I received a comment from Willow on Day 365 which really got me thinking. Her comment read…

Congratulations, Colleen! Your perseverance has been an inspiration to me. What is the biggest, most important lesson you learned this past year?

And my response was…

Hi Willow,
it is really a combo of all the lessons but I suppose the biggest one was to stop shopping and don’t replace the stuff with something else. Hardly a thing has entered my house all year and what has replaced something old and worn, which wasn’t included in the 365 things because it was being replaced. Learning to let go of the bindings to things is key too. We hold on to things for all sorts of reasons and none of those reasons are good enough to make you live in a situation you no longer wish to tolerate.

My response could have been more long winded because there was so much going through my head at the time. Mostly the crazy reasons why we keep things when we know that not so deep down we would rather let them go. We wouldn’t have been considering decluttering them in the first place had we not become at least partly detached from them. My thoughts went kind of like this…

💡 If you don’t love it set it free – This one speaks for itself, if you are just tolerating certain stuff then you really need to consider why it is still in your home.

💡 If you love it let it show if you don’t then let it go – If it is worth keeping it is worth using or displaying so don’t hide it away somewhere that you can’t enjoy it properly and regularly.

💡 Do you have a bad relationship with your stuff – are you keeping certain stuff out or guilt, obligation or fear, that you would really rather part with. Like a boyfriend who you fell out of love with over time but you don’t seem to be able to end the relationship for fear of hurting his feelings or regretting the decision later on. Or Like that visitor that came for a short time but twelve months later is still sleeping on your sofa and you just can’t tell them to leave. Reasons for keeping stuff that come under this category might be…

• So and so gave it to me.
• It belonged to (insert loved one) who has now passed.
• I got it while I was on vacation in (Insert place).
• I might need it someday.
• The children may want it when they grow up.
• It’s been in our family for generations. (There is always another family member)

Sure there are going to be certain things that you will keep regardless of what your relationship with them are but they should be things of real importance or use to you. If you have a whole house full of these items you really have to question your decision making process. If you are miserable being surrounded by and shackled to your stuff then you need to get past whatever less important reason you are clinging on to it. Just imagine the freedom you could enjoy.

Today’s Declutter Item

This item used to hang in the kitchen of my grandmother’s house. It was there for as long as I remember. She and I shared our middle name and I gave my daughter the same name. The saint in the picture is where we got the name from so the picture came to me when my grandmother died. I don’t think it has ever adorned a wall in my house. Her name is not even spelled the same as ours. I have never had any real loving relationship with this item and I will always have my name tie with my grandmother so I don’t need this hidden in a box in my house any longer.

Things I am grateful for today

• Getting off my butt and framing some art that has needed doing for some time – Especially since they were items of Steve’s and it is his birthday today.
• Also finding the time and inclination to run some other errands I have been putting off.
  
• Refreshing afternoon showers.
• Enthusiasm – It sure makes doing otherwise unpleasant things a lot more tolerable.
• Know I don’t have to cook dinner tonight because we are going out with friends – I love birthdays even when they aren’t mine. 😉
  

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow.

There are three key elements to decluttering

1. Purging your home of items that are unused
2. Being selective with future purchases so you do not end up recluttering you home.
3. Staying ahead of the clutter by removing items as they become redundant.

Today I want to talk about #3 on the list above. The key to staying decluttered is to make sure you remove any redundant item from your home as quickly as possible after it outgrows its usefulness.

Redundancy can include…

Physically growing out of an item

• Children are especially prone to this, some more so than others. I was fortunate to have small children so they tended to wear clothing out rather than growing out of them. So I usually got good value out of my clothing purchases. Children also grow out of their sporting equipment, car safety items, beds etc.
• Unfortunately, we adults can also suffer from this problem due to weight gain and loss. It can be very tempting to keep the clothes in hope or fear that we may fit into them again. Sometimes these items only serve to torment us rather than inspire us.

Mentally growing out of an item

• This may apply to children more than adults but not exclusively. As children age, they mentally outgrow toys, books, hobbies, school supplies and pursue new activities.
• Adult tastes can also mature as they gain experience or see new possibilities for their lives that can include books, hobbies, digital media, information technology or a new business opportunity.

