I make a lot of suggestions and give a lot of advice on deciding what may or may not be clutter in your homes. However, ultimately your decisions are your own because no one knows better than you as to what you consider clutter in your home and what you don’t. No matter what the choices, everyone’s ultimate goal when it comes to minimising their possessions is, and should, be their happiness.

What you are happy to get rid of and what level of minimising is entirely up to you. Quite often these goal post move as time wears on, and that is fabulous, but the end result should be what you are happy with, or a happy medium between you and the other occupants of your dwelling place.

Sometimes the decision making may be a cause of discontentment, procrastination or soul searching. However don’t let that deter you, because in the end, it is a rare occasion when seeing the stuff go out the door causes anything other than delight. Anything that is too difficult to decide on can be put aside while more decluttering goes on around it. With decluttering experience comes decluttering ruthlessness so the decision making does get easier.

I have gotten happier and happier with my surroundings as more and more goes out the door. I do a little happy dance with every package I send off to an eBay auction winner. Driving a car load of donations to the thrift shop is also a joyful experience for me and it ultimately benefits others. And things offered to and accepted by my children pleases me because we both benefit from the exchange. Of course they are always told they are under no obligation to accept nor keep the items, should they, at some point, no longer want them.

So be happy with the process of decluttering, delight in your progress, and be happy with the end result.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

Cindy

My in-laws are visiting, and I was thinking about my father-in-law. He really likes to do home improvement projects, to work on his own vehicle, and he’s done some truly outstanding woodworking projects.

My husband is not really like his father. No one else I know works on their own car, my husband can only do the simplest of woodworking, and although he does home improvement projects, he doesn’t love it. Yet at least some of his clutter reflects who he thinks he should be (see his Dad, above) and not who he really is.

The fancy name for this is “aspirational clutter,” but I’m going to call it “should” clutter because it defines who you think you should be.

You may have a bookshelf full of classic books, when really all you enjoy reading is popular fiction. However, you think you should be a person who owns, collects, reads, discusses, and enjoys classic books.

You may have a sewing machine – maybe even a sewing cabinet – and not even know how to thread the machine. But you think you should be the sort of person who is either so crafty or so frugal that you have need for a machine and all its accoutrements.

You have tools for home maintenance or automobile repair, but no interest, aptitude, or knowledge for doing these things, but you think that a “good” person should do their own home and car repairs.

You have craft or hobby supplies – probably a lot of them – for crafts that you’re sure you should try. The fact that you’ve owned them for more than a dozen years and haven’t tried the craft yet is only making you feel worse for not being what you should.

Stop “shoulding” on yourself. It’s nonsense. There is nothing you should be, just what you are. You are under no obligation to continue owning a bunch of items that simply remind you how insufficient you are in becoming what you (or maybe someone else) thought you should be. Move on! Sell it, give it away, return it to its owner, and free up your physical and emotional space for becoming what you are.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter any item you haven’t used in six months. This could be a tool, dishes, some other not very useful to you item or  even an ingredient. You could do a use it up declutter on that ingredient. These items are usually found underneath useful things in drawers and in the mirky depths behind everything else in the cupboards.

Eco Tip for the Day

 Natural way to clean silver ~ http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/natural-way-clean-silver-3121.html. Warning:- It always pays to test any cleaning product or suggestion on an inexpensive, easily replaced item first.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Cindy

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 box, and being a curious person, of course I checked them out: 3700 square feet of heated/cooled space, plus 2000 more square feet of un-heated/cooled space including a three car garage plus a pool. Three stories; 5700 square feet of house.

As you can imagine, there was immediate chatter in amongst the neighbors. Those who thought is was a bad idea were concerned about its looming massiveness and its lack of appropriate style and balance with the rest of the neighborhood. Others thought it was a waste of resources – to build, to maintain, to fill. Other people though said, “If they can afford it, good for them.”

That last response gave me pause.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

Do four people (two adults, two children) need a 5,700 square foot home? What about the costs to build, maintain, heat, cool, and fill this home? The resources that will be used for all the lumber, furniture, appliance, etc. Can you imagine the dusting and vacuuming? The clutter?

When it comes to clutter, we all know how easy it is to do and how difficult it can be to un-do. While my future neighbors are providing a rather extreme example, we’ve all done things we should not: purchased more than is necessary, purchased a new thing when the old thing was perfectly functional still, bought new things to make ourselves feel good / be fashionable / because they were such a great bargain / because we felt we needed to keep up.  And, on the other hand, we’ve all failed to get rid of things when we should: things that were broken that we could not or would not repair, tools or craft supplies that might be useful someday, items that we received as gifts and stuck in a drawer, forgotten, clothing that will never again fit no matter how much we exercise, pieces of paper that became obsolete as time passed.

