There was a lot of chatter generated yesterday about an overabundance of plastic containers. It seems most of us still have an excess of these.

In a bid to reduce food items in both the fridge and pantry due to my long vacation and impending move late last year, I have become very efficient at catering, shopping and using up leftovers to the point where my need for plastic containers has become greatly reduce. I mostly shop for fresh produce, meat and dairy these days from which there is very little waste. Any leftovers are soon devoured.

I have also eliminated several baking items in my pantry. Because I only make dessert once a week, if that, there is no need for a plethora of ingredients to be stored in the panty. For starters, I managed for seven and a half years, living in America, using a combo of baking powder and plain flour rather than stocking self-raising flour so I decided that was good enough for here too. That eliminated one large canister in my pantry. We use rice much less these days too due to our lower carb eating choices so I reduced the amount I stored. Similarly ingredients such as desiccated coconut were so infrequently used I decided it could also go, along with several pasta varieties, chick peas, noodles and white sugar. Should I ever wish to make something with any of these ingredients I buy the smallest possible quantity so there is little or no leftovers, any of which I include in another recipe ASAP.

I also have a variety of glass mixing bowls that nest inside each other which can also be used of storing food. If I can make and store the item in the same bowl it also saves on washing up adding a little more efficiency and an element of eco friendliness. These bowls have lids, but if they didn’t I would opt for a plate to seal the food in rather than waste cling film.

Admittedly not having any children left at home has added greatly to this streamlining.

Is there an area in your life where efficiency would allow you to declutter?

Today’s Mini Mission

Start a trial separation of fashion accessories.

Eco Tip for the Day

Yesterday I cleaned all the glass doors on my balcony. What did I use to do that? Microfibre cloths and water. No chemicals and they are as clean as a whistle. A few good microfibre cloths and good old H2O is better for the environment and can save you cash as well.

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.

Some items that clutter up our home are items that aren’t unused individuals but similar items that we use but just have too many of. This weeks overall mission is to start a trial separation from some of these items to see if we really need so many or can happily live without some. So find yourself a box to store these items in, gather them up and put this away somewhere for a while. If you find you don’t retrieve them in a month or two then it is probably safe to declutter them permanently.

Monday – Start a trial separation of plastic kitchen storage containers.

Tuesday – Start a trial separation of fashion accessories.

Wednesday - Start a trial separation of costume jewellery items.

Thursday - Start a trial separation of stationery items.

Friday - Start a trial separation of kitchen gadgets.

Saturday - Start a trial separation of your lease favourite clothing items.

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

Save the water in the kitchen sink while rinsing items. Then bail it out and use it on your potted plants or garden.

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

Today’s Decluttered Item
Paperwork no longer necessary to keep.

Sorry about the delay in today’s post. I think I caused to problem by forgetting to give the page a title. Alls fixed now.

Doodle asked yesterday…

“If someone came to you for help, what 3 top tips would you give them to get them started (decluttering) and how would you sell the knock on benefits of a de-cluttered life to others in less than three sentences?”

Here are my answers…

1. Start with the easiest stuff to part with first and don’t be in a hurry. Take your time and make it easy on yourself. Be satisfied in knowing the stuff is heading out the door and it doesn’t need to be immediately obvious.
2. Set your disposal methods in place before you begin. Find a charity nearby you can donate to and brush up on selling methods that work for you.
3. Stop the flow of stuff coming in.

How to sell the knock on benefits…

Freeing up your space, time and effort is enough on its own but being free from the consumer rat race is one of the best knock on effect of decluttering that I can think of. The money saved to go towards things that really matter.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something hiding behind something. Behind a door for instance.

Eco Tip for the Day

Share and loan with family and friends things not don’t use often enough to own/store. (Spices, tools, kitchen gadgets…)

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

One of our long time regular readers Doodle has kindly agreed to help out here at 365 by writing a blog post for me every other Wednesday. Today is her first regular post although not the first she has contributed. She has become quite the expert on the subject of decluttering over the years and I am sure you will all be able to learn a lot from her. Welcome Doodle and thank you for your contributions, past, present and future.

Owning your life skill

The biggest reason I owned too much stuff, was I just never realised I didn’t have to. It was as simple as that: getting rid of stuff as a regular proactive life choice had just never occurred to me.

