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.

The holiday season is a great time for decluttering. It always seems to be the time of year where all the weird stuff comes to the surface or at least comes to mind. And now is a great time to send it on its way. So here are some items to be on the lookout for.

Monday – Declutter something glittery.

Tuesday – Declutter some old toys.

Wednesday – Declutter something red or green.

Thursday – Declutter an old unwanted gift.

Friday – Declutter someone from your Holiday card list that never sends a card in return.

Saturday – Declutter some holiday themed household items ~ towels, oven mitts, placemats etc.

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

Banishing the Busyness: by Idgy of the North

Growing up in small town Canada, the holidays were filled with the Hollywood version of Christmas.  My mom would bake lots of cookies in holiday shapes and Christmas cake. We would go into the forest and cut down a snow covered pine tree.  Our house would be covered in lights and the inside would be decorated for the holidays.  There were always lots of social gatherings both at our home and at friends and families.  We would end with a huge feast with my parents, siblings and grandparents.

When I was an adult, I tried to recreate these idyllic scenes.  I would spend months shopping for the “perfect gifts” for family and friends.  I would send out holiday cards to everyone we knew.  We had a large tree that would take a whole day to set-up and decorate.  I would bake dozens of cookies.  We would setup a schedule to visit as many family members and friends as possible in the few days we had off work.  If we were “hosting” the holiday dinner, we would spend a couple of days cleaning the house and prepping food followed by a day of cooking.  We said yes to any social engagement we were invited to.  Our extended family is spread out around this large country so we often travelled snowy highways for several hours or took very expensive plane rides so we could spend the holidays with family.  At the end of the holidays, we were left exhausted.  The holiday season became something to dread.  Where did we go wrong?

In looking back at my childhood, I realized my life looks nothing like my parents.  My mom was at home with the kids.  My dad had 2 weeks off work for the holidays.  In asking my mom if she enjoyed the holidays when we were young, she answered that it was stressful and exhausting!  She spent weeks baking, shopping, wrapping, decorating, cleaning , sending out over 250 holiday cards and cooking.  The tree took a whole day to get into the house, into the tree stand, floors cleaned up and  tree decorated.  She had to remember to water the tree everyday so it wouldn’t become a fire hazard.  She had to vacuum several times a day due to the needles dropping from the tree.  On Christmas Day, we kids would wake up ridiculously early in anticipation of opening presents.  My parents often had 2-3 hours of sleep after setting up all the gifts.  My mom would then spend hours in the kitchen preparing the feast.  She would then fall asleep shortly after dinner and be exhausted and/or sick for the following week.

My life does not resemble my parents.  We live close to the country’s largest city and have long commute times.  Both my spouse and I work full time.  I travel by plane a lot for work.  We also have 2 school aged kids with special needs. We just don’t have time for the fairytale.  We began to say no to anything that was not high priority.  High priority for us means spending time with our kids and spending time outside.  This included scaling back the decorations to a small tabletop artificial tree, saying no to events that were not meaningful to us and saying no to driving hours on dicey roads to spend a few hours with others.  We also scaled back on gift giving.  We now only give experience gifts to the kids (ours plus nieces and nephews).  We no longer exchange gifts with our siblings, parents and friends.

I now look forward to the holidays as a time to rest and enjoy the season.

What have you done to banish the busyness?

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 are brought to you by Nicole V. 

Do you remember playing with those shape-sorter toys as a child? Apart from being fun, they were great for developing hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills. We’ll be shape-searching this week and you’ll need to find something to declutter in the form of (or relating to) different shapes. The item doesn’t necessarily have to take the shape perfectly – it could be squarish, instead of a perfectly proportioned square, or it could be a vase with a triangular base, and patterns and prints of any of the shapes would work as well. So let’s see how your decluttering shapes up for the entire week.

Monday – Declutter something that is a circle.

Tuesday – Declutter something that is a square.

Wednesday – Declutter something that is a cylinder.

Thursday – Declutter something that is an oval.

Friday – Declutter something that is a rectangle.

Saturday – Declutter something that is a triangle

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

How many of you come to the end of the year with a bundle of paper you need to keep to prepare your taxes or because you have to be reimbursed for medical expenses or for who knows what reason?  How many of you just find that at the end of the year you have piles of Stuff you can’t remember having a reason to keep?  How many start the year with plans to do better and then it all falls apart?  Every year I find myself going through a large personal safe of paperwork.  I’ve been good about filing it away but I still have way more than I want or need.  I also find myself starting a new year with plans to create a better way to file things.  It never seems to work like I want.

This year I am recommending creating e-files for those papers that we need to keep.  I’m also recommending e-files for keeping things for the new year too.  Here is how I plan to do it.

The Old Year. 

For every tax file I need to keep I will create a year file under taxes in Dropbox.  As a year becomes redundant I will just delete the file.  I will keep no paper copies.  I can easily print them out if needed.

