People give things to friends and family members for all sorts of reasons and three of those reasons are 1. Gifts  2. Trying to be helpful and  3. Offloading things they no longer have a love of or need for. And each of these reason have their own sub-categories some of which crossover through all three titles. I will set out some examples below.

Gifts

1. They have one themselves and love it and wanted to share the joy. The intention is good but it may not contain the same joy for you.
2. They know you have a collection of something and think you would be happy to receive another example. Also good intentioned, but sometimes personal collections revolve around personal taste and although the gift is along the same lines it may not be to your taste. And perhaps your collection only keeps growing because well intentioned people keep adding to it.
3. They have an idea on what would look good on you fashion wise and buy you an outfit to suit. You on the other hand would hate yourself in it.
4. What do you buy for someone who has everything? Anything so long as you have a gift to give, right? Wrong. Take them out, give them a treat and don’t bother with material gifts that they just don’t need.

Trying to be helpful

1. 1 & 3 from the list above.
2. They notice you don’t have something and think you would benefit from owning one.

Offloading things they now longer have a love of or need for

1. What do people do with family heirlooms that they no longer want cluttering up their homes. That’s right they “generously” hand it on to the next in line sucker beneficiary. Now that person is stuck with the obligation of preserving family history. It really is OK to turn down this sort of duty ~ for want of a better word ~ there is usually someone in the family who would really appreciate what is on offer.
2. People often have useful things they no longer have a need for and hate to see these items go to waste. Often however it feels more acceptable to them if they generously hand it on to a friend of family member rather than just donate it to a charity. This way they can witness it being put to good use.  Once again it is Ok to turn down these offers. You don’t have to put yourself out in order to appease their guilt for not getting full use out of something.
3. You once said you thought something they had was handy, pretty or interesting and now they no longer want this item. They remember you had admired it and think you would be grateful if they gave it to you.

I have two pieces of advice when it comes to accepting and offering “clutter”.

1. You don’t have to accept or keep items that will clutter up your house just to make someone else feel good. That is just handing the clutter baton on to the next person. Here is a polite refusal for when people offer you their things… Thank you for your kind offer but I really don’t have a use for this. I appreciate you thinking of me though. When it comes to gifts it is difficult to refuse but in future make it clear that no gifts are necessary. Accept the gift by all means but don’t feel obliged to keep it. Return it exchange it or give it away.
2. When offering your clutter to someone else always offer the person an out. That is offer it in such a way that they won’t feel they are offending you by saying no thank you. Here is an example … I am getting rid of this item and I wanted to give you first option to take it. If it is not something you would find useful that is OK, I will just drop it off at the thrift store.

Have you ever felt awkward about passing on or accepting things? Have you taken items just because you don’t want to offend the giver? Have you wondered whether someone has done this with you?

Today’s Declutter Item

This was an unwanted gift that I found I had no need for even though I did give it a try. It was eventually donated to the thrift store. It is a manicure gadget in case you are trying to figure it out.

An unwanted gift

Something I Am Grateful For Today

My skills at packaging up ebay sale items. I have quite a knack for it, even if I say so myself.

“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

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.

This week lets do some small space decluttering. The there are lots of little places in my house where little things hide that are subject to becoming clutter. Maybe you have some of these spaces as well. I will name the space and all you have to do is take a look and see if there is some clutter hiding there.

Monday – A kitchen drawer

Tuesday – A side table or coffee table drawer or shelf

Wednesday – Under a bed

Thursday – The toiletries cabinet

Friday – The glove compartment of your car

Saturday – A desk drawer

Sunday – Your keepsake box

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

Yes Lena you were the first person to guess the answer to Saturday’s What Am I quiz.  Although I have to say that Joanna and Lynda were very accurate with their guesses of Coppertops (the product name for the batteries) and Duracell batteries. Thanks for playing everyone who submitted and guess.

These batteries were taking up valuable space in our small stationery drawer. Completely wasted space because we have no devices for them to be used in. Those devices have long ago been decluttered. The batteries were in danger going flat sitting there unused. I took them to the thrift store where we put them in a drawer to be used to check battery operated items when they come in as donations.

