There is a lot of focus on the negative stuff in our lives when we discuss clutter and decluttering so today I thought for once I might focus on a few items in our household that have been in our lives for many years and have been in use all that time (or at least all the time that they haven’t been in storage due to location choices)

1. A White Plastic Laundry Hamper – in my bathroom I think has been in use (off and on) for 23 years.
2. My Camphor Wood Chest -  has stored different items for me since I was a teenager – I plan to reduce enough clutter in our home so that I won’t need it anymore.
3. Two Cast Iron Frying Pans – my mother bought for me just before I was married. She bought a set of frying pans and saucepans for $12 at a garage sale. I intended to replace them with some thing “better” when I was more financial. I eventually sold the saucepans at my own garage sale for $12 and donated one frying pan because it didn’t work well on the new ceramic hotplates in our current home but I still own two pans as they have worked so well for all this time.
4. Fridge – I know every household uses its fridge on a constant basis but mine has served me particularly well as I have owned the same one for 23 years. I has been in and out of storage over that time but unlike many other electrical items it has managed to survive long periods of non-use without seizing up on me.
5. Whip Cream Maker – I bought this at a garage sale about 12 years ago and it is often put into service.
6. Fiskars Rotary Trimmer – you might wonder how often one would need one of these but I have used mine on a very regular basis for the last ten years and I imagine will do so for many years to come.
7. Ironing Board – Like the fridge and the laundry hamper the ironing board has been around for 23 years of marriage. It did have a spell in storage for 7 years though.
8. A Corel Dinner Set – which has been in constant service for 23 years.
9. Gold Coffee Mug – that I had before I graduated to a proper china tea cup and saucer at my grandmothers when I was a child. I still use this regularly.
10. My husband’s old stereo system – although we have sold it off on eBay recently it deserves a mention because it served him well for several years before we were married then right up to 2000 when we moved to America.

It is very satisfying to see the items mentioned above and know that we have used them to their potential and may still get many useful years out of them yet.

ITEM 131 OF 365 LESS THINGS

These Scott ski goggles fetched $37.00 from my eBay sales.

Think about it for a minute, all the stuff in your home that you thought you needed at one point or another and never used to its potential (AKA Clutter)  is likely to become landfill prematurely  if you don’t pass it on now to a good home where it will no doubt at least fulfill another person’s needs for a period of time before either being used to it’s true potential or get passed on again until it does.

I was so please with all my eBay sales last week not only because they put a little bit of cash back into my pocket but also the items I sold are now being used by someone else. There are two benefits to this 1.) the items are not going to waste 2.) the people who bought them are not contributing to landfill or production pollution by having to buy these items new.

While reading through the posts at Sanity In Simplicity I came across a link to a thought provoking video (The Story of Stuff) which is worth a look if you want to scare yourself into recycling what you no longer use and reducing what you buy in the future.

ITEM 130 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I received $30.00 for these three items on eBay, not my best sale but they have now gone to a new home where they will be reused and that is the most rewarding result of this exercise.

I no longer look at the decluttering process as a chore in fact I really enjoy it. I look for the positive in in every little effort I make. I no longer focus on the enormity of the task and just revel in the good feelings I get every time  a piece of clutter leaves my house. There is such a feeling of accomplishment and freedom associated with ridding myself  of objects that bring me stress rather than the joy I thought they represented when I brought them into my life.

I have almost forgotten what the feeling is like that is evoked by retail therapy. I think I was pretty much over shopping before this decluttering process even started or maybe that was the catalyst. Whenever I am forced to go to my local shopping centre usually that is just for groceries these days, I actually feel sorry for all the people around me clamoring for one item or another that they feel is lacking in their lives.

I suggest if you are not feeling this way about your efforts with decluttering you should just take a little time out and think about…

• how you are are feeling about the clutter (how it now feels like it owns you, how you feel smothered by it, the quilt when you look at all that stuff you are sorry ever came into your life in the first place).
• how you are hoping to feel once it is gone (the freedom, how clear the air feels, the stress relief, the lessons learned and maybe even the lifting of the financial burden when you have learned to buy less in the first place)
• the relief you feel every time you remove an item from your space  (the joy of accomplishment, how every little thing makes a difference, one more battle won, one more step to freedom and a simpler, happier life)

Focus on the good feelings to keep you motivated and when you falter remember the bad feeling and how you don’t want to go back there and keep on forging ahead.

ITEM 129 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I thought I would give you a break from snow gear and throw in this computer desk the was far too bulky for the space we had it in.