The realisation I could be happier with much less came gradually. Now, the more I get rid of, the more I look to pare back even further and it brings a deep satisfaction that this is the way I’m meant to live. (Fortunately I’m no minimalist longing for bare white walls: my husband is a bit of a hoarder so I am always going to have walls filled with his books.)

Knowing you don’t have to keep everything you’ve ever owned is a life skill in my opinion. Some of us learn this sooner and some of us later and like all life skills, the fact it is ok to let go of stuff can be taught and learned.

We don’t have to be trapped for ever in being overwhelmed by excessive belongs…how good is that!

So those of you who have been de-cluttering for a while now, do you realise you are honing an excellent life skill that you are not only benefitting from yourself, but can pass on to others?

After all I have learned about de-cluttering in the last 3 years I found myself naturally helping a few family and friends who’d got a bit overwhelmed.

It became apparent that I have a knack of helping in just the right way and they all encouraged me to do it professionally. So now I do. I love it so much.

If someone came to you for help, what 3 top tips would you give them to get them started and how would you sell the knock on benefits of a de-cluttered life to others in less than three sentences?

Today’s Mini Mission

 Declutter something hanging on your wall.

Eco Tip for the Day

Take the stairs instead of the lift. The exercise is good for you and you save electricity. I have to remember this myself instead of walking past the stairs, that are right outside my apartment door all the way across the building to the life. I may actually hardly be using any extra energy by taking the stairs. Silly me.

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.

I left it to the last minute yesterday to write todays missions. In fact I almost forgot because we were busy celebrating a family member’s birthday. So for my own sake and for a little fun I decided to keep it simple. Placement is the theme of today’s mission – in, under, on and behind. See if you can find something in each of the places I mention. It shouldn’t be hard because they are broad with choice.

Monday – Declutter something under a piece of furniture. The bed is often a good place to look.

Tuesday – Declutter something whose purpose is to wrap around something. Perhaps a belt, a set of sheets, and old scarf, excessive rubber bands…

Wednesday – Declutter something hanging on your wall.

Thursday – Declutter something hiding behind something. Behind a door for instance.

Friday – Declutter something from inside a cupboard.

Saturday – Declutter something in a drawer.

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

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

I have spoken about this subject before on 365 Less Things, however, having just moved, I am finding it necessary to do a little more of it. Things have become a little scattered during my move. Mainly due to the fact that rooms have been eliminated from my options of where and how to store things. The office space/craft area/parents retreat has turned into the office space/craft closet/guest bedroom. The laundry/third toilet/storage closet has become the laundry closet. The kitchen/family room/dining/living room/entry with cupboard has become the living room/kitchen/dining room. And needless to say there are a lot less walls to hang our art and photos on.

Call me strange but I am having a fun time bringing like things together and eliminated bits and pieces of stuff that just aren’t fitting well into our new smaller home.

Functionality within a home very much depends on the ease of use. Eliminating things that just get in the way and the bringing together of similar items makes it simpler to find what you need and to get your hands on them quickly. How often have you given up on the idea of an activity because it is all to hard to find what you need and/or to dig it out from among all the other stuff.

Today I was reshuffling my craft supplies in the guest room cupboard. My objective was to make them easier to access when my creative juices were flowing. I have a number of craft cubes that can be arranged in several ways. I has a plan to insert some of the spare shelves so that containers were separated rather than awkwardly stacked on top of one another. Aside from the physical action of reshuffling the items and inserting the shelves a little decluttering was required. It was only a little but it made a huge difference. I decluttered two bobbins (which didn’t even work in my machine) making it possible to declutter the bobbin holder. This small effort made it possible to minimise the space required for my sewing kit which in turn made it possible to reshuffle everything.

The lesson is that even a small declutter, in the way of consolidating and refining, can make a big difference to the functionality in your home. So never underestimate the effect of a small amount of effort or change.

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

Hi there. Just a quick post today to say welcome to any new readers scouring the internet for suggestions of New Years resolutions.

I have one for you ~ Resolve to declutter one thing a day for a whole year. It isn’t hard but it sure is effective if your house is currently cluttered.

For those of you who have been decluttering for a while set a decluttering resolution that suits where you are at with your mission to unclutter.