Batteries we have no gadgets for.

Something I Am Grateful For Today

A tidy house, washing folded, another load in the machine and a BBQ to look forward to with friends. All in all a good day.

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

We haven’t had a What Am I quiz for a while and I do have some rather odd decluttered items sometimes. So lets see if you can figure out what this one is. If you can’t work it out I will post it as my declutter item of the day on Monday.

For those of you who haven’t played this game with us before it is simple to play. All you have to do is guess what the object/s is that I have included a close-up photo of. It is of course something that I am decluttering. Leave a comment with your guess if you want and on Monday you will find out if you were correct or not. There is no prize but I will let you know who the clever person was the sent in the first correct answer.

What Am I?

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.

Wow what a busy week for comments we almost cracked 100 on Tuesday’s post alone. Well done 365’ers. I was so busy answering them that I hardly had time to select some for today’s favourites. I didn’t have time to read other blogs either but I did manage to scrape together three articles for you to read. Enjoy!

Favourite Comments. Enjoy!

Sometimes stuff isn’t the only thing that needs decluttering. Jane tells us how she decluttered her tax to do task and her cable bill in this comment. How many times do we complain about not being decluttered but at the same time waste hours watching TV? ten minutes a day verses hours a day, there is no excuse for that.

Becky and I are proof that it is possible to divorce yourself from the desire to shop. Read her comment here.

Kristen shows she understand the advantages of slow decluttering in this comment.

I was impressed with Gails proactive approach in this comment in response to Cindy’s prescription bottle ring issue.

Favourite Web Finds. Happy reading!

www.paulgraham.com/stuff

www.bemorewithless.com/2010/shoot-your-stuff

womansday.ninemsn.com.au ~ declutter-your-home-declutter-your-life

Today’s Declutter Item

My husband has been decluttering some of his stuff and I am sooooo happy. I hate dusting these models as I have a habit of only ever breaking his stuff. Plus I just hate dusting in general. So one less thing to dust is a joy to me yahoo!

Die cast Aircraft Model

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Seeing the joy in my new friends face today when she was saying how happy she was to have new friends. Sometimes doing good takes no effort at all.

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

Clutter is often the result of buying now rather than wisely. This can apply to all sorts of products for various reasons. Here are two common reasons for purchasing this way. The first being that the item has bargain price you’d would be mad to pass it up. And second, the item may not be available later so you would be mad not to grab it now while you have the chance, avoiding future regret. Sound familiar?

Here are some examples…

Scenario ~ Sally was at the thrift store and saw a microwave oven plate that exactly matched the one for her oven and it was only $2. She had recently broken her plate and it had cost $25 to replace. She would be mad not to buy this one now at such a bargain price just in case the same misfortune reoccured.

Argument ~ Sally is thinking only of the pain of having just spend $25 on the replacement she bought while this plate is only $2. She is not taking into account that this is the first time she has broken a plate in 25 years of owning and using a microwave oven. Don’t buy it Sally or it could be cluttering up your kitchen for the next 10 years and that would be mad.

Scenario ~ When my family was leaving America to return to Australia our daughter was to be going off to college in another city soon after our return. Because we assumed household items were less expensive in the US we bought a selection of items for her to take when she moved out. We would have been mad to pay Australian prices right?

Argument ~ She moved to another city alright but lived with her grandparents because it made economical sense. She is still with her grandparents almost five years later. Meanwhile I am still storing two large plastic containers of household items in my garage. I am sure I could buy the same items at much the same prices now right here is Australia and not have wasted space in my garage for years.

Scenario ~ I used to do a lot of papercraft and I worked in a large craft store. It was so easy to stay up to date with all the latest trends and I got to see all the new stock as it arrived at the store. Paper in particular was hard to resist as the patterns changed all the time and it would have been crazy not to purchase the ones I liked while they were available, right?

Argument ~ Wrong! I was mad to stock up so much on supplies when I had no idea how life would change down the line and leave me with less time and less enthusiasm for the craft. Especially since I have a track record of switching from one interest to another. Not to mention all the storage systems I had to purchase to organise it all that I am now also decluttering.

