Week after week, tons of clothes arrive in Guinea‘s capital : Conakry. They are sent everywhere and sold at the markets. Here in Kissidougou, the sellers open new bunches of clothes every Tuesday. There is a rush on them, as everyone wants to have the best pieces. Then, the rest is sold during the week. You can really find anything: clothes, bras the seize of shower basins, gloves, ski suits, and the most beloved pajamas. Guinean love pajamas, because the shirts match the pants. They don’t understand pajamas as such, and wear them all the time. They don’t mind wearing ski suits either, even with 100°F !

I often go on a treasure hunt too. Today, I found six shirts. They seem brand new, are of good quality, and only cost me 30’000 francs. Don’t worry, this represents only 4,50$ ! But I must say I was lucky . There are some days where I only find torn, dirty clothes. Some people don’t mind wearing socks with holes, but who wants to buy them? A few people over there seem to think that « the poor africans » will be happy with anything, even their trash. But let me tell you that for 3000 francs, « the poor african » has to choose between a pair of socks with holes, or a whole meal. What would you do ? And what do you think we do?

But I must say, even if everything is not perfect, we love what you send, and it is SO useful to us ! So thank you everyone!

But I must say, even if everything is not perfect, we love what you send, and it is SO useful to us! So thank you everyone!

Just one last thing : maybe you are shocked because these bunches of clothes are supposed to be given to people in need, not sold on the market. But let me tell you that nearly everyone here is in need. The women who sell the clothes are usually very poor women, who earn their living, and their whole family’s living with this selling. The cooking oil I buy is « Gift from the Russian Federation ». I don’t mind, and nobody does : this oil or these chlothes are meant to help people, and this is exactly what happens !

The Weekend’s Mini Missions

Saturday ~ Declutter items that have accumulated on your desk top.

Sunday – Declutter items that have accumulated on the coffee table.

“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

Due to a system error yesterday that didn’t allow comments on this post I have chosen to repost it today in an attempt to fix the error and to give Moni the joy of responding to your thoughts on the subject.

We’ve all said it. “I’ll keep it just in case I need it again”. That moment of hesitation where our de-cluttering confidence wanes and doubt creeps in and prevents us from parting with something that serves no functional purpose.

Recently fellow 365’er Dizzy pushed me in the direction of a book called “Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui” by Karen Kingston, I bought it as an e-book as it was only $8.00 as it was not available in my local library. Karen talks about the reasons people hang onto clutter in chapter six and “Just in case” was especially interesting for me as it might as well be the family motto for many of my relatives.

Karen feels that keeping things ‘just in case’ indicates a lack of trust in the future.

We’re not talking about the necessities of life here, or something that has a high chance of re-use or an upcoming specific purpose – we’re talking about items where the words ‘might’, ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’ apply or where the scenarios or people are imaginary. They may even have names such as ‘someone’ or ‘somebody’ and the time frame for their use is usually ‘sometime’. My husband recently wanted to keep our Lego for our grandchildren. We have no grandchildren. They are imaginary people born to adult versions of our currently teenage children. What is reality is that we have a young nephew who will get hours of fun out of the lego now. I recently heard from a friend that “someone might want to use it someday” and although I gently pointed out that no one wanted it today, he couldn’t comprehend the idea. You can’t win them all.

Karen goes on to talk about how people worry that they will need something after it has been moved on, then sure enough, very soon afterwards, your subconscious mind will create a situation where you “need” that very thing, however obscure it may be. In actual fact you could have averted this need by thinking differently. This was very interesting to me as I have a friend whose work centers around the subconscious mind, and she has told me that our subconscious takes everything that comes out of own mouths, quite literally. Getting back to Karen’s perspective on this topic, it may on the surface sound like a good thing, something may get re-used, however, the 200 other items stashed in the household will not, and it encourages future hoarding. Most importantly it reinforces a frequency of not trusting, vulnerability and insecurity about your own future.

