…and it is way too late to return them for your money back, what do you do?

When our lodger left in the summer, I took the opportunity to revamp the room and change how I furnished it as things were getting shabby after 10 years. I dithered for ages over the best storage solutions for the range of people we tended to attract. My dithering drove me mad so in the end I just went for it, but then ended up with some pieces that were not the best solution.

So I got it wrong, despite lots of thought. So, after more re thinking I did get the right pieces for maximum space and storage, but had an armchair and brand new storage cupboard left over.

I had 3 choices:

• keep them (only available space would be the attic) as ‘they may come in useful sometime”
• keep them as “I can’t get rid of them; that would be so wasteful”
• sell on/give away at a loss to get them out of our small house.

I chose to attempt to sell rather than beat my self up for my mistake and hang on to them for ages as:

• keeping them, unused, would not compensate me for the money I had spent anymore than giving them away for nothing would.
• keeping them in our small house would compound my error by their constantly getting in the way, forever reminding me of the money I had wasted.
• someone else could be making good use of it.

It took 5 weeks of trying to sell the chair until I realised I would have to give it away to get rid of it. But the woman who collected it was delighted with it and her bargain made her day. It was great being the source of someone else’s good luck.

The cupboard has just been put on our local online selling forum. I’ve put it on for nearly half what I paid for it and know I may have to drop it in price. I’d like to keep it – I love nice wooden storage, but we have a small house that I have already maxed out with good suitable storage solutions.

Getting things out of the house did put me in the mood to try and sell a food dehydrator I bought a few years ago that is enormous and takes up a third of our kitchen counter space and I have only used 3 times. That did sell well for over £200 (close to my original purchase price). So win some, lose some.

What do you have lurking in your home that you can’t face getting rid of because it would be a waste of the money you spent on it, even though:

• you never use it,
• it gets in the way
• maybe you don’t actually like it any more either
• it reminds you of your ‘mistake’ in a way that always annoys you a bit?

This post was written by Doodle one of your fellow 365ers.

Today’s Mini Mission

Choose a drawer in this room and declutter it. If you have no drawers choose a small area that is out of sight. A box under a bed, a shelf or a small cabinet.

Eco Tip for the Day

Sweep your outdoor areas rather than hosing them down.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

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

Cindy

Every time you see something fun, intriguing, clever, imaginative, or functional at a friend’s house, are you tempted to buy one for yourself too? When your child loves a toy that he or she has played with at a friend’s house, school, or the doctor’s office, do you think he or she must surely want one for your house as well?

This is a trap. Don’t fall for it.

In my experience, parents and grandparents are the first and worst to fall into this trap. If junior loves a toy elsewhere, he/she will surely love one at home too. Not necessarily. Instead, by buying a duplicate, you’ve removed the thrill of the toy at the other location as something special to look forward to. Now it’s at your house and is just one of the many, nothing special about it. I’ve even seen duplicates occur when the child already owns a toy. In my own life I can think of some wooden dolls with magnetic clothing that the girls enjoyed. Somehow, by the time they were ready to get rid of the sets, my two daughters had five different sets of these dolls. They didn’t enjoy their five sets any more than they enjoyed their original two though. So why did I, and others, think that if some was good, more was better?

My husband recently tried to go down this path. He has made a new friend Joe, and Joe likes to play strategy games and owns an extensive collection of them. First game they played together, Dan wanted to buy for our house as well, even though the chances of playing it without Joe are negligible. In fact, a big part of the fun is that the two fathers and the two oldest kids play together. Owning this game isn’t going to make the playing happen more frequently or make it more fun. In fact, if Dan insisted on playing it at our house, it might make the times we get together with the other family less enjoyable.

Can you look around your house or garage and see something that you felt you had to have too, and now it’s just sitting there, mocking your decision? Get rid of it, and remember: You don’t have to have one too.

Today’s Mini Mission

Today clear off and declutter the floor in your chosen room. Pick up anything that doesn’t belong on the floor and find a home for it. Once again move any unwanted clutter to its departure point.

Eco Tip For The Day

Use washable dishrags in your kitchen rather than paper towel or chemically saturated wet wipes.

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

Well hello folks, it’s nice to be back to chat with you all again. My vacation was wonderful and as usual on my return my house seems so big. After living in B&Bs, AirBnBs and motel rooms for seven weeks having all this space around me seems a little excessive.

I have to say that after wearing the same limited items of clothing for that length of time I am glad to see my closet again. And it is a whole new season here so a whole different set of clothing is called for. Thank the heavens for that because I am so over the ones I took with me. They did serve me well though and I chose well when I packed. Even with only one backpack weighing less than 7kgs (15.5lb) I was never hot, cold, wet, uncomfortable or short of clothing. I did get close to falling short of garments at times when laundromats were few and far between but a little hand washing took care of that issue.