Scenario ~ At the end of the season you would be mad not to stock up on clothing the next size up for your child for the coming year. At 50 – 75% off it is a bargain too good to refuse.

Argument ~ What if ~ 1. Your child has an unusual growth spurt and is too big for the clothes when next year comes around. 2. Your child’s growth pattern slows and is too small for the clothes when next year comes around and then too big the year after. That’s two years of storing these clothes for nothing. 3. Fashion trends change and the clothes would have your child looking and feeling out of place. 4. The child develops their own style and refuses to where the clothes you chose. 5. Next year you could have had an unexpected move to a different climate zone and then the clothes may not fit when needed. I will leave it at that although there are many more reasons why this could be a bad idea.

The potential for future clutter also exists when you purchase something on sale you only think you might enjoy or get use out of. I have photographic proof of endless garage sale bargains, over enthusiastic craft purchases, use it up decluttering missions on toiletry items, must have half price gadgets and regretful purchases of substitute items that were almost right but a lot cheaper than the items I really needed…for all to see here on my blog. So trust me, I speak from experience. Luckily I have also learned from the experience

The one thing I have discovered over the years is there is always another bargain around the corner so if you don’t need the item now it will probably be on sale again by the time you actually need to make the purchase. So stop cluttering up your cupboards with backups, regrets and wasted money and only purchase what is necessary when it is necessary. Thats not to say you can’t enjoy a frivolous purchase every now and again just not every time you see something you think you would be mad not to snap up.

Today’s Declutter Item

Here is a perfect example of buying in advance because they were a bargain too good to refuse. Of course I thought at the time “I will use them one day” and at 75% off what did I have to lose? I’ll tell you, about $6 and space in my craft room for five years. I am giving them away to an artist friend of my son.

Spiral Scrapbooks

Something I Am Grateful For Today

No less than six of the items I donated to the thrift store yesterday were sold before my shift there was done. I love that I have decluttered, the store has made money and the customer is happy. Although I do wonder if they have just fallen for one of the scenarios I have mentioned above.

“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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Cindy

Raise your hand if you consider yourself an environmentalist. Mine is up! But as Kermit the Frog says, “It’s not easy being green.”

Being “green” and decluttering often do not feel like they go hand in hand. After all, you might *gasp* throw something away. You might discover that you cannot find another home for an item you no longer want or need. You may have to face up to the fact that you made foolish purchases that you now recognize as being bad for your wallet and bad for the environment.

I was once told that for someone who’s such an aggressive recycler / reuser, I was amazingly good at getting rid of things. Apparently part of how people stay green or  reduce their trash / recycling flow is to reduce their output, simply by hanging onto what they have. Most hoarders probably have very little trash, but that doesn’t make them environmentalists!

I strongly encourage you to find an appropriate new home for anything you no longer want that is reusable. Of course I don’t want you to pitch out perfectly good things, but I also want you to realize that there are somethings for which there may not be another home – somethings are too old, too tired, too broken, and too outdated to be of any continued use.

If you tend to save bits and bobs of things because you just know you’ll be able to do something with it later, you may have to accept that you aren’t going to do anything with your pile of treasures, and neither is anyone else. I recently stumbled into this trap myself. We get prescriptions from Target pharmacy, three of them each month. Target has a really cool design for the prescription bottles, and it includes a rubber-like ring around the neck of the bottle, the yellow band in this photo. Each family member has a different color ring. Sounds like a ingenius idea and when both girls were younger and would sometimes take the same cold medicine, it was really helpful. Here’s the negative: as far as I can tell, they aren’t recyclable, Target won’t take them back, and Target won’t give you a bottle without a ring. So I started saving them. Every time I put a bottle into the recycling, I could have tossed the ring into the bin, but I didn’t. Now I have about 24. I have no stinking idea what to do with them, but now it feels more wrong to throw them away because there are so many of them. I could do something with them. Maybe? Perhaps? Heck if I know. What I know is I can’t think of anything to do with them, and they’re cluttering up my drawer.

