Doodle

I was at a wedding last weekend and I didn’t know anyone among the 170 others  there apart from the groom. But I tell you what at the reception, I only had to mention that I sometimes work as a professional de-clutterer and I had a whole host of new friends intrigued and plying questions, lol.

First up we had the familiar, groaning husband; “Please come and sort my wife out!” followed by the another woman silently pointing at her husband while mouthing the words ‘We need to down size, help!’ and pulling faces.

I would add that the groaning husband was standing next to his wife at the time, and rather than thwack him with her hand bag, she immediately agreed she really needed sorting out. Her self confessed downfall was her love of browsing charity shops and what could I suggest? I suggested the only cure was going cold turkey and no longer visiting them. She agreed this was probably the only answer. If I was working with her  a client I would help her explore a little what need the shopping was fulfilling how she could explore others activities to enjoy that may fill the void.

As for the ‘we need to downsize’ couple, they had a 25 year accumulation of stuff from family life and were now empty nesters looking to the future. My advice to them was ‘start sorting out now’, if you hope to move in 2-3 years. It’s much less stressful to do it gradually. Start with the easy stuff and the rules

Do I really love it/use it.

Do I want to pay someone else to pack this up and move it to our new home.

In this couples case, he is a researcher so has lots of papers. We talked a little about scanning services.

Someone else was stumped by her clothes mountain. She confessed she struggled to let anything go, as she always convinced herself could always use old outfits for house work/in the garden. I suggested she consider what was the realistic maximum number of ‘old clothes’ outfit she could use given that at present she had a wardrobe full of such clothes. I suggested charity shops were a good way to make a donation rather than money, but she didn’t like the idea of clothes being added to the rags pile if there was in her opinion any life left in them, even though charity shops in the UK make a lot of money this way. Whatever I came up with, she had a reason not to let anything go. Sometimes, people block change with all sorts of excuses. But with these sorts of conversations, you never know what seed you may have planted, or what part you played in what goes on to be a major reversal of habits.

I definitely came away thinking there may be  a smart business move to hold de-cluttering workshops at wedding receptions!

Do you talk to people you meet about de-cluttering and find it’s a subject many people have something to say about? It’s a great conversation opener I find and everyone here will have some excellent tips for others that seem simple once you get more experience but to a newbie are a revelation: share your growing expertise folks, with the community you live in.

Today’s Mini Mission

Obligation ~ Declutter something you don’t want that you feel you should keep for someone else’s sake outside of your home. If they really care for you I am sure they wouldn’t want to cause you this stress.

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

Eco Tip for the Day

If you make coffee or tea after a meal boil a little extra water to soak the baked on food from the bottoms of pans. This saves having to run the hot water until it is warm enough for soaking. Adding a little bicarb soda will also make clean up easier.

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

Doodle

When I first started helping people de-clutter their stuff, I hoped no one would ask for help with their wardrobe, because I am not a fashionista and felt ill qualified.

So when I got my first ‘clothes job’ I was a little unsure…until I started and then I took to it like a duck to water. Now it’s my favourite kind of job.

Because you don’t need to know anything about fashion, or what looks good other people. You just apply the same principles as you would to anything else they own and ask one simple question:

Does it make you feel great when you have it on? If yes keep, if no, throw.

My method is at follows

STAGE ONE: try and work quickly making simple gut decisions. If you find yourself dithering or agonising, put the item in the keep pile and move onto the next one.

Empty your wardrobe completely, creating piles on your bed and floor as you go:

Pile one: the ‘get rid  to charity shop’ pile.

* Hate it, never feel good in it

* Shabby/worn out

* Can’t fit in it and it’s nothing special and haven’t worn it for several years

Pile two

Can’t fit in it but really love it so much: putting these clothes to one side saves wasting energy agonising over them, so you can get on with the job in hand.

Try to keep these to a minimum, and then store them separately, with a diary note to re check them in one years time and see if you are ready to get rid of them then. It’s ok to keep things that feel precious even if you may not wear them again – be kind to yourself, just try and limit the number. Just remember, when you have lost weight, styles will have moved on and you may want to treat yourself to something new.