I will create a file for every other item of paperwork I need to retain.  Once I no longer need something I can delete it. Probably an end of year task. 

All paperwork no longer needed will be shredded and disposed of. 

The New Year

Create a Medical File that includes sub files for each doctor, hospital, ancillary office.  Mom sees an inordinate amount of doctors along with having numerous tests and procedures.  I need to keep track of the bills, results, etc.  I can match bills with payments, maintain a file of results of tests and procedures, and at the end of the year use it all to create the medical deduction if needed for taxes.

Create a Financial file. This will include a year’s worth of bank statements.  Again this will keep this information available for tax purposes. 

Create an Automobile file.  This file will contain copies of all work done on a vehicle, the insurance policy and any other pertinent paperwork for the car. 

Create a Home file.  This will contain the insurance policy, repair paperwork, etc. 

Just looking at these two lists creates a calmness in my heart because I know I can maintain all of this with a little work between the holidays.  I hope this gives you some ideas of ways to cut down on the paperwork clutter in your home. 

Does anyone else have files you would want to create?

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.

So it is that time of year again where family and friends come together to celebrate one occasion or another and sometimes a little of each. So now is a good time to eliminate some stuff messing up our homes that we wouldn’t want others to see. So lets see if there is some little tweaking we can do to make our task of presenting a home, in its best light, a little simpler.

Monday –  Declutter some of those dust collectors that make cleaning day a bigger chore than it ought to  be.

Tuesday – Declutter some things sitting on surfaces in the bathroom. Cleaning bathrooms is a big enough chore without having to move things to do the task.

Wednesday – Declutter some excess items in the room that would be used to accomodating guests. It can be awkward enough living out of suitcases in an uncluttered space, the task becomes more difficult when there is no clear surface to put guests’ things on.

Thursday – Declutter some items from the entrance to your home. Either the front lawn, the porch, the entry way etc. You want your home to make a good, welcoming,  first impression.

Friday – Declutter some excess, less used, items from the kitchen. This will make it easier to get at the things you do use, making food prep easier.

Saturday – Declutter any stuff cluttering up the dining table. This clutter is bad enough at the best of time but when guests are in the home it makes catering more difficult than necessary.

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.

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

This post was contributed to 365 Less Things by Deb J

Gift wrapping is one of the big “chores” of the Christmas/Hanukkah season.  A later post in this series will talk about alternative gifts for adults but for those who take part in gift giving among family and friends decluttering wrapping supplies can make a big difference.  Every year as you walk through the stores you see a big assortment of wrapping papers, bows, bags, gift tags and gift boxes.  I remember a time when we had a huge storage tub of wrapping supplies we would buy in the after Christmas sales and hold over for the following year.  We no longer have any of that.  We are gift wrap free and have been for about 10 years.  Of course, as I have shared before, we no longer give gifts as our family and friends have decided to “get out of the habit.”  Still, I’d like to share some ideas we used once we realized how much time, money, space and effort came with shopping for and storing wrapping supplies.

I think the biggest change we made was when we decided to no longer store wrapping supplies.  We decided to pick a theme color each year for paper, ribbon and bows.  We bought one huge roll of paper, a huge roll of ribbon and made our own bows.  Most of the time, we bought white paper or craft paper and then came up with the “color of the year” for the ribbon.  I especially liked the year we used craft paper and plaid ribbon. Even the gift tags were made of “craft paper” card stock with a swipe of color around the edges by a marker and tied on with thin strips of the ribbon.   Whatever you decide, it is much cheaper to buy supplies in bulk with the idea of buying only what you need for the one year. 

Many people have resorted to using gift bags.  We found a place where you can buy various sized ones in one color.  Then you can embellish them with stamping, stickers, rick rack, ribbon, etc. to fancy them up.  I know friends who make bags out of the paper sacks they get at the grocery store.  You just turn them inside out and either cut them to size or use them at their original size.  Lunch sacks work well also.

I think the best idea I have seen is a friend who made a variety of bags out of holiday fabric.  Every year she gives gifts in these bags.  She tells the receivers she will gladly take them back if they don’t want to reuse them.  She has found really cheap fabric in after Christmas sales and takes her time over the year making up the bags.  Another friend uses fabric to make pillow cases and then gives away gifts in them.  Nothing like giving two gifts in one.  She especially likes to make the cases in material that reflects the recipient.

Do you have any cheap, easy ideas for holiday gift wrapping that helps you with the prevention of storing wrapping supplies from year to year?

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

Clutter is very much about being keener to acquire than to let go. We acquire things we need or want but once their usefulness to us has expired we hang on to them. I feel that there are three main reasons for that and they are laziness, fear and indifference.

Laziness of course refers to having the stuff there, being aware that it is a problem but refusing to deal with it because you just don’t want to make the effort.

Fear is all about thinking you might need it some day and keeping it just in case.

And indifference is being aware that you have clutter but don’t mind, don’t care or even like it that way. It can also be that you don’t even notice because you like being surrounded by stuff. 