Or maybe you actually add to your clutter in your efforts to be a good steward of the environment: you grab a perfectly good item out of bulky trash or from a friend’s discard pile and “rescue it” by hauling it home. Then what? Then does it just sit at your house?  

In the past year, my recycling has gone up astronomically because I started working at a law firm that did not recycle. Now I bring it all home. (Sometimes, frankly, I can’t believe how much of my life is dedicated to refuse of various sorts.) Anything that’s broken, needs to be sold, has a second chance at life, I bring home. Yes, all of it.  But it’s not adding to my clutter, just my workload. The recycling goes directly from the van into the can. I’ve known what I was going to do with every item I brought home before I put it in the van with me: the broken coffee pot went to my daughters’ school for the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) class. The teacher likes for the girls to have real world things to take part – like a fancy, computer-controlled broken coffee pot. The nine 3 ft. by 4 ft. presentation boards were offered up free on Craigslist and snapped up by a man who wanted to make a display for his church. The staples for the stapler than broke were taken to the thrift store, and the stapler itself went into the metal recycling.

It’s great to go those extra steps to make the world a better, less cluttered, and less trashed place, so long as it doesn’t add to your own clutter load.

 Today’s Declutter Item

Here is some more obscure clutter. A bunch on old postcards from our USA days. They came to the surface while digging around in Bridget’s clutter last month. I decided to put them in the recycling just like my mat boards yesterday. It is just paper clutter after all.

Postcards

“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

One more empty box

Keeping in mind that I have been fitfully decluttering craft supplies for the last two years  today I did something a little outrageous. Well outrageous for me anyway. I threw some perfectly good mat board in the recycling bin. Yes you heard me I threw something perfectly usable in the recycling bin.

The thing is they were also perfectly recyclable but it was a case of faff around with them forever or make an instant decision to get them out of here. I chose the later. You see I have a hard time wasting anything that is even remotely creatively useful and the mat board has been shuffled around in the continuous craft room reshuffle for two years for just that reason and I was over it. In my defence they were small pieces that had limited use but use none the less.

Two entries on Facebook over the last couple of days lead to me make this decision. One was in relation to decluttering unfinished craft projects and the comment or rather question which almost sounded like a plea was this ~ “But what should I do with it?” The second was a status from Mr Green @ My Zero Waste ~ “Morning all; really trying to find energy / motivation to declutter (sans landfill of course!) any tips to ease the butt glue I’m experiencing?”

The former (although possibly about something far more valuable than my mat board) got me thinking that sometimes it just complicates the issue of letting go if you make the letting go too difficult in relation to the objects worth. And the latter says to me that you can’t keep paying for the sins of your past wastefulness by continuing to allow things to be closetfill in a vain attempt to save them from landfill.

Yes I could have put it up for grabs on Freecycle or even cut it into small mats, bundled them up and sold them on ebay. Maybe a craft group or the school up the street could have found a use for them but, chances are, making this effort would probably have resulted in cluttering up someone else space who also can’t let a useful bargain pass them by. After all that is how I acquired them in the first place.

So I did myself a favour for once and saved myself the bother. The time it would have taken to find a new home for them just wouldn’t have been worth the effort. And it’s not as thought they went to land fill. They will be recycled into some other useful paper based product.

Like I said before, I have a hard time parting with stuff that I find to be creatively useful and I probably would have keep passing over these for some time but I had a better use for both the box they were in and the space they were taking up. So I took the bandaid approach to decluttering and ripped those suckers off real fast and out to the recycling bin before I changed my mind. Don’t worry this isn’t something I am going to make a habit of.

Today’s Declutter Item and the subject of today’s post

Mat Board

Something I Am Grateful For Today

I was a little off colour on the weekend but am grateful I am feeling much better today. I am weary after a busy day but I feel well and that is good.

“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

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.

Aspirational clutter keeps raring its ugly head around my house. More to the point as I get more ruthless about decluttering more things loose their disguise of useful and expose themselves for what they really are to me. I bet you also have aspirational clutter clogging up you house and this week we are going to do something about it.

