Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Cindy

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That’s a saying we’ve all heard and probably have said. I first truly appreciated the saying at the first garage sale I ever held as an adult. As we raised the garage door at 8:00 am, shoppers began ducking under the rising door, eager to be the first inside. The very first thing that sold was a men’s electric razor for $5. The next thing to sell was a rusted kitchen knife for 10 cents. That’s when I first came to believe that you really can sell anything.

But, of course, decluttering doesn’t have to be about selling, as we have discussed many times on this blog.

I think there are two things you need in order to make any trash to treasure (T2T) work. 1) a place for your “trash” to go and 2) and more importantly, a willingness to find that place.

Let’s start with the easiest examples.

Have Trash: your old clothes. Make Treasure: donate them to the thrift store. That’s how you turn clothing T2T.

Okay, duh Cindy, that’s obvious, but no one would want my XX. You think not? Let’s recall some of the tougher items I’ve decluttered.

Have Trash: 3 pounds of sour cream with about 1/2 C missing and a bottle of salad dressing with one salad’s worth missing. To make this into treasure, you are probably the biggest obstacle. Your embarrassment about offering slightly used food to others is holding you back from making this into treasure. I took a deep breath and offered these two things on my neighborhood list serve. Both had multiple people willing to take them off my hands. The person who took the sour cream just happened to be having a party that weekend and was pleased to have a base for various dips. She made a sour cream cake with the rest.

Have trash: Things which can be recycled, but it’s inconvenient. To make treasure: It’s your responsibility to dispose to things responsibly and in the best way your community demands. Batteries can be saved up and returned to the battery store, Home Depot or Lowes, and probably your community recycling center. The same with Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (except they go back to the lightbulb store, not the battery store). Try this mindset: You were perfectly willing to drive all over town to acquire these items. You should put at least this much effort into recycling them. (Or you can make battery art, like this creative soul.)

Have trash: Sentimental item you dislike. Make treasure: Again, you’re the obstacle here. You have to know that it’s not your responsibility to hang onto other people’s memories, stuff from the dead, or gifts you hate. Make treasure: As we occasionally say in our house, You gotta put your big girl pants on. Be okay with the fact that you don’t want these things. Then ask among the relatives (and don’t listen to their silly attempts to guilt-trip you into keeping the item), donate to a historical society (if appropriate), give to the thrift store, sell on EBay, donate on Craigslist or Freecycle. Recently my cousin has had great luck selling on Facebook classified ads, which I don’t know anything about. She lives in the country. Her rural location does not stop her from selling and buying used, and it shouldn’t stop you either.

Have trash: A wierd, awkward, or very one-of-a-kind item. Make treasure: These things are perfect for Freecycle or the free column on Craigslist. I have Freecycled battered used wooden fencing – twice (once it was used to make a goat pen and once it was used to make rustic mailboxes), and we let people pick through our construction dumpster for a single piece of wood they needed. A broken antique mirror frame with no mirror went to a furniture refinisher. Either he’ll fix it when he’s got time or he’ll use the pieces to fix up something else. A huge box of old cassette tapes were happily snapped up by a fellow driving a really old pick up truck – no CD player in that thing. All of our pencils that had been used until they were really short, and all the pens that worked but we didn’t like for some reason went to our daughters’ school. “Pencils of shame” we call them, because they were saved for girls who forgot to bring their pencils to class.

Have trash: Dirty, torn or stained clothing. Make treasure: Call around to your local thrift stores; it is likely that at least one of them is also in the fiber business. I had a hard time finding this information in my community, but it turns out that both the Salvation Army and Goodwill take items for fiber. I just need to label the bag clearly with “For Fiber. Do Not Sort.” and drop at any Salvation Army or Goodwill location. How easy is that? Now in addition to the bag I always have for items to donate to the thrift store, I have a bag for fiber too. Make treasure, part 2: In addition, when I converted my entire lawn to garden, I smothered the grass with layers of old clothing, sheets, and blankets that I have saved over the years. It made as good of layer as the cardboard I also used. Occasionally I dig up a button or a string of elastic from the garden from the fibers that have now decomposed.