Breakages, wear and tear

• There are very few items that we acquire that last a lifetime, so it stands to reason that items break and wear out over time. Unfortunately in this day and age many things are not made to be repaired. It can be hard to part with items that have served you well. It sits in the cupboard while you hope to find a way to make them useful again. Don’t wait, if you cannot fix or re-purpose it today then time rarely changes that fact, recycle what you can and discard the rest ASAP. Quite often there are handy folks out there that can re-purpose the parts so make every attempt to find the item a new home rather than send it to landfill.
• Single use items such as batteries, ink cartridges and pens can accumulate in office drawers. Most of these items can be recycled and there are often drop of points at your local stationary store for this purpose.
• How often does an item of damaged or shabby clothing, which instead of mending or discarding it, ends up back in your wardrobe. Deal with it immediately, is it repairable? Then place it in your sewing area or take it to a tailor. If it cannot be repaired, re-purpose the fabric (search Instructables for ideas) or use it as a rag.

Limited use

• Newspapers are the main culprit under this heading and accumulate quickly, don’t let this happen. Pass them on to someone else or recycle them as soon as you are done reading them.
• Magazines can be more useful in the long term as reference material but I think it is best to set limits. I have set my limit by not buying them any more but most folks aren’t prepared to go that far. I used to subscribe to several craft magazines that I mainly used as visual inspiration but I find just as much inspiration via the internet for free with no clutter.

Basically there is always going to be clutter maintenance no matter how well purged your house is at this moment. Things become redundant along the road of life. Keep up with these redundant items and you will not have to worry about returning to square one.

Item of 365 less things

Scooba didn’t live up to my expectations, too bad a person can’t work this out before wasting the money in the first place. Never mind, I sold it for $132.50 on eBay.

5 Things I am grateful for today

1. My polish apple pancake recipe –I don’t make them all that often but we always enjoy them when I do.
2. A lovely night out – I went out the a friends granddaughter’s end of year dance recital last night and it was amazing. There is some real talent in that school.
3. Modern technology – It give me the ability to help people from the comfort of my sofa.
4. Butterflies – Aren’t they amazing looking creatures.
5. The willingness to learn – Live would be pretty stagnant without it.
   

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow.

I love to browse the antique shops just for the nostalgia that it evokes. I often see things there that remind me of my grandmother or things that bring back fond memories from my childhood. The beauty of these occasional visits is that I can enjoy the sensations for free and come home empty handed. I don’t need to own the stuff to enjoy it every now and again.

How many of us actually bring this stuff home or even make a hobby of it. There are a lot of collectors out there and an endless variety of things that can be collected. Some people do this because they enjoy the novelty/beauty/rarity of the items while others collect for the monetary value or more importantly the potential monetary value. Much as I love the idea of preserving these items for history’s sake, it does seem a shame when they are hidden away in private collections where very few people will ever view them.

We have a couple of collections in our home that serve to remind us of our shared enjoyment of baseball and art. Both collections have items we enjoy to look at and also considered to be investments. The trouble with investing in collectables is that sometimes you miss the window of opportunity to sell at it’s best price in your lifetime. Case in point are four Ichiro bobble head dolls that when released sold for up to a couple of hundred dollars each on ebay.  Granted we paid nothing for these dolls but now they are worth much less and taking up space in our garage along with a bunch of next to useless baseball cards and other ball park freebies.

Now I know you are thinking why not just get rid of them but to add to the problem they also hold a certain amount of sentimental value for some family members. There are also a box of band T-shirts belonging to my son and various other souvenir clothing items belonging to my husband that may or may not have monetary value but certainly have sentimental value. All these things are cluttering up space in the garage but they aren’t out of site and soon enough they will be dealt with during the 365 days.

I personally will never collect anything ever again, I have learned my lesson. Baseball card collecting is akin to gambling in my opinion and so too really is investing in collectables with the hope that they will appreciate in value. If you want to gamble like this buy shares and try your luck on the stock market at least this doesn’t clutter up your home.

Before I finished writing this post my husband pulled the boxes of baseball collectables out of the garage and at least condensed it down to a much small hoard. One more step taken to a minimal household and more garage space. I will be posting the photos as soon as he works out what he is doing with the rejects.

