A Simple Saturday Post by Cindy

The thrift store has been quite the topic of conversation this week, hasn’t it? Today I want to look at it from another perspective – completing the circle. If you only donate to the thrift store, and never shop there, you are not completing the circle. Now, for those of you who already like to shop in thrift stores, this is not permission to run out and purchase willy-nilly “because Cindy says it’s a good idea.” No, no, no! The idea behind my list is to give you an idea of all the really great stuff there is available in this world that you can purchase used, without calling on the earth’s resources to manufacture new, and you’ll save yourself a lot of money in the process, as well. Here is a partial list of non-new items in my house, and where I acquired them. As Colleen said earlier this week, I always look to buy used first.

• 90% of my clothing, 80% of my husband’s clothing, and almost 100% of the children’s clothing are second hand, except for their school uniforms, which are a mixture of new and used, depending on what’s available in the uniform closet. (Thrift stores, EBay, and my youngest gets hand-me-downs from her sister and from her sister’s friend.)
• Both girls’ bedroom sets, including dressers, beds, and nightstands. (Craigslist)
• Three upholstered chairs, sofa, love seat, coffee table, and living room art. (Craigslist, thrift store, purchased from neighbor)
• Tile for kitchen backsplash (never used). (Craigslist)
• 16 foot sliding door (never used). (Craigslist)
• Two Anderson sliding glass doors (never used). (Craigslist.)
• A truckload of wood, now the ceiling of my screen porch. (Craigslist)
• Two bathroom sinks with faucets. (Craigslist)
• Wooden desk. (Garage sale)
• Swing set. (Handed down from neighbor.)
• Porch chairs. (Found during bulky trash pick up.)
• Kitchen light fixture. (Habitat Restore, which sells new and used building materials)
• Window for stairwell. (Habitat Restore.)
• Rug, sofa, and side table. (Furniture consignment store.)
• Dining room table. (Top and legs purchased separately at Habitat Restore and assembled by my husband.)
• Dining room chairs. (Craigslist.)
• Silver jewelry. (EBay)

There’s more, but that’s enough of a sampling. Nearly every piece of clothing and piece of furniture in this house was purchased second hand. The terrific find of the 16 foot door saved me almost $4000 over the cost of the same door new. I have lived lighter on the environment by purchasing used and second-hand goods, some of which were no longer in their factory container but were, in fact, still new.

It’s important to complete the circle, but remember, you don’t have to do your part and the part of four other people, as well. If shopping at garage sales or thrift stores is a temptation for you, shop with a list, or avoid those stores all together until you are able to control your impulses. Follow this list to make wise buying decisions (starting with “Do I need this item”) and then complete the circle by purchasing used.

I’m sure that some of you have all your recipes on-line and (could it be?) don’t have a cookbook of any sort in your house. Most of you, I know, have from some to many cookbooks plus a personal recipe file or binder. As I wrote last week, I have a couple of cookbooks, and I have a rather large recipe binder, which I use almost exclusively.

My binder is not a thing of beauty; however, it suits me perfectly. I made it from a 4″ binder, plastic sleeves, dividers, and colored paper, all of which I had in our office supply cupboard. My divisions are

1. Poultry
   

   My Recipe File

2. Beef
3. Pork
4. Vegetarian Entrees
5. Fish
6. Soup
7. Pizza, Tacos, Sandwiches
8. Hot Pasta
9. Cold Pasta, Salads
10. Veggie Sides, Grains, Beans
11. Breakfast
12. Cookies
13. Other Desserts
14. Appetizers, Sauces, Beverages

The recipes I have tried and want to make again are at the front of each section. Recipes I hope to make are stored behind these. I try to be brutal in deciding if a recipe is worthy of being added to the book. I hope to make any recipe that I clip from a magazine or newspaper within the next month, preferably within the next week; otherwise, it’s in danger of becoming aspirational clutter. In addition, I try to be honest about what I really will make. I am a successful and functional family cook. I am not a gourmand (or as we like to call them in the United States, I am not a “foodie.”)  While Chicken with Garbonzo Beans and Fennel may sound delightful, the truth is that in the last 48 years, I have never to my knowledge eaten fennel, and I am not likely to start now. To store the recipe would be to add aspirational clutter to my cookbook.