When I first started this adventure of decluttering at the beginning of the year that was all it was to me, decluttering. As I go along on this journey and discover the freedom that unburdening our lives of things that only bring stress on us I am starting to embrace the idea of taking it to the next level.

It really is a natural progression because the fundamentals of minimalism  have been a constant topic of conversation in our home for some years mostly without me even realising it. My husband has been reading up and considering the options available to us  for some time now and I have only just put a label to the concept.

In a round about way I stumbled onto a blog recently – Sanity In Simplicity – that follows one person’s journey into to minimalist lifestyle. I haven’t read that much of her posts yet but what I have read I have enjoyed.

Here is a small sample from the very first post from Megan’s blog….

Minimalism means many things to many people.  To me, it is a way to declutter my space so that I can declutter my mind so that I can declutter my life and sort out my priorities.  It a way to have more time and less stress, and be more environmentally friendly.  It means working less and playing more.  Minimalism, to me, is freedom…

Megan has some links to other great blogs about minimalism as well that are worth a look at.

Maybe next year I will have a whole new blog topic to consider “How I stumbled into minimalism” but lets not get ahead of ourselves after all one step at a time is the motto of 365lessthings.

ITEM 128 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This is another of my ski gear eBay auctions, a pair of child size 10 Columbia Snowboard Pants that fetched $32.95.

Previously I mentioned how a change of  location and or lifestyle can have an impact on the necessity for certain  items around your home. Our move from Seattle in the USA back to Australia has rendered our ski gear mostly useless to us as we are now 700km from the closest ski fields. Sure we might like to take a winter holiday to the snow some time but in Australia you can hire both ski clothes and equipment should that ever happen. We also have some items that no longer fit our children anyway. So I decided to sell it all on eBay.

Now I did my homework first and checked similar completed auctions on eBay to see how this type of product was selling and it didn’t look that great but I figured I would give it a shot anyway and take what I could get. The goggles in particular weren’t performing very well.

I am pleased to be able to say my auctions have gone very well. Everything I put up for auction sold and now there is a lovely big space in one of the cupboards in our house. The combined starting price for my auctions was $108.00 and the total amount that I fetched was $312.00, “got to be happy with that”. Those 4 pair of goggles I mentioned brought in $147.87 of the total.

Altogether I sold…

• 1 adult jacket
• 3 kids jackets
• 4 kids pants
• 2 pair of kids gloves
• 4 pair of goggles (2 kids 2 adults)

I haven’t had any feed back yet but I hope the buyers will all happy with their purchases.

ITEMS 127 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I have decided to list each combined auction sale as one item because otherwise I will be boring you with ski gear for the next two weeks as it is it will take ten days to get through it all. These two items sold for a grand total of $37.50.

Today I applied my 365lessthings approach to my housework.

I have had my sister visiting for a six days and we had a lovely weekend away in the middle of that. I hate to waste time doing housework when I have visitors because I would rather spend time with them than doing chores. Needless to say this neglect had taken its toll on how my house was looking by this morning and I was feeling quite tired and lazy after all the activities of the last few days and wasn’t feeling up to a hard day of cleaning.

I decided to take the one step at a time and don’t focus on the enormity of the task ahead approach like I do with my decluttering and I must say it has made my day a lot more pleasant than it could have been. I just flitted from one task to the next and didn’t give a moments thought to what else had to be done. Another task magically presented itself each time I was finished with the previous one so it was a smooth transition until everything I wanted to get done was done.

Now I am quite satisfied with my efforts without even feeling like I have worked hard and it has left me with enough time and a topic to write about for today’s post.

ITEM 126 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This is the first of the eBay sales of our snow gear. I will post all about how well we did with the sales and how much space has been made by finding these things new homes once they are all posted or collected.

I often check the discussions taking place on Unclutter Forums and sometimes even start a new topic myself. Recently I began a topic called The Neil Armstrong Approach to Uncluttering. This topic has attracted a reasonable amount of interest mostly due to the curiosity about the title but one comment really struck a cord with me.

Pol wrote – I’ve been decluttering regularly and it simply gets easier and easier the more I do it! “Sentimental” clutter has always been the worst with me…    Each small step has opened my eyes to the damage I was causing myself, the stuff owned me.

Those four little words “the stuff owned me” really was an AH HA moment for me. This is often the case with a lot of the clutter we own. We feel tied to it for one reason or another like Pol writes and it gets to the stage where you don’t even really care for the stuff any more and it is virtually owning us instead of the other way around.