What’s your hardest thing that you think you can’t find a good second life for? Let’s work together and see what we can come up with.

For more great tips on recycling your stuff check out 365’s Recycle Guide

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter one dust collecting ornament.

Today’s Declutter Item

I performed only one task with this mug, a task that could be performed by something else that had multiple uses. Hence this item was just wasting space in my kitchen.

Enamel Mug

Eco Tip for the Day

When doing your weekly shop put a shopping basket in your shopping cart to put your fruit and vegetables in rather than bag everything up separately in plastic bags. I have been doing this for years and only once has the checkout person given me grief about having to weigh it this way.

“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

Some time back I wrote a post ~ How many is too much ~ which addressed the issue of ~ what is clutter for one person is not neccessarily so for another. Last week I wrote a post ~ Over catering for guests ~ the goal of which was to get my readers thinking about how much stuff do you really need to keep in your home in order to cater for people who are only there a small percentage of the time.

In both these posts I give examples as to what I think is a reasonable amount of items to have for specific circumstances. However it is possible that many of my readers would agree in principal but may well be happy to possess more and in some cases even less than I stated. The suggestions I make here at my blog are a guide only and not some formula that is set in concrete that should be be applied to everyone.

For instance my suggestion last week on towels and sheets stated the bare minimum that I would be comfortable with. Some readers actually have less others more. I have more, although I would be very comfortable with the idea of reducing the numbers should the circumstance arise that I had less space to store them in. In fact I would happily declutter many items in my home in a heartbeat were I to finally find the perfect smaller home to purchase which was the original goal behind my decluttering mission. In fact many such items will likely be decluttered before then.

So basically what I am saying is your declutter goal may be minimalistic in nature while another person’s may simply be about not being embarrassed should guests drop by unexpectedly while yet another person may just want to be able to get to and from their bed without tripping over something.

The key is don’t have a static decluttering goal in mind and stay open to possibilities. In many ways I have reached points along my declutter journey that I hadn’t even envisaged before I set out. Such as…

• Realising I no longer had the desire to acquire stuff. What a freedom that was.
• When I became detached from pointless sentimental clutter . Another wonderful freedom.
• When I realised that so many of the things I had acquired in the past, expecting them to simplify my life, only made it more complicated.
• When I realised that having so many material choices didn’t make my life easer it actually complicated it.
• I believe that relinquishing my attachment to and desire for stuff has taught me to eliminate other control issues in my life.
• I would even say that the process of decluttering a family home has taught me to communicate better.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter one rarely used tool or gadget in you home.

Today’s Declutter Item

Who needs a napkin holder when they rarely if ever use napkins. This napkin holder stayed in my house so long not because it was useful but because it was handmade by my son in middle school. When asked he said he had no desire to keep it and didn’t expect me to either.

Napkin Holder

Eco Tip for the Day

Save on electricity by sweeping your hard floors instead of vacuuming them sometimes.

“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.

I have to admit that sometime my mini mission sound simple in theory but aren’t so simple to carry out. No 10 minutes simple anyhow. So this week I am going to make it really simple by name seven categories from which I only want you to declutter one thing. Should you choose to step it up a notch and declutter a few more then good for you.

Monday – Declutter one garden item ~ be that a sick plant, a garden gnome, a broken pot…

Tuesday –  Declutter one rarely used tool or gadget in you home.

Wednesday – Declutter one dust collecting ornament.

Thursday – Declutter one vessel that can contain fluid ~ drinking glass, fish tank, bottle, jar…

Friday – Declutter a pair of shoes you rarely use.

Saturday – Declutter a electric cable that serves no purpose.

Sunday – Declutter something made of paper.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

I have enough nice glass salad bowls that I don’t need to keep this cheap plastic one. Another donation for the thrift store.

Plastic Salad Bowl

Eco Tip For The Day

Cutting back on washing powder ~ combine a fraction of your regular laundry powder (1/4 for top loader or 1/8 for front loader) with 2 tablespoons of bicarb soda.

