How do you live your life? Are you a person like me who used to have an active, busy life with work and other outside interests but now you spend the majority of your time at home? Do you have children at home or did you recently become an “empty nesterâ€? What is your life like today? It took my mother and me awhile to realize that our home no longer matched our lifestyle. I think it took longer for Mom than it did me but it was true. We had changed. Our lives had changed. Mom was always a very active person who entertained people in her home, was very involved in activities at our … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2013
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Is Your Clutter a Pile of “Should”?
My in-laws are visiting, and I was thinking about my father-in-law. He really likes to do home improvement projects, to work on his own vehicle, and he's done some truly outstanding woodworking projects. My husband is not really like his father. No one else I know works on their own car, my husband can only do the simplest of woodworking, and although he does home improvement projects, he doesn't love it. Yet at least some of his clutter reflects who he thinks he should be (see his Dad, above) and not who he really is. The fancy name for this is "aspirational clutter," but I'm going to call … [Read more...]
Decluttering That Kitchen
I think this week's mini missions just about cover the basics of decluttering your kitchen. But I shall make a list of suggestions here just in case I missed something. Get rid of ingredients you haven't used in a long time. If you want to improve your diet but suffer from lack of self control then declutter ingredients and prepared foods that you should not be eating. You could do a use-it-up declutter mission on these items, sparingly of course. There is no need to rid yourself of these items altogether just ration how much you stock and how often they are replaced. Declutter … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday ~ Declutter Your Kitchen
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. In keeping with my post from Tuesday last week ~ Apply-the-365-approach-to-other-areas-of-your-life ~ this week's mini missions will all be taking place in the kitchen. I have found, over the last three years of my slow declutter, that I have returned to the kitchen over and over again. … [Read more...]
Friday’s Favourites ~ 22Feb2013
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! Loved that Jane has found a finical benefit in her new attitude towards stuff. She tells us about it in this comment. This next comment from Hunter_xs was Cindy's pick in response to her post on Wednesday. Here is another testimonial from Jane on how she has lost weight by giving up fizzy drinks. I just had to include this comment because I know how thrilled Moni is to … [Read more...]
Extra Incentive
Rebecca J sent in a comment on Tuesday and two lines really struck me as something worth sharing with you all in a post. Here is what she wrote... "6 years ago, my parents decided they both wanted to lose about 50 pounds. They did lose the weight and have kept it off. One aspect of their approach was that they weighed themselves each day and plotted their weight over time in Excel." Rebecca J's parents were clever, maybe unintentionally but clever nonetheless. Whether they realised it or not they actually put in place a task that gave them extra incentive to lose the weight. Seeing the … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ How to Begin
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Several people have recently asked me how to begin decluttering, and someone confessed last week that she thought all of us were running to the thrift store every single day as we decluttered, so I decided that it was time for another review. Where Colleen and I started from For those of you who are newer readers, you may not know that Colleen and I started our decluttering journeys from very different places. (And we didn't know each other then, either.) Colleen's house was well organized and very tidy, but she realized that she simply had way too much stuff. Her … [Read more...]
Apply the 365 approach to other areas of your life.
Have you ever felt you need to make changes in your life, whether that be adding something healthy in, or stop doing something that isn't good for you. Have you ever decided those changes are too hard to make and give up before you begin. Well, just like our small steady steps in decluttering you can also utilise this approach with other good habits you would like to implement. I am using the 365 approach to cut back on the amount of coffee I drink. My goal is to only drink coffee outside of the house which of course isn't everyday. I started out by not drinking coffee at home after 4pm for … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday ~ Consider these items
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's mini missions address items that you may not have considered decluttering in the past. You may not even consider the idea when you see what they are, but I thought I would make the suggestion anyway and allow you to give them some thought. I have to say that the only one I could … [Read more...]
Saturday Extra ~ The Untouchable Box, a guest post by Andréia
I have made some great progress with my decluttering, but a lovely chat I had with Colleen recently prompted a decision by which I want to improve my decluttering and help me evaluate better the real value of my objects and why I keep them. As I was talking to Colleen she started to ask about things I don’t even want to talk about decluttering, let alone actually declutter them. They are in my bedroom in the lovely box. It is a 31 square centimetre box, covered in fabric with a lid. I made a mistake with my decluttering. Instead of focusing on all the “easy†stuff I want to and am … [Read more...]