I use the on-line source allrecipes.com for the majority of my explorations into new recipes. I occasionally see a recipe on-line that I’d like to make and store it in the “recipe box” that All Recipes provides, but most of the time I make the recipe by reading it right off the computer. If I like it, it gets printed and stored in the binder. If not, I just shut down the computer.

It’s easy to pull recipes out of the newspaper and magazines, especially if you have a subscription to a cooking magazine such as Vegetarian Times or Cooking Light. Try to be realistic. Clipping more recipes that you can or will ever make adds clutter to your life and makes it harder, not easier, to make decisions about what to have for dinner. Most of us only make a handful of recipes over and over again. That’s okay. And if the occasion ever arises where you really are going to make Lobster Nurenberg or Châteaubriand, there are plenty of on-line guides, as well as the library, to help you get that special meal just right.

In addition, to my recipe binder, I have a separate list of a few meals that I can pull together very quickly, and I keep all the ingredients for these dishes on hand at all times. Being prepared in this way prevents a mad rush to the store or the take-away place when my afternoon doesn’t seem to allow for cooking (or when I just can’t get off my hind end). These foods are:

1.  I have a package of cooked chicken that has been diced or shredded in the freezer, as well as meal-size packages of ham. I also have a wide variety of frozen vegetables.
2.  Six can soup. I use frozen chicken, rather than canned, and add cumin and oregano to this basic recipe.
3. Tortillas with canned beans, cheese, and the frozen chicken.
4. Red beans and rice mix from the pantry cooked with sausage links from the freezer.
5. Canned chili accompanied by cornbread from a mix
6. Spaghetti Carbonara
7. Chicken a la King

Paper clutter is one that really bogs people down, and dealing with a bunch of unnecessary paper clutter at the same time that you’re trying to make a meal is just unnecessary. I challenge you to go to your recipe box right now and recycle 10 recipes that you know you’re never going to make. It’s okay. Let them go. There are millions and millions of delicious foods in this world. Ten recipes fewer aren’t going to keep you from a delicious life, but they could keep you from finding that recipe that you really do want.

Today’s Declutter Item

One of these cables belongs to something we don’t even own any more and the other has a US plug. So neither are of much use to us. These two will go in the trash as I think they will be of very limited demand or use here in Australia.

Unnecessary Power Cables

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Correct postage calculations on ebay sales. I love to go to the post office to mail off completed ebay actions and find the postage is exactly what I am expecting. Couple that with the fact that more stuff has left my house and I am a very happy lady.

“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

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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Welcome to my first post of 2012. I assume we have a crop of new readers and people who have vowed that this is the year they’ll get organized. Welcome, I say! If you’re new here, I highly recommend that you read Colleen’s guidelines for decluttering.

Typically I write a long post, but today I just want to give you hope on your decluttering journey. No matter what your circumstances, no matter who you live with, no matter how many children or pets or elderly parents you have, you can declutter a thing a day, one day at a time.

In 2011, I decluttered 1888 things, and I made $1126.75 plus another $1000 I bartered in repairs for my van when we decluttered (and did not replace) my husband’s car. As you can see, the benefits of decluttering are many.

For inspiration, I present to you photos of my daugther’s room. These first photos are just about as horrible as anything you can imagine, right? They were taken in September 2009, just before I hired a professional organizer for 3 hours to help me tackle the room.

These second photos were taken on December 26, 2011. I did nothing to prepare her room for the photos; this is how I found it.

To read more about the process of getting her room from chaos to control, you can read my post about it here. But, as you can seeing if you compare the “after” photos there to the “after” photos here, she has cleaned and decluttered her room even further in the subsequent 27 months.

My daughter is only 9 years old. If she can do it, you can too!

Here’s to our continued decluttering success in 2012!

Today’s Declutter Item

Since I no longer have a Christmas tree I won’t need a skirt for it. This declutter wasn’t as easy as you might think though. My mother made this tree skirt for me some years back so there was a little sentimental attachment. When I really thought about it, it was more of a guilt feeling of decluttering something that my mother put effort into making for me. Guilt isn’t a good reason to keep something as I am sure my mother would agree so I donated it to the thrift store.

