Hi Folks, it’s Friday again and here are my favourite five comments of the week

This is the first comment we’ve received from Smoothagator and what a great one it is too. I hope she will join in and share her special brand of wisdom with us on a regular basis. Thanks Smoothagator and welcome to 365 Less Things.

This comment came from Grace in Brazil in response the Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ First Fruits. It is short but sweet so I have cut and pasted it here rather than add a link. ~ Something my 17 year old daughter said recently also puts this in perspective. She stated quite wisely, “There is greater virtue in giving away something that you really want to keep.” Let us be virtuous women!

I liked this comment from Sarah simply because it shows she is not afraid to go against the flow. I am such a rebel at heart.

This comment from Annabelle shows she is getting good at delegating the decluttering. Way to go Annabelle! And thanks for the weather report.

Deb J brings more light to the way customers mistreat product in retail outlets in the her response to Are we too conditioned to convenience ~ When I was in college I had to interview a store manager regarding business practices… Read more

This week’s favourite five blog posts/web finds were excavated through various methods and included for a variety of reasons. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Organizing Maven ~ Managing paper controlling clutter part 2

I googled Decluttering Regrets and came up with this little gem. There is some great advice given here by people with experience: ask.metafilter.com ~ Anyone had regrets about a-massive decluttering of their lives

Be more with less ~ The one thing standing between you and simplicity

Every now and again we need reminding about the awesome things we take for granted 1000awesomethings.com is a great site full of those reminders and here is one that tickled my fancy ~ When-you-find-the-spot-on-the-dog-that-makes-its-leg-go-crazy

Here is some sound shopping advice from Susan at One Less ~ My shopping rules

Today’s Declutter Item

I last used this item in 1999 when I had lawn to water. Now I live in a townhouse and my lawn is about 4m² and rarely needs watering. As I have no intention of ever having a bigger garden I feel confident to decluttering this item.

Sprinkler

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Somedays I have a habit of making mountains out of molehills, finding discontentment where it needn’t be and generally making my life miserable for nothing. Today wasn’t one of those days. In fact today I spent some time with a beautiful friend of mine who has more than her share of real difficulties and it felt good to be there for her and remind myself just how lucky I am. Today I am grateful for the wonderful life I am blessed with.

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

My darling husband has been playing around with the blog layout. So what do you think of it? As they say a change is as good as a holiday ~ that isn’t always the case but for now change is all that is on offer.

The design is a little more simple and uncluttered which is what we love here at 365 Less Things. I have also switched the gratitude list to a single gratitude item for the day. The list was a little hard to keep up at times but I didn’t want to eliminate it altogether so I just swapped quantity for quality.

This is just phase one of the changes so if you notice things looking different every now and again it is just hubby and I tweaking things. If you have any questions or suggestion please feel free to put them forward and if you have trouble finding anything on the site also let me know.

I can’t let you go without imparting some snippet of decluttering wisdom so here is a little advice for the day…

When decluttering your belongings there are only three categories of items, things you “can’t live without”, things you know you don’t want and things you are undecided on. Eliminate the things you don’t want, keep the things you do and everything else is potential clutter.

Today’s Declutter Item

This soup bowl is a Liam hand painted original that he no longer wants. I will send it off to the thrift store and when he is a rich and famous artist there will be someone out there with a very expensive soup bowl hiding in the back of there kitchen cupboard. Well it sounded like a good story anyway.

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Some days start out badly and just get better as they go along and for that, today, I am truly grateful.

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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

I love a label. Love. Love. Love.

• My grocery store bags, children’s lunch boxes, our water bottles, coolers, and flashlights are labeled with our last name.
• All of my girls’ uniforms, sweaters and coats have their names in them.
• When they were littler and their feet closer to the same size, all of Audra’s socks were labeled on the bottom with a letter A to distinguish them from Clara’s socks.
• My canisters of food staples are labeled with their contents, even though you can easily see into the canisters.
• The girls and Dan and I have matching hairbrushes and matching nail clippers; matching, that is, except for the big “Mom and Dad” on the items that belong in my bathroom.
• All the leftovers in the refrigerator or freezer are labeled with the name and date.
• I label packages of food with the carbohydrate counts in large letters so they’re easier to find and read.
• My ipod, laptop, cell phone, and Clara’s insulin pump and supply bag are all clearly labeled with contact information on the outside.
• When I loan out a book, I slap a return address label on the inside cover.
• One lip balm is labeled “desk.” Another is labeled “bed.” Scissors are labeled “Mom,” “Dad,” and “Kitchen.”
• All of my garden tools are labeled on the handles – some so long ago that they bare my maiden name.
• All of my animals have name tags on their collars, the cats as well as the dogs.