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

One of your fellow readers would like your opinion on something. Please read her message below and add your advice if you wish by leaving a comment for her. Thank you in advance for your help.

I have been on a mission to declutter my house. My house was never a disaster by any stretch of the imagination but in my opinion there was just too much stuff. It stresses me out. Since February I have been working though my possessions. I have removed clothing, nick-knacks, doubles of items, just general excess. I have removed more then 365 items and I am very proud of myself.

Recently I have started to tackle the toys. My house is a toy store, literally. There is not a toy at the store they we do not own a version of. I have two rooms specifically used as playrooms, one is a large basement. My friends tease me and strangers, like contractors make comments about the volume of playthings my two boys own. I did not buy most of them, they were gifts from my children’s very generous grandparents and other relatives. I know this has been discusses before but need some help and reassurances.

I am feeling very guilty about getting rid my children’s toys. My first two going are being sold on Sat and I feel like I want to cry, my stomach hurts. One of the toys being sold was never opened the other never played with. I choose these because there was no attachment to the toys for them or me. I figured they would be easy. Boy was I wrong. I think I feel guilty because these on some level are not mine to sell. But my boys are 5 and 1 not really old enough to understand or support my decluttering efforts.

I think I am also afraid that my disappearing toy act will cause them to become hoarders as adults. So, basically I just wanted to know if the readers here have any advice for mom with a guilty conscience. Thank you for your help.

Here is the advice I proffered to this reader while assuming that she was already taking steps to stop the plethora of toys coming in…

Involve your 5 year old in the decision making. Your 1 year old is clearly too young to care so won’t be affected either way. I always involved my kids and they never had any qualms about getting rid of the stuff they no longer played with. You will be teaching him a valuable lesson about letting go and not living a cluttered life.

You can give him two incentives to let go of things ~ 1. Tell him the cash earned from sold items will go into his bank account. Involve him in that process to a level he can understand. 2. Let him know that the toys he donates are going to children who wouldn’t otherwise have toys to play with. Children can be very generous when you explain to them that others aren’t as lucky as they are to have things.

Pick out the toys he no longer seems to play with that you don’t wish to keep for his younger brother. Choose which ones you would like to sell for him and ask him if he would like to donate the rest to children in need. Show him how his bank account is increasing with the funds from the sales and let him know he will be able to use that when he is bigger for things he needs. Also involve him in the donating process and express to him how happy he will be making less fortunate children with his kindness.

The Weekend’s Mini Missions

Saturday – Leisure activity items, be that sport, craft, digital media, reading material etc. There are nearly always items among these collections that are less utilised than others or in some cases not at all. To narrow down the selection makes the things you do use easier to find when needed. Superseded equipment is a good place to start the weeding out process.

Sunday – Declutter your excess linen. I fact rethink how much linen you really require to cater for yourself your family and a couple of guests. Some people seem to stock enough for the All Blacks (New Zealand) rugby team. This really isn’t necessary especially if you have a dryer and even if you don’t a laundromat is never far away should you have a houseful of people and the weather turns foul.

“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

The problem with long term decluttering is that you lose the heady gratification of sending car loads of stuff off to goodwill or recycling depots and you no longer find yourself staggering to the counter of the post office with arms full of ebay sales heading off to their new owners. Yes the house might be looking streamline but now that we have been honed into Olympic level declutterers, every now and then we still need a metaphorical shotput to throw or a marathon to pound out so we can still have our gold medal moment.

Slow and steady is always a guaranteed method to get across the finish line, but for today I’d like us to take on a challenge to stretch our muscles. This idea came from a recent post by Colleen where I stumbled onto the idea of “Lazy Clutter” and was defined as “no attachment, you just haven’t got around to getting rid of it”. I identified with this as I have plenty of space now in all my cupboards, but there are probably still things which don’t have any reason to stay either. The bar of deservedness (as in deserving to stay in my house) has risen and what was middle of the field a few months ago, is now sitting in a marginal position. It is just a few things, here and there, and over there, oh and over there too. Some of them missed first, second and third culls of that particular cupboard or drawer as they were found elsewhere more recently and returned to their correct place since. Maybe now that the cupboard has more room it stands out as the anomaly on the shelf. Maybe we’re just waiting for the right mini challenge to dig them out and send them on their way.