Six more piles: clothes that have passed the 1^st quick gut decision test:

*Trousers/skirts/dresses

*Blouses/tops/jumpers and cardigans.

STAGE TWO

Go though these six piles subdividing into smart/work/casual, assessing each one more carefully this time to see if it feels easy to let anything more go. Then subdivide the new piles by colours: reds/oranges, pinks/purples, blacks, neutrals and browns, blues, greens, yellows.

This should give you a good idea if you have 15 pairs of black trousers for work and you can really stop buying more now you can see what you’ve got.

More questions to ask yourself:

Does your wardrobe reflect your current life style? Do you still need those 6 work suits with matching blouses?

There are 7 days in a week and 14 maximum (probably) between wash days: how many outfits do you really need in your life?

Are you hanging on to stuff because you ‘should’ feel great in it because it’s gorgeous…but somehow you never actually wear it because the colour washes you out or it doesn’t flatter your body shape? Time to ramp up the ruthlessness!

Now  clean the inside of your wardrobe and then start hanging your clothes back up, keeping work, smart and casual in 3 separate sections. Hang them in colour order. As you handle each item, really be sure you really like the item and feel good in it before you re hang it up.

If you have items you are unsure if you look good in, now might be the time to invite a friend round whose clothes sense you like, to help you decide if you look good in something you are not sure of.

Some people love clothes and have loads – that’s fine, if they give you pleasure: de-cluttering isn’t about minimalism. This process will help you know what you have so you can wear all of what you have rather than just 20% of your wardrobe.

Other’s like me function much better with a capsule wardrobe, paring back to  as few clothes as possible but ones you love to wear. Since I created my own capsule wardrobe, I have found it so much simpler getting dressed in the morning!

If you come across things you love but never wear because you have nothing to go with it, start planning what you would need to buy to wear with it.

And some colours suit us better than others – it took me years to realise that I looked completely washed out in pastels, but now I never give them a second glance in a shop.

Three  excellent reasons to  face that spreading clothes mountain:

*Loving what you wear increases your sense of well being and confidence and other people pick up on this.

*An organised wardrobe saves a lot of time energy and angst.

*It contributes to a peaceful space to sleep in.

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

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter some items that are past their used by date. This could be make-up, lotions, perfume, medications, adhesives that have dried up, food items…

Eco Tip for the Day

The only thing you need to clean your car is a bucket of water a hose and a selection of microfibre clothes. One outdoor mitt for cleaning the car, one glass cloth for the windows and a multi purpose

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

 

Declutter some items that are past their used by date. This could be make-up, lotions, perfume, medications, adhesives that have dried up, food items…

Doodle

A friend messaged me this week, with pictures of numerous bags of stuff on their way to a local charity shop, but bewailing the fact her home stills looks over full of stuff. Where am I going wrong she asked?

After congratulating her on what she had achieved so far – any clutter going is great and builds up your de-clutter muscle, I came up with a few suggestions:

I recommended now  focusing on one room. Choose the room that bothers you the most. Within the room, choose one cupboard or shelf and systematically go through every single item on/in it: handle each one and ask yourself:

• do I love it,
• how does this enhance my life now
• would I buy it now if I didn’t own it already.

Being systematic will help join up the dots in one small area that you can then enlarge so you see results quicker, rather than removing stuff perhaps from random areas all over the house. (But keep randomly removing stuff from all over the house as a daily habit too… the 365 mantra of one thing a day really does make a difference over time and reinforces the mental attitude towards looking for things you no longer need to leave the house in a non stressful way).

It’s also a good idea to take some ‘before’ photos, that you can compare to ‘after’ that reinforces the reality that your clutter level is changing, even if you still have a long way  to go.

Something I do with clients, if we are dealing with a set of shelves or a cupboard, is rather than removing one thing at a time, is to remove everything. Give the shelf/cupboard  a wipe down and then choose what goes back on it: it can be very powerful, that act of choosing.

