365 Less Things

Reducing our stuff one day at a time.

Friday’s Favourites ~ 28June2013

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On Fridays at 365 Less Things I share with you my favourite comments from my wonderful readers and my favourite web finds of the week. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

Favourite Comments.

Enjoy these comments from…

Wendy F 

Janetta

Tammy R

EcoCatLady

Favourite Web Finds. Happy reading!

www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/myths-about-clutter

Here is a Facebook page you may be interested in ~ Daily Possession Purge Challenge

www.oprah.com/home/Clean-Sweep-Peter-Walsh-Wants-To-De-Clutter-Your-Life

Mark Adam Douglass ~ Box-Bottle-Bag Index . Mark has also recently relieced and eBook ~ The Original Minimalists Consumed.

Angel suggested this post from The Minimalist Mom on Decision Fatigue. And in case you missed it while reading the article here is the New York Times article she referred to in her post. This was also suggested by Sanna.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter some motor vehicle related stuff. There is a wide range of stuff that accumulates relating to motor vehicles ~ accessories, oils, jerry cans, parts … and simply the stuff that accumulates in them. Last week I decluttered some motorcycle oils and brake fluid to my friend Wendy F. My husband no longer owns a bike that needs these fluids topped up, while the men in Wendy’s family service their own motorbikes.

Eco Tip For The Day

Don’t leave the TV on during the day just for company. You may laugh but I have known of plenty of cases of people doing this.

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

Comments

  1. As usual, Colleen, some good comments and links. Congratulations to Mark on his book. Also, I too have noticed the ratio of box-bottle-bag changing in a good way in the last year. The Decision Fatigue articles are very good. I have seen this in many ways. I’m learning to be careful what I do when I am fatigued.

    • Hi Deb J, I also enjoyed those Decision Fatigue articles. I will keep them in mind in the future. I imagine rushing and general stress, pain etc. don’t help the decision making process either.

      As for the box-bottle-bag idea, that post by mark really resonated with me because we have discovered the same with our grocery shopping since the kids have both left home. We mostly by fresh meat and vegetables, which we don’t bag up, and very little else these days. The packaging that does come with the meat or the other items, like bread, get used to bag up rubbish, so even they don’t go to complete waste. I feel good about that.

  3. I can’t believe its Friday again!
    I have linked a few friends and family on Facebook to the Daily Possession Purge. Maybe it will be their ‘ah ha’ moment :).
    Tonight I am looking forward to reading the rest of the links.
    Next weekend I will be with my siblings as we sort through our parents house and prepare it for sale. The knowledge I have gained from reading 365 less things and my own life journey will make this experience for me a lot easier. Put simply, I have no attachment to anything in that house. It is just stuff. So my car will not be loaded with sentimental possessions. I made this comment to my younger brother ‘how easy it is to get stuff, and how hard it is to get rid of stuff’. His funny reply was ‘money is not like that’ . 😛
    Just because it was our parents or we can have it for free, do we need it??
    As far as car stuff goes, I have the headrest out of the back of my car and the cargo carrier stashed under my bed. Maybe I could list them on eBay and use the cash to buy more coffee.☕☕☕
    Thanks for another great week Colleen, you wicked person!!
    Colleen thinks she is a parking policeman and placed what looked like a parking ticket on my windscreen after we hade coffee and a game of Upwords yesterday. When I returned to my car , well you can imagine what I was thinking!!!!🙀😤😡 . I grabbed the ‘ticket’ and turned it over ‘Ha Ha got you’ was written on it. You don’t know the relief I felt, needless to say a quick phone call to let Colleen know what I thought followed . 😋
    Cheers

    • I think it is neat that you and Colleen can see each other often and she can play tricks on you. Wish I had that privilege.

      • Ha ha Deb J ! I will get my own back one day on Miss Colleen!
        Yes I do feel lucky to be able to discuss everything with her. Sometimes writing it in a message does not convey my exact thoughts. I like to use emoticons and other little pictures that appear to express myself. I am thinking of using 👍 the thumbs up sign when someone writes something I like. What do you think?