These labels help keep me and the family organized, help items to come back to us if they’re lost or misplaced, cut down on waste, and prevent clutter.

Obviously, when many things are labeled, it makes it easier for everyone to find what they’re looking for and to put things back where they belong. Labels help to keep like with like. They help you to find what you want and prevent duplicate purchasing due to “I know it’s here…somewhere.”

Labels also help your lost or misplaced items to be returned to you. Recently Clara and I left her diabetes kit on the floor of a shoe store. (Dummy us!) Fortunately, Clara realized within a few minutes. We hurried back to the store, and the sales clerk was literally calling me as we arrived because the bag is plainly labeled “Diabetic Supplies” with my name and phone numbers.

Several times a year, we take many of our gardening tools to the girls’ school for big grounds clean up, and it is used by many different folks. Having everything labeled allows it all to get back to us, eliminating the need for replacement purchasing.

All these things are true, but I have to tell you what motivated this post. First a quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (or Philosopher’s) Stone by J.K. Rowling. Harry is looking over his school supplies list. First up are the required uniforms:

1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)
2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear
3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)
4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)

Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name labels.

“Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name labels.” Oh if reality only mimicked fiction.

I volunteered to take home all the lost and found from my daughters’ school. Not the uniforms that had made their way into the Lost and Found but everything else. I was flabbergasted by what awaited me. First off, let me add that the girls had sorted everything as an end-of-school clean-up chore and had already returned everything that was labeled with a name. I brought home more than 100 items that I had to check over, sort, clean, and donate. 100 items for a school of 120 girls and about a dozen teachers and staff. Currently in my house are a couple of seemingly brand-new swimsuits, a couple of beach towels, a dozen tote bags, at least fifteen refillable water bottles, a dozen books, five or six lunchboxes (one still complete with lunch and full water bottle), a whole host of non-uniform jackets and sweaters, and someone’s special stuffed dog along with her nice hairbrush.

All these items have to be looked for and replaced by their owners (owners’ parents). How much simpler would everyone’s day have been if the items had been labeled to begin with and could have been returned before it was too late?

Is there anything you could label at your house that would make your life easier, more organized, and less likely to create clutter?

* * * * * * *

Today’s Declutter Item

This camera case is no longer useful to us because we sold the damaged camera for parts on ebay.

Camera Case

Something I Am Grateful For Today

My son Liam handed in his last uni assignment in for the semester and all of last semesters unfinished work is also complete and handed in.. Now he can have a nice break for four weeks and return with a normal work load next semester. At last life post accident can return to normal. It is amazing how that time (9 months)has flown and how well he has recovered. Thanks again everyone for your well wishes during that frightening period in our lives, your support was a Godsend.

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

While looking at furniture a few weeks ago I was considering one item and found myself thinking ‘This unit is a little low. The drawers will end up not being used for the purpose we intend for them because it requires bending over to use them”. My God I thought, have we really gotten that used to convenience that this could be an issue, what is the world coming to. At what point did we get that spoiled, and when I say we I am not just talking about my husband and I. I am talking about Western society in general.

Laziness would seem to be the initial culprit here and in some cases it may be but in fact I think sometimes the opposite is actually the problem. Loading ourselves up with too much responsibility, so that something has to give, is more likely the issue in many cases. We then find ourselves doing counter productive things in order to “save time”.