Before you buy or when you don’t feel like decluttering, remind yourself: Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something made from paper.

Today’s Declutter Item

I didn’t have any paper items to declutter today but here are some mechanical pencils and a fountain pen that Liam doesn’t want. They are all off to the thrift store.

3 Mechanical Pencils and a Fountain Pen

Eco Tip for the Day

When buying bars of soap, by ones without wrappers or multipacks that come in a simple cardboard box. Every little bit of plastic saved from landfill counts.

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer by Juliet B. Schor was published in 1998, but the information seems as relevant today as it did more than a decade ago. The book is geared toward middle and upper-income families, who seem to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, no matter who the Joneses are.

“The Joneses” are our first error, according to Dr. Schor. In the past, our Joneses (or reference group) would be our neighbors, who all lived in houses about like ours, drove cars similar to ours, and likely had two adults and only one income. However, Dr. Schor asserts that today, our reference group is no longer our neighbors, many of whom we do not even know. For many people, the new reference groups are our colleagues and coworkers, who may hold financially very dissimilar jobs to our own, and our media “friends” that is, the fictional people we see on TV and relate to. It’s not uncommon for someone making $50,000 to compare their financial prowess to someone making well over half a million.

Dr. Schor also discusses the brands and types of items we buy as a way that we identify ourselves and show our “place” in the complex world. In my peer group, nearly all my friends have iPhones (“regular” cell phones are no longer good enough for us) despite the fact that they cost a minimum of $70 per phone per month, in addition to the purchase price. Everyone has a laptop, including the kids, many of whom have their own iPhones, as well. (Often the model that their parents have already upgraded from.) Plenty of our friends go on overseas vacations regularly. Frankly, it’s a lot to think about keeping up with. I’ve had several conversations with my daughters reminding them that because they attend a private school, they are automatically surrounded by people with more money than is typical, and that a trip to Africa or Denmark is not something that most families take on an annual basis. (In fact, I dismissed one expensive private school, which really was out of my financial league, in part because a European school trip is mandatory for all high school students. I didn’t go to Europe until I was 33, and I’ve only been a two overseas trips total. I don’t want my child going to school where it’s thought that such an experience is a must for teens.)

Finally, Dr. Schor talks about “The Downshifter Next Door.” This chapter focuses on telling the stories of various individuals who have moved away fromconstant pressures to spend – from people are embracing voluntary simplicity to people who have made commitments to stop buying so many material goods and services. I think this is the group that most 365 Less Things readers are trying to become a member of.

The last chapter contains nine points to help turn this financial, emotional, and environmental quagmire around. They are:

1. Controlling Desire – Stay away from places where you’ll spend.
2. Creating a New Consumer Symbolism: Making Exclusivity Uncool
3. Controlling Ourselves: Voluntary Restraints on Competitive Consumption
4. Learning to Share: Both a Borrower and a Lender Be – Love this one and definitely practice it.
5. Deconstruct the Commercial System: Becoming an Educated Consumer
6. Avoid “Retail Therapy”: Spending is Addictive
7. Decommercialize the Rituals – Christmas is a religious and family holiday. Don’t let the mall tell you how it should be.
8. Making Time: Is Work and Spend Working? Cut back on your spending and maybe you can change how and where you work.
9. The Need for a Coordinated Intervention

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this discouraging thought - which to me especially embodies the politics of the state that I live in – although remember that knowledge is power:

“The intensification of competitive spending has affected more than family finances. There is also a boomerang effect on the public purse and collective consumption. As the pressures on private spending  have escalated, support for public goods, and for paying taxes, has eroded. Education, social services, public safety, recreation, and culture are being squeezed. The deterioration of public goods then adds even more pressure to spend privately. People respond to inadequate public services by enrolling their children in private schools, buying security systems, and spending their time at Discovery Zone rather than the local playgrounds. ” (p. 21)

By Cindy

I have been struggling to find time to wrote my blog posts over the last few days because my parents are visiting so today I will keep my post short.

Being that the mini mission for the day is to declutter the outgrown, worn or unloved clothing that is hanging in your child’s wardrobe I though it appropriate to make a few comments on that subject. There are several reasons why is does not pay to overindulge when it comes to children’s clothing…

1. Wasted money ~ why buy a whole lot of clothes that are going to get rarely worn before your child grows out of them. You really only need enough outfits to keep them clothed from day to day and no more. A few good outfits and a two weeks worth of everyday clothes ought to be enough to get by without running out even if you don’t have a clothes dryer for wet weather periods. Beyond that is sheer indulgence.
2. Creating a monster ~ Children aren’t born as fashionistas they are transformed into them over time by making a big fuss about the way we dress them. If we constantly make a fuss about how beautiful they are in new outfits we buy them they with start to associate that with their self worth. This is not a path I would advise any parent to go down.
3. Wasted resources ~ Yes you can hand clothing on to someone else when your child is done with it but wouldn’t it be better for the environment if you placed as little strain as possible on the supply of natural resources. The more items you buy the more demand you place on the materials and energy it takes to provide these items. Please do your best to shop sustainably.