Christmas Tree Skirt

Something I Am Grateful For Today

All the new subscriber that have signed up recently. I hope that my blog will give them the advice and encouragement they need to met their decluttering goals. 

“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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Cindy

I love New year’s resolutions, don’t you? Ok, most people really don’t love them, but I do. Because of them, I have (finally!) learned how to use chopsticks, and I (finally!) had a charity party that I’d been intending to have for 4 or 5 years.

And I have one for you this year: Less trash.

It makes me crazy to drive through my neighborhood and see people’s trash cans literally bursting out the top with trash. The City of Austin provides a choice of 3 cart sizes: 32 gallons, 64 gallons, and 96 gallons; each is more expensive than the size before it, although even the largest can is only $30 a month. Trash pick up is weekly. Most people have the middle size can. This is the one I often see stuffed to the top and more.

(For full disclosure: Everyone also has a 96 gallon recycling bin, which is picked up every two weeks. Any amount of yard waste can be put out weekly as long as it is in large paper sacks or trash cans that can be dumped. Yard waste may not be set out in plastic bags. The city has a fantastic program for recycling solid sewage waste and yard trimmings to produce compost, which is used at city-own buildings and parks and is also sold to the public.)

My family of four people and five animals produces a single bag of trash a week. One. Even when the children were little and wore disposable diapers, we only had two bags of trash a week.

How do we do this when others are brimming over? Frankly, I often ask myself how they could possibly have that much trash. It seems impossible to me, although obviously it’s not.

Here’s how I mange it: a place for everything and everything in its place.

I have a trash can in the kitchen, plus a little one in Dan’s office, each girls’ room, and in all four bathrooms. Except for the kitchen trash, the other ones only need to be emptied once a month or so. I have two recycling bins in the kitchen, one in Dan’s office, and one at the end of the hallway by all our bedrooms. I have a tiny compost bucket in the kitchen. I have a plastic bag recycling area in the pantry; metal recycling tub (small) under the kitchen sink; and a box for Styrofoam in the garage.

Yes, that’s a lot of containers, and yes, I do live in a fairly large house, but I did the same when I lived in smaller places.

All the food cans and bottles go into one of the bins in the kitchen. Paper recycling goes into the bin in the office. The basket at the end of the hall is for miscellaneous recycling generated in the bathrooms and bedrooms. The metal bin under the sink is for aluminum foil or any recyclable but non-can metal. Food scraps are dealt with in a number of ways: the compost bin is that last option. I feed leftovers from our plate to the dogs. The guinea pig gets vegetable and fruit trimmings. Fruit that the guinea pig doesn’t eat goes outside to feed the squirrels. (My 9 year old especially loves squirrels, so ours are well cared for.) In the end, only things like egg shells, banana peels, and tea bags end up in the compost bin. Even the cats’ litter is composted: I buy compressed pine pellets for their box and put the used litter in with the yard waste when it needs to be emptied. Since I know this waste will be mixed with sewage and yard trimmings, I don’t worry that there may be some cat feces remaining. The guinea pig’s pine shavings are dumped directly into the garden as mulch.

In addition, things you’re decluttering need a place to go so that they launch into their new life in the best way possible – a gift to a friend, a trip to the thrift store, sold on Ebay. One of the advantages of thing-a-day decluttering is that you have time to make wise choices. Reader Annabelle just packed up from Germany to come back to the US and said it was a breeze due to decluttering in advance, even though the movers came early. Like her, you don’t want to be in a panic at the last minute. That’s when waste occurs.

And remember, I’ve only talked about ways of diminimishing your trash by recycling. There’s a whole other side to this coin: Bringing less into your home. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

With anything you want to succeed with, you have to 1) have a plan and 2) a way of executing that plan. If you don’t have a convenient place to put your recycling, then it won’t get recycled. If you’ve got some recycling that has to be taken to the recycling center and can’t be put in your curb-side bin, then you need a place to store it. This is my New Year’s challenge to you: Can you cut down on your trash by 1/3? By 1/2? I bet you can. Let’s all take a deep breath and say our 2012 mantra together: Less.