ITEM 313 OF 365 LESS THINGS

These paint cans were left over from Liam’s art class in high school. Graffiti really isn’t what a parent wants their teenage sons to learn in art class. Once used up he then kept the cans to make some sort of art installation but never got around to it. He gave me permission to get rid of them before he had his accident so out they go to be recycled.

5 Things I am grateful for today

1. Another fine day so we were able to take our morning walk.
2. Coffee with a friend.
3. Memories of reading to my children when they were young – My daughter and I were sorting through some old children’s books in order to declutter the ones that have no sentimental value.
4. My husband and daughter doing their part in the decluttering today.
5. Bridget doing a grocery run for me so I didn’t have to go myself.
   

Pride     Envy    Gluttony   Lust    Anger    Greed   Sloth

If loosely translated you could associate five of the seven deadly sins to clutter. This may seem a bit like hitting below the belt but sometimes that’s what it takes to make people realize the error of their ways.

Pride – otherwise known as vanity is a sure trigger to the collection of numerous unnecessary items. How many things do we buy just because we want others to see how trendy, clever, sporty, rich, beautiful… that we are. We don’t use these things in the privacy of our own home, we just want the world to see we own them. Let me give you some examples – Prada/Coach/Guess handbags, the latest apple iPhone, updated sport equipment, expensive jewellery, and trendy clothes. Not one of these things is a necessity and soon enough is no longer “cool” either and out we trot to update, leaving the previous items to languish in a cupboard somewhere.

Envy – How often do you see that person I spoke of above sporting the latest and greatest and feel that nasty thing called jealousy rare its ugly head? So out you go and follow suit buying the same things to keep up with the Joneses whether you can afford it or not. This is a direct route to a house full of guilt clutter and huge credit card debt.

Lust – although truly related to lust of the body there is no doubt you could also draw a parallel between that and lusting after the pretty, shiny, trendy, latest and greatest products available on the market. Shopping certainly satisfies a desire to make yourself feel good even if like any carnal act the satisfaction doesn’t last long before you are out there again seeking more of the same.

Greed – the desire for material wealth and gain pretty much speaks for itself. It is really just a combination of all of the above.  No matter how much we have we always want more.

Sloth – the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. This is a two part sin that once overcome can be our salvation. First of all, once we have accumulated all that stuff to satisfy the other four weaknesses, we become too lazy to deal with it. These possessions start to pile up around us and we are either paralyzed by our guilt or just can’t be bothered to do what needs doing to move them on, and before you know it you are drowning in a sea of stuff. We have neglected to work on our spiritual or mental wealth and given in to desires that won’t sustain us in the long term.

Fortunately, there is a cure. If you take the time to do the spiritual or mental work required to rid yourself of the desire to constantly have more, keep up with the Joneses and be something you are not then you will find you no longer need all these material substitutes for true satisfaction in life. Discover the things in your life that are dragging you down and substitute them for things more spiritually or mentally satisfying. Maybe it is your career, a relationship or physical neglect that you are not happy with. It isn’t always easy to identify or solve the problem but it is certainly worth the effort to try and the benefits when you succeed.

ITEM 282 OF 365LESS THINGS

The last of the travel keepsake clutter has gone into the recycling bin.

5 Things I am grateful for today

1. The lessons I have learned from this decluttering experience – without them I would still be making the same wasteful mistakes.
2. Email, text messaging and blogging – because when you have lost your voice you can still communicate.
3. My husband – he likes to be the knight in shining armor.
4. The gift of hearing – all I can hear right now is my computer whirring, my fingers tapping the keys and the clock ticking but I still know what a gift my hearing is.
5. Bird song – I especially love to hear the magpies warbling and the kookaburras laughing.

More of the local flora from my walk last week

Scrapbooking is a wonderful pastime, and I enjoyed it for many years. The problem is that by its very nature it causes an enormous amount of clutter. Supply clutter, tool clutter, souvenir clutter, photo clutter not to mention time clutter. I have rarely met a scrapbooker who can keep up to date with all the happenings in life that they wish to record thereby causing a backlog of all of the above mentioned items.