The item in your hand either goes back on the shelf as a deliberate choice (of ‘I love this’ or ‘I need it and use it regularly’), or  if it doesn’t go back on the shelf it need to go elsewhere – either to live in a different part of the house, putting ‘like with like’ or it needs to leave the house.

And keep remembering, everything that leaves the house, IS making a difference.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a seasonal item that you haven’t used yet this season.

Eco Tip for the Day

Practice fuel efficient driving. Here are some tips from the Australian Government  http://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/transport/fuelguide/tips.html

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

Doodle

This post is based on  a reply I gave to Moni a few months ago, but I think we all get overwhelmed by paperwork so it is  a subject worth revisiting.

The best way to handle paperwork is to have a system that means you touch that piece of paper a minimum number of times. Don’t have a complicated system: keep it simple.

I open post straight away, standing by the recycled box in the kitchen. Empty envelopes and bumpf goes straight in it. The rest then gets taken upstairs to our study on the next trip. One of 3 things then happens:

1) Anything that doesn’t need action gets dropped into its designated labelled filing box:

a)Income and tax related

b)Household maintenance & Household utilities and bills

c)Car related: taxing/repairs/ resident parking/insurance

d)Medical stuff

e)Receipts

f)Instruction manuals

Most paperwork comes in category a and b and these are just boxes I can drop things into really easily – no need to get a file out and hole punch etc.

This isn’t  an actual photo of my box file but something I found on Pinterest – but it shows a simple easy to file and retrieve system.

2) If it needs action I try and do it straight away. If I don’t have time then or it doesn’t need doing until a specific date, I make a note of it in my diary to do and then drop it into its relevant filing box. This includes any phone calls.

3) It gets shredded. We have an attractive basket for stuff that needs shredding: stuff gets chucked in to there until it reaches the top and then I have a mass shredding session every 2 months or so.

To cut down on paperwork I pay all regular bills by ddm and have gone paperless with banking statements and utility bills. When a new invoice arrives that replaces a previous one, the old one gets thrown out.

At the end of each financial year, once I have made my tax return, all related paperwork goes into a large envelope with the year written on it and it gets stored in the attic. In the UK we have to keep this info for 7 years, so when a new one goes in, an old one from 7 years previously can get chucked.

Some people store all  paperwork on an online storage facility; I don’t, but the option is there.

This system works for me and I feel in control and easy to stay that way.

What are your difficult paper work areas and how do you think you could improve them? Have you developed any systems that work well for you you’d like to share?

Today’s Mini Mission

 I should ~ Declutter something you think you should own just because most people do. If you aren’t using it there is no reason why you should have it.

 

 

Doodle

I have done so well with de-cluttering my stuff over these last 3 years. I have got rid of a lot, and not regretted any of it. It has also taught me to think more carefully about what I bring into the house. But I still have one aspect of de-cluttering that doesn’t get any easier for me:

I am really bad at actually getting the pile of stuff I have declared can go out of the house.

I mean really bad – I defer and defer and then procrastinate some more. I’ve worked out that for me it is around fear of regret and loss, even though experience tells me I haven’t once regretted anything after it has gone. But every time I take things to the charity shop, I occasionally feel overwhelmed with irrational regret for a few days and it is that few days experience that makes me defer the final decision because I don’t enjoy living through it.

I have no idea why I feel this: I know all the theory about sentimental attachment and loss etc, but when it happens, it isn’t enjoyable.

The human mind is a complex thing is it not? Sometimes analysing why we feel how we do is good, but other times, I find it more helpful just to accept this quirk of how I am and find ways to work around it. A case of ‘feeling the fear and doing it any which way I can’.

A couple of times, with stuff I need to go and I want to go but I seem choked over the final parting, I have either:

• asked a friend to take it for me. That’s quite a good tactic. Don’t ask me why that is easier, but I have discovered it is, so I use it!
• arranged collection by a charity that particularly touches me (in this case, our local Hospice), that helps me let go when I know they really need the money.
• Taken the one thing out of the pile my feelings seemed to be focussed on and got rid of the rest with no problem.

Ultimately , at some point, having the stuff hang around for (sometimes) months eventually tips the balance and I get desperate just to see the back of it and that overcomes the other feelings.

