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 focus on areas of your home, top to bottom, inside and out. Here’s hoping you can find something for each day to declutter.
Monday – Declutter something hanging on a wall or from the ceiling.
Tuesday – Declutter something in a closet.
Wednesday – Declutter something from outside.
Thursday – Declutter something from inside a drawer.
Friday – Declutter something that is located on the floor.
Saturday – Declutter something from on top of a piece of furniture.
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
Minimise the paper products you use in your home, such as paper towel, printer paper, wrapping paper, note books…
It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow
You know, Colleen, you sure do come up with some good mini-mission ideas.
Thanks Deb J, actually when I was writing these I thought ~ I don’t think I have had this particular theme before. It took only a few minutes to finish it off. I’m glad you like them.
I have a few things I think I can get rid of to meet those missions.
I agree. I don’t know how you do it.
Cleaning & getting rid of my hutch will make this week’s missions easy except for the outside item. Will have to take a look around, but I know I have a ton of plastic pots to recycle.
Thanks again for another fun week of mini missions
Thanks Calla, that hutch should take care of most of them ~ I dare say there is a cupboard and a drawer in it, something sitting on it, and it stands on the floor. That is four out of six.
It looks like I need to spend more time on photos, I didn’t get as much done last week and my weekend was taken up with family stuff.
I am however up to the digital camera era, however the mentality of take 3-5 photos every time was still firmly in place. Also family especially would send a disc of photos because it was so easy, so 50 odd photos of one event need to be culled down to 5 or 7 or in one case 4 different sets of family all pooled a full memory card each of photos of one event. I also want to check every flash drive, external hard drive, memory card for photos (and then these will be wiped) I have no plans to re-do this project at a later time, except however to maybe cull a bit further.
Hi Moni, your commentary over the last weeks regarding photos doesn’t inspire me to tackle mine. It sounds like too much bother. Not that it matters because Steve has set ideas about photos so I leave that side of the decluttering up to him.
Colleen – if I wasn’t so pedantic, I would probably have it done by now. I can remember Dizzy saying that she just picked the photos she liked and binned the rest. Like Steve, I knew exactly how I wanted this done and have been determinedly slogging on. I showed my daughter and husband the 2000-2003 photos yesterday as a slide presentation and they were both pleasantly surprised at how brief it was but no obvious gaps in the timeline either. Sixty photos of a family re-union was pared down to eleven but it seemed to cover everything. I have few other big family events to trawl thru this week.
It has been interesting observing myself from a decluttering perspective during this, early on when it was all a big muddle, it was quite hard because on some level I was afraid I was losing something. As I got further into it and some sort of order began to emerge, it became easier as I could ‘see’ what I wanted this big box of photos to look like as an end product. It was a bit like watching a mini version of my house decluttering.
Hey Moni, there is nothing wrong with being thorough. That means you won’t have to go back and do it all again.
Once again, I am amazed that I have just completed this weeks mini missions before they arrived in my inbox! : ). I just removed a picture from the bathroom WALL, packed some items from the CLOSET for the thrift store, eliminated lots of envelopes from INSIDE A DRAWER (I have a collection of envelopes because of my card making hobby. Now, I’m paring down); I removed the under the bed box that I kept on the closet FLOOR for my husbands shoes, and removed a vine arrangement from ON TOP OF A PIECE OF FURNITURE. All that is left is for me to go OUTSIDE and remove a couple of plastic pots!! Not to worry, though……….I’ve got plenty of other projects to be working on!!!!! I’m also in the process of removing excess tablecloths and I think more envelopes could go. And plenty more of OTHER things.
Thanks, Colleen for all the suggestions. I don’t know how you do it, but I greatly appreciate your dedication to your blog that we all enjoy so much!! It is my favorite!!!! And I so enjoy all the comments from your readers!
Ah Brenda, another card maker among us. Deb J and I are also card makers. Do you have photos up in the internet at on, on Pinterest or something. I would love to take a look. Card making is how a spend a lot of my time these days as I sell them at a local art space. I am about to take on a small art collective with some other ladies with in the space so I have been busy trying to increase my stocks.
I am glad you enjoy the blog, it may be mine but, as you say, the readers are a much contributors as I am. Even more so sometimes.
No, Colleen, I don’t have any pictures of cards anywhere. I started rubber stamping about 1985, I guess. I would not consider my work of excellent quality and mostly used the rubber stamp itself as the design, with some matting and such. I always loved to color as a child and I used to tell people that rubber stamping gave me an excuse to keep coloring into adulthood! As I retire my hobby (for the most part, anyway), I sure wish some 365 card maker lived close by that I could give my supplies to!!!!!
Do YOU have pictures on the Internet somewhere? I would love to see yours!
Hi Brenda, I have a Pinterest account. Here is a link to the board with a small selection of some of the cards I have made myself. https://www.pinterest.com/colleen365/cards-~-by-me/
Brenda, I was looking back through the comment archive to see if I could figure out where you were from. I never did work that out but I did notice that you have been with us practically from the start. Your first comment was six months in from the beginning post and you started then that you had been reading for a while. I also noticed that you haven’t left a lot of comments over that time which is probably why I hadn’t learned a lot about you over the years. Anyway, thank you for your loyalty and I hope you stick around for many more years to come.
Colleen,
I love your cards! You’re very talented!