I don’t intend to elaborate on that, the purpose of this post is to have a discussion ~ inspired by a situation in my life right now ~ about the insanity that acquiring can be.

So here is my story. As I have mentioned here more than once, I have an art space where I sell my handmade cards and, at the moment, beaded spiders. My space runs as an artist collective of, at present, six artist/crafters. Our price range begins at $1, for a handmade origami gift bow, and goes up to as much as $500 at times for and original acrylic painting. So as you can see our creations are many and varied as are our members.

There has been some contention recently, both internal and external, about the integrity of the value of an artists labour and real art v kitschy craft. And one of the issues is that people coming in to the venue, which also houses ten other art spaces, might opt to purchase one of our least expensive items rather than opting to buy something of greater value, either within our collective space or the venue as a whole. It boggles my mine that anyone would think they might be losing the sale of, for example, a $200 fashion item to a $5 string of origami cranes. I could elaborate more on this situation but that would just be expressing my emotional turmoil and discontent, so I will leave it at that as a lead into my the point about the strangeness of acquisition.

So let us assume that no one in their right mind is quietly making the choice between a $200 or $5 purchase and that they are purchasing the $5 item…

1. …because they actually like it or…
2. …they feel obliged to buy something while in the space and just choose the cheapest item they like the look of.

The second reason above is one of those situations where the better choice would be to buy nothing.

This of course got me thinking about the futileness of acquiring stuff just for the sake of it. It brings to mind the clever marketing many companies like Tupperware, and the like, who almost exclusively sell their products via party plan. In the past even I used to felt obliged to buy something when attending such parties. The host is your friend, they have provided a delicious spread for the event, and how much of a heal would you look if you just walked away satiated, entertained and empty handed ~ well orderless but same thing.

Then there is recreational shopping, where you just go shopping with no real need in mind and end up finding all sorts of things you didn’t know you “needed” and go home with a whole lot of potential clutter on your hands.

All these scenarios above are where most of the clutter comes from in your home. Combine that with the three reasons I also stated as to why it is not being removed and you can end up with quite a mass of clutter on your hands.

So the moral of this story is, don’t acquire for the sake of acquiring. Stuff doesn’t make you happy, at least not for long. If you curb your shopping habits you will also reduce the likelihood of clutter buildup in your home. And removing clutter only to replace it with more clutter gets you no where on your decluttering mission. That is the first lesson in avoiding clutter and it won’t do your bank account any harm either.

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 focus on the decluttering a few items that are cluttering up the master bedroom in your home. Your bedroom should be your sanctuary and clutter can make you feel less than relaxed in a space that should be tranquil for you. So lets see if you can find a few things to make it a more pleasant place to be.

Monday – Declutter items that have accumulated in or on your bedside table/cabinet, nightstand or whatever you call it.

Tuesday – Declutter a few of those scatter cushions you pile on and off your bed everyday, all the while collecting dust and dust mites.

Wednesday – Declutter out of date makeup and lotions on your dressing table.

Thursday – Declutter anything lurking under your bed.

Friday – Declutter costume jewellery that you never use anymore.

Saturday – Declutter a couple of less loved clothing items.

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

This blog post is by Moni Gilbert who is coordinating this series of posts.

As we enter the Silly Season I would like to kick off a series written by Deb J, Andréia and myself entitled “365-ing The Silly Season”.  So often women plan their holiday seasons to the nth degree with the goal of the ‘perfect’ day and while the home might look grand, the menu perfect and all the little details might be delightful, is there a tired, stressed out woman behind it all?   I would like to suggest the gift of going a little easier on yourselves.   Trust me, no one will notice the difference if you omit a few things.

I’d like to encourage you to decide what is actually important to you as far your preparations go, cull some not so important details and reduce your menu by an item or two.  I’d like folks to think about how their expectations and preparations would appear mapped out on the calendar.   If every single day in December has a huge to-do list on top of all the regular workload and commitments, add an escalated social whirl, its a recipe for stress.  Set yourself a limit of how many ‘extra’ chores you can realistically achieve in a day and stick to it.  It is realistic to have time to yourself to relax in the evening in the weeks leading up to the holidays.  Explain this new arrangement in advance to your family, they might have suggestions of what they’d be happy to forego or volunteer to do in your place.

What would you be prepared to forego this year?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something that was really useful in the past but hasn’t been used in a long time. Maybe its time in done for you.

“If we do not feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more?” — Unknown

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.

Monday – Declutter an unfinished project, either by finishing it or letting it go. These are a mental burden. Once done they can either be passed on or enjoyed, but either way they are no longer weighing you down with aspiration.

Tuesday – Declutter an unwise purchase.

Wednesday – Declutter your junk drawer if you have one. If not some other drawer that holds a little clutter.

Thursday – Declutter some paperwork.

Friday – Declutter something that was really useful in the past but hasn’t been used in a long time. Maybe its time in done for you.

Saturday – Start a use it up challenge on something.

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