Stop and think about the things we do, or don’t do for that matter, because it is just one more effort to add to our already busy day…

• Driving round and round in a car park looking for the most convenient parking spot rather than walking a few extra yards. We waste time and gas, adding to carbon emissions, and rob ourselves of the chance of a little healthy exercise. In the end we have actually wasted more time than we saved.
• Buy “time saving” gadgets in order to streamline the jobs we can’t avoid. In my experience many these gadgets don’t save time and just add clutter to our homes, waste to the environment and rob us or our hard earned cash.
• Buy convenience foods, often over processed, over packaged and over priced and I don’t need to tell you the problems all three of those things cause to our health, the environment or our bank balances.
• Overloading our children with toys to keep them amused because we don’t have enough hours left in our day to spend some quality time with them ourselves ~ once again adding more expense to the cost of living that we work too hard to upkeep. It is a vicious cycle isn’t it.
• We pick things up while shopping, change our minds, and just put them down where they don’t belong. Contrary to popular beliefs you are not doing the staff a favour by keeping them in a job doing this. You are just displacing product in the store possibly causing a loss of sale and adding more strain to an already overworked staff. The amount you pay for items is determined by the cost of manufacturing, shipping, store rent and staffing expenses. The more mess the more hours required to maintain the store, and the more you pay.
• Don’t pick up after ourselves, then clutter accumulates and we live in a constant mess. The stuff has to be dealt with eventually, it may as well be now rather than later. Living this way can be more stressful than making the effort to stay tidy. Cindy’s post ~ One minute rule ~ has some fine examples how spending one minute now can save you countless minutes of inconvenience later on, and that has to be more convenient in the long run.
• Dropping litter may seem more convenient than holding on to it until you find a trash can but it costs everyone eventually. Someone has to pay for the clean up and although there isn’t a obvious fee I can guarantee you that we are all paying for that in local taxes somewhere along the line.

You may have noticed that the cost of convenience only adds to our work load. In some cases there is a monetary cost in others it costs you in time. How much of our lives are we prepared to give up  just to pay for stuff that we don’t even need or could avoid paying for.

Today’s Declutter Item

Somehow I don’t think we are going to find a use for these around the house. They can certainly be decluttered.

3D Glasses

Something I Am Grateful For Today

The weather has been less than optimal when it comes to taking our evening walk lately but today the clouds parted long enough to allow us the privilege. It was nice to leave everything behind, including the cell phone, and just walk and talk. I can hear the rain coming down out there again now so we were quite lucky to find that gap.

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

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.

Some areas of our homes require constant clutter control just because of the nature of what they are. There is a continuous flow of stuff coming in and out of these areas and naturally at some point items become redundant for one reason or another or we just lose items in the melee only to discover them later when they are no longer required. Each day this week we will declutter something from seven different areas like this.

Monday –The Toy Box ~ Over time toys get broken or outgrown and work their way to the bottom of the toy box where they lie unloved until we take the time to sort through them. Now it that time.

Tuesday – The Pantry ~ You don’t need to clean out the entire pantry just take a look from the door and see if you can spot one item that you know is likely past its prime.

Wednesday – The Car ~ I know that during the course of getting from A to B and back again stuff makes its way to the car and doesn’t get returned to the place it belongs immediately and sometimes trash can accumulate there also. Every now and again we need to take some time out to put everything right. Today would be a good day for that.

Thursday – The Junk Drawer ~ or black hole (an area in your home where odds and ends collect) is another area that builds up with displaced items that needs constant reshuffling and decluttering.

Friday – Child’s Closet ~ Children have a tendancy to just keep on growing some faster than other ,or slower as the case was with my children, but no matter the speed the clothes will become unwearable sooner or later. It is a good idea to identify the ill-fitting clothes as we dress children on a daily basis then shuffle them to the appropriate disposal place in our home. Whether that be in the bin if they are old and shabby or to a donation collection basket or bag ~ perhaps in the laundry room ~ to be dropped of to your favourite charity when the time is right. If this isn’t your usual MO then maybe today is the day to have a look through your children’s closet and declutter some items that you know no longer fit.

Saturday – Newspapers and catalogues are also on constant flow through our homes. Once read they are often never viewed again. Recycle the ones you know you won’t be reading again and think twice about setting aside any that you “think” you will look at again.