I have confirmed one thing for sure from my time away, and that is that I could easily live in a smaller space with less stuff. Life is complicated enough at times without cluttering it up with unnecessary responsibility. Responsibilities like cleaning and keeping tidy space one doesn’t even need and working long hours in order to afford to buy stuff one also doesn’t need.

Today’s Mini Mission

Return to your chosen room again and pick another elevated surface to clear off and declutter. Once again put everything away in its proper home and move any unwanted clutter to your clutter departure points. 

Eco Tip for the Day

Eat more whole foods. That is food that has received no or very little processing such as raw fresh fruit and vegetables.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

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 we are going to do something a little different with our mini missions. I want you to pick a room in your home that has a clutter issue, and this room is going to be the focus of your mini missions this week. Make a vow to yourself that you are not going to add any extra clutter to this room. Anything you use from or in it during the week you are going to put away immediately after use. Choose departure points for your decluttered items, some will go in the trash some will end up in the recycling bin while others will be donated. Make sure your donation departure point is in an out of the way place, preferably in the garage where you can load them into the car at the end of the week. If you have the opportunity to dispose of them as you go along that is all the better because then you won’t be tempted to keep them. Lets get started.

Monday – Tidy off and declutter one elevated surface in your focus room putting everything away in its proper home.

Tuesday – Go back to your chosen room again and pick another elevated surface to clear off and declutter. Once again put everything away in its proper home and move any unwanted clutter to your clutter departure points. 

Wednesday – Today you are going to clear off and declutter the floor in your chosen room. Pick up anything that doesn’t belong on the floor and find a home for it. Once again move any unwanted clutter to its departure point.

Thursday – Choose a drawer in this room and declutter it. If you have no drawers choose a small area that is out of sight. A box under a bed, a shelf or a small cabinet.

Friday – Repeat the same task as Thursday.

Saturday – Declutter an area of your own choosing in the room today. By now the room should be in pretty good shape.

Sunday - Sunday is reserved for contemplating one particular item, of your choice that is proving difficult for you to declutter. Whether that be for sentimental reasons, practical reasons, because the task is laborious or simply unpleasant, or because the items removal requires the cooperation of another person. That last category may mean that the item belongs to someone else who has to give their approval, it could also mean there is a joint decision to be made or it could mean that the task of removing it requires assistance from someone else. There is no need to act on this contemplation immediately, it is more about formulating a plan to act upon or simply making a decision one way or another.

Good luck and happy decluttering

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

Deb J

I have never been very sentimental toward things. I have had a few collections over the years and they kept mostly because I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of those who had given them to me. I found myself attaching to people. I never wanted to let go of anyone once they had been in my life. I wrote letters for years to many of the people who had come and gone in my life. When email came along I switched to emailing them and then later to Facebook (FB) if they had an account.

In mid May someone made a comment on 365 Less Things that set me to thinking. I wish I could remember who and could quote the comment. I just know I suddenly realized that I had a clutter area that I needed to work on. It was my email list and FB list. I realized that I had a lot of people on both and that I was spending a lot of time reading status reports and sending emails. I also realized that I had a pretty long list of people I sent homemade birthday or anniversary cards to. With some of the other changes I am making in my life I had to examine these areas to see why I was so dutifully engaged in this.

One of the first things I realized was that many of the people I emailed or send cards to never responded back. Oh, they seemed to like reading my messages but I never heard anything about their lives. I had the same thing going on when it came to FB. Many of them would have all of these pictures, jokes, etc. they posted but little about themselves and their actual lives. I sat down with these lists and began to set some priorities and guidelines. I began to delete friends and addresses.

On FB I had 93 friends when I started this process. I now have about 40. I am part of a FB group for our church so anyone who is in that group is no longer a FB friend in the regular friend area. I don’t need them in two places. It’s the important stuff they put on the church group page that is what I want not the games, likes, jokes, political stuff, etc. In the regular area I have kept my few family members who have FB accounts, some close friends who I hear from all the time, and a few friends who only post on a occasional basis but who are very important to me. I read FB once a day now.

In my address book I removed everyone who I have not heard from in a long time. As I went through that book I realized I had 20+ names of people who I had been sending a Christmas card to plus quarterly emails and not once had I received more than maybe a Christmas card with nothing but their name signed. Hmmm! I don’t seem to be important to them. That’s okay. Things change in our lives and that means we even lose some friends we cared about and were close to at one time. I took those names out of my Outlook address book. I also went through and deleted a number of email addresses for this same reason.

