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 is another week of just random decluttering. Nothing to difficult like confronting family members or dealing with obligation clutter so I want no excesses my 365 declutterers. Only those who have all these tasked taken care of are allowed to slacken off. Chop Chop!! 😉
Monday -Â Â Go through your spice collection and declutter any that you know have been there a long time or that you never use.
Tuesday -  Open one of your digital photo sub-folder and delete any not so great photos. Computer clutter is still clutter. (I did say one sub-folder not the whole twenty years of digital memories. Don’t blame me if you get carried away.)
Wednesday - Declutter one item of aspiration clutter – something you own that you have been meaning to learn to use for years but haven’t. If you can’t part with it then start to use it either way it won’t be clutter any more.
Thursday - If you have picnic items such as a basket of utensils and the like, a Thermos flask, blanket etc check to see if they are in good working order or if you are ever likely to use them again. If not it is time to purge the items that are of no use to you.
Friday -Â Find one electrical device in your home that you never use and sell it or give it away. It will be slowly dying from lack of use.
Saturday - The Car ~ I know that during the course of getting from A to B and back again stuff makes its way to the car and doesn’t get returned to the place it belongs immediately and sometimes trash can accumulate there also. Every now and again we need to take some time out to put everything right. Today would be a good day for that.
Sunday - Newspapers and catalogues are also on constant flow through our homes. Once read they are often never viewed again. Recycle the ones you know you won’t be reading again and think twice about setting aside any that you “think†you will look at again.
Good luck and happy decluttering
Today’s Declutter Item
About five years back I bought a set of these pens each for my son, my daughter and myself. I don’t think any of us ever used them to their fullest extent. I donated this lot to the thrift store because they are in danger of drying up before they ever g0t used.
Excessive pens
Something I Am Grateful For Today
For a successful Freecycle weekend. I finally got rid of a few things that have been hanging about for way too long.
 But on a sadder note I would like to offer up prayers of comfort to the family, friends, colleagues and fans of Marco Simoncelli. After the high of Casey Stoner winning the Motocycle GP last week it is hard to comprehend the low of this weekend’s race in Malaysia. In an horrific accident in the second lap Marco sustained serious injuries and was rushed to the track medical centre. He sadly succumbed to his injuries at 4:56pm local time despite the medical team’s efforts to resuscitate him. RIP Marco Simoncelli you will be sadly missed.Â
Hi Colleen,
Ha done them tasks already so I am slacking off, well not really I’m reading your wonderful journey entries and I found this: Excessive Clutter Feb 24 2011, apart from the great post I noticed you had a yuck moment entry with your oven!! If you haven’t already found a good solution to your splatter problem may I suggest ditching your oven and getting an EASY COOK’ turbo convection oven bench top cooker, portable easy to use and a dream to clean. I have used one for the past 10 yrs and man what a star. It is an oven & griller in one. You lift the lid, put your roast in, set the timer and watch it cook (if you want too)best part when it’s finished you put water in it and set it to wash! No more filthy oven to clean (I like a crispy roast as well) I am actually considering getting rid of my oven and putting my ‘Alien’ in it’s place! prices vary (depending on brand) mine was $100 back then and I still see them now for around that price, way cheaper than an oven or microwave, I find it to be my go to cooker. You can cook everything in it and I mean everything you can possibly want to cook. No heat in the kitchen either, honestly, I thank my mum everyday for getting it as a gift for me. I love it! Might be worth looking at and save you having to put your head in the oven eveytime you need to clean it.
Hi Dizzy,
yes I had heard of those ovens. A couple of the comments mentioned them if I remember correctly. I am still persevering with the hideous thing I have for now. Have spend all this time decluttering I am loath to add another kitchen gadget as good as it does sound. Thanks for the thought though.
Putting some stuff curbside right now marked “FREE”. Thanks for the post.
Mark
http://www.minimalistlifestyle.wordpress.com
Gotta love it if you live on a busy street like I do. Free on curbside is very effective here. On the weekend it was the website Freecycle.org that I used to get rid of some unusual items that have proved hard to get rid of including an old non-digital television.
Did the car and the newspapers on the weekend but can’t justify being a slacker until I’ve done the rest of the tasks 🙂
The car: that is my downfall at the moment. I’m trying to teach the kids to bring everything inside the house after a car trip, and lately I have put a carry bag on the back of the front seats for their notebooks/pens/activity books, which seems to be working (my car doesn’t have those handy back pockets more expensive models have).
My boot is full of stuff either to go to the op shop, my craft basket (as there is no where in the house to hide it during open for inspections), library books to go back to the library and a few bits and pieces I don’t know what to do with. When the house finally sells I’ll be able to clear it out properly!