Sunday – The Refrigerator ~ Just like the pantry this area is filling and emptying on a continuous basis but there is always the odd items that don’t get used up in an appropriate time frame. These items are usually things that have a long used-by date but weren’t enjoyed when you first tried them. There is no point in keeping them because you are unlikely to suddenly decide that they taste good after-all. Do yourself a favour and declutter whatever is in there that isn’t being used on a regular basis.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

We had kept four of these bottles because they have Liam’s (my son) photo on the label. We really don’t need to keep all four so we kept one for him and one for us and the other two went in the recycling bin.

My Gratitude List

• Something I enjoyed ~ Making a batch of ANZAC biscuits (Rolled oat cookies) for my family to enjoy.
• Something Awesome ~ Cooking things what you really have to sink your hands into like cookies and bread dough.
• Something to be grateful for ~ Having just enough room on the airer for two loads of washing. I don’t like to use the dryer unless I have to.
• Something that made me happy ~ Although it is Sunday it is also a long weekend here in Australia so my husband will be home tomorrow as well.
• Something that brought a smile to my face ~ Watching a family laughing and chatting with each other at a bus stop today while I was in a café enjoying a coffee.

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

Cindy's Laundry Cabinet "BEFORE"

Yikes! It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it? But really, the cabinet needed a tidy even more than it needed a declutter. Here’s what I did:

• removed two towels, which I mentioned in my post The First Fruits
• removed the package of sponges, which I donated to local food pantry
• transferred the Socks Looking For Their One True Love from the crumpled bag on the top shelf into a plastic bin. (Freed up from other decluttering, of course!)
• took down the cardboard box on the top shelf, which has light bulbs in it. I cleaned out the box itself and removed 9 light bulbs (one of which I used right away) and 7 packages of mantles for a gas outdoor lamp, which we no longer have.
• refolded the towels and sorted them by rag bath towels and rag hand towels

All together, I spent 30 minutes, including changing the light bulb, matching a couple of socks, breaking down some packaging for recycling, and posting a free listing on my neighborhood listserve for the mantles, which quickly found a new home. (It used to be that everyone in the neighborhood had a gas lamp on a pole in their front yard, but many of them have been removed over the past 45 years.)

The AFTER shot

Once again there has been some great comments this week elaborating on the topics at hand. Here are this weeks favourite five.

It is clear from this comment from Ornela that she has her shopping strategies all worked out. With a plan like this in place there should be no more fear of clutter building up in her home. ~ I am slowly learning to shop by list only… Read more

This comment from Melissa is a good example why it is important to sort and label your photo collection.

This is the comment chosen by Cindy from the responses to her Weekly Wisdom this week, it is from Ideealistin who clearly understood the concept Cindy was putting forward. Read the comment here.

Eve tells us how she found her target audience in this comment. Well done Eve this is a great example of how easy it can be to find homes for your unwanted items where they will be appreciated all over again.

With the added difficulty of living in the country, Wendy has still managed to find a way to be as resourceful as she can when it comes to getting rid of her decluttered items. Read all about one of her rehousing efforts here.

Now for the five posts/articles from the web that I found interesting or inspiring this week.

Exconsumer ~ When time is an investment in personal happiness

Marc and Angel hack Life ~ 20-ways to make today unforgettable

Minimalist Packrat ~ A guide to instant simplifying

My Zero Waste ~ A saving for me at a cost to the environment

One less ~ The bus? But wheres your car?

Today’s Declutter Item

I bought these canisters to refill my butane burner for silver soldering but they did not have the right fitting for that purpose. They sat in the shed for years so I put them on Freecycle and they were gone by the end of the day. The lesson was ~ do your homework before buying stuff you don’t know about.

Butane Gas Cans

My Gratitude List

• Something that made me laugh ~ Liam acting the fool. He has it down to a fine art I must say. I suppose I would have to take at lease 75% credit for the generic imprint.
• Something Awesome ~ Winter, because it is so nice to be able to snuggle up with my hubby and fall asleep. It is too hot for that in the summer although it has it’s advantages too.
• Something to be grateful for ~ The good old recipes handed down to me by my mother. She taught us the stills to cook as well and I often take that for granted until I help my own kids with cooking and remember there is more to the skill than meets the eye. Learning why the steps are necessary is just as important as doing them. Thanks Mum and thanks also Mrs Lawson my old Home Economics teacher.
• Something that made me happy ~ Giving credit where credit was due. It gave the receiver a boost of confidence and I felt good doing it.
• Something I had fun with ~ I discovered an Air Supply album on my iphone and am listening to it while I write this. I haven’t heard this album for years.