        • Wendy F, I can’t read any of those signs except the hearts and coffee cups. Most are just little squares. I don’t know whether it’s a problem of my browser or my language settings, however it could be that it’s not just me who has problems.

        • WendyF, I was going to tell you what Colleen wrote above. At least you can type it. I like the emoticons too but I don’t use them because of how they can be interpreted online. You never know how they are going to appear to the recipient. Too bad too cause there are some really cute ones out there.

    • Ha ha ha , still laughing about my little trick Wendy. I am sooooo funny. Now I know why you asked where I was parked today. Ha ha I took the bus and didn’t know where Steve parked when he came to pick me up.

      I will be expecting you to stick by your conviction to not bring anything home from your parents old home. I expect if you do I won’t hear about it. 😉

  4. Good articles – I enjoyed the one on decision fatigue, also tried to read the longer article but gave up (ironically, I am really tired today) but it is the type of thing I find quite interesting. I can see how, like the judges, I don’t make a decision so that I have an option of making a decision at a later time. I’m not a procastinator by nature, but have a lot on the go at the moment and have found it harder to make snap decisions, I’ve actually been making sloth-speed decisions when I actually to make one. Good to know why.

    I always enjoy Gretchin’s writings and Peter Walsh is always a good read.

    I personally feel that some people are more ‘wired’ to be organised than others but skills can be learnt. And Cindy wrote something on adapting organisation methods to appeal to the arty types, which I found useful but the arty types that I live with (no names mentioned) don’t find it comes easily. Having said that, they can’t understand why I can’t draw and sing like they can. I guess we all have our strengths.

    Marks article – yes I get tired of jars, bottles and boxes ending up in the rubbish bin, and also the quantities of these that travel thru our household. Not as bad as we used to be, but always room for improvement. There are so many ideals that intersect at grocery shopping time, and I never seem to get the balance entirely right.

    • Hi Moni, there is nothing wrong with making slow decisions they are better than wrong ones. I have been making a few small decluttering decisions lately as I work through updating our inventory. We are about to make a move. My husband has been posted to the nation’s capital Canberra in January of next year so we are on the move again.

      I think you are right that some people are more bent towards being organised than others but we can all learn to be better at it with a little patients. I find it is better to get rid of most of the stuff so we don’t have to organise it.

      • How exciting, Colleen!

        I hope you’ll let us take part in how your move goes now that you’ve decluttered so much! 😉

      • Canbarra is it! Is that a good post? I hope you enjoy this post but am sure you will miss some people and places in Newcastle.

          • No sad faces until I am out of town Wendy F. I am going to go out smiling and laughing with you all the way. If you can’t promise me that I will have to leave clandestinely prior to the leaving date I give you so you won’t know my last day is my last. 😉

        • Any post is a good post because we get to experience somewhere different. But yes, I will miss the lovely people I have met here in Newcastle. I will miss my children most of all.

      • Colleen – Canberrra! Exciting. And yes sad to shift away from your children. Although I had heard of both cities and I wasn’t sure where they were in relationship to each other and had to google driving instructions from Newcastle to Canberra to see both on a map.

        I’m sure we will all be eagerly awaiting updates on your upcoming shift – I’m sure your inventory will cause some poor clerk to think he/she has lost pages 2-9. And some shifter will turn up and see your stuff boxed and think that the bulk of it is still to brought thru to the exit spot and do a happy dance that he’s landed this gig.

        If you don’t mind me asking, how many times have you shifted since marrying into the military?

        • Hi Moni, after 26 years being married to military man I will finally actually drive all the way to our next posting. We have always done huge moves before which has been totally flying or fly drive but this one is only a five hour drive.

          I hope you are right about that clerk. I am expecting comments from the removals team as well.

          Funny you should ask about the number of moves. I was laughing about this with my mother the other day. I was married at 22 and have been married 26 years. My mother actually had me move house more times than the military. I moved 9 times growing up and only 6 time with the military. Six times must be some sort of shortest record I would think. My husband has had lots more postings than that but in the same location or temporary so we stayed behind. He had three postings in America alone. He has had at least three postings since we returned to Australia, one took him to Canberra for 11 months but the others have been here.

