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’s mini missions reflects the decluttering that was going on in my house last week. Â Each day I will name a category and you can see if you have an item in that category to declutter. You may think you don’t have anything but take a look anyway, you might be surprised.
Monday – Jewellery ~ This category comes up often and yet last week I got serious about it. There wasn’t that much left  in my jewellery box but mostly I was keeping it just because I have had it for years and it didn’t take up much space. Sentimental clutter really. This time I have been realistic about whether I actually wear it and have chosen accordingly. I have already placed some vintage pieces on ebay and I will either sell or donate that rest. The jewellery box will be decluttered as well.
Tuesday – Heirloom Items ~ In my jewellery box was a fountain pen that I believe belonged to my grandfather and an old Speidel watch band which also belonged to a relative, I have no idea who. As it turns out both items were broken and therefore useless. So after years of “cherishing” them I did what I should have done with them years ago. I threw them in the bin. To be quite honest I was only keeping them because I thought they might be worth something.
Wednesday – A Clothing Item ~ I own one white basic T. Correction did own. This T-shirt has two obvious stains on it so why was it still in my possession. I think probably because I didn’t want to replace it and because it would do in an emergency. Both laughable reasons really.
Thursday – A gadget ~ I have also listed on ebay a digital voice recorder. I bought this with the intention of recording family history interviews. Needless to say this never happened. I was pleased to see this morning that someone has placed a bid on it and it will soon be out the door. If I feel inclined to do any voice recordings in the future I will use my hand-me-down iPhone.
Friday – Fashion Accessories ~ Last week I decluttered some hair accessories and a belt. All of which are rarely or never used but kept “just in case”. I have decluttered in both these areas before but this time I was somewhat more ruthless.
Saturday – Craft Supplies ~ This category appears ad nauseam on my blog I know. Decluttering this area for me is a gradual process in letting go so please be patient with me. Last week I began the arduous task of decluttering enough scrapbook paper so that what remains will fit into two file drawers. Lena has challenged me to be finally done with this area by the end of the year. I am going to do it Lena, you’ll see. In fact I am aiming for end of June.
Sunday – Eyeglasses ~ This week I picked up my new eyeglass prescription. I had ordered a pair of everyday glasses and my first ever pair of prescription sunglasses. Oh how nice it is to be able to protect my eyes from the sun and still be able to see properly. I can now donate my old back-up pairs to charity.   Here are links for donating eyeglasses in Australia and the USAÂ
Good luck and happy decluttering
Today’s Declutter Item
This belt I mention above. I haven’t used it in about four years and most likely never will so I think it is time to let it go.
Something I Am Grateful For Today
A break in the wet weather so we could go for a ride on the motorbike. There a lots of nice seaside places to visit near where we live.
Hi
Thanks for your blog. It’s so encouraging and gives me great hope.
Unfortunately my clutter is really out of control hoarding. I’ve had to swallow my pride and accept that I need some outside professional help.
I’ve got someone from an agency coming in for a week. Then I look forward to having a home where visitors are welcome and I can keep declutterering slowly one day at a time!!
Hi Archie’s girl,
it is my pleasure to welcome you to 365 Less Things and I hope what we have to say here goes at least a little way to helping you get past the problem you are experiencing. I am so glad that you have admitted to yourself that you have a problem and are going to seek professional help. There is absolutely no shame in that in fact it would only be a shame if you kept struggling on unaided. Sometimes the only way through these things is to enlist the help of a neutral third party. I wish you all the success that you can find the strength to concur this issue and I would love you to check in whenever you feel the urge to let us know how you are getting on.
Keep your eye on the ultimate goal by focusing on the freedom you will enjoy with less stuff. How easy it will be to care for your home, how financially better of you will be not buying things to add to the clutter and how much happier you and your loved ones will be living in a comfortable safe environment. Good luck, my thoughts are with you!
Hi,
I’m back in town.
Sunday’s item : spectacles: in New Zealand, just take them to an optician who collects them for the Pacific Islands. Each summer, a group of opticians go over there (different places, different years) and checks eyes where there are no opticians and prescribes, using our cast-off specs. Good system all round, I reckon.
Hi Ann,
thanks for the tip. There are many opticians that collect them here in Aus as well.