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

I received this comment from Janetta on June 3rd:

I have a question: I am a quilter and when I left South Africa in 2004 (to travel for two years and then settle in New Zealand) the little group I met up with every week gave me a lovely gift of a miniature quilt (A4 size) from each of them and a group one wishing me all the best. The work is lovely and very reminiscent of them and I have stored them in plastic sleeves in a folder. I practically never look at them and although I am very pleased to have been given them, I don’t really want them any more. I could take pics of them, but what would I do with them. They are so personal I can’t imagine anyone else wanting them. Any ideas?

And my my response was:

I would suggest that you go to a quilting shop near your home and ask for their advice. There is always the possibility that they may want to display them in the store or one of their customers might want them. It would be a shame to just throw them away. If this doesn’t work for you why not try advertising them on Freecycle where you would have a wide audience of people and maybe just one person among those would be happy to take these off your hands.

Then yesterday I got this comment fro Janetta:

Success! I took my mini quilts to our local quilt shop and Alison, the owner, was very pleased to take them, she said they are a perfect size for decorating and filling in corners in the shop!

I also donated the wooden file they were given to me in (I think intended for decoupage) and donated it to an opshop (together with 35 other items), so I am feeling very satisfied with the solution to the problem. Thanks for your advice.

I was so pleased for Janetta being able to pass on some items that she would have felt bad to throw away. Instead they are now being appreciated all over again. Her situation just goes to prove, that if you can identify your target audience you should have no problem handing your clutter on to someone who will get as much enjoyment out of them as you once did. No matter what it is you are getting rid of, if it is still useful in some way there will be someone happy to claim it. I have had success with this many times over the last eighteen months of my declutter mission…

• Craft items ~ Arranged a sale with a local craft group.
• Broken Amplifier ~ Freecycled to a man who likes to tinker with that sort of thing.
• Non functioning Kenwood mixer ~ I sold the accessories on ebay and when one man came to pick up his item I offered him the mixer as well and he was happy to take it.
• Excess Stationary & scrapbook paper~ Donated to the school up the street.
• Lamp that needed rewiring ~ Offered on freecycle and a lady whose son was an electrician was glad to take it from me. I am not so sure her son would have been so pleased but that’s not my problem. 😉

As you can see, with a little imagination it is possible to find home for all sorts of things. You may be thinking that Freecycle doesn’t target a specific audience but in a way it does because there are a lot of handy people browsing the offers looking for things they can repair, recycle or repurpose. Like the man that took the top of my entertainment unit. It would have been useless to a thrift store but the man that took it was a retired carpenter who was excited to reuse the leadlight doors and recycle the timber for other projects.

Below are some examples of specific items and who may want them:

• Perhaps you are no longer interested in camping and you have an old tent you no longer want. Why not offer it to a local Scout Troop, I am sure they would get great use out of it.
• Maybe your beloved dog passed away and you do not plan get another so you are free to travel in the future. I am sure a kennel or your local animal shelter would appreciate any equipment you have to offer like leads, kennel, beds, toys, bowls etc.
• You might have fishing gear that you no longer use, try offering them for sale or donate them to a local fishing club if you have such a thing in your area.

The variety of enthusiast, non-profit, sporting, craft… groups out there is almost limitless so use your imagination and I am sure you will find someone who would just love your stuff. Even google ~ the word donate and your item ~ and see what pops up on your screen, it may not give you the exact answer you are looking for but it will stimulate your imagination.

Today’s Declutter Item

I hate it when an item doesn’t work as well as it should. This thermal mug was hard to open and close and even harder to pull apart to clean. Needless to say it ended up in the back of a cupboard unused and unloved. Maybe a thrift store customer may have more patience for it than I did.