Remember earlier this week, on day 272, I decluttered an old Rick Steves’ travel guide that had been languishing in my bedside cupboard for three years. Close by that guide was also a zip lock baggy full of all the maps, tickets and brochures from that same trip. These items are the subject of today’s post.

As I said I used to be a scrapbooker. Along with the supplies, that I now don’t use regularly, which hold their own element of spending guilt, are the souvenirs that were so lovingly collected and hold far more sentimental attachment than the supplies. Even though I am fairly sure I am never going to return to the hobby, I clung on to these items for years, “just in case”. Well, now is the time to be realistic. I am at a very different stage in my life now and even though it is nice to look back on the scrapbooks I did make I am never going to get around to making any more. Even if I do there will be plenty of new memories that I will be able to document and it would be a mammoth task trying to catch up on the past.

This souvenir collecting has not only cluttered up my home for years, it also cluttered up my suitcase during the collecting in the first place. It was so nice on my recent vacation not to be weighed down with this kind of clutter. Therefore I am ready to part with the items in this zip lock bag and then next week I will start on the storage bin that holds items from other vacations, events and occasions that have likely been lingering even longer than these.

ITEM 275 OF 365 LESS THINGS

The items from the zip lock bag

5 things I am grateful for today

1. The off switch on the television – it is very had to concentrate on writing my blog with that thing blaring.
2. Not having to go out today – sometimes it is nice to stay in and veg out.
3. My husband is home again.
4. That freeing feeling – of purging clutter and the heavy ties it has on your soil.
5. A cozy knee rug on a cool day – spring isn’t sprung altogether.

Ah ha! Yes that’s right now we are getting amongst it. Who is familiar with the third drawer down? You know the one. It could be in the buffet, the kitchen cabinets, a desk or maybe the bathroom cabinet but nevertheless it is the same situation regardless of the location.

The first/top drawer is always the prime drawer with the important everyday/most used items. In the kitchen and the buffet it will likely be the cutlery drawer, in your desk it will be your pens, pencil, stapler etc and in the bathroom it usually has your hair brush, hair pins and the like.

Now the second drawer down is also a well used drawer with things you use fairly often. In the kitchen that will likely be cooking utensils, in the buffet it will be linen napkins and napkin rings, in the desk most likely larger tools like hole punch etc, and in the bathroom feminine hygiene items, spare razor cartridges etc.

Now the third drawer down that is everyone’s dirty little secret it is the hold-all area for every piece of crap that you really don’t know where to keep. Little bits of this and that that you keep “just in case you need it some day”, weird parts that you don’t remember what they belong to, keys that unlock mysterious places that you have long ago forgotten, a couple of Allen keys from Ikea, various nuts and bolts, torn off bits of paper with phone numbers or addresses that were important once, things you just stuffed in there because you couldn’t be bothered putting them back where they really belonged…

I am painting a picture here of a drawer full of clutter but alas it also houses that warranty paper you needed last September when the clothes dryer broke down. It would have been fixed for free but it cost you $120 because you couldn’t find this important little piece of paper.  Are you getting the idea here? We all have or had one of these drawers in our homes. If you had one, please share your horror stories of this drawer with us. If you still have one, get in there and clean it out today. Find a proper home for all those important “lost items”, discard the rest and share with us the oddest item you found in there.

ITEM 228 OF 365 LESS THINGS

No this wasn’t in my third drawer down, it just doesn’t get used any more.

…well that’s what it is like waiting for my son to get around to clearing out the unwanted clothes from his closet. So today while he was out of town I pulled out everything I haven’t seen him wear in a long time and put it on our portable clothes hanger. When he gets home he can take five minutes to decide what stays and what goes and put me out of my misery.

Decluttering your own stuff is one thing, waiting patiently for someone who doesn’t give a hoot to do their part in this process is quite another. Sometimes one just has to expedite things a little bit. It’s not all bad though every now and again he will clear out a certain area of his room but it is usually only when he can’t fit something else he has accumulated. At least he isn’t just stashing things under his bed like I used to do at his age. Boy have I come a long way since then and that gives me hope.

Needless to say my only advice here is that if there is someone in your household that is not motivated to declutter make it as easy as possible for them to achieve an end result. It will be less painful for all involved. I will let you know on Monday how this worked out.