Also – we’ve been “gypsying” around the countryside for a week, to get out of our ill-health “rut” (over the head, almost, after the last year), staying an B & Bs as we felt like stopping. What a change! I have not brought home a single shampoo, soap or anything else like that!!! I “blame” you, Colleen.
And I will gladly take the blame Ann. Well done my girl. I hope you had a wonderful time and are feeling better for it.
Colleen,
Thank you, we did have a wonderful time, are feeling much better, and much more positive for it. John is almost off the second crutch, and doing better every day, and back to work tomorrow. I am ….. me with a stick! I still hope to be rid of it, and vastly better than before, but not there yet. Still hoping. Anyway, I can get on with my life, as I am, so I’m set to do just that. Roll on 2012!
Good for you Ann. Positive thinking is the only way to go.
I’d be curious to know how much you started your auction for your dictaphone for? I have one lurking, and whilst I have used it, not since 2006! I think someone has borrowed it once since, and many a person has said ‘I wish I had a…’ and I tell them I do, they still never get it from me!
Hi Snosie,
I started the auction at $10 with a $5 shipping fee. 5 people are watching it. Next time some one wishes they had one sell it to them. Mine was bottom of the range. You can check out the auction on ebay the item number is 280820106155.
Thanks – sometimes it’s about the price point, that’s why I asked. I had an address book, $35 new, it was still in it’s packet, no hits at $15, and sold for one bid at $5 (and then I underquoted postage costs!) Lucky I’ve overquoted shipping other times (and as someone says, it’s HANDLING too, and standing in line at Christmas costs money!), so it all evens out.
Yeh Snosie sometimes it really just isn’t worth the bother. How many times I have been held up with decluttering things that didn’t reap enough reward in the end to have made the wait worth it. Trouble is it is such and ingrained thing for me to want to achieve some sort of financial recompense for certain items. Oh well overall I have done pretty well though which keeps me trying.
June? wow. you have ambition. Perfect for me, my birthday is the 23rd, so you can make it a fancy birthday card 😉
I am challenged as well, as I will have my boyfriend moving in with me in beginning of july. But I am making progress everyday. currently I dedicate an hour every second day to sort out pictures, today I managed to empty a box, that was full before. its incredible what pictures you are happy to keep as a stack, but if on display in an album they are just not pretty enough for it…
Anyhow, I am seriously decluttering at the moment. amazing thing.
Hey Lena, I agree, doing my brother’s 21st Album (my parents gave up on albums some time in our childhood), I realised that if it’s not in the album, and it’s not of a special other occasion I have in the two family photo boxes, it can go.
I can’t for the life of me get over why we bought the sheets of school photos – we NEVER send them to the relatives (my parents were lamenting never seeing THEIR kids at the grandparents place with other family friends – they can’t display them if you don’t give/send them!). They are out – that was primary school, one photo’s in the album, that’s enough!
PS Colleen, this is some gentle encouragement. It really was easy to do, law and order on the DVD, photos pre organised into pages/themes (so I broke it into sections, did that months ago). I had some sticky dots and it was a snack to put them all in place after I tried one or two arrangements. No pretty paper, will do some headings later, otherwise, done in an hour or two! Makes me want to tackle something else! Maybe I should outsource, make it my service?
honestly. everytime I am done with a “small task” of decluttering, I am forcing myself to go back to my desk and write on that thesis. I would love to do decluttering professionally. I mean in the company of this blog, I am just a little beginner, but rearranging with friends, sorting out things (my own or others), paperwork and organising in general are so much FUN for me…
I just placed a lot in the album (my mum stopped to put the pic in, when I was 10, but there is space for 4 more years to come). I am done sorting them roughly time-wise, now I have to go through them and check what I want to have in the album and what not. I am sure half of the pics will go. and I might be able to put all the pcitures in albums. sorted, placed and easy to look at if I want to…
Thanks Snosie, for the tips and encouragement. I will keep this in mind when I find myself with nothing left to declutter, which is about when I intend to tackle photos.
Hi Lena,
I will have to do a power declutter to achieve the June deadline of course but that is OK. My items are often multiples of the same thing so nothing new there.
I will keep your theory in mind about photos not being pretty enough for an album for future reference. I will get around to decluttering my photo nemesis one of these days.
Hi all,
I’m sure you girls secretly get together and think of something that I have to do! After making sure I have got everything I want sorted photo and album wise I have DE-CLUTTERED PHOTOS ON THE COMPUTER!