Thermal Mug

My Gratitude List

• Something that I appreciate ~ How fortunate I have been in the game of life so far.
• Something Awesome ~ Hot beef stew with veggies and dumplings for dinner on a cold windy day.
• Something to be grateful for ~ My warm woolly slippers. I love to have warm toes.
• Something that made me happy ~ Spending the day with a friend and getting out of the house for a while.
• Something I found fascinating ~ How many kitchen gadgets there are out there to choose from. My friend and I had coffee at a kitchen store yesterday and the range of products was insane.

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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

I was holding two pitchers: One was a really nice Tupperware in great shape with a tight, functioning lid. The other was a yellow, stained pitcher with no lid and handle that threatened to crack down the seam but was still holding. Which to declutter? The phrase “the first fruits” popped into my head. I knew the reference, but I had to look up the quote from the Bible. It is from Psalms 3:9: “Honor the LORD with your substance, and with the first fruits of all your increase.”

This quote is referring to tithing (giving money to the church). What did it have to decluttering? I realized that most people would probably keep the nicer pitcher and give the shabbier one to the thrift store. But I’m not afraid of the stained yellow pitcher, and it sure would look tacky and undesirable at the thrift store. The other pitcher would feel like a real find. I decided that since I would continue to use the cruddy pitcher, and I only needed one pitcher, I would give the better one, the first fruit, to the thrift store.

I used this same thinking when I was looking at our junk towels, which we use by the front door when it rains or to towel off the dogs after a bath. I have too many of these. Our church has a ministry where the women provide toiletries and the use of towels for homeless women to shower once a week. Some of my junky towels are really junky, and some are just not my current bathroom towels. I decided to donate the better towels, the first fruits, to the shower ministry. After all, these are already downtrodden women; they don’t need a threadbare towel with a tear in it to make them feel even worse about their circumstances. The dogs, on the other hand, couldn’t care less what I towel them off with. (In fact, they’d prefer never to have a bath again.)

I know that decluttering one item a day allows us to think through what we’re getting rid of, where it should go, etc. Here’s another way to look at the picture: If you have two similar items, should you give or keep the first fruit?

Today’s Declutter Item

Some of the items that I donated to the school up the street or recycled when I decluttered my  stationery drawers recently.

My Gratitude List

• Something that made me glad ~ Liam is riding off to university right now with the all but one of the last work that needs handing in for the end of semester. Hooray!
• Something Awesome ~ Friends you do favours for and then they do them in return.
• Something to be grateful for ~ All the wonderful applications available for free on the internet.
• Something that made me happy ~ Chatting with my mum and dad on the phone today. I can’t imagine them ever getting old even though they are 72 & 76 this year.
• Something I found fascinating ~ How some flavours work together and some just don’t. God bless the people who thought to put dates and caramel together that tart I had yesterday was scrumptious.

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

I don’t know about you but in our home there a hundreds if not thousands of photos dating back to my husbands and my late teens and every year since. Some are in albums, some are in photo boxes, some are still in the envelope they came in when they were picked up from the store. Needless to say they are mostly in one area of the house but when it comes to organisation there is very little of that going on.

Of course we are talking about printed photos here, lets face it sorting digital photos is child’s play. Actually, sorting printed photos would have been child’s play too had we been diligent all along and not just chucked them in on top of each other with far less respect than they deserved. Now we have a huge task ahead of us to sort through them and add some semblance of order to our lives in picture.

I am going to give you some guide lines as to how to sort through this mess in the most logical fashion. Even though there are many ways to sort your photos it is usually best to sort them chronologically. If you were to go in search for a photo of say your cousins wedding the most obvious place to start is by the date that this occasion took place. The same goes for a birthday party, vacation snaps even a baby’s first tooth photos if you had such a thing because it is easy enough to pin point around about when the event happened.

If chronological order is the most logical way to find a photo then it is also the most logical way to sort photos in the first place. Even when you start sorting through the disorganised piles of photos you have you will likely recognise the event in the batch of photos and remember roughly when that event occurred. So even if your collection is as big a jumbled mess as mine you will soon start to set it to order once you muster up the courage to begin. I am actually giving myself confidence that I can handle the task as I write this post.