Monday – Declutter one unfinished / never likely to be finished craft project.

Tuesday – Declutter items of clothing that will be out of date before you fit into them again. If you work hard to lose the weight surely you deserve a few new outfits.

Wednesday – Get rid of those magazines you have set aside to read articles from or aspire to acting on articles you have previously read.

Thursday – Declutter more of that sports equipment I mentioned last week. Ones you think you might use again but the likely hood is next to nil.

Friday – Reduce that cookbooks collection a little further. The internet is a far more efficient way of finding recipes anyway.

Saturday – Put those items on ebay you keeping meaning to sell. This one has already inspired me to list something I have been meaning to list for a while. Photos are already taken so that should make it easy.

Sunday – Sell, donate or give away an item of any kind that you have been planning on using for a while but just haven’t got around to. Chances are you are never going to use it so set it free.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

Truth be known this is probably more guilt clutter than aspirational clutter but it certainly is craft clutter that I don’t think I will ever get around to using. so it’s out of here. I gave it to the lady in the stamping store up the street from my house. She seemed quite pleased with my offering.

More of my aspirational clutter

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Finally getting to the end of the backup in my inbox. Last week was a little busy for me.

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

Photo Credit

Does your pet wear a collar and tag? If you have a pet, I hope the answer is, “Of course!” Today is a great day for inspecting your pet’s tags.

• Are they still legible?
• Are they still accurate?
• If you have a tag from Home Away or another finding service, dial the number and make sure the information they have is correct.
• Does your pet only have current tags? I once found an animals whose owners kept putting on new rabies tags like they were charms on a charm bracelet. Remove the extras.

Heaven forbid your pet should get lost, but we all know it’s possible. Even the shyest cat or the most elderly dog sometimes slips out through a open door. Keeping their tags up to date is the best way of making sure that he or she is returned to you safely.

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!

Here is Moni’s clutter/declutter story.  Thank you for sharing Moni it all sounds very familiar.

In this comment Sabrina lets us in on her thought process while trying to downsize her belongings to fit in a new much smaller home. Good luck Sabrina my mind is very much on the same process at the moment.

Some of you may not like Jane’s view on photos in this comment but you would have to admit there is an element of truth in it. Even with three avid photographers in my immediate family I feel inclined to side with Jane on this one. The though of ploughing through the thousands of photos on our computer does my head it.

I liked Kristen’s attitude in this comment and her advice to Lena was good too. Recreational activities should be just that, if you are no longer enjoying them why continue with the task.

Favourite Web Finds. Happy reading!

I was sent this link by one of the people responsible for producing this blog and I am suitably impressed with the posts I have read so far. They have some great practical advice on living deliberately. www.deliberatism.com ~ Do-you-love-this-thing

Here is motivation to keep you house tidy. Thanks Cindy for this link. www.telegraph.co.uk ~ Teenager wins £53000-on-lottery after finding ticket when mother forced him to-clean bedroom

Here is the latest offering from Becky, one of our regular readers. I can relate to this one because I made a bit of a mess decluttering in my own craft area yesterday myself. declutteringdiva.blogspot.com.au ~ Art table decluttered

Seriously who has room in their kitchen for one of these ~ unclutterer.com ~ Unitasker  Wednesday – Karate lettuce chopper

Here is a little decluttering advice from zenhabits.net ~ 18-five-minute-decluttering-tips-to-start-conquering-your-mess

Thanks to Wendy here are some Aussie links to mattress decluttering and buying recycled mattresses ~

http://www.newcastlemattressrecyclers.com.au/50/mattress-and-base-collections/

http://www.mattressrecyclers.com.au/storelocator.html

Today’s Declutter Item

Not only have I decluttered this storage system from my craft room but most the items in it have also been decluttered. I vowed to Lena that I would have this craft clutter knocked on the head by June and I am well on the way.

Craft room clutter

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Having a lovely afternoon with two girlfriends sipping cocktails and chatting. Of course I will have to make up for that laziness tomorrow but c’est la vie.

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