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.
I think the title certainly gives away the theme of this week’s mini missions. We are going to search areas of our house for things that haven’t been used in three months. Then hopefully we can convince ourselves to let them go.
Monday – We’ll make today easy. Find something in your kitchen that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
Tuesday - Find something in your living room that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
Wednesday - Find something in your closet that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
Thursday - Find something in your basement, attic or garage that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
Friday - Find something in your linen closet that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
Saturday - Find something in you bookcase that you haven’t used for three months and let it go.
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.
Another great week of ideas Colleen!
Kitchen….air pop corn popper
Garage….stack of Styrofoam that I’ve been saving to take to recycle center
Closet….3 shirts
Bookcase….a toy that I got for Christmas
The linen closet & living room are clutter free!
Yay! Took me years to get there, & at times wondered if it would happen. Thanks to Colleen & the 364 Community for the continued support that kept me going!
Well sone Calla. Even I am going to have a go at following my own missions this week.
I tidied up my wardrobe on Saturday. I moved the winter shirts onto hangers and placed the summer clothes into the bottom drawer. I was able to discard some well worn items and when I hung all my shirts and skivvies in groups I saw a few that could also be discarded as I don’t need that many. I certainly have a few clothes that I haven’t worn for a while, and at this weight may never do again. The planets have aligned and my weight is my next declutter goal. I have downloaded an app for my phone to help me track my kilojoule intake .
There are two wine glasses sitting on the kitchen bench needing a home , not mine I don’t drink wine. I think I can finally discard them as part of today’s mission.
Cheers
Wendyf – what is the name of that app?
MyFitnessPal Moni 🙂
Good luck Wendy F, I hope you succeed with your weight loss goals.
haha I thought from the title that we had 3 months to complete the missions!
Ha ha Peggy, I would never be that easy on you.
Three months? How about 3 years? ? Or 30 years???? I unpacked my boxes of fabric and disposed of a lot of it. Now that I no longer sew for sale, I have no need to keep colors or fabrics I don’t like. I have also given myself permission to dispose of all the saved jeans that I am not going to make into anything and cannot find a home for but have kept due to enviro-guilt. The jeans were worn, they were patched and worn again. They gave us good service. Time to let go.
Well done Wendy B. I think my craft area may yield a few items for this weeks mission too. Doesn’t it feel good to give yourself permission to let go of long held on to stuff.
Actually, it bugs me that I didn’t find a home for the jeans. A couple of years ago everyone was sewing with used denim. Missed an opportunity there. Oh well.
Among the ‘pretties’ I gave away was a piece of lavender satin from the dress I wore as a bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding. I believe the year was 1966. Interesting fabric. Disgusting color. No wonder I could never find a use for it! Think I’ll declutter the wedding photo as well. Do I need a reminder of that hideous hairdo? NOT!
I jumped ahead to Wednesday and put a t-shirt and cardigan in the donate bag. T-shirt is cute but not at my current weight, cardigan just never seems to go with anything. I haven’t worn either in at least a year.
Good job Claire.
Thanks Colleen!
For Monday I got rid of 8 bowls that I haven’t used in a year or more. I only ever used them for dessert and I have other bowls for that.
These seem simple enough. I can think of things off the top of my head for everything but the closet a I’m trying out a capsule wardrobe experiment and don’t have much in the way of clothes in my wardrobe at the moment. The living room might be tough too. We’ll see what I can come up with.
The Disaster Gods seem to be helping me along at the moment, my husband dropped a glass casserole dish that I’d been umming and ahhhing over – I didn’t really like it but my husband seemed to like it. So it was the best solution moving forward. Then down in the garage my younger daughter had a table set up for art projects and of recent times an assortment of her jetsom and flotsam items. A bottle of oil-base paint brush cleaner must have gotten tipped over at some point and on the weekend I discovered a big oily mess. By some sort of miracle all her art stuff was down the other end of the table and it was all the junky items which were damaged. We suspect the table (a fold up narrow kind) may not survive the episode either as the liquid was beginning to dissolve the surface coating of the table, most of the edge-banding had come off etc, when we got to it.
The Disaster Gods have struck again! The lid of my rice cooker broke and we decided that since it had a dent in the cooking unit and the bowl was scratched from my son using a knife to empty it of rice…….that it had served us well and so we replaced it with a smaller model, which even better was below half price when we got it to the counter to pay. Not decluttering per se, but I’ll claim down-sizing.
Also our L Plates (those on a Learner license have to display them on the front and rear windscreens) will finally get retired today, my youngest got her restricted license this morning (she can drive unsupervised between 7am and 10pm, no passengers unless supervised) so the L Plates that have gone thru three children, can also be passed on.
Colleen – an off-topic question here, do kitchen appliances bought from America work here in Australia and/or New Zealand? I’m trying to find a 1.5 cup rice cooker for my daughter to take to Uni next year but I can’t seem to find the little small ones. Plenty of 5 cup and 8 cup cookers, but nothing small.
These items don’t necessarily fall under Coleen’s specific topics, but I had a few things sitting around that I didn’t know when I would dispose of, but I found a recycling center in town that takes them twice a week as opposed to twice a year or not at all. In a few minutes, I will be dropping off an old Blackberry, an old VCR, a very old computer, an old modem, and two garbage bags full of clothing or other fabric items that are not in good enough shape to donate. The electronics drop-off normally is twice a year, and the line can take more than an hour to get through. I’ve never seen a place until now that will take clothing that isn’t in good repair. I will be happy to be rid of these things.
Also in the past month, I’ve donated quite a bit of clothing and more books, and my husband cleaned out the garage and got rid of a lot! Slowly but surely . . .
Hi Donna B, how wonderful to have a place where you can drop off this sort of stuff on such a regular basis. Perhaps I need to do a blog post where everyone can write in the comments what sort of great recycle opportunities they have in their communities. Perhaps that would help other people in the same area.