I’m not asking for help or suggestions, lol, this is how I am and how I deal with it effectively.

I am just sharing some self awareness of what I find difficult in case it helps anyone else reading who thinks we all find it easy.

At the end of the day, although I have found this at times difficult, I have let go of two thirds of my own possessions in the last 3-4 years.  I love lightning the load. And sometimes I briefly remember some of the things I got rid of that took me months and feel great that they are gone and out of my life.

 

What do you find most difficult and what strategies can/do you use to combat this?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter anything with words on. Book, magazine, T-shirt, old bill…

Eco Tip for the Day

Don’t leave lights on in unoccupied rooms even if you are only vacating them for a few minutes.

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

Doodle

I do love the mantra, a place for everything and everything in its place. This is a good rule to live by when dealing with an excess of stuff. But it is just as important to ensure that the place you give something to ‘live’ is also at the logical point of use, and easy to access.

We live in a small space so inevitably, we have our armchairs in front of book/storage shelves and these need to be moved if we want to get something behind them. One thing that has been annoying me for a while is that somehow, my filing system has ended up behind my chair (and therefore now behind a sofa – see last post ‘Would I buy it now?’).

Although on paper you wouldn’t think it takes a moment to move the chair/sofa, the reality is that is doesn’t happen and paperwork piles up unfiled. I also had an ‘in-tray’ next to my chair that I no longer had room for – and to be honest it only acted as an  – “can’t be bothered, let’s dumps it here for months” tray anyway and looked messy.

So on my unscheduled mass de-clutter day, in the middle of everything else, I decided to ruthlessly weed two 3 feet (1 metre)  shelves of paperwork to take up half the space and look for a new home for my paperwork…and no in-tray would be it had to be done straight away or diarised and filed.

Which led me to my 1950’s retro cupboard…. that was full of craft stuff:

I’ve had various crafting hobbies over time, but in recent years have been learning to down size the stuff I keep and to recognise hobbies I have gone off. A year ago I bought a 2^nd hand cabinet for my crafts stuff with the commitment that anything that couldn’t fit in there had to go. It’s worked really well. So well in fact it has made me see that after 10 months, I am no longer that interested in making stuff.

So, enthused by the changes I needed to make, I got ruthless with the contents.

This is just the bottom cupboard  pre sort out, the storage space above looked much the same:

All my craft stuff has now been reduced to just the bottom cupboard:

Now the top 2/3rds of the old crafting cabinet is my new office 😀

A month on, and not one bit of filing has hung around for days – it can be put away very quickly and easily. You will note from the photos that I have also labelled a lot of things with printed labels. This helps not just me, but if anything should happen to me, anyone else who needs to sort my paperwork and find vital stuff.

Anyone else got things they use regularly that never gets put away because there is no convenient place for it/ or too much effort to put it where in the place designated for it?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter an item you have known you no longer want but guilt has had you hanging on to.

Eco Tip for the Day

Use the stairs rather than the elevator. This of course has the added bonus of a little impromptu exercise.

Doodle

I found myself making the most of my day alone today by turning the living room upside down into a state of complete chaos and back again with 5 minutes to spare so my husband came home to calm and order.  😀

There was a purpose to it of course. It started by my finally admitting my gorgeous red chenille chair seems to be now causing me back problems. So I have swopped it  position with the small very upright sofa for a few days to see if that solves the back issue and proves I’m right (oh, how I want to be wrong!)

The sofa takes up more space, so there is no room for my set of drawers I use as a side table and I needed to find something else within the home that could do the job instead.

Somehow, this led to emptying 7 feet of bookshelves, completely emptying my craft storage cupboard and putting together a flat pack storage cupboard all at the same time/not finishing one job before starting another. Basically, every time I thought – “that could go there and that could go there”, I had to create the space before I could move anything. So within an hour, the floor was covered with books and craft pieces and various shelves and cabinets were in a state of undress.