A light bulb moment for me recently was a 365er comment, I’m so sorry I can’t recall who – but please put your hand up and take a bow – that the things we get hung up on getting rid of, generally are worth less than $20. This is so true. The only item that I regret getting rid of in the last year is a ring binder, and when I say regret, it was more of a ‘damn’ moment, not sorrow. Only because 9 months afterwards, my daughter broke the mechanism on hers. Would it have been worth hanging onto the 10 or so empty ring binders just in case we needed one? It cost less than $5 to remedy and it was one less box hanging around my garage floor. Having clear space in my garage is certainly worth the $5 to me, it actually feels like a thousand bucks!

After reading Karen’s comments, I came to another realisation, over the last few months – obviously I have grown more confident in my de-cluttering – but I have developed this little ritual when I am umming and ahhhing over something where I say to myself “you know you won’t even miss it when its gone” – and guess what? I never do, in fact I can’t even bring to mind the items I said this about. Whether it is me programming my subconscious to not miss it, or very simply out of sight, out of mind, it doesn’t matter it is all a step towards this clutter free home I really want to live in.

Apparently the key to finding out if something is a “just in case” is to not worry about possibly needing it in the future…..find out! Get rid of it and see if you actually ever miss it.

What “just in case” item are you prepared to let go of?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter items accumulating in or on the bedside tables.

Today’s Declutter Item

This little items had got lost amount some boxes in the garage. I found it while doing one of my periodical reshuffles  out there. After a quick double check with my husband, since it was something he owned before we were married ~ yes that long ~ it got moved to the donation box.

Framed Decor Item

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Trying a new recipe. Even though it didn’t live up to my expectations I was just glad to be adventurous enough to try. A few tweaks should make it better next time.

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers. I hope the weather is fine, the company is congenial, the food is good and the firework are brilliant.

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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

A Book Review of The Power of Habit

by Charles Duhigg 

Cindy

What a fantastic book: so well researched, so easy to understand, so very interesting. Duhigg shows over and over again that most of what we do is habitual and that habits can be changed and manipulated – by ourselves and by others.

My mother should be happy. This book validates her often-said phrase “When you do things outside the norm, that’s when they go wrong.” My Mom’s not a pessimist or a stick in the mud; what she’s saying is that when you lock your keys in the car, forget your purse, leave the burner turned on, or drive to the store without your grocery list, it’s probably because you approached these routine events outside of the format of your usual routine. Without your habits in place to guide you, you actually have to think about actions you usually don’t think about, and they can go terribly wrong. My Mom and Duhigg are in agreement! In fact, Duhigg claims that 40% of what we do daily is habitual.

One of the chapters that I found most enlightening - and disturbing – reported research using brain scanning to test the lingering power of habits. What researchers found was that even if you have overcome a bad habit (say cluttering the coffee table when you arrive home from work or overeating), the neural pathways for cluttering that table never go away. They are always present in the brain, and that’s why it’s so easy – with the right (wrong!) cues – to fall away from our good habits back to our bad. However, I consoled myself that the opposite must also be true:  Somewhere inside my brain there’s still a neural pathway for running 3 or 4 times a week. I just haven’t seen that pathway in a decade or so!

The first part of the book, the section on personal habit development, is the most relevant to our decluttering efforts. What Duhigg explains repeatedly is that habits consist of three parts: The cue (time of day, arrival into the house, presence of certain people, etc.), the routine (which is the habit), and the reward. Duhigg says the reward the most important part of the cycle because habits form when we like the reward. Habits can only be changed, he says, by changing one of these three inputs – usually the routine. I highly recommend that you watch his video here. It’s only about 3 minutes long and explains how he analyzed and changed his habit of eating a cookies every afternoon and lost a dozen pounds as a result of his success.

The other two portions of the book talk about the habits of organizations and the habits of society. There’s some very interesting stuff here, and if you don’t start using cash at Target after reading about their focused marketing, I’ll be mighty surprised. Target knows that during life disruptions (birth of a child, divorce or marriage, move), people change their shopping habits, often without realizing it, and Target does their very best to know – as soon as you do – if any of these life changes are taking place in your household.

Changing from a lifestyle where you continually buy too much, where you never purge, or where you leave things out all over the place are all habits. They’re habits that need changing, and especially if you’re having trouble making changes, this book and some experimentation might really benefit you.