The last thing I went through was my list of birthdays and anniversaries. I realized that only a few of them really cared about receiving a homemade card (or any card). These were mostly family. So I took all those names and listed most of them either FB or email birthday/anniversary greetings. Less postage was a bonus benefit, and better for the environment

Does this sound unfriendly to you? Do you have the same dilemma? Have you even considered this as a place to declutter? I have to tell you that it was a huge change for me. It took lots of consideration. I was so used to making the effort to keep up with people. I had all of this done near the beginning of June. It’s been quite feeling of freedom since then. I expected guilt or something to overtake me. It hasn’t. I feel like this was long overdue. I don’t think anyone will notice.

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

CiI read this great little

I read this great little post the other day – 46 ways to increase your happiness. Of course, I wasn’t surprised at all to find that reducing clutter was on the list (number 31). I followed the link to the summary of a University of California Los Angeles study about “crushing”number of possessions in the households of 32 Los Angeles families. I highly recommend you read the whole article and examine the photos. I’m going to highlight some of the portions that struck me as particularly important.

First of all, only we know what goes on it our home; only we can tell (or hide) the truth about our clutter and excessive purchases. “Marketers and credit card companies record and analyze every nuance of consumer purchasing patterns, but once people shuttle shopping bags into their homes, the information flow grinds to a halt.”

“Managing the volume of possessions was such a crushing problem in many homes that it actually elevated levels of stress hormones for mothers.” Later in the article, it says that men do not  see or respond to mess like women do.

Today’s Mini Mission

Eco Tip For The Day

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

Way way back on Day 258 of my decluttering journey I wrote this post on five items I won’t declutter. Today I am writing an update on that post. Pictured below are the five items in question.

So which of these items do I still own that I would never part with.

The Flour Sifter ~ As I have mentioned previously was decluttered. It left on the 19th Oct, 2012. As I mentioned in this post I decided I no longer needed it, either for practical or sentimental reasons.

The Can Opener ~  This I still have. It serves me well and I have no need to replace it with some new fancy modern equivalent. This old fashioned type is good enough for me.

The Peg Bag ~ Natural progression finally took hold of this item. It got very old and even rattier than it looks in the photo. I used it to make a pattern to sew a similar one for my daughter but I chose not to replace mine. Instead I began using a plastic basket I already owned. This substitution started out as a trial separation, knowing that I could make another if I wished, but I have not as yet bothered to do so. A part of it still remains, the coat hanger within it was used in my daughters new version. Hers is made from a luscious rich red corded velour fabric remnant that I got cheap at a craft shop.

The Laptop ~ This was replaced long ago. It was over six years old and not cooperating well. So in essence it wasn’t decluttered just substituted. It was sold on eBay and hopefully some tech savvy person managed to revamp it and it is still in use somewhere today.

The Grill Pan ~ This is another of those old, well seasoned items that is still in my possession. It is great for cooking pancakes and many other foods on. It was secondhand when my mother-in-law gave it to me and I know that if I decided I didn’t want it my daughter would be happy to take it off my hands.

All these items were of great service to me. They were, and in some cases still are, used and used and used. This is the kind of stuff that I find most valuable in my home. No fancy china, not mementoes of past achievements, not an extensive wardrobe or status symbols. Just good old fashioned useful stuff.

Here is what my daughter wrote in the comments of that original post back on day 258:-

I almost fell over when I saw the photo that was next to this post when it came up on Facebook. It was the one of the skillet from grandma and I thought you’d gotten rid of it. It’s honestly the greatest skillet known to man..and the rest of those items are all some of my favorites. A little bit because they’re just really useful and good items to have around the house but also because through all the moving that we’ve done over the years, they’ve always been with us to make each new house feel like home.

Decluttering isn’t all about getting rid of stuff it is more about sorting out and only keeping the good stuff that is truly important to you for whatever reason.

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 weeks mini missions will take you to a different area of your house each day. I will name a room/area and all you have to do is find one thing from there to declutter. If you don’t have one of these areas either declutter a second thing from one of the other areas or choose from an area you have that I may not have mentioned.

Monday -Declutter something from a bedroom.

Tuesday – Declutter something from a bathroom.

Wednesday – Declutter something from your kitchen.

Thursday – Declutter something form your storage room. Be that attic, garage, back shed, basement…

Friday – Declutter something from your living room.

Saturday – Declutter something from outside. Whether from your garden, porch, balcony…

Sunday - Sunday is reserved for contemplating one particular item, of your choice that is proving difficult for you to declutter. Whether that be for sentimental reasons, practical reasons, because the task is laborious or simply unpleasant, or because the items removal requires the cooperation of another person. That last category may mean that the item belongs to someone else who has to give their approval, it could also mean there is a joint decision to be made or it could mean that the task of removing it requires assistance from someone else. There is no need to act on this contemplation immediately, it is more about formulating a plan to act upon or simply making a decision one way or another.