Colleen, I am a day late with this comment and I don’t know how blogs work, but I’m assuming you will see it from “your side”. I looked at your lovely cards and enjoyed seeing them. If I had an iPad that would take pictures I would try to send you some pics of my past cards that I still have samples of, but my iPad is very old. In fact, I had tried to contact you a couple of times and got no reply, so I assumed my emails did not arrive. Once, I was hoping to contact Sanna ( with permission thru you) to get more info on a type of canning she mentioned on the blog. The second time, I tried to let you know I had written an article if you wanted to use it when you were out of town and couldn’t write (I’ve forgotten now when that was).
Anyway, I live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia, USA.
(and, yes, the mountains really do look blue in the distance). I was born and raised here and never wanted to leave.
I originally found your blog as a link from someone else, although I now forget whose. You had been writing a while, but I loved the first one I read and went back and started from the beginning reading everything, including the comments. It has been my favorite blog from day one. I have read other simplicity blogs and still do from time to time, but yours is always number 1!!!!! And, as I have stated before, everyone starts to feel like an old friend.
I look forward to every post, so please keep up the good work!!!!!
I am no where near a minimalist, but I love and crave simplicity. Sadly, I also always loved anything OLD and was quite the collector. I had a knack of finding good items for almost nothing and could not resist. Now, I am trying to undo years of doing. Ha!!! I am being more successful at it now than ever, thanks to you and all the 365ers, and perhaps a touch of mid-life crises. Recently, a guest writer used the word STUFFocating, which I had also previously seen and used in the post I had written. That is what has suddenly happened to me—— I am STUFFocating. I had SABLE (stuff accumulation beyond life expectancy) and now I’m trying to fix that. Thank you for keeping me encouraged in that endeavor!!!!!
Brenda, thank you for your response. I enjoyed reading about your clutter/declutter story and wish you every success with continuing to let go. If you still have that post you wrote I would be happy for you to try sending it through to me again. I will extract your email for you comment and send you my email to send it through to. I will keep an eye out for it so it doesn’t get lost.
We have been on a real tear around here as the date of listing our house for sale gets closer. I’m making good use of the free classified ads in our community newsletter and used it to give away the slide projector and two dog kennels last week. At the same time I called up a neighbor who works with stained glass and gave her about 10 kg of glass and tools, keeping only enough for the mosaic project I will do for the new house (the leftovers will go to her when I’m finished). Her husband went home with a set of books.
Between us we had 6 First Aid kits. The industrial all-perils one that Ian had for work has ridden around in his truck, along with a survival kit. The rest of them were here at home where they were of no use to anyone. A major turfing took place the other day. The big kit goes to the garage sale, a reasonable-sized one is now in the survival kit in the truck, a small one will go in my car and a fist-sized waterproof one will go in the kayak bag. Been wanting to do that for a long time.
This morning I brought up a large cardboard box of leather – patterns, tools, dye and unfinished projects (most of them not even mine). I suspect that by tomorrow a lot of it will be in the garage sale box.
As for the mini-missions: walls, ceiling and floors are not problem areas but I have enough closet, drawer and cubby-hole clutter to substitute! WB
Hi Wendy B, you sure don’t need any mini missions to keep you busy. And I am glad you don’t live nearby because I would be tempted to take the leather working gear off your hands. 😉
Good thing you moved and didn’t give me your new address! Actually, I kept about half of the leather and neighbors are interested in some of it.
Took a look in the buffet today and within minutes had a small pile of stuff. I noted that I had glass (shot glass), stone (candle holder), wood (chopsticks) and metal (steak knives) and that looked suspiciously like a mini-mission to me so I went on a search and also decluttered something of paper (file dividers), pottery (plant pots), plastic (more plant pots) and fabric (a small backpack). Now to get rid of come cyber-clutter (emails).
Ooh, did somebody say survival kit? 🙂
Yup! Our government encourages people to prepare to survive at home for 72 hours without services or help in case of disaster. Our vehicle survival kits are the very basic needed for a short term in severe winter weather. My kayak survival kit consists of the basics necessary to get to shore and get warm and dry. The best survival tool of all is using your noggin. We all have one and carry it with us – too bad so many folks neglect to use theirs. W
Wendy B,
Survival kits are my hobby. 🙂 I keep one in the car as well. Totally agree about the ole noggin!
This is a cute set of missions! Okay, here goes:
Wall – The only thing I had on a wall in the house was a hook I was using to make a paracord bracelet. Gone.
Closet – Two purses, a tote bag, and a toiletry bag.
Outside – Already completely decluttered! My husband pruned all the trees in the backyard yesterday, so I’ll count that. Oh wait, there’s a doormat that won’t stay put (it blows away), so I might as well get rid of that.
Drawer – Pantyhose that I bought and didn’t need.
Floor – Two paper shopping bags.
Furniture – I think I’ll sell the guest bed and night table, and maybe the dining set. I won’t accomplish that this week, but I will put it on my list. We use all of our other furniture (bedroom set and living room set).
Woohoo!
Well, I obviously can’t read. I thought it said declutter a piece of furniture. Reading again, I realize it says declutter something on TOP of a piece of furniture. Duh. Happy to report that I have 365’d everything on furniture surfaces! (Except for my nice (small) CD/radio on top of husband’s chest of drawers, which we are keeping (both CD/radio & chest of drawers.) LOL.
This was a very good mini mission week
Wall…ceramic Sun
Floor…hutch
Drawer…20 roll-a-round stamps, 3 handles for roll-a-rounds,8 ink cartridges for handles, 6 bottles of ink
Closet…about 100 scrap booking items
Top of something…a picture frame on top of hutch
Outside….10 large plastic pots
What a great week!
Keep thinking I’ll run out of items to declutter, but hasn’t happened yet!
Hi, Colleen. A late response from me this week but I just want to say that this is such a creative set of missions. You’re making it fun, fun, fun!