Highly recommended reading.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter objects accumulating in the third drawer down in any room ~ kitchen, office desk, bathroom cabinet… It is a strange phenomenon that the third drawer is often the receptacle for clutter.

Today’s Declutter Item

These little plastic lidded cups and storage box used to contain beads in my craft area. They gravitated to the third drawer down when I reduced my stocks and were no longer needed. During the great craft room declutter of June 2012 they were relegated to the donation box. They have since been sold at the thrift store.

Ex Craft Storage Items

Something to be grateful for today

Soaking up the sun on my back patio while being visited by the neighbours cat.

“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

So, ten days ago I went into hospital to have an operation. I was in hospital for three days and then returned home to convalesce for four weeks. I made sure the house was as clean and tidy as it could be ahead of time, which quite frankly just meant I performed my usual Monday morning housework ~ dusting, wiping down benches, cleaning toilets, baths, showers and kitchen and vacuuming and mopping. The washing was all up to date. My son and husband were left to fend for themselves, keep the house tidy and do their washing until I was ready to resume my usual household duties.

I wasn’t home long before I started slowly doing a few light jobs ~ wiping down a benches here and there, doing the occasional load of washing, cooking a simple meal, doing a little sweeping ~ nothing heavy of course just the odd little thing to help stay on top and to get me up an moving. One can only sit on the couch for so many hours of the day.

The things is that I thought the worse part of my recovery was going to be the frustration of my house slowly slipping below my high standard of cleanliness. Thinking that the men of the household would fall short of my expectations. But the truth is that my home is in such good shape that there really isn’t much effort required to maintain its upkeep. Sure it isn’t quite as pristine as usual but nothing that I can’t happily settle for.

My daughter and her boyfriend are coming to visit next Saturday and aside from getting the men folk to do a quick whip over with the vacuum cleaner, clean the bathtub and shower and make up the spare bed, I fail to see that anything else needs doing.

I love my uncluttered house!

Don’t feel bad though if you don’t think you have reached this stage yet, it is just something to look forward to and to keep you motivated. And of course it isn’t this simple if you have young children or even teens with lots of activities. But the truth is that under any circumstances the more organised and decluttered you are the easier it is to maintain a tidy and smooth running household. So keep at the decluttering and before you know it you will have a home that requires minimal effort to remain tranquil and inviting.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter any stuff accumulating on your kitchen bench or breakfast bar.

Today’s Declutter Item

More of the snow gear sold in ebay last month. Selling this gear has freed up a drawer in the foot of my bed. As a result I have almost emptied a box that has resided under our bed for five years. I will be discussing the one remaining item in it with my husband and then hopefully decluttering it and the box as well.

Snow Pants

“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.

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom last week mentioned those dreaded “clutter black holes” that most houses have. These phenomena suck in all sorts of stuff that you mean to do something with or haven’t got a real home for. They lurk in numerous places, most people have at least one but some have many. For this weeks mini missions I will name seven common black hole locations and you can check them all to make sure you don’t have any. Even if you don’t you may find an item or two of clutter has gravitated to these places anyway, so declutter them or find them a home. For those of you who do find the odd black hole use Cindy’s advice to try to eliminate them for good.

Monday – On the kitchen bench or breakfast bar.

Tuesday – In or on any furniture or large appliance near your entry ways.

Wednesday – The third drawer down in any room ~ kitchen, office desk, bathroom cabinet… It is a strange phenomenon that the third drawer is often the receptacle for clutter.

Thursday – By the telephone.

Friday – The bedside table.

Saturday – A desk top.

Sunday – The coffee table.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

I no longer have any black holes but I do still have a backlog of craft item photos that I saved to post for while I am convalescing.  Here is an 8 x 8 Scrapbook that was too good of a clearance bargain to resist as 75% off. That was at least five years ago. The 25% I did pay was clearly a waste of money because I never used the scrapbook. The lesson here ~ A bargain isn’t a bargain unless you actually have a use for it.

Scrapbook

Something I Am Grateful For Today

The two lovely vases of flowers I have received from friends in the last week. Not only are they pretty and brighten up the living space but the arrangement I made with one has lead me to the perfect solution for what is the right balance for a decoration on my dining table. I may well get rid of that artificial plant yet.

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