My resolution this year is to get rid of anything that doesn’t fit comfortably into my lovely new little two bedroom apartment. I am loving it here and the only thing that will make it better is to trim down my stuff a little further. Join me on my journey and be inspired to let go what you don’t use or love.

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

A Guest post by Doodle

Some of things we tend to hang on to for long after they are no longer needed is an excess of crockery and towels and bed linen.

An older member of my extended family still has enough pots, pans and crockery to feed an army, yet hasn’t fed anyone other than her husband and herself at home for years. The excess means she can’t keep the things she uses regularly in the most easy to reach place for her with her increasing lack of agility and will make moving should they need to for health reasons a lot more work and bring a lot more decision making at a difficult time.

I see this in other households I visit too.

Hanging on to how things ‘used to be’ can happen very easily. It’s worth taking time to regularly review your life and how you really live it rather than aspire to live it.

Perhaps it is time for you to review the life you actually have now?

 A few years ago I did this with crockery and came to the following conclusions that were right for us:

1. We don’t entertain at home and it was time to acknowledge we don’t, and that is ok. I think I still felt entertaining was something that ‘normal’ people did and therefore I aspired to it without any heart for it. The reality is, I meet my girlfriends in town for lunch, family are too far away and we have defaulted to friends who don’t do dinner parties either. Offering tea and cake is enough, or soup and bread.

2. We default to being a bit lazy and the more dishes we have, the larger the pile of dirty dishes can become (we don’t own a dishwasher) because we just select the next clean plate.

3. Our lodger has their own supply of crockery and doesn’t need to be considered in our equation.

So I drastically downsized two years ago and we haven’t missed any of it and we are forced to keep on top of our washing up which pleases me very much 

This is our entire supply of crockery for me and my husband and can be seen in the photo:

2 large plates 2 small plates 2 pudding/soup bowls 2 pasta bowls 2 spare mugs for visitors 2 mugs each (when we break one each they won’t be replaced) I also use the smallest one as a rice measure) 2 beer glasses (when 1 breaks it won’t be replaced), 1 wine glass (I don’t drink alcohol) 2 medium glasses and 2 small 200ml glasses. 2 small wooden serving bowls made from local woodland by a friend as a wedding gift.

On the very rare occasions I may need to offer a visitor or two a small meal, they can use our dinner plates an we’ll use the pasta bowls (or if it is a pasta meal, the other way round)

This is our entire towel and bed linen collection:

Towels: Tiny travel towel (about the size of a face cloth that absorbs all the water when you wipe your self down after a shower) 2 bath towels each 2 hand towels 2 towel turbans for hair drying for me. (One of each above in use, one in the weekly wash. Spare set when dry kept folded on shelf in bathroom)

Bed linen: One spare set of duvets covers (we have a single duvet each rather than share a double duvet – this makes for a much better night’s sleep for our individual sleeping styles),

One spare super king fitted sheet and one set of spare pillow cases.

Kept in little wheeled storage unit under our bed with a spare double duvet for occasional extreme cold weather.

One spare set, for a visitor, kept in sealed bag in attic along with duvet, 2 pillows & single folding visitor’s bed. Last used 3 years ago. I am thinking of downsizing this to just the bed and borrowing linen in the extremely unlike event we have an overnight visitor.

I love this simplicity and our space saving choices. They suit us. They will not suit everyone.

Are there any changes you can make to how many spares you have? And if you are saving excess spares for ‘once a year’ events, is it possible to borrow for those occasions?

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a few magazines from you collection that you haven’t returned to in a long while.

Eco Tip for the Day

 Create a pocket in the day to witch off the technology devises and television for a while. Not just for the peace and quiet but also to cut down on your electricity usage.

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

We all are taught that perfection does not exist. What we fail to do is to believe that. I don’t really know about the rest of the world, but I am tired of seeing in all places the evidence of how imperfect I am. It is hard to avoid. You would have to live in an isolated island not to feel how your lack of perfectionism is ruining your life. They say it about the way you keep your house, care for your kids, live your marriage (?) (saw this one in a magazine)…Oh how life would be great…But not.

Let’s talk for example about decorating and de-cluttering:

How can I have a perfectly de-cluttered, decorated house? That is an easy one: by not living in it.