Good luck and happy decluttering

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

Cindy

True story: Once I was carpooling with 2 friends. At that time, the girls were still using car seats, so I pulled a booster out. Among other crunchy, yucky little bits under the seat were two desiccated chicken nuggets. How embarrassing!

While I was driving the van, it always looked “Mom-ed.” In this case, “Mom” is another word for “trashy.” No one ever took into the house everything that they carried into the car, and over time, there were more and more pens, scraps of paper, crumbs (no more nuggets!), a single shoe, forgotten art projects, etc. It was dirty – “Mom’s taxi” dirty. In fact, my favorite YouTube video of all time celebrates (?) the “Mom van” in a video that you can watch and laugh at here.

Some people’s cars are much more of a disaster than my bit of “momming.” Not long ago, I encountered two women driving the most trashed out car I’d ever seen. It made me sick and sad to see how foul it was, especially when I realized that they had a couple of small dirty dogs in the vehicle with them and that they were likely living in it as well. Ironically what were they doing? Jockeying to be first in line at 99 cent day at the thrift store.

I found this website of junk-filled cars. While these vehicles are extreme, how many of you have a car that you’re not too proud, that you’re not keeping clean? A car is a major expense: the purchase, the fuel, and the maintenance. Shouldn’t it receive the same attention as your house, your closet, and your office?

Here’s how I suggest you proceed. First, get your trash can, your recycling bin, and another bag. One at a time, grab everything off the floor, from the trunk, and from within the seat pockets and sort – trash, recycling, goes back into the house (that’s what the extra bag is for), stays in the car. Clean out every little thing. Put away what you’ve accumulated, possibly leaving the “stays in the car” stuff out because next you’re going to vacuum, and not having those items in the way will allow you to vacuum more thoroughly. Finally, wash the car, inside and out. Ah, doesn’t that look and feel better?

Now, just like every other area of your decluttered home, you have to maintain it. Frankly, this is easier than maintaining the house because once you leave the car, it’s unlikely that you’re going to pass back by it and leave a book or shoes like you might in the living room.

In fact, a clean car can save you thousands of dollars. About five years ago, Dan was sick of his car and started talking about buying a new one. I knew that wouldn’t be a good way to spend our money, and I knew that this car still have thousands of good driving miles left. I took it to the body shop to have a few little dents and dings repaired and a piece repainted so that the outside looked new, and then I took it to a car wash place and got the super-detail package (everything cleaned, buffed, waxed, shampooed, etc.). True, it cost me about $500, but that’s only one or maybe one and a half car payments worth of investment, and we used that car for 170,000 miles.

What state is your car in?

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

Deb J

First I have to tell you that I am not fond of the word sensible. It strikes me as an inhibitive word. It’s something I have to do because someone said so. Ah, my rebel heart shudders at words like this. BUT!! Sensible is a word we need to attach to our vocabulary way up there at the top of the list. Let’s see, this brings to mind words like wisdom, prudence, of benefit to. So okay! Maybe it’s not so bad of a word. I guess. Maybe?!

Wisdom in buying. Well, okay, I know better than to buy a Lamborghini when I can only afford a Focus or not to buy a Versace but a White Stag. But is that really using wisdom or is it using common sense because $20 in the old bank account means White Stag is the only thing to do.

What about when you actually HAVE the money to buy something? What about when you can have a choice that will bring you into the “this is the thing to have” state? What if you can afford to have that name brand? Oh, heah heah. Gulp. You mean THAT kind of sensible?! Yep! You got it. That’s what I want to talk about because I hope we all have already come to where we realize that we can only buy what we can afford. Haven’t we? HAVEN’T WE??!!

Sensible Buying looks like:

1. Not buying that dress just because it is on sale and I like it when I don’t need it and already have more than I wear.

2. Not buying that name brand outfit when there is one almost identical that I actually like better but doesn’t have “A NAME.”

3. Not buying that item for the kitchen because I saw it in a magazine or on a TV show and it looks like fun—even though I KNOW I will never make _______ more than once or twice if that.

4. Not buying that vacation package just because the neighbor is always talking about her vacations.

5. Not getting my 7 year old child (or myself) an iPhone just because all of the people in my clique have given their child one.

6. Not going to that expensive restaurant just because my business peers say it’s the place to be seen.

I see you are getting my drift. You know, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these scenarios. It’s why you do it and whether it’s really a priority for you and your family. It’s the attitude and mind set behind the buying. It’s the buying for buying’s sake or for the sake of your reputation or some such thing.

I’m not saying we are all like this. I know it is easy to be swayed by many things that bombard us on a daily basis. That’s why Sensible is a good word. It keeps us out of trouble (like debt). It keeps us aware of what we are doing. It keeps us from having clutter we don’t need, like or want. It keeps us accountable. Oh dear! There’s another one of those words we don’t like. Sigh.

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