This is a great example of how not to de-clutter/re organise if you are likely to feel overwhelmed! How I handled that was to give myself regular breaks and bring my focus back to completing one area at a time. Most importantly, I was in the mood to tackle a bigger job and to get rid of stuff and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I’ll talk about the results of the craft cupboard and bookshelves in my next post.

The flat pack storage cupboard, I bought 8 months ago. I realised instantly it was a mistake and have never been able to face putting together in order to sell it on at a loss. Well this afternoon I finally did it, and it confirmed itself as a bad purchase as not only is it too big for where I though it might go originally it doesn’t work as a replacement side table. I also can’t find room for it anywhere else in our small house. I’ve tried every possible place as I rather like it.

Finally I asked myself a key question: “would I buy it now?” Always a good question to ask yourself if trying to decide whether to keep something or not.

The answer, ‘no’ is a good clue to the fact it needs to go.

So the cupboard is now online to sell. For much less than I paid for it of course, but 8 months has softened the blow. And hanging on to it unused and in the way will not bring my money back either.

Do you have anything you keep trying to find a use for that you wouldn’t buy now? Is this a sign it needs to go?

Today’s Mini Mission

Put away an item out of place in your home then declutter an item in the place that you just rehoused the other item.

 

Doodle may not have had a photo of her upheaval but here is an old one of mine during some manic craft room decluttering and reorganising.

I catch the train a lot and love nosing at the back of people’s homes that we pass en route.

Doodle

I can’t help myself from thinking over some of them, that half an hour of putting things away at the onset of autumn would make such a difference to the look of a garden that never look their best during the wet dull days of winter. Of course, fortunately loads of strangers can’t see my back garden from a train 😀

We only have a small back garden – a very typical Victorian ‘backyard’ with high 8ft walls.

The History Bit

In the UK, the Victorian period is so named after the period that Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 – 1901. (Great Great Grandmother to our current Queen Elizabeth II).

This was a period of mass movement to urban living. In the town I live in, the population quadrupled during that period and there are many many streets of terrace housing, back to back (where gardens back on to the terrace behind you with no other access other than through your own back door.)

You can often find traces of the old outdoor privy and in our’s also the original brick floor of the coal house.

*

Our backyard is a fairly typical 10ft x 16 feet wide (the width of the house) and doesn’t have any soil, just paving.

When I first moved here, on my own 12 years ago, this was my first garden and I fondly imaged that I would prove to be a keen gardener, despite never having shown a flicker of interest before. In fact I remember on first meeting the people who were eventually to become my in-laws, shortly after I moved, proudly talking about my ‘interest’ in gardening, lol.

My Garden Clutter

Over the years I seemed to have collected a lot of pots (as the only means of growing plants), in part from my now in-laws full of plants but also my own annual spring burst of enthusiasm: a triumph of hope over realism.

Most died due to a combination of summer neglect and a massive snail and slug problem. I finally admitted to my self that the idea of me being a gardener   and collecting all the paraphernalia that comes with such an interest was typical aspirational hording!

I’ve stopped pretending.

Fortunately, my husband seems to have developed an interest in the garden in the last year or two but he has bought all his own pots to suit his fruit tree passions. So we’re left with a plethora of spare pots that won’t get reused.

A few weeks ago, we had a typical British trigger for de-cluttering the garden – a weekend of spring sunshine! While he happily tackled vigorous pruning I felt the urge to declutter.

Pots gone via Freecycle

My husband is never keen on de-cluttering and seemed resistant at first to the idea, but I was greatly surprised how many he was able to let go of: I did my usual, “you c
an keep as many as you like, but let’s go through them one by one and just give me a quick yes or no as to whether you can let it go”.

By removing the stress by ensuring he understood I wouldn’t be pressuring him or disapproving of his choices he said “yes it can go” to nearly every one.

To the right is a picture of many of the pots we got rid of via freecycle that weekend

How’s the clutter in your garden?

Doodle 

We all have different reasons to keep on decluttering. I think ultimately, decluttering facilitates living in the moment, open to new opportunities because you have physically and psychologically made room for them.

But it’s all too easy for us to bury our heads in the sand about aging and illness and the effect too much clutter has on our lives when unexpected illness and disability strike.

