I catch the train a lot and love nosing at the back of people’s homes that we pass en route.

Doodle

I can’t help myself from thinking over some of them, that half an hour of putting things away at the onset of autumn would make such a difference to the look of a garden that never look their best during the wet dull days of winter. Of course, fortunately loads of strangers can’t see my back garden from a train 😀

We only have a small back garden – a very typical Victorian ‘backyard’ with high 8ft walls.

The History Bit

In the UK, the Victorian period is so named after the period that Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 – 1901. (Great Great Grandmother to our current Queen Elizabeth II).

This was a period of mass movement to urban living. In the town I live in, the population quadrupled during that period and there are many many streets of terrace housing, back to back (where gardens back on to the terrace behind you with no other access other than through your own back door.)

You can often find traces of the old outdoor privy and in our’s also the original brick floor of the coal house.

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Our backyard is a fairly typical 10ft x 16 feet wide (the width of the house) and doesn’t have any soil, just paving.

When I first moved here, on my own 12 years ago, this was my first garden and I fondly imaged that I would prove to be a keen gardener, despite never having shown a flicker of interest before. In fact I remember on first meeting the people who were eventually to become my in-laws, shortly after I moved, proudly talking about my ‘interest’ in gardening, lol.

My Garden Clutter

Over the years I seemed to have collected a lot of pots (as the only means of growing plants), in part from my now in-laws full of plants but also my own annual spring burst of enthusiasm: a triumph of hope over realism.

Most died due to a combination of summer neglect and a massive snail and slug problem. I finally admitted to my self that the idea of me being a gardener   and collecting all the paraphernalia that comes with such an interest was typical aspirational hording!

I’ve stopped pretending.

Fortunately, my husband seems to have developed an interest in the garden in the last year or two but he has bought all his own pots to suit his fruit tree passions. So we’re left with a plethora of spare pots that won’t get reused.

A few weeks ago, we had a typical British trigger for de-cluttering the garden – a weekend of spring sunshine! While he happily tackled vigorous pruning I felt the urge to declutter.

Pots gone via Freecycle

My husband is never keen on de-cluttering and seemed resistant at first to the idea, but I was greatly surprised how many he was able to let go of: I did my usual, “you c
an keep as many as you like, but let’s go through them one by one and just give me a quick yes or no as to whether you can let it go”.

By removing the stress by ensuring he understood I wouldn’t be pressuring him or disapproving of his choices he said “yes it can go” to nearly every one.

To the right is a picture of many of the pots we got rid of via freecycle that weekend

How’s the clutter in your garden?

Never fear all you book lovers out there, I am not going to once again nag you into relinquishing books today. This post is about the accumulation of reading materials other than books.

Reading materials are another form of clutter that tends to accumulate around the house, in racks and on benches, tables and floors. Magazines, newspapers, sales catalogues… There is no reason why most of these can’t immediately go in the recycling bin once read. Particularly the newspapers and sales catalogues.

Quite frankly though in the age of modern technology there is no need to even acquire these reading materials in the first place. You can read the news on-line. Web sites like Pinterest or Taste.com have all the links to inspiration one needs in the way of helpful hints, home decorating and cooking. All other topics can also be found at numerous other web sites as can most retail outlets’ specials of the week. So there really is no need for trees to fall, ink to be wasted, money spent or clutter to build up in the pursuit of something to read.

That being said some people still like a good old fashioned hard copy of these articles in their hot little hands. However, even in that case, by the end of the day the newspaper is full of old news and can go in the recycling bin. And hopefully I have convinced most of you that sales catalogues are best put straight in the recycling bin if you can’t find a way to stop them coming in altogether.  Now that just leaves magazines.

Magazines are often the tricky periodicals that people tend to cling to. They come in every subject available from craft to fashion to hunting to smut and gossip. Personally I think that paper and ink is totally wasted on the smut and gossip mags, however I can understand people wanting to indulge in a little reading on other topics of interest.

The problem begins when we convince ourselves to keep our magazines with the intention of looking back at articles, recipes and the like. I have done this myself in the past. I found though that what happened was I ended up with so many magazines that the thought of ploughing through them all, for just the right project, information or article, was so much bother that I gave up before I began. I knew the information I wanted was in one of those magazines but what a task. Had I bothered to put a data base together with a list of all articles I am interested in the task would have been easier. But once again putting that data base together would be a job and a half itself.

Then there is the idea of clipping articles but once again my experience is that those clippings also have to be filled somehow and nine time out of ten I never bothered to look back at them. On reflection I think it is a much better choice to scan articles, recipes etc of interest, save it to your computer under a folder name of like subject with a file title making it easy to identify at a later date. Then recycle, donate or pass on your copy for someone else to enjoy. If you don’t have a scanner perhaps a photograph will suffice.

