Cindy

Recently a friend was cleaning out items from his mother’s estate, a chore than sadly has stretched on at least two years now. He brought over a bag of craft supplies, jewelry, and a peanut butter jar full of needles and other small sewing items.  In pretty short order, Dan and the girls and I sorted through the jewelry and craft supplies. Only the peanut butter jar remained. Specifically, it remained on my desk for weeks. Finally I got sick of looking at it there, so I moved it to the kitchen island to motivate myself to sort through it. There is remained for another month. I looked at it yesterday and realized that I still hadn’t sorted through it and that, more importantly, I obviously didn’t care. I don’t need any needles; I don’t need any pins. I suppose it’s possible that there is some tiny sewing item in the jar that might make my sewing box better and more complete, but I don’t know what it is and (say it with me) I don’t care. It’s just clutter. I don’t know everything that’s in that jar, and I just don’t care. It wasn’t my clutter, but then I let it become my clutter. I put it into the thrift store bag without opening it. Problem taken care of.

We think that we have to sort, and categorize, and make a wise decision about every item that needs to be decluttered. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you; maybe you don’t care.  Do you need to look through each craft supply, each ball of yarn, each set of beads and make a separate and independent decision? Not if you don’t care. Just get rid of the whole lot and be finished with it. Same with books, tools, cookware, collectibles – anything that you feel this constant, aching need to “deal” with when you just really don’t want to. Let me free you from that nagging thought. Who cares if you could make a few bucks on Ebay? Who cares if one of those 100 books might be worth more than 25 cents at a garage sale? Just free them from your life. Sometimes it’s okay not to care.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a souvenir.

Eco Tip For The Day

Drink tap water in preference to carbonated beverages. It doesn’t take a genius to work out how much better that is for the environment. Your waistline and your teeth will thank you for it as well.

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

Cindy

There is such potential for waste in the kitchen! I am certainly not perfect, but I really try to keep it to a minimum. Here are some of my tricks and tips:

Don’t buy in bulk except for items that you know, for sure, you and your family make good use of it. Toilet paper I buy in bulk. Paper towels (which, per Colleen’s suggestion below, I almost completely eliminated years ago), I buy one roll at a time, and I always buy the “select a size” towels, so I can pull of just a small amount.

Use substitutions in the kitchen. For reasons I won’t go into, I ended up with a cheap jar of “meat flavored” spaghetti sauce in my pantry. The likelihood of every serving this plain on pasta was almost nil. However, one day I was making my good spaghetti sauce recipe, which calls for lots of jars of tomatoes. I used the meat-flavored sauce as one of my jars, and it was perfect mixed with so many other ingredients.

Use a recipe website to find uses for lost and forgotten things in your pantry. I had hominy, used in Mexican cooking, in my pantry. I’m sure I was inspired when I purchased it last year. I went to my favorite recipe site, typed in hominy as my ingredient, and made a great soup with it. As a bonus, the recipe happened to use another orphan from my pantry – a double success!

I put badly damaged fruit or veggies in the back yard to feed the wild animals that visit. Trust me, they’re coming to my yard anyway – we call our back fence the animal highway; feeding them isn’t an invitation, but it does help me get rid of watermelon rinds and the three bites of apple that my daughter didn’t eat in her lunch.

Make stock. At all times in my freezer I have a gallon freezer bag in which I put onion peels, ends of carrots or other veggies, garlic peel and tiny cloves, apple and pear cores, and the skin and bones of a chicken. When my bag is full, I dump the frozen scraps into my biggest pot, add water, and let it simmer for an hour or two. When it’s finished, then the bones and trimmings go into the trash (not the compost pile because of the meat). I run the stock through a cheese cloth, cool it in the refrigerator so that I can skim the fat, and then it’s ready to freeze.

Don’t buy too many fresh fruits and veggies. Yes, we all want to eat more of these, but having a fresh, every-changing selection of produce is more appealing and less likely to go bad, than just buying produce once a week.

Snack foods. Yes, my house has snack foods it in, but I typically just buy one or maybe two of these treat foods a week. We don’t always have chips and other chips and three kinds of crackers and packaged cookies and chocolate-covered nuts. Just one or two is enough. Eat those and then get something different. That way, it’s truly a treat and not a pantry staple. Same with cereal. Unless you’re like my cousin who truly loves cereal and enjoys mixing several different kinds together on a daily basis, two or maybe three boxes is all you need.

Eat your leftovers! I once worked with a woman who cooked fresh every night and threw everything that was left at the end of the meal away. She and her husband refused to eat leftovers. I’m still shocked by this. When we are cleaning up after dinner, we immediately package up lunches for Dan or I to take to work. (Today – leftover grilled chicken, leftover salad, and a small handful of whole grain pretzel sticks that the kids turned their noses up at. [They are pretty twig-like.]) If needed, we have a leftover lunch on Sundays. I just pull everything out, and anybody can help themselves to anything.