Today’s Declutter Item

This is a classic example of if you keep stretchy things for too long unused they will perish. This piece of elastic tubing was something I had to exercise with when I was having back spasms which in turned caused me neck problems. Fortunately I haven’t suffered from that problem for some time now so it is now only good for the trash.

Elastic tubing for physiotherapy

Something I Am Grateful For Today

The pest man has been, the car is serviced, dinner dates are sorted, towels are washed. Things are coming together nicely around here. Hopefully that means that by Sunday all I will have to do is cook, eat, drink and be merry.

“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

The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer by Juliet B. Schor was published in 1998, but the information seems as relevant today as it did more than a decade ago. The book is geared toward middle and upper-income families, who seem to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, no matter who the Joneses are.

“The Joneses” are our first error, according to Dr. Schor. In the past, our Joneses (or reference group) would be our neighbors, who all lived in houses about like ours, drove cars similar to ours, and likely had two adults and only one income. However, Dr. Schor asserts that today, our reference group is no longer our neighbors, many of whom we do not even know. For many people, the new reference groups are our colleagues and coworkers, who may hold financially very dissimilar jobs to our own, and our media “friends” that is, the fictional people we see on TV and relate to. It’s not uncommon for someone making $50,000 to compare their financial prowess to someone making well over half a million.

Dr. Schor also discusses the brands and types of items we buy as a way that we identify ourselves and show our “place” in the complex world. In my peer group, nearly all my friends have iPhones (“regular” cell phones are no longer good enough for us) despite the fact that they cost a minimum of $70 per phone per month, in addition to the purchase price. Everyone has a laptop, including the kids, many of whom have their own iPhones, as well. (Often the model that their parents have already upgraded from.) Plenty of our friends go on overseas vacations regularly. Frankly, it’s a lot to think about keeping up with. I’ve had several conversations with my daughters reminding them that because they attend a private school, they are automatically surrounded by people with more money than is typical, and that a trip to Africa or Denmark is not something that most families take on an annual basis. (In fact, I dismissed one expensive private school, which really was out of my financial league, in part because a European school trip is mandatory for all high school students. I didn’t go to Europe until I was 33, and I’ve only been a two overseas trips total. I don’t want my child going to school where it’s thought that such an experience is a must for teens.)

Finally, Dr. Schor talks about “The Downshifter Next Door.” This chapter focuses on telling the stories of various individuals who have moved away fromconstant pressures to spend – from people are embracing voluntary simplicity to people who have made commitments to stop buying so many material goods and services. I think this is the group that most 365 Less Things readers are trying to become a member of.

The last chapter contains nine points to help turn this financial, emotional, and environmental quagmire around. They are:

1. Controlling Desire – Stay away from places where you’ll spend.
2. Creating a New Consumer Symbolism: Making Exclusivity Uncool
3. Controlling Ourselves: Voluntary Restraints on Competitive Consumption
4. Learning to Share: Both a Borrower and a Lender Be – Love this one and definitely practice it.
5. Deconstruct the Commercial System: Becoming an Educated Consumer
6. Avoid “Retail Therapy”: Spending is Addictive
7. Decommercialize the Rituals – Christmas is a religious and family holiday. Don’t let the mall tell you how it should be.
8. Making Time: Is Work and Spend Working? Cut back on your spending and maybe you can change how and where you work.
9. The Need for a Coordinated Intervention

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this discouraging thought - which to me especially embodies the politics of the state that I live in – although remember that knowledge is power:

“The intensification of competitive spending has affected more than family finances. There is also a boomerang effect on the public purse and collective consumption. As the pressures on private spending  have escalated, support for public goods, and for paying taxes, has eroded. Education, social services, public safety, recreation, and culture are being squeezed. The deterioration of public goods then adds even more pressure to spend privately. People respond to inadequate public services by enrolling their children in private schools, buying security systems, and spending their time at Discovery Zone rather than the local playgrounds. ” (p. 21)

By Cindy

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Perhaps you’re rushing about, buying some last minute gifts and stretching your brain to figure out what to purchase. Beware! There are gift buying pitfalls that you should avoid. They’re the route to clutter for the recipient and likely a waste of money for you. Read before you buy!

