together a book with their art work and school work samples. Even 3D objects could be photographed and added to the content. You could put it all in chronological order including their school photos from the corresponding years. Maybe even include sports photos and pictures of trophies or awards that they won along the way. You could choose to compile your own scrapbook rather than having it printed on-line if that is a craft you enjoy.

This is starting to sound like fun. If anyone has some more suggestions please send them in through the comments section and we will compile it all in a more comprehensive post for another day.

ITEM 238 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Braiding purchased for a special project that never happened.

Today I received a comment from Hannah asking for help with a decision on what to do with old diaries/journals.

Here is what Hannah wrote…

I have just found a box full of the journals/diaries I have kept over the years! What to do! I don’t think I’ll ever read them again, and I don’t know if I want anyone else reading them either, although if I’m dead, who cares?! I think I actually know the answer for me as much as I don”t want to face it, but would be interested in your thoughts, and those of your readers.

Well Hannah, there are a couple of things you might want to take into account here. These journals are a record of your life. You may think now that you will never want to read them again and maybe you never will who knows. I used to do a bit of genealogy research and I would have loved to have had some old journals from relatives that have passed just to get an insight as to what they were like. So maybe it would be nice to keep them for when you are gone.

The upside to this is that the words are what counts not whether or not you have the original copies. I personally would scan them and save digital copies and throw the originals away. If you are not fond of the idea of someone accessing them at this point in time put a security password on the file. If you have a will keep the password with that.

I am sure some of my other readers will have an opinion on this so I will leave it up to them to comment and provide you with other ideas.

When I read your request I actually fished and old Abundance Journal out of the bin that I had thrown away earlier today. I wasn’t going to bother recording it on my blog but under the circumstances I thought twice about it. This journal only records five things a day I was grateful for back in 1998 and it really wasn’t riveting reading so I don’t think anyone ealse is likely to want to read it. I had no qualms about tossing it in the bin which is where it was returned to immediately after I took the following photo.

ITEM 204 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This of course is the journal mentioned in today’s post

I think I mentioned some time back that one of the areas of doom when it comes to decluttering my house is my daughters bedroom. It is mostly awkward because for now she is living elsewhere while going to university so that adds a degree of difficulty I didn’t really want to deal with. It is not for me to decide what she wants to keep and I cannot be bothered sending long convoluted emails or wasting precious phone minutes to have her decide long distance.

Luckily for me she came to visit the week before last and I warned her ahead of time that she was going to have to help me do some decluttering in her bedroom while she was here. She actually took it all with good grace and complied willingly if not too enthusiastically. That is she just did it and didn’t complain. We didn’t get through everything but I was happy with the progress we made and the rest can wait until her next visit.

She had fun reminiscing over some of the items we found but willingly let them go. Others she kept and we put back where we found them for now. I must admit I just dumped all the stuff out in the garage and had not been out there to sort through the piles until yesterday. All the extra hours I have been doing at work have left me a little short on time since she left.  Some of the items went into the recycling bin and the rest will be donated to charity.

ITEM 191 OF 365 LESS THINGS

A pile of old papers and Rolling Stone magazines that she would not part with previously have finally found their way to the recycling bin. Hooray this was the stuff I really wanted to see go.

The item that is being donated today is a sentimental item that is kind of sad to see go.  As you know our mission at the moment is to declutter any items in our home that are not being used and are unlikely to be used in the future. The fact that this item has been unused and hidden away in my camphor wood chest for several years deems it clutter.

It is the last hand crocheted item left in our home that was made by my husbands grandma. Our linen closet used to overflow with all the crocheted hand towels and face clothes that she made for us throughout our  married life. She has been gone for several years now and we have  plenty of fond memories of her. She was a lovely lady who had it pretty tough for much of her life and we will never forget her.

You may wonder why we would give away this last physical reminder of someone so loved. My answer to that is because it is only that a physical reminder. Whenever I see any hand crocheted item I always think of her so there are constant reminders everywhere. We will always remember her and she will always be near in our hearts. We do not need to keep items that may be more useful to someone else in order to remind us of the good time we had together.

ITEM 180 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I sit here with my hands poised above the keyboard drawing a complete blank today. I have been a little side-tracked as my son had all four of his wisdom teeth extracted this morning. So due to my lack of sleep last night, sitting in hospital waiting rooms for half  a day, swapping ice packs, warming soup and serving ice-cream to him I have been a little distracted.

So I am going to keep it light today and just admit to you the strangest item of clutter lurking in my home. Being as we have discussed this week about childhood clutter and in keeping with the above paragraph I think this is an appropriate confession. At the fear of losing all respect as a declutter blogger this is it…

I have two tiny bottles stashed away in my jewellery box which contain the baby teeth of my two children.

So does anyone have anything stranger than that hidden away somewhere? If so please tell us about it because I would like to think that I am not the weirdest one among us.