So work out what it is the your child needs ~ everyone has different circumstances so their needs will be different ~ than shop only for what is necessary. Replace items only when needed and adjust to suit future needs. It is possible to raise your child to present themselves neatly and appropriately without making them vain about their appearance. These guidelines can just and easily apply to adults so if you have no children considered taking a look at your own wardrobe.

Today’s Declutter Item

More baseball stuff gone to a new home via Freecycle.

Things that made me happy, made me laugh, made me feel grateful, fascinated me or I thought were just plain awesome.

• Having a lovely day in Sydney yesterday.
• Spending time with family and friends.
• Talking with perfect strangers and learning about their lives ~ Sometimes hearing about other peoples struggles make you far more grateful for your own good fortune.
• Inexpensive public transport.
• Rain on the roof at bedtime.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow.

Pride     Envy    Gluttony   Lust    Anger    Greed   Sloth

If loosely translated you could associate five of the seven deadly sins to clutter. This may seem a bit like hitting below the belt but sometimes that’s what it takes to make people realize the error of their ways.

Pride – otherwise known as vanity is a sure trigger to the collection of numerous unnecessary items. How many things do we buy just because we want others to see how trendy, clever, sporty, rich, beautiful… that we are. We don’t use these things in the privacy of our own home, we just want the world to see we own them. Let me give you some examples – Prada/Coach/Guess handbags, the latest apple iPhone, updated sport equipment, expensive jewellery, and trendy clothes. Not one of these things is a necessity and soon enough is no longer “cool” either and out we trot to update, leaving the previous items to languish in a cupboard somewhere.

Envy – How often do you see that person I spoke of above sporting the latest and greatest and feel that nasty thing called jealousy rare its ugly head? So out you go and follow suit buying the same things to keep up with the Joneses whether you can afford it or not. This is a direct route to a house full of guilt clutter and huge credit card debt.

Lust – although truly related to lust of the body there is no doubt you could also draw a parallel between that and lusting after the pretty, shiny, trendy, latest and greatest products available on the market. Shopping certainly satisfies a desire to make yourself feel good even if like any carnal act the satisfaction doesn’t last long before you are out there again seeking more of the same.

Greed – the desire for material wealth and gain pretty much speaks for itself. It is really just a combination of all of the above.  No matter how much we have we always want more.

Sloth – the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. This is a two part sin that once overcome can be our salvation. First of all, once we have accumulated all that stuff to satisfy the other four weaknesses, we become too lazy to deal with it. These possessions start to pile up around us and we are either paralyzed by our guilt or just can’t be bothered to do what needs doing to move them on, and before you know it you are drowning in a sea of stuff. We have neglected to work on our spiritual or mental wealth and given in to desires that won’t sustain us in the long term.

Fortunately, there is a cure. If you take the time to do the spiritual or mental work required to rid yourself of the desire to constantly have more, keep up with the Joneses and be something you are not then you will find you no longer need all these material substitutes for true satisfaction in life. Discover the things in your life that are dragging you down and substitute them for things more spiritually or mentally satisfying. Maybe it is your career, a relationship or physical neglect that you are not happy with. It isn’t always easy to identify or solve the problem but it is certainly worth the effort to try and the benefits when you succeed.

ITEM 282 OF 365LESS THINGS

The last of the travel keepsake clutter has gone into the recycling bin.

5 Things I am grateful for today

1. The lessons I have learned from this decluttering experience – without them I would still be making the same wasteful mistakes.
2. Email, text messaging and blogging – because when you have lost your voice you can still communicate.
3. My husband – he likes to be the knight in shining armor.
4. The gift of hearing – all I can hear right now is my computer whirring, my fingers tapping the keys and the clock ticking but I still know what a gift my hearing is.
5. Bird song – I especially love to hear the magpies warbling and the kookaburras laughing.

More of the local flora from my walk last week

Today I want to draw your attention to a web site that I discovered thanks to Stephanie who writes a blog called Renouncement . I first met Stephanie through a comment she left on my blog back in Day 208 and I featured her blog on Day 210. As always I went over to Stephanie’s blog to check it out as I always do when someone new leaves a comment. On her About Me page she had listed among her favour books one called Not So Big House. Being the curious little munchkin I am I was intrigued and had to check it out. So I did what all computer savvy folk do and googled it and found this interesting web site…

www.notsobighouse.com

Below is the intro from the front page of this site

The Not So Big House books by Sarah Susanka bring to light a new way of thinking about what makes a place feel like home—characteristics that many people desire of their homes and their lives, but haven’t known how to verbalize.