During this post I commented on Lazy Clutter and pondered the idea of getting some red X stickers made (as in CONDEMNED) and to slap them on everything that I felt constituted lazy clutter. Fellow 365’er Anita added that she uses dated post-it notes to do this and Fruitcake evolved/simplified my idea by saying she was going to use red tape. And just like that, the idea was launched on its maiden flight.

So your challenge is to grab some red tape – I’m using electrical tape as it is easily removable – and blast through the house and slap a piece on everything that wouldn’t be in your dream home anymore. You don’t have to eliminate it or list it on e-bay or freecycle it or anything else today or anytime in the near future if you don’t want to. You just have to slap on a piece of tape or a post-it note or a piece of paper and cellotape. Then you need to count up how many in your house and report back.

Those who know I am on a mission to eliminate a bookcase – well I don’t think there is enough tape on the roll to do that, so I’ll just count that as one, but the old glass measuring jug in the cupboard that I bypass for the newer one, that will also count as one. The vase in the bathroom that I have put off making a decision about, well today is D Day and the extra mop I have in the cleaning cupboard (I have no idea why I have more than one mop or where it surfaced from) that is getting slapped with a bit of tape too.

The purpose of this exercise? To get a visual idea of just how many items that have Lazy Clutter status, to see how many items I know I don’t really want but either haven’t gotten around to eliminating or possibly haven’t been able to justify getting rid of up until now or maybe have been avoiding making a decision on them.

So my fellow Olympic level Declutters…..on your marks, get set, GO!

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter excess kitchen items. This is one area of the home where people seem to think ~ “The more the merrier!”. For me it is the more the messier. I bet many of you could use up a lot of red tape in this area of the house. Especially if that red tape was to mark items you rarely use.

Today’s Declutter Item

Here are some items that had my imaginary Red Tag on for some time. They weren’t mine to declutter though but all good things come to those who wait. That’s one more box of stuff off to the thrift store.

Books etc

Eco Tip For The day

Keep a jug in your kitchen sink to save the water that would otherwise go to waste when waiting for the hot water to come through. This water can be used as drinking water, to fill the kettle, rinse dishes, water plants, rinse the sink etc.

“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

Many a time when I have put together the Monday Mini Mission posts I have included a mission about adjusting your possession to reflect your current situation. I mostly relate this to changes in locality, particularly ones that includes a climate change. For example thick winter jackets become clutter were you move to a warmer climate. I am very familiar with this concept having been through this process several time during the somewhat transient nature of my twenty five years of marriage.

There is another perhaps even more radical change that families go through that warrants some serious decluttering and that is when the children leave home. Yet in my experience no such transformation takes place in many households. Ten years, twenty years or even more later the home is still containing sufficient equipment to constantly cater to a full household. This isn’t so bad if there were originally just two children in the family but if there  were four or five what was once constantly useful has become clutter 90% of the time.

This post relates closely to Tuesday’s post about over catering for guest except that it often stretches further than just the linen closet, pantry and kitchen cupboards. Some grandparents houses contain enough toys, children’s books, board games, televisions, luggage, old unused sporting equipment, toiletries, stationery and even space than is sensible to maintain. This is especially so as age creeps up on us. It is simply a fact that as we get older keeping cleanliness and order just gets harder.

Now back to the concept of ~ “…what was once constantly useful has become clutter 90% of the time.” Once the children leave home there is a good chance that if they haven’t moved somewhere just down the street or across town they are going to want to come home to visit. Even with the possibility that they will eventually have your grandchildren in tow that doesn’t mean you need to have a houseful of stuff all year while most of it is only being used occasionally when family arrive to visit. With three or four adults in the home during visits to maintain order the household can run efficiently with less stuff for short periods of time.