Loretta, I am just pleased that the kids have the notebooks, pens and activity books. I hope that means you don’t have a DVD player in the car. I know they are easy entertainment but don’t their kids plonk themselves down in front of a screen far too much without having one in the car as well. I love car bingo, the number plate game and I spy much better for car entertainment.
We go to Yellowstone most summers, and my kids love to watch for license plates. This year we got all but 2 states and several of the Canadian provinces as well. No DVD player as the cars we own are much too old to have that option. They always manage to keep themselves entertained just fine.
Yay, another family who knows how to have good old fashion fun. When I lived in America we had this cool car bingo game I used to love to play with the kids whenever we drove further than across town. Only in America is one of the items on car bingo and Corvette.
My car bingo game is OLD. No Corvettes. You just have to try to NOT get the one with the rooster!
Yes Lisa S I can see how a rooster would be a bit tricky. Ours also had a ladder, which sounds a little odd but you see them often on RVs and on big highway signs.
No, definitely NO DVD player in the car! I’m pleased to say that we drove from Melbourne to the Gold Coast and back a few weeks ago, and the kids were only allowed to play on their DS or iPod for 1 hr a day (that’s doing 6-7 hr drives each day). We are quite used to doing long car trips as my husband’s family live 4 hrs away, so they are usually happy to read/play car cricket/i spy/draw; this last trip they both did a lot of knitting!
That is so refreshing Loretta. Good old fashion fun.
I was so happy to pop in and find that just this afternoon I completed the mini mission for Monday. As far as Tuesday’s mission goes, I declutter photos as I load them on my computer but I am overdue to save them on a flash drive and delete most from my computer, that’s what I’ll do as an alternate mission.
I have zero aspiration clutter, it’s long gone already, have 2 picnic baskets both in good condition and being used as decor as well, just sent my unused electrical devices to the curb this weekend with a free sign like Mark did.
Hmmm, nothing in the car that doesn’t belong but boy is it ever in desperate need of a good cleaning inside and out as well as being overdue for an oil change and tire rotation – I’ll make those my alternate assignments too.
We don’t get newspapers and catalogs go straight to the garbage with junk mail 🙂
Oh, that reminds me!!! We are also due for our car to have an oil change. I know my better-half already cleaned out the car; so this week I’ll do just like Martha (MM) is doing and make the oil change appointment the alternate assignment! 🙂
Hi Martha, I am glad that you have made up your own missions when mine aren’t appropriate. Well done! I gave my car a good clean inside and out on the weekend and it is nice to enjoy a drive without thinking ~ I really need to clean this car. Mind you I will never again buy a car with a dark interior every little speck of dust and grass shows up.
Hi Colleen.
I really like the mini-missions, though I don’t actually DO them as prescribed. I consider them nudges or reminders or incentives just to keep me motivated.
I work very hard to stay off mailing lists (paper or email) so I don’t get a lot of that sort of stuff, and our bi-weekly recycling pickup keeps the mess from building up. As you always say, keeping it out of the house is easier than getting it out of the house!
And this week I will take advantage of our fine fall weather to give the car a thorough cleaning before the snow flies.
Hi Wendy b,
I am sure you are not the only one who doesn’t follow the mini mission, I know I don’t. But as you say they are a good reminder just to do something and that it doesn’t have to be much in order to keep moving forward.
I love that in Australia I can put a NO JUNK MAIL sign on my letter box so I don’t have to receive it. Then I don’t give out my address to anyone I don’t have to so no junk mail sneaks in through legit channels. I also don’t get newspapers because lets face it there are no end of other way to receive that information. If only it was all accurate.
In Canada, if they pay to mail it, the postal clerks have to deliver it. I think you can put a ‘no flyers’ (hand-delivered adverts) note on your mailbox at home but those of us who are rural get our adverts mailed in the free newspapers we don’t ask for. The only remedy is to heave them straight in the recycle box. I hate the waste of paper but that’s the best I can do.
Yes Wendy, how frustrating. I am the only person in our 7 unit townhouse who has a no junk mail sign on their mailbox. Every time I see their boxes full of cr@$p I have to wonder why they don’t do it. The thing is their mail is hanging out of the mailbox with the junk because the postman can’t get it in. So much for having locking mailboxes. I remember living in the US and all the mailed junk mail I used to get. You can’t put your address on anything these days without them selling your address to the advertising companies who then send you all that rubbish.
Hi all,
Just had to share this with you all, for anybody who is having trouble letting go read this:
‘Corinne, what in Christ’s name am I holding?’