How big is Not So Big? Not So Big doesn’t mean small. It means not as big as you thought you needed. But as a rule of thumb, a Not So Big House is approximately a third smaller than your original goal but about the same price as your original budget. The magic is that although the house is smaller in square footage, it actually feels much bigger.

What a wonderful idea someone actually designing homes that make sense  functionally are aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly. Even though these homes as still not small they are designed to entice people into building smaller and leaving a smaller footprint on the planet. What a wonderful idea. Please go over and take a look at this website especially if you are planning to build or renovate.

ITEM 248 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Finally the last of hubby’s clothes

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

I received an email from Cindy recently with a list of topics she thought would be good to address on my blog. The one I chose for today is an issue I am sure we have all come across during our decluttering efforts. This is one of those dilemma decluttering issues. Here is some examples Cindy had to share with us…

The trouble with owning something “too good to use”

1. One on my friends started using her “good” dishes after hearing this story: A woman who had married a widower was using the good dishes of the previous, now deceased wife. She (the first wife) had never used the dishes, died without using them, as they were “too good.” The second wife decided she wasn’t going to let that happen to her.
2. At our house, I have wine glasses that are too good to use. (All Gifts) I probably have 60 Waterford wine, champagne, water, sherry, even brandy crystal glasses. I HATE using them. They have to be hand washed and EVERY time we use them, one gets broken. At $75 each, I feel so angry at the person who broken them, which puts a damper on my party hosting. My solution? My Mom bought me a dozen plain, sturdy glasses from the restaurant supply store. The Waterford stays in the china cabinet where it looks pretty (I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing, and my husband is) and it’s behind glass doors, so it all stays clean. We look at the Waterford, and use the cheap glasses.

1. When I was a little girl my godmother used to send me a china teacup and saucer for my birthday. I thought she meant for me to use them so I did. Years later she asked me about them and I told her they had all been broken over the years. She was very disappointed as she had expected me save them for when I was married I suppose. I made no apologies I liked them, I used them and they met their demise having been used for what they were intended. If I still had them now I may be sentimentally tied to them causing a decluttering dilemma.
2. Like Cindy I have a china cabinet cluttered with a selection of crystal glasses that very rarely get used. The wine glasses have been used over the years but the port glasses and decanter are just a waste of space really. We tend to use the less expensive glasses instead. Most of the crystal pieces were wedding presents but luckily not from anyone who would know if I got rid of them.

Unfortunately for Cindy not only does her second example fall into the “too good to be used” category but they were also a gift from someone who would notice if they suddenly were no longer in her possession.  If it were me I think I would enjoy using them for what they were intended and let fate do it’s own decluttering.

That being said I have decided to practice what I preach and put  all the cheaper glasses I have aside for my children for when they leave home and just use the good ones in future. Should they get broken then c’est la vie.

I received this comment from Calico Ginger this morning after she read this post and I thought it worth adding in case people don’t read the comments.

Well, I say use the “good” stuff for these reasons:
1. we all need as much beauty in our lives as possible
2. if you have kids, it teaches them to be careful – if you only use plastic/cheap stuff they never learn that
3. every breakage is an opportunity to a) make do with less or b) replace with something even more beautiful.

ITEM 194 OF 365 LESS THINGS

More of my daughter’s childhood stuff she has decided she doesn’t need to keep

My posts from day 110 and yesterday got me thinking about a combination of the basis of those two subjects., oversized homes and unnecessary cars. What about unnecessarily large cars.

How many people own cars far greater in size than their everyday needs. When we lived in America we owned a V8 Mustang and a seven seater van. We loved both these cars, the Mustang because, well it was a V8 Mustang convertable, who wouldn’t and the Van because whenever we had visitors from Australia this vehicle had enough room to fit everyone in and it was roomy and comfortable and handy to have when we needed to haul large items.

Not very good reasons for owning such terrible gas guzzlers. Instead of owning the big van we could easily have hired a similar vehicle when we had visitors or needed to haul stuff  which only happened maybe once a year if that. The little Chevy Cavalier we owned before the Mustang was far cheaper to run, more reliable and had one extra passenger space and didn’t bottom out on speed bumps.

Ah, the crazy things we do for vanity and convenience.

Now we own two motorbikes one is my husband’s one is my son’s and a small Ford Fiesta. That has not doubt reduced our cardon footprint to a much smaller size not to mention the savings in running costs.

ITEM 115 OF 365 LESS THINGS

The modern cars today have inbuilt security systems rendering the car useless when you don’t have a key to start them so this little item is of no use to me.