ITEM 168 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I am on the fourth go around in the kitchen and these didn’t make to cut this time.

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know that my take on decluttering is ” slow and steady wins the race”. One of the advantages to this approach is that you can start with the easy stuff and as time goes on you become more ruthless and eager to reduce your clutter more and more. The job gets easier as you go because what seemed like hard decisions at first become simpler and comfortable for you.

Betty Jo from Joy With Less has discovered this and she recently wrote about it in her post The Little Things. Here is an excerpt of what Betty Jo wrote..

Like Betty Jo has discovered, decluttering is a process one that gets easier as you go if you give yourself the time to get comfortable with the areas you find challenging. Learn as you go, get ruthless when you are ready and youwill find out how liberating it can be.

ITEM 167 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This vase hasn’t been used for a long time, someone else may use it more than me.

I received a comment from Loretta yesterday and here is what she wrote…

I’ve got a question for you: since your children are now grown, what advice do you have for those of us with younger kids with regard to keepsakes and clutter? Is there anything you regret not keeping for your kids, or did you (and they) keep ‘too much’ childhood stuff?

I recently went through a big box full of cards my mother kept for me from the time I was born: birthday, Christmas, invitations. I had 40 years worth! Tossed most of them, but realised I was doing the same thing for my kids. It is quite liberating to think I don’t NEED to keep this stuff any more!

Much to my Mother-in-laws horror I have never been one to keep too much of this kind of stuff. Because we move around every now and again due to my husband’s job I have continually decluttered over the years. My approach this time around is different, it is more of a case of minimising with the intent never to accumulate again. Below is  a list of some of the items I have kept for and of my children.

• Baby cards (birth and Christening) Confirmation and First Holy communion cards and mementos (rosary beads etc.)
• A few special outfits they used to wear ( Unique items I and my mum knitted for them)
• One or two special toys. (a silver rattle and a music carousel)
• My son’s Thomas the Tank Engine & Star Wars toy collections.
• Some examples of their school work.

Which when you write it down like that it sounds like an awful lot. These are just the things I have kept for them. Once they were old enough to choose things they wanted to keep themselves that is when things started to pile up. I have always encouraged them to sell their old toys whenever I have had garage sales over the years and they were happy to make a little pocket money from that. Nevertheless, here is the list of what has accumulated over the years and is cluttering up every spare bit if space in their wardrobes….

• Every band t-shirt/hoody my son has ever owned. (my children love their music)
• Skateboard and Sports Illustrated Magazines
• Travel souvenirs
• KISS dolls
• Every note slipped between friends at school that my daughter ever received (there are a lot)
• A doll or two
• 2 Build-a-bears
• Every Rolling Stone magazine she received by subscription
• Both have piles of CDs
• Mariners Baseball souvenirs ( both children)
• Photos frames with friends and other odd stuff (daughter)
• Both have a sleeping bag (huge) that came from I don’t remember where but came in handy for sleep-overs and school camps.
• A box of Little Golden Books and Dr Seuss books they were particularly fond of.

And I am sure there is other stuff but I have scared myself enough already with this lot. I think I have mentioned before that this is my area of doom when it comes to decluttering.

The beauty of my decluttering strategy is to leave the hard things until last but the day of reckoning is coming and I do plan to minimise these items. My daughter is visiting next week and she is aware that I am planning on going through her stuff while she is here and hopefully she will be prepared to part with some of it.

As much as this list of stuff is large and scary and I really would like to see it minimised I do believe you shouldn’t force you children to part with things they are not prepared to let go. I suppose the best thing is not to over indulge them in the first place. There isn’t anything I regret not having from my childhood but then I didn’t have much in the way of possessions we made our own fun those days building cubby houses, fishing with the family, and other physical stuff. I wouldn’t change that for anything.

Anyway I digress. In a couple of weeks I will let you know how things went with my daughter and I will speak to her and my son about this subject and how they feel about their clutter and if there is anything they wish they still had.

I would like to think that if you set a good example of living with less maybe your children will follow suit and feel the same way but you never can tell.

Thanks Loretta for such a great question. I know I have only given you half an answer but when I have actually dealt with my children’s clutter I will give you some feedback on how that went.

ITEM 166 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Another ebay sale $6.50. I guy from the local post office and I are on a first name basis now.

Today, three pair of holey Nike Skate shoes that languished in the shoe cupboard for nearly three years head to the garbage bin. We can sometimes make personal attachments to the strangest things. I suppose this is so because they remind us of a happier time in a place we would much rather still be, a common mistake we fall into that causes a lot of clutter in our lives. Purging ourselves of these useless items will not make us forget the good times, the places we’ve been or the people we’ve met along the way so don’t be afraid to let go. It is just “stuff” after all, the memories remain. The beauty of this plan is that if you don’t feel you can let something go today maybe you will feel better about it on day 100 or day 213-so what-after all there are 365 days in this resolution, just pick something else for today.