After 25 months of decluttering it is hard to believe that there are still some things that I have too many off. It's OK though because we are still happily working away at the excess one day at a time. I will however share with you below a list of some of those items. I will also explain the excess and why they are still here even though I am aware of them. Bath towels ~ I have weeded out the tatty ones and donated the extreme excess but the remaining ones will be subject to natural progression decluttering. That is, I will not replace them once they wear out. Sometimes it is just … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2012
Mini Mission Monday ~ Cling-ons (Not the Star Trek type)
I dug this set of mini missions out of the archives. Enjoy! For this week's mini missions I am going to encourage you to declutter some of those items you have been clinging on to for toooooooo long. You know the items I am talking about here, things you just haven't been able to press the reject button on even though they have been in your radar for a while. There is always something holding you back, some lame reason for hanging on, none of which are because you love the item and want to keep it. The reasons you still have these items will become apparent as you start to work through the … [Read more...]
Simple Saturday ~ The microwave oven story
Today I wanted to share another little story with you regarding a thrift shop donation. To be correct it really wasn't a donation it was me acting as a go between. Confused? Well here's the full story. A man came into the thrift store where I volunteer. He had a microwave oven to donate. Now for reasons unknown to me we can not take donations of microwave ovens so I had to refuse the offer. I suggested to the gentleman that he check out freecycle.org but he looked somewhat confused and I got the impression that the oven was going to end up in landfill if I didn't do something. The man had … [Read more...]
Friday’s Favourites ~ 27 Jan 2011
On Fridays at 365 Less Things I share with you my favourite comments from my wonderful readers and my favourite web finds of the week. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did. Favourite Comments. Enjoy! Sabine nailed the clutter selection process perfectly in this comment. I couldn't have put it better myself. Karen has a sensible outlook on what is an heirloom in this comment. I loved Juhli's last sentence of this comment so much that I tweeted it and posted it on Facebook. You might want to follow this comment thread back to the beginning to understand it fully but what I … [Read more...]
Improvise don’t compromise
We received the following comment from Snosie in response to one of Cindy's archived posts I republished over the Christmas break. This post gave great advice about thinking twice before buying. Snosie has just bought her first home and is in the process of moving out of her parent's house. She now has the task of furnishing and equipping her new home with the things she needs. A daunting task in which one could really get carried away but not Snosie she has it all worked out. Here is her comment... Great post Cindy – and a lot of what I’m saying to myself (without even realizing). I … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Sentimental to Whom?
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Recently my in-laws were in town. They went to their storage unit and returned to my house with a glass pitcher that they thought we might like ~ it had belonged to my mother-in-law's great grandmother. My husband seemed eager (or at least politely accepting), and I had broken one of our two glass pitchers a while back, so I wasn't opposed to having it. It was not fancy or heirloom quality, just a pressed glass pitcher with a duck scene molded onto it, something that would be the equivalent of a Wal-Mart purchase today. I used it a few days later and proudly showed my … [Read more...]
Declutter your expectations ~ Rome wasn’t built in a day
I received a comment form Shirls a while back which started out like this... Aah Colleen, will I ever get as far along the declutter road as you? The short answer is ~ If you believe it, it will be so. It may not happen overnight but it will happen. The long answer is ~ I thought I would be finished decluttering and have moved on to the maintenance decluttering phase before my first 365 days were up. And perhaps that would have been the case if I hadn't continually moved my goal posts along the way. When I first started out I would never have thought I would get rid of some of the stuff … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday ~ Category Declutter
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. I love to throw in a good old clutter category set of  missions every now an again to get you thinking about what sort of clutter you have. So this week we will declutter something from each of the clutter categories I refer to on a regular basis and one or two less used categories I have … [Read more...]
Simple Saturday – Complete the Circle
A Simple Saturday Post by Cindy The thrift store has been quite the topic of conversation this week, hasn't it? Today I want to look at it from another perspective - completing the circle. If you only donate to the thrift store, and never shop there, you are not completing the circle. Now, for those of you who already like to shop in thrift stores, this is not permission to run out and purchase willy-nilly "because Cindy says it's a good idea." No, no, no! The idea behind my list is to give you an idea of all the really great stuff there is available in this world that you can purchase used, … [Read more...]
Friday’s Favourites ~ 20 Jan 2011
On Fridays at 365 Less Things I share with you my favourite comments from my wonderful readers and my favourite web finds of the week. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did. Favourite Comments. Enjoy! I loved this attitude from Faith and  I am exceedingly grateful to the thrift stores for accepting my stuff too. I liked this short comment from Ann. The benefits of decluttering are realised in little ways that add up to a big difference in the long run. In what little ways have you noticed the difference a little decluttering can make? Spendwisemom has the right idea in this … [Read more...]