I have made a list below of some items that will be of assistance in making this task as painless as possible:

• 5 x 7 or 4 x 6 index cards
• Photo storage boxes
• Photo safe pen
• Archival Sleeves (Acid Free Page protectors) for larger photos
• Negative holders
• And of course, gather up all the photos from wherever they are throughout the house.

Before you begin: You amy want to read through the list of steps before you get started so you know exactly what the process is before you begin. Seeing the big picture may help with the sorting process as you go along. You may also want to weed out “bad” photos as you go or get the sorting squared away before you start this process. With loose photos like this (not in albums) I would sort first and weed later, that way they are never out of their protective environment for too long. Once sorted you can weed at your leisure, one batch at a time.

Step 1 ~ Guess how many years of photos you have to sort through and mark one index card for every  year (1979, 1980, 1981…) you have to sort.

Step 2 ~ If you ar like me and have photos that have been given to you by other people and loose photos that have somehow become separating from other photos of an event just set them aside until you have the bulk of the photos sorted. It will become easier to sort these once their fellow group of photos are in place.

Step 3 ~ Start sorting the bulk of the photos into their appropriate years. There is no need to be too precise about what month they belong in, for now a rough guess will do. If you also have the negatives that relate to each group it is best to keep them together throughout the process then once the photos are identified you can also mark the negatives and file them away appropriately.

Step 4 ~ Once they are sorted by year go back through each year and identify as best you can what month/date each event occurred on. At this point we are trying to be precise about chronological order. Make an index card for each month that you have photos for and then separate those with an index card marking the name of the event.

Step 5 ~ For history sake you may want to mark the back of one or two photos from each group identifying the people in the photo and the event they relate to. Ideally every photo should be marked this way but I think I would go insane at the very thought of going to that much trouble. My advice is do whatever feels right to you.

Step 6 ~ Now it is time to identify the negaties and file them together with the photos or in a separate negative file. Remember it is not so easy to view the negatives so it is best that you identify them clearly before you files them away. My husband recently sent our negatives to a professional to be scanned so we now have digital copies just in case the originals deteriorate over time. In fact it was already too late for some.

Step 7 ~ If you have large photos of special events like weddings and school photos it is best to store these in archival sleeves in a hard cover folder. Or course you will also identify the event and date for each of these photos as you place them in the folder.

Step 8 ~ Grab that pile of miscellaneous photos I mentioned in step two and start sorting them into order with the other photos. Hopefully they will be easier to identify and sort because you have come across matching photos in the first part of this process. There may be some photos that will remain single, it is best to identify the back of these photos and make a miscellaneous index card and file these singles together at the back of the appropriate month/year to which they most likely belong.

Step 9 ~ If you are like me and also have some random heritage photos, make a special file/album for these and of course identify the people, event (if any) and approximate date. It is likely that future generations will have no idea who these people are if they are not clearly identified by someone who knows the history behind the photo.

I hope I have covered everything and that you will find this guide useful when or if you find it necessary to sort your photo collection. I would love to find the time to sort through my parents photo collection as they won’t be around forever to identify the people in the photos but for now I will deal with mine and then maybe one day not too far away I will tackle that task.

Good luck and happy sorting.

Today’s Declutter Item

This item belonged to my daughter. I often send her text messages or ambush her when she comes to visit to find out if I can delutter her clutter.

Dolphin Trinket

My Gratitude List

• Something that made me laugh ~ Listening to my children in fits of laughter while talking to each other on the internet. Liam was showing his sister some funny photos I had found of him when he was little.
• Something Awesome ~ Driving in the rain when you have just replaced your windscreen wipers.
• Something to be grateful for ~ Liam’s university semester is almost over and he can take a break and regroup for a while. It has been a hard slog trying to finish last years work (due to his accident) and this semester’s work all at once.
• Something that made me happy ~ Escaping the house this afternoon to have coffee with a friend after doing housework non-stop for the rest of the day.
• Something I am grateful I learned in my past ~ How to track down what appliance in the house is causing the master fuse to trip. This comes in handy when the power goes out to your refrigerator in the middle of the night.

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