Trap One: Here Comes Another One, Just Like the Other One

Susie enjoys her subscription to Better Homes and Gardens, so she’d surely enjoy a subscription to Good Housekeeping as well. Leslie has a life-figures drawing book that she really enjoys. Surely she’ll enjoy another book and maybe an additional set of pens to go with it. The girls enjoy their set of wooden “paper” dolls, so I’ll get them another set, as well – maybe two because Look! How cute!

We are so easily swayed by this idea that if one is good, two is better, and three is best of all. Really? How about one is enough, two is too many, and three is way too many? I have a piece of garden art made by two local women that I absolutely love. I can see how it would be tempting to get me another piece – it seems like an easy way to a successful gift. But I love my piece. I think another would dilute the pleasure I regularly get from looking at this piece.

This is an especially easy trap to fall into if someone is a “collector.” How easy it is to buy yet another shot glass, Hummel figurine, or character salt and pepper shaker? Does the recipient really love these items, or has everyone gotten so used to giving them as gifts that it’s just become the thing to do?

Think twice before you purchase duplicate items.

Pitfall Two: The Thematic Gift

A theme-related gift can be the biggest mistake of them all. A girlfriend of mine is an avid gardener, and her sister gave her what must have been one the ugliest lamps ever with a garden scene as the base to commemorate her love of the out-of-doors. The sister was so pleased and excited, and my friend was so horrified that she lied and said that, sadly, the cat had knocked it over and broken it rather than confess that she’d returned the lamp as quick as she could.

A love of dogs does not equal the desire for a dog figurine. An enjoyment of travel does not equal an enjoyment of a souvenir t-shirt, especially one commemorating someone else’s travel.

Be careful when you follow the path of a theme; it’s easy to lose your way.

Pitfall Three: She loved it when she saw it at Franny’s house!

I love having fancy coffee drinks made by my friend Steve. But if Steve bought me a snazzy coffee maker like he has, I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I do the once-a-month coffee he makes for me. In fact, it’s the companionship of him making coffee for me that makes the coffee twice as good. Clearly, I couldn’t duplicate the experience at my house, yet how easy would it be to buy me this gift?

I think parents especially have a hard time avoiding this trap. I know I fell into it many times. Precious so loves playing with the fancy wooden dollhouse at the doctor’s office, that we buy her one for home. She loves the 10,000 Legos her friend has or the mini-trampoline, and we buy, buy, buy. But these toys are not nearly so enjoyed once they get to our house. Anyone else seen this movie?

It took me a long time to learn that it’s okay, even desirable, for there to be something you enjoy and not own it. That’s not part of our US culture, which tells us that if we like something, we should own it. But, really, it’s OK.

So, still have shopping to do? I may have just made your shopping trip more complicated, but I hope I’ve made your decision-making process a more successful one as well.

Today’s Declutter Item

These cards were all handmade samples from a card swap I used to participate in at one of the craft stores I worked in in America. They kept getting passed over in preference for other more suitable cards. I finally decided that they were never going to get used so I packaged them up and sent them off to the thrift store.

Craft Clutter Be Gone

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Jamie Oliver’s ~ My Favourite Curry Sauce.  C’est très bon.

“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

Cindy’s simple solution to cords and chargers out of control and either tangled on the desk top or snarled in the drawer. A great use for the over-abundance of plastic containers wasting space in your kitchen.

Cindy's Cord Control

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

We just passed Thanksgiving (in the US) and are coming up on Christmas and Hanukkah,  and I am willing to guess that December is the most heavily photographed month of the year. Well, last month, I spend an hour sorting through a huge box of photos and memorabilia. There were packets of organized photos from my college years, but beginning with my wedding (1997), nothing was organized, culled, etc. What a miserable experience!

"The photos that survived this culling and an outfit that was in box that belong to my Grandmother Clara."

Here are the things I learned:

1. If you don’t sort through your photos when you get them, it will not get easier 14 years later.
2. If you don’t label your photos, it will not get easier 14 years later.
3. If you’re not motivated to put your photos in albums now, you won’t be any more motivated in 14 years.
4. You will wonder why in the world you took certain photos. Did they once mean something to you?
5. You may experience a sharp, sad feeling of regret when you come across a lovely photo of yourself and someone who is no longer a part of your life.
6. Your digital camera takes far better pictures than your film camera ever did.
7. What in the world was the point of getting every photo printed in duplicate?