I know it’s Digital and therefore smallish but by God my files are HUGE! So as a present to myself I have dumped 6217 not-so-good, totally blurred, headless, armless, legless and unknown people shots out of my files. Took a while but does that count as de-cluttering on a huge scale? I’m sure I just heard my computer says ‘Thanks’!!! Probably have another 10 000 that can go but I’m on my way to LESS!!
Have a great day everyone 🙂 🙂 🙂
Well done, Dizzy, that’s one I still have to do.
Definitely “de-cluttering on a huge scale” – just think of the memory boost your computer doesn’t need!
ah I know that feeling. Its good. digital clutter is still clutter if you ask me.
I did the same, but in my early, overimpulsive decluttering sessions (you know with music and a fancy drink) I somehow managed to delete a couple of pics I thought had doubles somewhere. Well I was wrong, and a lot of good and fancy pictures are now gone. strangely enough, its a relief… So please take good care what you delete and sort, and how you save your folders. I would recommend to burn them on CDs.
I have to tackle the issue of photos (and the upload and organisation of them) sooner or later again. But for now I am on the old ones from schooldays.
Wow Dizzy that is a lot of photos to declutter. It must have taken ages to plough through them all. You must have freed up a huge chunk of hard drive space. Well done.
Fashion Accessories!
When I read that category I thought, ‘oh, I don’t have much there, I’m a plain dresser.
Then I saw the picture of your belt.
Colleen, I have almost the exact same belt. Plus a few others, all of which I never wear. Thinking about it, I realized I just like the idea of having the kind of figure that belts would look good on. Time to give up that false dream, and go with what I have.
If I can. Please wish me luck.
Deb, if you’re reading comments this week, you might want to check back after Friday, to see if I’ve tossed them. It might be hard.
Hi Sabine,
so often readers see my mini missions and think they don’t have anything from a certain category and then discover they do. I think, like your situation, it is because the items haven’t been used for so long they have forgotten they have them. That is what the mini missions are all about.
Three pairs of prescription eyeglasses are now on their way out of my house and will hopefully be repurposed for someone in need. Thanks for the reminder.
And isn’t that a good feeling Anita. Not only have you got rid of clutter but you are helping someone in need. Win Win!
We did the prescription glasses before Christmas. I had decluttered the jewelry box but I know I have sentimental clutter in there still.
Please please don’t say the word ‘photos’–ack! I just get overwhelmed with even the thought of that task. I put ‘organize photos’ on my to do list every January. I work a little. I get overwhelmed. Then I quit. Sigh.
Those photos can wait until you retire from work. You have enough paper to shuffle through during the school year. Me, I have no excuse I just don’t like that task and am avoiding it until the end.
you remember colleen, that you once told me to declutter the electronical pics and documents, every time I turn on the comp, for 10 minutes? That worked so well – Thats how I did the real pictures.
Grab a pile, go through them, sort out the really mean ones (the ones with hands over the flash, blurry vision, or the people you really cant remember). finish. next day. grab the next pile. do the same. next day, same old same old. its 10 minutes. not more. and once you are done with that – you take the next step. sort out those you have multiples from (why on earth do I take 3 times a pic of buckingham palace? its not like its changing its form within 3 minutes…) you can do this for quite some time, maybe already roughly sorting pictures into stacks (schooltrips, scouts, parties, family, or by years). only 10 minutes a day.
and then voilá – you are basically done with the big stuff. If you want to label and sort them into little folders or boxes, you can start doing that. I think it is the least of the problem, and you will know your pictures by that time already so well, that you can easily let go of those you thought they are a must keep in the first round.
its really not that different from normal decluttering. 😉
Way to go Lena,
It’s so true, 10 mins doesn’t sound like much but it really works, especially if it is for something you have been dragging your feet about. I know from experience coz I tried the 10min fling and after 3 sets of 10 I had actually rid my home of soooooo much STUFF!!!! After a while you forget about the 10 mins and keep going and before you know it the job is done.
Have an awesome day:) I’m off to look at another house!
You are right Lena and I did actually get out one of our albums today and looked through it while I had my 10am coffee. I put little stickers on the ones I though could go. Don’t forget I have a husband who has a choice in the matter as well. So I will give him the album this evening and he can have his say on the matter and then I can go from there. Thank you for the mentoring. No fair using my own strategies on me though Lena.;)