ITEM 227 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I did manage to make an executive decision on these holey socks though which are now at the bottom of the garbage bin. I just wish someone could explain why these have accumulated at the bottom of his sock drawer when his trash can is right next to it.

Stationery is another one of those items I am leaving up to natural progression decluttering. It is a very slow process though. This evening I made a very small dent in our supplies and fulfilled a request from my daughter at the same time.

Last week, she asked me to print her a copy of the family cookbook that I had painstakingly digitised about 10 years ago.  I have added new recipes as I have tested and deemed them good enough to add to the regular rotation.

In printing the recipe book for my little girl I managed to use up…

• 68 pieces of coloured paper
• 34 plastic sleeves
• 13 stick-on divider tabs
• 1  ring binder

…the coloured paper was bought for another project some years ago. The sticky tabs are just spares. I am happy to say that the plastic sleeves and binder are from papers we decluttered a while back so are being reused. That’s only a drop in the bucket when it comes to the using up the abundance of stationary in our house but it’s a start.

ITEM 224 OF 365 LESS THINGS

The cookbook in question. I know it is very 1990’s in layout but that is when I originally digitised it and I am not about to go to the bother of updating. It isn’t quite finished yet but it is close enough to photograph for today’s post.

I don’t usually write about computer clutter in my blog as it is not really an area of expertise for me. However I am going to mention it today because it can be a problem for some. I would like to concentrate on email clutter.

I am not actually talking from a personal level here more from a professional point of view. It can be very annoying when you share a computer, specifically email, in he work place with  people who are not very computer savvy. The idea of using folders to sort emails is alien to some and even deleting unnecessary emails does not seem to be a priority. Therefore the inbox is forever full.

While I was at work today I made it my mission to delete and file all the emails that arrived in the inbox today and yesterday. Late in the afternoon one of the ladies asked me why it was that when she looked at the inbox there was no mail except what had arrived last week. She was surprised to find out that I had filed and deleted to the point where there was nothing left  in there. If you are wondering why I don’t do this all the time it is because I only work 17 hours of a roster of about 210 hours  so most of the cluttering goes on in my absence

As for my own personal email I  probably receive too many decluttering and lifestyle blog updates  but they often inspire my posts so even though they use up time they also save time otherwise wasted pondering over what I am going to write about. I try to make sure I empty my inbox everyday which mostly involves reading and deleting but sometimes I move emails to folders for future reference. I clean these folders out on a regular basis too.

Most of the time I spend on my computer is used writing my blog and responding to the comments and emails that it generates but I consider this my volunteer time. What I do is helping others so I feel justified in that.

As for desktop, my document and other files, I am a lover of  folders there also. I can usually find exactly what I am looking for because I create folders with major categories, and inside them I create subfolders to break down those categories. That keeps thing neat, tidy and findable.

It really is that easy!

ITEM 195 OF 365 LESS THINGS

These microwave bowls are now in the donation pile which I think will be heading to the thrift shop this week sometime.

I think I mentioned some time back that one of the areas of doom when it comes to decluttering my house is my daughters bedroom. It is mostly awkward because for now she is living elsewhere while going to university so that adds a degree of difficulty I didn’t really want to deal with. It is not for me to decide what she wants to keep and I cannot be bothered sending long convoluted emails or wasting precious phone minutes to have her decide long distance.

Luckily for me she came to visit the week before last and I warned her ahead of time that she was going to have to help me do some decluttering in her bedroom while she was here. She actually took it all with good grace and complied willingly if not too enthusiastically. That is she just did it and didn’t complain. We didn’t get through everything but I was happy with the progress we made and the rest can wait until her next visit.

She had fun reminiscing over some of the items we found but willingly let them go. Others she kept and we put back where we found them for now. I must admit I just dumped all the stuff out in the garage and had not been out there to sort through the piles until yesterday. All the extra hours I have been doing at work have left me a little short on time since she left.  Some of the items went into the recycling bin and the rest will be donated to charity.

ITEM 191 OF 365 LESS THINGS

A pile of old papers and Rolling Stone magazines that she would not part with previously have finally found their way to the recycling bin. Hooray this was the stuff I really wanted to see go.