When you have been a clutterer for a long time, decluttering never seems to end. Reading posts and articles I found that there is always room for improvement. Last year I was very much upset with my bedroom, but I had no idea where to start. Frustrated I asked Colleen for help and she told me to make a plan. My bedroom didn’t just need a declutter, it needed a new life. I always felt a mess in my bedroom. Not a nice feeling to have at all in one’s sleeping place! So I started to point out to myself what were the trouble areas: the furniture in a whole, the excess stuff I put off dealing … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2013
Friday’s Favourites ~ 14June2013
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! In this comment Melissa tells us about how just the right gift from her mother helped her declutter lots of related clutter. And this comment also from Melissa proves that happy decluttering requires good communication. I loved this declutter story from Megan S. Sometimes leaving things lying around can actually reduced clutter rather than add to it. Read about it here. In this … [Read more...]
The disharmony of clutter
Do you ever think about how your clutter affects the other members of your household? Do you think they don't mind because they don't complain about it? Have you ever considered that they don't complain because they have simply weighed up the risk of upsetting you over it and decided you are more important? How unfair and ultimately heartbreaking is that. Would you do the same for them? Would you grant them the same loyalty if they said, it's your clutter or me, make a choice? Would you let them go easier than your clutter? Or do the other members of your household complain about the clutter … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Mourning My Dancing Shoes
My daughter, who is 13, is starting to take ballroom dance lessons. I'm happy for her, but this new passion has caused my first case of declutter regret. Yes, after 3 years of decluttering (June 1 was my anniversary), I finally caught the bug. It took someone else to cure me. You see, my husband and I used to ballroom dance, as well. We took lessons for 4 hours a week for 2 years and went to many dances up until my new dancer was born. I held onto my dance shoes - a pair of black practice shoes and a pair of gold performance shoes - for years. Dance shoes are pampered and get very little … [Read more...]
Feng Shui Parallels
I have only read 27 pages of Karen Kingston's book ~ Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui and so far it is obvious to me that what I said last week is true. Â Although I have only ever read the occasional article here and there on Feng Shui, and even less on the relationship of Feng Shui to clutter, there are a lot of parallels between these teachings and what I have been conveying here at 365 Less Things since I began blogging about decluttering. The words "negative energy" or "stagnant energy" really have much the same meaning as the "unhealthy relationship", that I have talked about, between … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday ~ Clean to identify clutter
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 begun reading Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui - by Karen Kingston. I borrowed it from the library, of course. One thing she suggests you do to clear the stale energy from your home is clear away physical grime. It is only too easy to be oblivious to this grime even being there because, … [Read more...]
Friday’s Favourites ~ 7June2013
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 are one wise and one amusing comments left by dizzy this week. And the Change post this week resulted in some great comments from... Melissa ~ Lucinda & Loretta This comment is from a readers who had not commented before. Shelley welcome to 365 Less Things and thank you for sharing your story. Favourite Web Finds. Happy reading! Here is a post for … [Read more...]
Staging your home for you
In Cindy's post yesterday she talked a little about staging a home for selling purposes. This got me thinking two things ~ 1.) Why wait until you are about to sell before making your home look good. 2.) A home can look good without being impersonal such as they suggest in this staging process. How nice would it be were your home in a state where it looks good enough to show people through at the drop of a hat while still having those personal touches that make it feel like home? Keeping in mind that people viewing a home, with the intent to buy, will look in your storage areas to see how they … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Moving
Last month, I helped my friends, The E family, move. In the last month, I also helped my daughters' school pack for a move. The Es have lived in their house 13 years; the school has been in this location 10 years. Let me tell you, I have seen a lot of junk, stuff, things, good stuff that's no longer needed, beautiful useful items, heirlooms, and lost & found in the past month. A lot. Moving really forces you to focus in on what's essential. This is especially true for the school, which is being torn down and rebuilt. For the first half of the next school year, The Girls' School of Austin … [Read more...]
Change
Decluttering is all about change. Changing the way you think about stuff: It isn't important. It can trigger memories but doesn't contain them. It usually becomes clutter eventually no matter how excited you were at acquiring it in the first place. It doesn't raise peoples' opinions of you. It doesn't make you happy in the long term. You have to work to acquire it, which may rob you of precious time spent taking care of those and that which are actually important to you. Changing long formed ideas and habits: You are not obliged to keep stuff no matter how it was acquired ~ gifts, … [Read more...]