Personally I choose not to purchase magazines at all these days. My subject of interest was usually cooking or craft. These days I just use my search engine of choice to find what I want quickly and easily on the internet. At least then I don’t have a huge collection of aspirational clutter wasting space in my kitchen or craft room.

Today’s Mini Mission

Reading materials are another thing that end up accumulating around the house, in racks and on benches, tables and floors. Magazines, newspapers, specials catalogues… There is no reason why most of these can’t immediately go in the recycling bin once read.

Eco Tip for the Day

Consider subscribing to digital copies of newspapers and magazines so as to save on paper and publishing.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

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

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.

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

You may love to cook or you may hate it. No matter how you feel about cooking, I bet you have at least 6 cookbooks, and I’m certain that someone reading this blog today has at least sixty cookbooks. They’re fun to look at, fun to collect, fun to page through and dream with. But let’s be realistic: they’re also expensive, easy to ignore, and hard to declutter.

Prior to December 2009, I probably had two dozen cookbooks, and I don’t think I’d ever gotten rid of one that I owned. I just added to the pile; I loved them. When we remodeled our kitchen, I had a special bookshelf made just for them; it took up the majority of the storage space at my kitchen desk. Then my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes, and I knew our diets had to change. There were foods I was probably never going to make again, and I decide to get rid of cookbooks without mercy. I thought I would be heartbroken; I thought I might cry.

Prior to purging them, I decided that I would look through each one and photocopy those recipes that I could not live without. In the end, I had paged through all those books - all those treasures - and I copied fewer than 10 recipes. Ten! What an insight! The books that I loved and cherished were, in truth, almost worthless to me!

After the purge, I still owned a Cooking Light Slow Cooker book (because the recipes are good and because it contains the nutritional information I need), a Better Homes and Garden plaid cookbook (because I thought it would be wise to hang onto a basic book) and my own recipe binder. Later, I realized that I truly missed Horn of the Moon Cookbook, and I “borrowed” it back. (Thanks Lisa!)

Now I had far fewer cookbooks, but still there was a special shelf dedicated to them, taking up precious space at my kitchen (only) desk.  What a waste of space! I was trying to carry on the majority of the family business at a desk with just one shallow drawer, and here was a big gaping hole below. And, of course, it was getting junked up. Although not everyone has the same luxury I did in this situation, my kitchen cabinets were custom made, so I had drawers made. Two beautiful, spacious, useful drawers, which improved my desk situation 100%. I moved a couple of rarely-used oils into the pantry and put the cookbooks in the narrow cabinet between the vent hood and the wall.

Photo on Left: The hole where the cookbooks were stored has now been replaced with two useful drawers, so new that they still need paint. This space was 24 inches deep, 30 inches wide, and 18 inches high (12,960 square inches). Photo on Right: Cindy's cookbook collection can now be stored in a narrow cabinet, 13 inches deep, 9 inches wide, and 15 inches high (1,755 square inches). Now that is a whole lot of reclaimed space.

Next week I’ll discuss how I manage to be a from scratch cook without a storepile of cookbooks, but in the meantime, I want you to consider what you could do with the extra space you’d gain if you purged your cookbooks.

Today’s Declutter Item

I do have one or two cookbooks still to declutter but they need to be processed first. So today I offer this Art School book instead. I have already taken it to the thrift shop and it was already sold by the end of my shift.

One more book gone

Something I Am Grateful For Today

I am grateful in advance for the weather holding out until my sheets are dry. I am hoping that my powers of positive thinking will make this a reality.

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

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

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 for our mini missions we are going to do a little aspiration decluttering. You know the things I am talking about. Those items you aspire to using one day but that day never comes. Why not be realistic and ease the pressure on yourself. Maybe by eliminating seven of those items it will free your mind to actually rekindle an old interest or take up something new you really will enjoy.

Choose something to eliminate each day from my suggestions below or come up with your own ideas.

Monday – A craft or hobby supply item.

Tuesday – A project that you started long ago but have never completed.

Wednesday – A gadget you bought to perform a function that rarely or never gets used.

Thursday – An item of clothing that you promise yourself is going to fit you again some day.

Friday – A piece of sporting equipment that, if you are really honest with yourself, you are not likely to use again.

Saturday – A recipe book that you haven’t made anything out of in years.