Here are some examples ~

• You don’t need a ten seat dining suite. When the guests arrive sit the adults around the ~ smaller more appropriate for you ~ table and let the kids eat in front of the TV or bring in the outdoor setting in for them to sit at.  This will probably become one of the things the grandchildren love about coming to grandmas.
• You only need enough cutlery and crockery to cater to yourselves and your visitors at one sitting. They can be washed and dried before the next meal. If something needs reusing in the same sitting then give it a quick rinse.
• When the grandchildren come to visit I will almost guarantee they will bring plenty of entertainment with them. iPods, PSPs, Nintendo DS’s, perhaps a book to read and maybe even iPads or laptops. So there is really no need to stock enough toys to cater for them living there permanently. I remember visiting my grandparents when I was young and we always managed to entertain ourselves with the few toys they had to offer. We mostly made our own fun, digging in the dirt, pottering around discovering what was in the back sheds, helping bake, visiting other relatives, playing with the kids next door who we only saw two or three times a year and going to the local park to play on the swings.
• We discussed towels, sheets and other bedding on Tuesday so we should be savvy about that now.  In the event that lots of visitors converge at once they can always bring sleeping bags for the kids who can then camp out together on the lounge room floor or the sofas.
• One pot cooking is a great way to cater for guests with the odd roast dinner thrown in and a takeout meal every now and again to relieve the pressure of a kitchen that isn’t overflowing with equipment.
• People generally bring their own toiletries so there is no need to be overstocked in this area. An extra bar of soap or two should be all you need.
• When you had a houseful of kids attending school it always paid to carry a good stock of stationery items However those days are gone and now this equipment rarely leaves the home so just the few items you use all the time and a couple of spare pens is all you will likely need.

So if you are in this position ~ where the kids have left home or even if the kids have just moved to another stage in life within the home~ take a look around you home and determine what you really need 90% of the time and minimise the rest.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter tools or equipment you rarely if ever use. Consider that you could borrow these items when you are in need from those who do actually use theirs. In some cases these items are so expensive that it would be cheaper to pay someone to do the job for you when the rare occasion arrises rather than maintain ownership.

Today’s Declutter Item

Let’s face in the unlikely event that we were to have so many guests that we didn’t have enough wine glasses I am sure no one would mind drinking from our water glasses. These two glass are odd ones out and excess to our usual requirement so they are off to the thrift store.

Excess and odd wine glasses

Eco Tip For The day

Consider online magazine subscription rather than wasting paper.

“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

I’ve been short of both time and inspiration this week, so I dug up a post from the archives. This one was written in early 2011, eight months after I began daily decluttering.

Perhaps if you’re like my mother – always organized, always together, the focused Energizer Bunny – you won’t understand this post, this post about why my house fell into complete disarray and stayed there for about 8 years. Well, perhaps not why it fell into disarray, but why it stayed that way, year after hateful year.

Our house was almost literally always under construction, with my husband and I as the main worker bees. I had two young children. I find housework boring. All those reasons are true. But plenty of people offered to dig me out of my hole, and I had a housekeeper every other week for several years. It would take me hours to “clean” before Ellie came to clean – mostly I was stacking things and tucking them away before her arrival so she could find the floor and the counters.

My reason, in part, why nothing stayed clean was anxiety, unease, discomfort. When I cleaned, I knew without a doubt, that the mess would come right back, right away. I felt uncomfortable and almost unhappy when the house surfaces were clean and the junk was piled up tidily. It was like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I knew, as sure as I know that water rolls downhill, that all that stuff was going to re-emerge, and sooner rather than later. It felt useless and hopeless to bother to tidy up – so why bother at all? I wasn’t working then, and once both of the kids were in school, I carried a secret fear that my husband might “fire” me as a homemaker and send me back to work because I was doing such a lousy job. Truth be told, I would have fired myself!

Besides my defeatist attitude, another thing that kept the house from being clean and staying clean was that I never organized or decluttered all the way. I would load the dishwasher but not wipe the counter. I would pay the bills but leave the stamps and envelopes out. We joked that no one in our house understood the word “away” as in “I’ll put that away.” 90% of the job done was 100% good enough for me. Why did I only go part of the way – laziness, habit, the feeling of wasted time I got from completing the job?