And the changes I will make in my photographing habits:

1. I will use my delete button much, much more.
2. I will transfer my photos into Picasa and label them when I download them, deleting more as necessary.
3. I will remember that just because I can take photos of every conceivable moment of an event, that doesn’t mean I should.
4. I will leave my camera at home at times so that I can fully appreciate the event with all my senses, not just through the lens of a camera.
5. I will take fewer photos of things and more photos of people.

I hope you have a great holiday season and that you use common sense with your camera. Remember, each photo you take is one that you have to process in some way. If you don’t, instead of preserving memories, you’re just creating clutter.

"The photos still to be sorted and more than 2 pounds of photos that went into the trash. These were mostly duplicates, lousy shots, and photos of people I did not (or did not want) to remember."

Today’s Declutter Item

I had another sweep through our paper files and found more out of date paper clutter. This is a task that requires attention on a regular basis. 

Paper Clutter ~ Decluttered & Recycled

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Last year, as a thank you gift, a friend gave me a blueberry bush. She knows I hate clutter so she gave me something lovely for the garden. Earlier in the season I replanted it into a lovely big pot I had picked up off the side of the road. I am so excited that is has grown so beautifully in its new location and I harvested my first crop this week. So, it was only two blueberries but they were juicy, sweet and delicious and I am expecting greater things from it next year. Thanks Jen for my lovely plant I am really enjoying watching it grow.

“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

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

What do all these things have in common?

• Buy (Red): 10 to 50% of the proceeds of which go to eliminating AIDS in Africa.
• Book Sale: 20% proceeds go to your child’s school!
• Would you like to buy some wrapping paper to support our band trip?
• How about a beautiful $200 beaded bracelets that supports JDRF? An undisclosed portion of the proceeds are donated to the organization.
• Rubber bracelets for sale for every cause possible. Typically $1 each.

Obviously, these are all ways of coaxing a donation out of you; that is, providing a rationalization for a purchase that you might not have otherwise made. A blunter way of saying it: These sales feed on people’s desires to get something back for their donation or circumvent our reluctance to make a donation in the first place.

The book sale example is from my own life just last month. My daughters’ school sponsored a book sale at a local book store, and 20% of the proceeds went back to the school. As you probably know, I rarely buy books and certainly not new books. But there I was, shelling out $65 for four children’s books. (Yikes! Thus reinforcing why I prefer the library.) The return on my investment to the school? $13.00. They would have been way better off if I’d just handed them $65. But, quite honestly, I wouldn’t have, because my husband and I just made a large donation to the school for our annual fund drive. The book fair was really fun – there were special readings and meet the author events, the honors orchestra (including my eldest) played, and it was a great opportunity to socialize. Also, a lot of the parents at our school do buy books and lots of them. I was surprised my friend G could even carry her basket of books it was so loaded up! Nonetheless, for me, it was really a moment of buying something I did not particularly want or need in order to make a donation to the school.

One of the things I like about our school fundraising gala, which happens in the spring,  is the “fund-a-need” auction. The Head of School selects something that the school needs (last year, a bus), and at the gala, you can bid in any amount toward the purchase of the need, but you get nothing in return except knowing that you contributed to the school.

Dan and I tithe bi-weekly to our church. The bottom of the form that we receive tallying our donations says something like “No goods or services were exchanged for these donations except spiritual ones.” I like that.

So next time you’re confronted with the opportunity or desire to buy something to support a charity ask yourself

1. Do I really want and need this item?
2. What portion of my sale is really going to the organization?
3. Wouldn’t this charity be better off if I just handed them the amount of money I intended on spending anyway?

Today’s Declutter Item

During my recent reshuffle of the garage due to space opening up on my shelving units I decided that this bin is really not needed. We don’t generate enough trash in the garage to warrant keeping it especially since the outside bin is so close by. That’s one more large item that isn’t taking up space.

One too many garbage bins

Something I Am Grateful For Today

My parents made it home safe and sound after their visit. It was a trying trip for them as my mum was really not well, but they are home now and can recuperate in the comfort of their own abode.

“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