  5. Well I had a wonderful morning, ran into Colleen at the Coffee shop, she was chatting to Mark and his partner Jess. So i bought a coffee and joined them 😀Lovely to meet Mark and hear his interesting life stories! I gotta say, life is pretty good!

  6. I think I entered a new stage in the decluttering game. It feels like until now I have just been shoving out stuff from an almost neverending amount of stuff. Now, I’m really reaching the point where it’s more about shaping the rooms, deciding how I really want them to look like and decorate (that means in most cases: get rid of stuff) accordingly. The home how I’d like it to be is now near enough that I can actually imagine it and know that it just takes a few less things to be there.
    Unfortunately that also means I really want to tackle some of the areas now that have been on a hold because my boyfriend clings onto more (or other) stuff than I do.
    I find I started a new “round” through the apartment, starting with the bathroom which is now as clutter-free as never before. Many things have been used up meanwhile, others decluttered. There isn’t much left to improve and I really love it now!
    Next I’ve been to the living room (including desks), but I can see we are not quite “there” yet. Both of us have to work to reduce our paperwork further, but I already arranged the room how I want it to be – it is a little cluttered still, but I can see where it is supposed to go.
    The kitchen is about the same. We really finally have to face the fact that it is a small kitchen and won’t hold multiple sets of china. Yet I want to store all kitchen items and most of the china and glassware there (except for a smallish cupboard in the living room), so we will have to reduce further.
    Then there’s the bedroom, the only place where I want to replace something (the bed) in the long run. Apart from that we’re fine, our wardrobes are ok and there isn’t much other furniture. Though there is a comic collection, but not mine. Maybe we can someday bring that to the living room as well, but that will take time, I think.
    This leaves the hallway and the storage/laundry room which are both not badly cluttered anymore, but also not exactly pretty. I’ll focus on kitchen and living room for the next weeks.

    • I don’t really know, why I babbled so much pretty uninteresting stuff. I think, I’m just happy that I am finally able to see the finish line. Thank you for your patience! 🙂

      • I think it’s great Sanna, not uninteresting at all! I’m feeling happy about my decluttering too at the mo and I took some stuff out to various charity shops, passed stuff on etc today which I haven’t done for ages, I’d kinda stalled. The use it up challenge on the foodstuff here is taking foooorrrrreeeevvvvveeeerrrr though, lol.

      • Hi Sanna, I am always interested to hear about other people’s progress with decluttering and organizing, it keeps me motivated and inspires me to stay on track, so I was glad to read all your details. It is also helpful to think aloud sometimes, and I’m grateful that this is a friendly, supportive and understanding place where we can do that. It sounds like you have been making wonderful progress and have lots to look forward to as you continue with your plans.

      • Sanna – it was actually quite interesting. I like how you describe it as “shaping a room”.

    • Sanna, don’t you just love how it is finally coming together? I think it is great you are making such progress and I enjoy reading about it. Keep up the good work.

      • Yes, I love it!
        I always enjoy reading about your progress as well. So, I’m really looking forward to your updates on the craft declutter and the decluttering going on in S’ house.

    • Hi Sanna, I see you have reached another milestone in your decluttering mission. Isn’t it good when your next goal becomes clear because enough stuff has been cleared to illuminate the next step. I have encountered this over and over again during my decluttering mission. Right now I am working on our inventory of possessions, which is a task we have to do for insurance purposes when we are moving to a new location. I am actually enjoying this task this time around (I have always hated it in the past) because there is so much less stuff plus it is forcing me to go over the entire house, item by item. It will be interesting to see how much more I will find to declutter.

      I wish you success in your new phase of decluttering and hope that you can convince your partner to let go of some more of his stuff.

      • Thank you, Colleen! It’s really interesting that these goals only become clear when you’ve reached a certain point.
        Writing an inventory is certainly interesting after all the decluttering you’ve done.

  7. Thank you for the links, some new ones there I didn’t know and I have whiled away a pleasant hour reading. I think I am allowed a break after 2 hours on the Big Purge!