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.
Do you have a few items you have been procrastinating over decluttering for some time. Well perhaps this week is the time to finally bite the bullet and let those annoying suckers go. Start controlling your clutter rather than letting it control you. Take a look at each item with a very critical eye and realise that the world won’t come to a screeching halt should you let it go. I’ll name six areas around your home in which to identify such and items and hopefully you will let these items go.
Monday – Take a look at all your sentimental items. There must be something among them that you really won’t miss.
Tuesday – Have a good look in your kitchen cupboards and drawers. This is usually a hotbed of only slightly useful stuff that you could declutter.
Wednesday – Inspect the tools stored in your garage or other work space. There are usually a few that are a rarely if ever used. Declutter at least one.
Thursday – Declutter  a grooming tool or product that you don’t care much for using. Even I have one of these to declutter.
Friday – Search among your craft/hobby supplies and let go of at least two things you will probably never get around to using.
Saturday – Go through your kids toys and declutter a couple of items they have grown too old for. If you don’t have kids, find something among your own “toys” that has fallen out of favour and declutter it.
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
Eco Tip for the Day
Spend less time in the shower. Long showers are one of the biggest water wasters in the modern home.
It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow
I think I can scrape up a few items for this week. My kitchen is under control. But my daughter did bring out a Nintendo console and games the other day to list, so I will get onto that. Adrian has been talking about having a clear out of the tool shed for some time, but we have Southerly weather arriving today, so that might have to wait.
Hi Moni, take a look at all the other areas as well. You never know what you might find. Consider these missions a chance to question some items you may not of considered so far.
Colleen – I’d actually been through the entire house in the last week due to hosting two events. We do have stuff in the house which is on an expiry date basis but it all relates to either schooling or extra curricular activities. It is very easy to check an area these days.
The project I should get on with is finishing digitising the photos but its one of those jobs that needs to be laid out, plenty of time allocated and not need to be packed up. Dining room table is in use for art assignments and there always seems to be something on the go in our household at the moment that either needs my attention more or doesn’t lend itself to having so many carefully stacked photos around. My plans to turn my son’s room into an office/craft room didn’t pan out. Never mind.
Colleen, I tried yesterday to sell my step-mom my unused, brand new sewing machine, but dang it, she is being soooo good and really thinking about it. She hasn’t had one in years but has found herself lately wanting to sew. It is an all-or-nothing proposition for her. If she does this, she wants my Dad to build her a space in the basement but now she is second-guessing herself. If he goes to all that trouble/expense, will she really use it? He bought her a treadmill because she said if she had one, she’d use it. Not the case. I can see why she’s hesitating. I’m afraid my Dad hasn’t let her forget the lack of use on the treadmill. So, now that I’ve started the ball rolling on this, I have 2 back-up plans, just in case. I’m not sure I’ll get it gone for Friday’s mini mission, though.
Hi Kim, you can always allow her to do what I did when I wanted to test if I would really use a bicycle. I borrowed one from the soon to be daughter-in-law. I have discovered that it gets a lot of use and I would really like one for myself. My husband keeps telling me I had better go out and look for one of my own. I feel no excitement at the prospect of buying one so clearing the attraction is the riding. I suppose I had better get on with it though so I can give my DIL to be back her bike.
Anyway back to your issue. You could loan it to her for a couple of months to give her the opportunity to decide whether she will use it or not. Then if now go ahead and sell it.
Colleen, I like your idea but…..would it be harder to sell if it has been used? Do buyers like getting something unused? I am getting the feeling she’ll say no to the whole project, but time will tell. I’ll give her a little while to decide then I’ll move onto plan B & C. I really want it gone, yesterday! 🙂
Colleen, I think we can actually find a few things along these lines. Mom has an older sewing machine that needs to be fixed so we can declutter it. It’s been sitting in her closet floor for several years and Kim’s comment made me think of it. Since we are not going to be staying here forever I think I will go through the tools in the shed and see what we can get rid of. We don’t have toys and have pretty much paired down the sentimental items so I will have to see what else I can find in some other category.
Good luck Deb and happy decluttering. I am going to take a look at my sentimental items, the kitchen again, tools for sure (particularly craft tools), and maybe some other craft supplies (beads most likely) and both those things equals toys for me as I don’t have kids toys to declutter. I will keep my eye out for some of these things while I clean house today.
My sentimental item… genealogy papers.
I’ve had a pile of genealogical stuff for awhile but finished getting it online so downsized most it this morning into recycling. Now to back it up onto a jump drive as well.
I did keep a few hard copies of things though.
Now to find another pile to attack as it’s recycling pickup this week with my garbage so might as well get more stuff out of the house.
Thanks for the mini-missions. They do get me thinking.
Hi Ron B, genealogy items are a good thing to digitise. I also recommend saving them to an external hard drive and a cloud for extra safe keeping. There is nothing worse than loosing information like that.
I am glad the mini missions are getting you thinking of stuff to declutter.
Thanks, Colleen. I’ve got to learn more about ‘the cloud’ though I do basically understand it. And I will have to invest in an external HD one of these days. Still have to convince myself I may need to do the laptop thing too eventually. 🙂
Speaking of sentimental items – I few years back I unloaded a lot of knick knacks that were given to me as gifts when I was quite younger that I had outgrown. But not before taking some pictures of them and saving them to a file on my computer labeled Sentiments. Every once in a while I look at the pictures and while I enjoyed receiving and having the items, I don’t regret passing them on.
Hi Kathy W and welcome to 365 Less Things. I a glad to hear you have never missed those items. That is the same result I have experienced when it comes to “sentimental items”. As it turns out I don’t think I am very sentimental about stuff.
Your mission on sentimental items got me thinking yesterday . . . so I went down in my basement and went through a few bins I had been storing sentimental childhood items in. Last time I went through them was last year (2013 – in January!). I ended up with two 30 gallon bags full of items that no longer hold my interest. I can’t even justify WHY I kept all that stuff to begin with. Other items went straight into the trash. I would have gotten to more but my allergies were acting up from all the dust I kicked up and I had to call it quits. Luckily I decluttered enough that I was able have space on my shelves (and in some half empty bins). I finally got some stuff re-homed that was sitting around in my way and my basement now looks less cluttered. Win-win!
Hi Michaela, well done you. I never did get to my keepsake box last week. I got busy trying to stock up my card supplies at the art space. I am doing a great job of decluttering craft supplies as a result. I do want to get to that box though, maybe I will this week. I sympathise about your allergies acting up, I have the same problem when digging around in dusty places. The bags of clothes that come into the thrift shop where I volunteer are usually a allergy stirrer for me. That is why I mostly take care of the jewellery. It would probably be a good idea for you to revisit your keepsake stash again in another six months or so. As we strengthen out decluttering muscle we often find it easier to part with this sort of stuff.