How did I overcome my cleaning anxiety? The kids getting older and the remodelling finally being finished both helped, that’s for sure. I became determined to know where everything was supposed to go. I decided that I wanted to be extremely familiar with the word “away.” And if I didn’t know where something’s “away” was, I would figure it out.

Although I was already on my way toward cleanliness and organization, I really started my decluttering on June 1, which is when I found 365lessthings. Since then, I have decluttered over 1,600 things. I could really see a difference after a couple of months, and so could the rest of the family. My husband, who had been secretly and not-so-secretly longing for a lovely home was praising. When one child’s room would look great, the other girl would ask for help with her room too. The ease of decluttering – and the reward – became exponential. Now when I look at the island (my black hole) and think, “That looks awful,” I know that it will take me 10 minutes to completely tidy it, and I remember that every surface in the house, plus half the furniture, used to look that way.

So remember there is hope for all of us no matter how deep in the quagmire of clutter we have sunk. You can claw your way out one item at a time, one day at a time one area at a time no matter how you got there. If I can do it so can you, you just have to get started. Good luck and happy decluttering.

Today’s Mini Mission

Choose and begin to use up an item that you have more than enough varieties of. This could be something in your pantry, your bathroom cabinet, your store of cleaning products…

Today’s Declutter Item

Here are some items that I discovered while doing a mini mission of clearing out items in my laundry cupboard. These leather care product were too dry to be useful and in the case of the shoe nugget already replaced by new product. How have I managed to miss this over the last 2+ years of decluttering.

Leather Care Products

Eco Tip of The Day,

Investigate product reviews before making purchases in an attempt to get it right the first time and not find yourself back at the store buying a similar but hopefully better alternative soon after. This isn’t foolproof of course but the more armed with information you are the better choice you are likely to make.

“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

Most people enjoy having visitors occasionally, family or friends who stay longer than just a fleeting few hours. As a result we also like to be able to cater for those visitors with enough room and household items to keep them comfortable during their stay.  A comfortable bed, clean linen, bathing facilities, crockery and cutlery items and food to keep the tummy grumbles away.

There is nothing wrong with this in fact it is preferable to not being able to keep your visitors happy and comfortable or worse, not being able to accept visitors at all. But my experience is that many people over cater for these occurrences rather than just satisfying a need. Resulting in linen closets, pantries and kitchen cabinets literally bursting at the seams with enough household items to cater to a small army.

Lets take linen for a start. An average household of two adults and two children require no more than three bath towels each to satisfy their bathing needs. If two of each person’s towels are washed at one time that makes a full load of eight towels with one each left for their immediate needs. Given that most households have only one guest room that is inhabited for less than one month a year on average there is no need to permanently possess three more towels per visitor for these occasions. If four people are to visit at once two towels per person spread across the entire household would be enough the wash a load of eight with one each left in use. Therefor four extra towels is enough to be visitor ready at any time which is a total of sixteen towels.

A similar equation works for sheet sets. Given that visitors rarely stay longer than one week two sets per permanently occupied bed with one per spare bed ought to be enough. The once a week washing of the sheets could be alternated between family and visitors so there is always at least one spare set available. That is if you have two queen beds and two single (twin) beds in the house three sets of queen sheets and four sets of single bed sheets ought to be enough when catering for the family plus another couple.

Even if a family has no dryer and the weather turns foul it is always possible to utilise a neighbours dryer or use a local laundromat.

Kitchen cutlery and crockery also need not be over catered for. With the extra people in the house either the dishwasher will be turned on more often or you can utilise the extra occupants to assist you in hand washing the kitchenware. Both options give you a regular supply of clean dishes without having to own an over abundant supply. While the hand washing option is yet another opportunity to chat with your guest and before you know it the task is done.

As for food, with grocery stores never far away and in some cases  open 24 hours a day seven days a week there is no need to overstock. This may not be the case further out in the country but even in that circumstance a little forward planning should make it possible to bring in just enough to be adequately stocked for the duration of the visit without having to plough through the leftovers for weeks after the visitors have moved along.