I personally find this situation appalling and refuse to be dictated to by clutter and I will think of those four words every time I come across one of those clutter items that for one stupid reason or another I find hard to part with and my shear stubbornness and determination will assist me to make a rational decision as to whether it makes sense to keep this item or not.

Thanks Pol I am most grateful for your words of wisdom.

ITEM 125 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Remember my blog way back on Day 86 when I decided to find a way to use up all my gift wrap items that seemed to be multiplying rather than diminishing in the linen closet.

Well this weekend I attended a lovely get-together in the wine region of the Hunter Valley to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday. The weekend which included wine and cheese tastings, a lovely lunch, a bus to take us to all our destinations  and overnight accommodation, cost us all $270 each.

I felt inclined to provide a gift even though I was sure one wasn’t expected due to the financial outlay for the event. So I decided to find something within my home rather than resort to outlaying more funds. I had a few bottles of red wine that we had been cellaring for a couple of years and a lovely decorated  cylinder for the purpose of giving wine as a gift. I have had the cylinder for about five years, it was one of those items I bought but found were too nice to give away (How silly, I know). I also had an extra pashmina my husband had picked up when buying gifts for my work friends while on a recent trip to the Middle East.

I put the wine in the lovely cylinder and the pashmina in a small gift bag from my collection of recyclable gift wrap items and felt quite satisfied with the present I had to offer and at the same time had removed 4 items from my home that had just been lying around waiting for someone to appreciate. To top it off I printed a copy of a secret family recipe she had been wanting for years ( I may be in trouble with my Mum for that) and put it in with the handmade birthday card my mother had made for her.

Needless to say it was a wonderful weekend. She was happy just to have all her friends around her and as I thought she wasn’t expecting any gifts and she enjoyed a little too much making a phone call to my mother dobbing me in for giving her the secret family recipe which she was more impressed with receiving than any other part of the gift. I am happy to have had the wonderful experience and to be four items lighter in the quest to clear my house.

ITEM 124 OF 365 LESS THINGS

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I check the bathroom cupboards I always come up with one more thing that (or in this case three more things) that are for some reason of no use to us or past their used by date.

On day 119 I spoke briefly about sorting through my warranties and manuals.  I received a comment from Jen who suggested using Manuals on-line to source the manuals on line and saving them to a file on your computer for when and if you need them. You could also just access them online when you need them saving room on your hard drive but you relying on the fact that they will be available indefinitely.

Steph said:-I spent the afternoon tossing old manuals and finding the rest online. Now I have a Google Docs folder with PDFs of everything I still own. I found most of them on the manufacturers web sites.

I was having trouble accessing IKEA assembly manuals on the Australian website but using google I found this web address  for IKEA where I found most of the ones I needed.

Sometimes you need to google what you are looking for and plough through a few web sites to find exactly what you want but it is worth the effort so you don’t have to store gobs of paperwork that takes up valuable file drawer space.

ITEM 123 OF 365LESS THINGS

While having coffee with a friend- lets call this friend Amber – she told me about a conversation she had had with one of her friends who had an interesting  method she was intending to deploy in order to declutter her wardrobe.

As I have mentioned before I live in Australia, Amber’s friend -lets call her Leanne- is about to go on a vacation to the United States where the shopping is great. I haven’t talked to Leanne personally about this situation but I believe her intention is to only pack clothes that she no longer likes or are starting to wear out and when she get to the USA she will wear these clothes and then throw them away and have a wonderful time shopping to replace them.

There is a quadruple benefit to this plan..

1. She will have a lovely new selection of clothing by the time she gets home
2. She will have disposed of all her old unwanted clothes
3. She wont need to buy an extra suitcase to bring her purchases home in because she has freed up the space by getting rid of her old clothes
4. She will save precious sightseeing time and cash by only having to spend half the amount of time in the laundromat while she is away because the first round of dirty clothes will be going in the trash.

I would like to mention at this point that Amber was appalled with this plan because she thinks Leanne should be setting a good example of how Australian women present themselves. I however think it is a great idea and even though Leanne may look a little shabby when she gets there she is going to look pretty sharp by the time she comes home.

I will let you know how this plan worked out when Leanne returns from her vacation. I believe she will be reading this post before she leaves so it will give her incentive to live up to my expectations and carry out the plan to the letter. No pressure Leanne.

ITEM 122 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Hair bands are one of those hit and miss purchases that you don’t know how they are going to work out until you have worn them for a while. Those that stay in place and don’t give you a headache stay, the rest, like this one must go.