‘Well?’ Thomas rattled the bunch of sticks at me.
I attempted a light, carefree laugh. What came out sounded more like a chicken being strangled. I took a deep breath.
‘They’re the first bunch of flowers a boy ever gave to me. It was back when I was at university and–‘
‘They’re dead.’
‘Nooooo’ I explained. ‘They’re a dried arrangement.’
‘They’re brown and dead. They are dead, brown sticks.’ he went to throw them in the garbage bag.
‘Wait!’
Be thankful this isn’t you, but it may be you, or may well have been, then get this book and read it and pass it on to anyone you may know who needs a good laugh and a reality check from a celebrity point of view! I loved this book and I highly recommend it to everyone.
Corinne Grant ‘Lessons in Letting Go’ Confessions of a Hoarder.
Corinne, if anybody is not familiar with her name, is a tv personality from ‘Rove’ amongst other accomplishments.
Enjoy your clutter free day
Dizzy 🙂
Hi Dizzy,
I will have to check that book out if they have it at my local library. I might go to the library web site now to check it out.
Back again, book ordered from library. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m not quite so far along as the other commenters. Although, we do keep up with newspaper and catalogs on a weekly basis, I do have a terrible time parting with my quilting magazines. I love your mini missions. They are so DO-ABLE for me!! And I feel like I have made forward progress!
Thank you!
Hi Deb,
I don’t know if I ever said an official welcome to 365 Less Things. We have chatted in the background a couple of times but I believe this in the first time you have appeared in comment. So welcome.
Don’t worry about not being as far along as some of us, everyone has to start somewhere. Craft magazines can be quite addictive and them it is hard to part with them once you have them. If you are still going back through them and using them then they probably aren’t yet clutter. If however all they are doing so collecting dust you do need to ask yourself how much value to have to you. I am glad you are enjoying the mini mission and making progress with them, any progress is a step in the right direction. Keep it up Deb.
Oh Colleen,
What a ‘spicey’ way to start the week!!! 🙂
I ADORE MINI-MISSIONS! YAHOO!!!!!
We can all do with a little spice in our live, hey Annabelle.
Well, I can’t mess with the spices as Mom would have a snorting fit. 😉 I will stay out of that.
I have several things that are aspiration clutter. One of them is an Advent calendar box with drawers and I decided to actually put on the papers and find the little items to put in the drawers. The others are for future gift albums so will keep them as I am using them as occasions come along.
I went through all of my online photo files and cleaned them up a couple of weeks ago so decided to instead make sure that while gone this week to San Diego I delete the bad photos at the end of each day.
We don’t have any picnic supplies so decided to go through the disposable plates, etc. I think I will find that there are some things I can get rid of.
We have no electrical cords or items as I just sent them off to the church Yard Sale a couple of weeks ago. It was so nice to have all this STUFF to give them to sell. In place of this I am going to have a friend come take a TV wall stand off the porch post. It was put there by the previous owners and I can’t get it off.
Since our car doesn’t accumulate things because it is just the two of us I decided to instead go through all the car info we have on our car and see what we really HAVE to keep.
Since we don’t get magazines and catalogs (We went the No Junk Mail route too) I decided to use this to deal with other paper clutter. It’s the end of the year almost and I am going to go through everything and see that we only have the stuff we have to have.
Wow, Deb J, that is quite a list of tasked you have allotted yourself. Paper clutter can be particularly insidious so I hope you get that one completed as it will by a weight off your mind for sure. While you are sorting through it consider if there is something extra you can do in future to avoid it accumulating in the first place. Perhaps make some diary/calendar entries for those purges that should happen on a regular basis.
Colleen, I am enjoying doing all of this a little early. Most of the paperwork is medical stuff that I have to hang on to until I can see that it is all paid by the insurance and us and I can mark it as paid in full. What is really nice is that many companies are now putting all of that on their web site and you don’t have to keep paper copies. That should cut back on a lot of it. Now that we don’t make enough to actually itemize on our tax return that also means I don’t have to keep them for tax purposes. Yippee!! I love getting rid of this stuff. I’m hoping we can cut the one file drawer in half if not more.
Hi Deb J,
thank heavens for the computer age! Less paperwork, gotta love that!
Tuesday checking in; digital photos decluttered. Actually, I have been working on decluttering (deleting) digital photos over the past several weeks. So today when a quick run through, within the 10 minute time frame, to weed out any others that last time I was hemming and hawwwing about. 🙂 Mini-mission accomplished for today now on to my house chores. 🙁
Well done Annabelle. Now get on with those house chores and see if you can find something else to declutter while you are at it. 😉