If you have a tendency to overstock give some rational thought to how much you really need verses how much you feel you need. Take into account what is the greatest number of people who would normally visit you at any given time and how long they would usually stay for. Keep in mind that if you have other family near by you can always borrow some extra provisions if necessary.

Coming around to a new way of behaving may take a little adjusting of long held traditional thinking. My advice is to aways question such thinking as that is usually what causes homes to become cluttered in the first place. I am constantly questioning the way I do things, testing new ideas and  adapting to them or rejecting them as the case may be. As the saying goes “Nothing ventured nothing gained.” I feel liberated in my ability to question how I do things and adjust where necessary. It is so much more interesting to experiment with ideas than insisting on being set in my ways.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something that has been relegated to the garage because it has been replaced with a better model or has broken down altogether.

Today’s Declutter Item

This item had been relegated to the garage where it sat on the top of the shelve while I procrastinated about decluttering it. The reason behind that is because my dad made it for me. But the truth is I no longer have a need for it so I am ignoring the guilt of letting it go and sending it on it’s way.

Mini side table/magazine rack

Eco tip of the day

Try some home made environmentally friendly cleaning solutions. There are plenty of recipes to be found on the internet so why not give it a go. I am experimenting with a vinegar solution as an all-purpose surface cleaner at the moment.

“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.

I have been doing a bit of visiting lately and during that time I have been observing areas of clutter that seem to be familiar to nearly all homes no matter what level of stuff or tidiness therein. So this weeks mini missions will reflect those observation and consist of common clutter. I hope that many of you will find that you have already taken care of these areas as I have included them all often in past mini missions. If that is the case invent your own mini missions for the week.

Monday – Clothing items, be that shoes, general clothing, outer clothing, underwear or accessories. I know this subject gets mentioned over and over again but that is because it is an area the needs addressing by most people. Taking a look back at Mohamed Tohami’s recent guest post it would seem that most of those who comment here regularly have this area well under control.

Tuesday – Declutter something that has been relegated to the garage because it has been replaced with a better model or has broken down altogether.

Wednesday – Choose and begin to use up an item that you have more than enough varieties of. This could be something in your pantry, your bathroom cabinet, your store of cleaning products…

Thursday – Tools or equipment you rarely if ever use. Consider that you could borrow these items when you are in need from those who do actually use theirs. In some cases these items are so expensive that it would be cheaper to pay someone to do the job for you when the rare occasion arrises rather than maintain ownership.

Friday- Declutter excess kitchen items. This is one area of the home where people seem to think ~ “The more the merrier!”. For me it is the more the messier.

Saturday – Leisure activity items, be that sport, craft, digital media, reading material etc. There are nearly always items among these collections that are less utilised than others or in some cases not at all. To narrow down the selection makes the things you do use easier to find when needed. Superseded equipment is a good place to start the weeding out process.

Sunday – Declutter your excess linen. I fact rethink how much linen you really require to cater for yourself your family and a couple of guests. Some people seem to stock enough for the All Blacks (New Zealand) rugby team. This really isn’t necessary especially if you have a dryer and even if you don’t a laundromat is never far away should you have a houseful of people and the weather turns foul.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

Due to changes in our household this is one less garbage bin that is required. Through incremental changes we tend to generate less rubbish in our household these days. I donated it to the thrift shop.

One excess garbage bin

Eco Tip For The Day

Challenge yourself to put every piece of recyclable material in the recycling bin no matter how small.. It is easy to be blasé about small pieces of paper or plastic but so long as they can be recycled they are best kept out of landfill.

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

If you have any doubts that you can change your habits of acquiring and keep stuff this link will set your mind at ease. It is always possible to retrain your mind to a new way of doing things no matter how old or set in yours ways you think you are. The desire to change is all it takes to get started.

Here is the link from Creative Affirmations.

The Weekend’s Mini Missions

Saturday – Declutter a Natural Progression item ~ Something that no longer fits, physically or intelectually or has simply been used up or worn out.

Sunday – Declutter a Location Inappropriate item ~ That is something the no longer suits your lifestyle since a location change. Perhaps snow gear if you have moved to warmer climes.

“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

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