What system do you have to reduce waste in your kitchen?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter disposable items from your home and your shopping list. For example ~ Cling film, aluminium foil, paper napkins, paper towel, dryer sheets, wet wipes. Utilise other items in your home that can easily take their place. The environment and your bank account will be all the healthier for it. I haven’t eliminated all of these things from my home but I use so little of the ones I do still keep (paper towel and aluminium foil) that I buy them in small quantities and only replace them when they totally run out. And before anyone tells me that these things are cheaper in large quantities, think for a minute about how easy it is to be wasteful with stuff when there is plenty on hand.

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

Cindy

There are all sorts of things that I don’t want to do or don’t like to do. For example, I like a clean house, but I do not like to clean house. You may want to be decluttered, but get overwhelmed at the process of decluttering.

Today, I want to talk about some tricks that can help you get yourself to cooperate. These are ones that I have used, and I am very curious to hear your strategies and tricks, as well.

1. When working at my desk, don’t sit down. Once I sit down, my rear end seems to develop a lead weight in it and nothing else gets done for at least an hour. When I stand, I do the one thing I came to my desk to do, and then I move onto the next thing.

2. The five (or 10) minute clean up. This is one for the whole family. I set a timer for a predetermined number of minutes, and everyone cleans as fast as they can for that amount of time. No going over; no extending the time. When the buzzer rings, everyone is done.

3. The five item clean up. Everyone finds five items in the house that are not where they belong and puts them away. This takes our family less than 5 minutes, and 20 objects are back where they belong. A variation of this involves finding 5 items to put away, 1 of which must be something that can be decluttered.

4. Use your declutter money for a specific purpose. Longtime readers will know that I put all the money that I’ve made from Ebay, Craiglist, and Amazon toward my mortgage, which has whittled away $2000 of that debt. Good motivation, and if I hadn’t done this, the money probably would have slipped away, largely unnoticed.

5. The mortgage connection. This is a new trickery device I’m trying. As I said before, I don’t like to clean house. (I do like to declutter, though, so I don’t need any extra motivation in that department.) I would love to hire a housekeeper, but that’s a luxury I don’t feel able to afford. I have decided to pay myself for cleaning the house. For every hour I spend on housecleaning chores, I will immediately go to the computer and transfer $20 from our checking account to our mortgage account. True, $20 isn’t a lot, but it’s $20 more than nothing, and it gets me just that much closer to my goal.

So, those are some of the tricks I have used to motivate myself and gain my own cooperation toward my goals. What are some tricks you have invented for yourself?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a music related item. Old records, cassettes or CD’s you no longer listen to. When I occasionally feel like listening to something that isn’t among my usual selection I just go to YouTube. There is no need to keep once-in-a-while music on hand these days.

Eco Tip For The Day

Challenge yourself not to use paper towel for a month. By the end of that time you may have come up with viable reusable alternatives that you are happy to utilise  on a permanent basis.

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

Cindy

For a US Woman, I have a very small wardrobe, probably not more than 50 pieces total, and it’s pretty unexciting wardrobe. I wear the same clothes in the same ways over and over. Recently, I discovered the website (http://www.puttingmetogether.com/p/one-item-many-ways.html), and I was intrigued. The first outfit she shows is a somewhat long t-shirt worn untucked over jeans. Hey! I do that! All the time! But look, then she’s showing the same shirt other ways. It was a revelation to me. I tried it; I looked good.

Then it occurred to me that imaging your wardrobe more functionally, with more potential matches, means that you can build a larger and more versatile wardrobe with fewer pieces of clothing. Check out this site and then look in your closet. There are surely items that you can and should declutter, and most of them probably don’t need to be replaced. Think about it: What can you wear in a new way?

Today’s Mini Mission

 Declutter excess bath towels and in future only replace them when they wear out ~ Judging from many of the linen closets I encounter, during visiting friends and relatives, I would say the people generally replace towels on a far too regular basis. Not because they are no longer capable of the task of drying but simply because they are considered decor items that are to be replaced when tired of.

Eco Tip For The Day

When cooking on an electric stove top, turn off the element at least one minute before you are finished cooking. The pan will retain enough heat to finish the cooking process while you save a minutes worth of electricity. Every little bit helps.

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

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

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

Cindy

I was making my semi-monthly trip through Costco and what did I spy everywhere I looked? Christmas items! Christmas foods, Christmas wrap, Christmas decorations, Christmas gifts, even Christmas Kleenex. (Okay, let’s be honest, what do you think is going to happen to Christmas candy that you bring home in September? Uh huh, that’s what I thought.)

Well I’m here to tell you – it’s too early to shop for Christmas. I am convinced that the earlier you start shopping, the more things you buy – both for yourself and for others. You buy a book for your child and by the time Christmas rolls around, that little genius has already outgrown that reading level or has checked it out from the library or borrowed it from a friend.  I can’t tell you how many years I planned and purchased in advance only to have my efforts thwarted.

In addition, you shouldn’t be buying so much that you need three months leading up to The Big Day. Now if you’re making homemade gifts, maybe you should start now. But I’m talking about purchased (impulsively purchased) gifts. Don’t waste your time and money and build clutter in your own house or someone else’s by purchasing too much, too soon. It can wait. I promise.

