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.
Aspirational clutter keeps raring its ugly head around my house. More to the point as I get more ruthless about decluttering more things loose their disguise of useful and expose themselves for what they really are to me. I bet you also have aspirational clutter clogging up you house and this week we are going to do something about it.
Monday – Declutter one unfinished / never likely to be finished craft project.
Tuesday – Declutter items of clothing that will be out of date before you fit into them again. If you work hard to lose the weight surely you deserve a few new outfits.
Wednesday – Get rid of those magazines you have set aside to read articles from or aspire to acting on articles you have previously read.
Thursday – Declutter more of that sports equipment I mentioned last week. Ones you think you might use again but the likely hood is next to nil.
Friday – Reduce that cookbooks collection a little further. The internet is a far more efficient way of finding recipes anyway.
Saturday – Put those items on ebay you keeping meaning to sell. This one has already inspired me to list something I have been meaning to list for a while. Photos are already taken so that should make it easy.
Sunday – Sell, donate or give away an item of any kind that you have been planning on using for a while but just haven’t got around to. Chances are you are never going to use it so set it free.
Good luck and happy decluttering
Today’s Declutter Item
Truth be known this is probably more guilt clutter than aspirational clutter but it certainly is craft clutter that I don’t think I will ever get around to using. so it’s out of here. I gave it to the lady in the stamping store up the street from my house. She seemed quite pleased with my offering.
More of my aspirational clutter
Something I Am Grateful For Today
Finally getting to the end of the backup in my inbox. Last week was a little busy for me.
Hi Colleen, I decluttered my cook books last night (again) and reduced the space by at least one third. I have only kept the books that make me feel good when I open the cupboard .All the fiddly small books have now gone – and books with “busy” pages with too many ingredients have also gone.I have three colourful folders or binders – one each for sweet,savoury and “most recent ” or yet to be tried .They are for recipes from friends or from magazines and I regularly cull them .I have a dear little vintage holder that is quite appropriate for my grandmother’s hand written cook book , my mother’s hand written sweets recipes, my year 8 “Mothercaft ” book and a book in which I scribbled down funny things that the children did or said when they were little – something I’m very glad I did and which we often look at and laugh about .The vintage holder suits its purpose and fits in perfectly. None of this takes up much space and its now even neater than before. I frequently simply google for a recipe as i’m sure lots of others do too. One day the contents of the vintage holder will probably go but for the time being I am happy to have them .
That sounds like another very sensible cull to me Judith. I also decluttered my cookbooks in stages. There are a couple left that I still want to get rid of but I just haven’t got around to copying the recipes I use out of them yet. I should get on to that task.
Just unloaded my mother’s “Recipes for Two”, copyright 1947. Had such brilliant and useful recipes as Beans with Butter — ‘boil beans until all color and possible nutrition are gone, then add butter’ — with similar instructions for every vegetable that can be destroyed by boiling (OK, so I paraphrased a bit, based on my mother’s cooking). Guilt and cookbook clutter removed in one swift toss.
You made me chuckle!
You are too funny Wendy B and good riddance to that book.
I have to buy *more* clothes. -_- I lost so much weight so quickly after giving birth (in January) that I weigh less than I did before I got pregnant. This seems opposite, somehow!
Lynn ~ You will be making the other readers jealous. Not me though, I was like you when having babies. I was usually back to my pre-pregnant weight within a week of delivering. Losing extra weight however can get expensive. I didn’t have any extra weight to lose at that age so it all worked out well for me.
I wasn’t overweight or even heavy at all but I am very petite in height so to be 143 at date of conception meant I was about 20 pounds heavier than when I got pregnant with my son (118). I’m now 135 and still dropping, though I nurse my daughter and that really makes the pounds/inches melt off. My husband makes sure I eat well, though, so I think I’d be losing faster if I ate like I did when post partum with my first but… I prefer this newer method. 😉
Okay, I thought about Friday’s. I am going to try to sell one popular cookbook and give two away. I’ll keep my older, Southern cookbook that belonged to my husband’s grandmother (and that I’ve actually used) and a blank cookbook that is for writing my own recipes in, and should get all of my random recipes off of the fridge. I had culled them before but I think it’s time to cull them again.
Woohoo!
Lynn ~ Like you I also collect random recipes on the side of my fridge. They usually end up in the recycling bin untried in the end.
Oh, goodness, no way. Not mine. The ones on my fridge are my tried and true favorites and I keep having to re-write the on fresh scraps of paper because I get stuff on them. (On the other hand, I know my brownie and pancake recipes by heart, so I don’t know why I grab the paper…)
Instead of just going to the thrift store again, I wrote an email to some friends who just moved, to ask whether they needed some more things for their household. Turns out they were happy to take some kitchenware and vases from me. I was even able to declutter some more things right out of the kitchen cabinets, as I didn’t feel any guilt of giving away perfectly useful stuff, but just felt happy to give away that just-in-case-casserole and stick to the minimum for myself.
With normal decluttering, I tend to only get rid of the crazy excess (20 items when two are needed and such) or things I don’t find pretty anymore. But if it’s friends, I’m giving the things to, I have no problem of giving away all casseroles but one. 😉
Good for you Sanna,
I am about to do a little more kitchen decluttering soon. Every time I think I might be done in there I get more ruthless and declutter some more.
I know what you mean here though. There is stuff that I would give to friends or someone with a specific need or I would only let go of it I could sell it where as most of the stuff I am happy just to drop off at the thrift store. I get there in the end and am satisfied.