I have been reading de-cluttering blogs for a long while now. And all of them, at one point or another, have talked about perfectionism. Even here it has been mentioned a few times.

So where am I going with this talk? First, there is no such thing as perfection. Believe that, it is real. The reality for me is that, in de-cluttering and in housecleaning I have three categories: nice, great and YAY. I don’t have to clean for a week! Not perfect, not eligible to be photographed for a designing magazine. Just my house clean and uncluttered to my standard. For a while at least my trouble was I wanted perfection, I always aimed for it. Sometimes I felt like Lord Farquaad from Shrek (the first one) who wanted a perfect castle, and a perfect village and a perfect princess wife. His words were “I want order! I want perfection!”. He ended being married to an ogress and being eaten by a dragon. So much for perfection.

I did learn that wanting perfection leads to doing nothing. I was frustrated, wishing for that picture perfect house on so and so internet site, all the while I had a whole cluttered house suffocating me because I wanted to clean them up…perfectly. It accumulated. I did not clean or fix things because I had to do it all at once and perfectly. And there is another catch right there: to do everything perfectly we have to do it all at once. But there is never enough time. I certainly never had that much time available. And when I did I was too lazy to do it all, it was too much. And I always gave myself the excuse that (we rent) but when I moved to MY house, then things would be perfect.  I had other stuff to do instead of de-cluttering. Play with the kids. Go out with the husband. Chat with  friends on Skype. I didn’t want to spend hours and hours cleaning, sorting, de-cluttering, just to have a perfect house. I wanted to live.

As it has been said before and will be said again. Ditch perfection. Do what you can, when you can. Get one thing done or just get something done. And good is great. If you do a good job on time, you are way ahead than if you aimed for a perfect job that never got delivered. Like models, the perfect made up houses that are pictured in magazines and design sites, are really that: made up models. I have recently looked at pictures from a décor magazine and I saw huge, spectacular houses there, beautifully decorated. They were great, but all I could think about was: “Who is going to clean all that?” And lately: “I bet they have a full time maid to have that much stuff and a perfect house…”. So, I realized perfection has a price I am not willing to pay.

To quote a new singer/comedian in a interview about her new CD: “If we keep thinking about what we could do better  we’d never do anything. The things we do are imperfect, it’s part of human nature.” And that is the beauty of it.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a few shades of eyeshadow, lipstick or nail polish that you rarely if ever use.

Eco Tip for the Day

When racing off to the grocery store to pick up something you need phone a friend or neighbour to see if they need anything while you are at it. You make save them a trip.

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

About a month back Michaela, in response to the post Memeories Are Not Stuff,  left this comment…

“This week I sold one of my American Girl dolls. My grandmother had bought her for me, I had gotten different outfits with extra cash back in the day. I took good care of her, and then she stayed in my closet for years. The other day at work I overheard a lady I know talking about getting one for her granddaughter for Christmas, but she was sad how expensive they were. I immediately offered to sell her my doll. Yesterday when I took her in all the ladies fawned over what great condition she was in and all her little outfits. They questioned me getting rid of her. Like I told them, I have two boys and the thought of her getting a little girl to play with was a good enough reason to finally let her go. Plus I made some money LOL. Sure I could have gotten all sentimental and kept her, but there was probably an inch of dust on the box. While she held memories, she wasn’t being cherished or loved. It was time for her to move on . . . and me to grow up. I still feel pretty good about it, so maybe I’ll finally part with my other one too . . .”

What a lovely story. Thank you Michaela for sharing it with us.

Have you ever found yourself in this position like Michaela did where the opportunity spontaneously presents itself that helps you let go of a once loved item that you may otherwise have held onto. An object collecting dust in your home. It has happened to me several times during my decluttering mission. It is so much easier to pass an item on when you know that it is going to bring joy to someone else.

So keep your ears open for these opportunities and when they present themselves embrace them wholeheartedly and share the joy while you declutter.

Today’s Mini Mission

People collect all sorts of things and often when others get wind of this they gift you similar items . if you have such a collection perhaps you could stand to declutter some parts of the whole that you don’t particularly love.

Eco Tip for the Day

If you can’t resist the temptation for hanging Christmas lights use a timer to limit the number of hours they twinkle for.

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