Today’s Mini Mission

Eco Tip For The Day

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

Cindy

I went to high school with a girl named Helen, who was extremely petite and wore a very tiny shoe size, 5 I believe. In college, Helen and I lived in the same dorm. Her room was remarkable because it contained the largest shoe collection in the dorm, probably in the entire school. Why did Helen own so many shoes? Because she wore a tiny shoe, many stores would only get one in her size when they ordered a style. Helen was constantly afraid that she wouldn’t be able to find shoes that fit. As a result, she bought every shoe she found in her size. Clearly, the idea that there was a shortage of size 5 shoes was all in Helen’s mind, since she had several dozen pairs stored in their boxes in her very space restricted dorm room.

Years later, I was girlfriends with a very tall, long-limbed woman named Lanette. Her husband was even taller and even longer limbed. Lanette was an every weekend, very systematic garage saler. Now because they had such long arms and legs, Lanette and her husband understandably disliked wearing too short shirts and pants. As a result, Lanette bought every shirt and every pair of pants that she found every Saturday morning that were long enough. The result? A wardrobe stuffed full of clothing. There was no real shortage of long-enough clothing, except in Lanette’s mind.

Are you guilty of creating a shortage that exists only in your mind? Do you have an excess of toiletries, food in your pantry, clothing, collectibles, or great deal you bought on sale because, you believe, there may not be enough, so you better grab some now, over and over again? I challenge you to declutter at least one of these “rare” items today and to start talking to yourself about how there is, in fact, no shortage of material goods. The store can store your extra food and toiletries; a person can only wear so many items of clothing; with the Internet, there is no material good that cannot be found. Don’t panic, don’t buy. The shortage is only in your mind.

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

Cindy

I messed up my posting this week. Sorry! So I’m trying again on Saturday / Sunday as a surprise.

As you know, I just got back from a 2 week family vacation in Colorado, and I’ve been thinking about souvenirs, possibly the most unnecessary yet expensive part of many people’s vacations, both in terms of money and the time spent seeking the objects. What motivates us to spend hours combing often tacky, crowded gift stores looking at mass produced and likely Made in China shot glasses, key chains, and t-shirts for something to take home, either for ourselves or as a gift for someone who did not make the trip with us?

According to Wikipedia, “A souvenir (from French, for a remembrance or memory), memento, keepsake, or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. The term souvenir brings to mind the mass-produced kitsch that is the main commodity of souvenir and gift shops in many tourist attractions around the world. But a souvenir can be any object that can be collected or purchased and transported home by the traveler. The object itself has no real significance other than the psychological connection the possessor has with the object as a symbol of past experience. Without the owner’s input, the object’s meaning is invisible and cannot be articulated.”

I love the elegance of this definition about objects that I consider to typically be the opposite of elegant. I think the last sentence especially explains why I at least so undervalue, even resent, when someone gives me a souvenir from a trip (which hasn’t happened for years, by the way). The object has no meaning to me, and therefore I see it exactly at face value – it’s a cheap t-shirt or a unwanted bit of kitsch.

Photographs are the most common souvenir, and I do enjoy taking photos, but I try not to go overboard. One at the top of Pike’s Peak is plenty. I don’t need 45 shots, like the lady standing next to me. I also like postcards, but I buy them and send them. I don’t hang onto them as a memento.

So in honesty, what did we return from our trip toting that we did not leave with?

3 t-shirts (me, Clara, and Audra). My t-shirt was an intentional replacement for a college t-shirt that I’ve had for years and need to make into a rag. I picked it carefully, and I like it. In fact, I’m wearing it right now. Both girls have also worn their shirts again. Clara’s references Colorado, but Audra’s is a graphic of horses.

copper ring – Audra

small matted photograph – Clara

3 bars of chocolate purchased at the Celestial Seasonings gift shop (a really fun tour if you happen to pass through Boulder, Colorado) – These were given to Clara’s boyfriend, and I’m sure they are not collecting dust on his shelf!

4 boxes of tea, also purchased at Celestial Seasonings. These are being consumed.

postcards – I believe that all we purchased were mailed while we were gone. (A travel tip – buy postcard stamps before you leave and take them with you. While it’s easy to buy postcards; it’s a lot harder to find a post office while you’re traveling.)

Are you a sucker for souvenirs? A person whose heart beats faster when you learn that the tour ends with a mandatory trip through the gift shop? Do you spontaneously buy things while traveling because they’re “cute” or “fun” or “a must have”? Do you have mouse ears from Disney, a t-shirt from the Grand Canyon, drilled playing cards from Vegas, and a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower inside. Do you need these things? Do you want them? Do you feel obligated to keep them now that they’re in your house? (“But it came all the way from (far away location) Cindy!”)

Prevention is the best cure, so I challenge you to not only move along a souvenir in your home, but also to resist next time you’re vacationing, and especially to teach your children that purchasing is not an obligatory part of every vacation, trip to the zoo, or visit to Grandma’s house.

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