Sunday – Perhaps you have some pet supplies in the garage or shed that you no longer have the pets for. You keep telling yourself you will get another pet one day but in reality you like the freedom of not having to take care of them and of being able to up and go whenever you like and not have to find a carer while you are away.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Today’s Declutter Item

My declutter item of the day and the What am I quiz answer from Saturday is a three inch tall figure of Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls animated television series. She was given to me by some friends I worked with in the USA because she has the same hair as me. Or maybe they thought, like her, I was capable of amazing feats. Sounds right either way. 😆 She has been standing on a storage system in my craft room for years but I rarely look at her. I do however often think of my old friends so clearly I don’t need her to remind me of them. Out you go little redheaded wonder child.

Powerpuff Girl (Blossom) Toy Figure

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Blossom reminds me of how grateful I am that no matter where I have gone in my life I have always made wonderful friends. Friends that I will remember forever. Each place I have lived there has been at least two very special people that have graced my life. Although we usually lose touch over time if we ever run across each other again it is like we have never been appart. I am very fortunate!

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

In the spirit of optimism I was anticipating a jump in Australian readers today due to my live-to-air radio gig on Nightlife with Tony Delroy on ABC radio last night. If that is the case I would like to extend a hearty…

…to those new readers and I hope you will find my blog informative, helpful, friendly and at times maybe even a little entertaining.

Aspirational clutter is any items that you aspire to using one day but one day never seems to come or items you used to use and “intend” to use again, but that never seems to happen. This could include…

• Craft/hobby supplies that you used to enjoy using but haven’t touched in ages.
• Bits and pieces of things that you swear you are going to make something out of. For example computer parts.
• The broken down old car in the back yard that has been sitting there for years.
• A shelf full of cookbooks that are only gathering dust while you cook the same old favourites that you know the family loves and you could make with your eyes shut.
• Books piled up on shelves that you read years ago and keep for the day you are inspired to read them again.
• That boat in the shed that has been rotting away while waiting for you to retire by the lake.
• Sporting equipment for a sport you think you might want to take up again when you have more time.
• Clothes you will fit into again when you lose that 20lbs you gain when 5 year old Johny was born.

…all of which are likely to be one or all of the following ~ out of date, out of fashion, perishing, collecting dust, wasting space and worst of all causing you angst.

When these items come into your field of vision they usually make you cringe either because of the money you have wasted on them, the disappointment in yourself for not living up to your own expectations or frustration from not having the time or energy to devote to them and knowing that you probably never will. In some cases these items represent an interest that although you had an idea to dabble in you really didn’t have the aptitude for.

My first advice is don’t be too hard on yourself and also don’t ever let this situation deter you from aspiring to other dreams in the future. My second piece of advice is to make a calculated choice as to what unsettles you the most, the thought of decluttering these items or thought of continuing to live with them cluttering up your home. What is greater, the chance that you are never going to use them or the chance that you are going to regret getting rid of them? Can you perhaps downsize your collection and see how you feel about that rather than getting rid of it all in one fell swoop.

If you find yourself on the fence, so to speak, not able to make a decision one way of the other perhaps it’s time to enlist the opinion of those close to you. Your wife may have been biting her tongue for months/years waiting for you to remove that eyesore from the back yard. You husband is secretly delighted that you might finally declutter your craft supplies and free up some space so he can reconfigure his well used office area. The kids will be so relieved that all that junk is out of the garage and they can get in and out of the car without worrying about scratching the paint on the doors. The thought that one choice could bring pleasure to someone you love may just make the decision a whole lot easier.

Finally, if you do decide to declutter don’t be too hard on yourself, don’t dwell on guilt, regret or disappointment. Rejoice in the fact the you have added tranquility to your surroundings, relief from unfulfilled aspirations and the freedom to open your mind up to new pursuits. With a little effort you may be able to find a new owner for you stuff who will immediately use and enjoy the gifts you bestow on them.

The lesson for the future is to try before you buy next time. Make sure you are ready, willing and able to enjoy the next pursuit you aspire to before equipping yourself for it. And even when you are sure, make certain to only take on enough supplies/equipment to enjoy the pastime without it taking over your life and space.

Today’s Declutter Item

Some of these old records have been with me for thirty plus years and most of them haven’t been played for about twenty years. I am not sure why I have hung on to them for so long. I am sure most of them are available on CD or can be downloaded to iPod and lets face it we decluttered the record player back on day 150 of my challenge back on May 30 last year.

My Old Records

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Although I am writing this post in advance I know that today I am going to be grateful and relieved that my live-to-air radio experience is now in my past and that anxiety is out of the way for now. I hope that I have proved to myself I can handle a situation like that just in case I am called upon to do it again in the future.

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