I’m only 50, but have experience of how quickly and unexpectedly we can become ill or disabled, because it happened to me in  my 20’s, leaving me drained of energy for a decade  and then in my 40’s, I had a sudden onset arthritis that left me crippled over night, not able to dress myself or even eat as my jaw was affected. I didn’t know if I would ever walk without sticks again, let alone drive. And once you have lost mobility and often energy, life becomes much harder to perform the simplest tasks, or indeed access anything stored in attics or under the bed. When putting your socks on uses up a day’s energy, then de-cluttering is going to go way on the back burner.

Fortunately thanks to medication my life is currently on an even keel, but it certainly highlighted for me I needed a clutter free home to aid mobility but also to avoid the frustration of not have the strength or agility to sort stuff that I knew needed sorting. It also reminds me that in old age, I won’t have children to help sort and clear and do practical jobs as we are doing with my in-laws and my own parents.

If I get to the stage of needing to go into a care home, I don’t want to face having to sort a life time of stuff then. If we need to sell up and to get a home without stairs, I don’t want to not be able to do that because I haven’t the energy.

I still get easily overtired, so the simpler I can make my life, with a place for everything and everything in its place the better. For people with low energy for whatever reason, Colleen’s one item a day is a perfect way to declutter. And every time I get rid of a few more things, I feel a little lighter, physically and mentally.

I wonder how many of you struggle with ill health that means you have to go slower on this declutter journey than you would choose.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something from the guest room.

Eco Tip for the Day

When all else is equal between one product or another choose the one with the most eco friendly packaging.

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

Doodle

We have a total of four choices of seating in the entire house: an armchair each (one purple, one red) and the 2 seater sofa. The sofa doesn’t get sat on much; unless we need to share a takeaway or we have visitors. We rarely have visitors, but it seems reasonable to be able to offer them a seat if we do 🙂

The sofa’s other main function is by default “the temporary dumping ground”.  This was fine as I was in the habit of clearing it, if it needed it, every night before I went to bed.

However, two months ago my husband had a bit of a clearout and put a large pile of papers/magazines on the left hand seat. He didn’t want to get rid of them but couldn’t think were to home them (much of it is magazine subscriptions for past interests.)

He’d done so well to get rid of other stuff, I hadn’t the heart to challenge these homeless strays.  But what happened?

This is a picture of what our sofa has looked like for the past 2 months:

They have stayed on the sofa for over two months,
that’s what happened!

And by the laws of attraction, it also resulted in me dumping my stuff next to his pile and failing to clear it…because I couldn’t achieve that nice clear look for the whole sofa so I think a kind of ‘why bother’ attitude snuck in without me realising. And we both stopped seeing it.

Yesterday however, we were due a visitor while my husband was at work. This event has made me realise how visitors can be a very good thing for keeping on top of clutter and seeing things with fresh eyes! Suddenly, the state of the sofa really bothered me.

I went through all of my stuff, re-homing or shredding and moved his pile to our bedroom until the visitor had gone.  Once gone, I didn’t put it back on the sofa but on top of a old storage truck we have in our living room this was still a temporary home but had  the positive effect of we were both able to  ‘see it’ again: the pile had become invisible to us.

30 hrs later and they have now been properly re-homed on a bookshelf with a little juggling of poorly used space on there. I am currently lounging in the sun on the sofa writing this 😀

This is our sofa now:

I shall be reverting to my ‘nothing stays on the sofa overnight’ rule. Is there any clutter in your home that has become invisible to you?

Today’s Mini Mission

Today’s area is as Cindy dubbed it The Black Hole. This is that area in your home where you dump things when you walk in the door and or need dealing with but not right now. Hall tables, kitchen benches, dining tables seem to often fall into this category. Read Cindy’s post that I linked to above, determine your black hole, deal with what is lingering there and try to come up with a better or organised system so the black home can be eliminated once and for all

Eco Tip for the Day

Using electricity off-peak doesn’t save electricity but it can lessen the strain at peak times which can result in a reduced necessity to  increase infrastructure.

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