I am Australian and my give-away for today is a barbecue. If you are from another country you may wonder what is unusual about being Australian and giving away a BBQ, so I will explain.

Just about  every household in Australia has a BBQ, because of our climate we are a very outdoorsy kind of people. When friends come around for a meal the normal procedure is to “chuck a steak on the barby”. Personally though I would rather cook a nice roast dinner, a spicy curry or maybe make gourmet pizza and as a result our BBQ has not been used for the last three years since we took it our of storage after an extended period of living overseas.

The moral of this story is, just because everyone else seems to have one doesn’t mean you have to. There are people out there who don’t have cell phones, computers, bicycles, cars or even televisions and they survive very well.

So no matter what it is, if you aren’t using it now, you probably never will so pass it on to someone who might get some use out of it.

So today I am going to wheel my BBQ out to the street (I live a a fairly busy road) and I am sure it will probably be gone within an hour. I will update this post to let you know how long it took to disappear.

I put the BBQ out at 9:00am and it rained for about an hour. I went out at about 10:00am to see if it was still there, a car was parted nearby and a man was looking at the BBQ. I went out again at 11:30 and it was gone.

I bet there isn’t one of you out there that doesn’t have a pile or two of magazines somewhere in your home that have some really interesting articles, pictures, recipes… so you are reluctant to part with them. I know I do.

I was an avid scrapbooker for some time while living in the Untied States and as magazines subscription are so cheap over there I didn’t hesitate to have a few. As these are reference material they never really go out of date and I have often looked back through them when trying to came up with ideas when creating my scrapbook pages.

Needless to say they do tend to pile up over time and even though I have been good and eliminated some as I decided I could do without them I still have several years worth of about four different subscriptions. Granted I do store them neatly on shelves in my craft room in binders using magazine hangers but they take up precious space.

The fact of the matter is though that I haven’t looked at them for about two years and I don’t do that much scrapbooking anymore so it is now difficult to justify their existence. I am not ready to part with them all though so I am going to approach this purge in stages.

Today I am going to eliminate one binder which is two years of one subscription that I didn’t enjoy as much as others. I am not going to waste time and risk giving myself second thoughts about this by looking through these magazines to make sure there aren’t any lame reasons why I should keep them I am just taking them out of the binders and putting them in the donation box.

For some people you may want to tear out articles and store them in a binders or boxes so you can refer back to them. Others may utilise your computer to scan items before throwing away your magazines. There are so many great graphics programs out there so you can arrange the articles you want with great creativity using tags to make it easy to find what you are looking for when you do need to reference this information.

Use the 365lessthings approach and just eliminate one today if that is all you are willing to part with and then perhaps another next week. You might find you start to become more ruthless at culling once you set yourself on that path. Give it a shot!

This in my pile I am discarding today. I may revisit my binders again very soon and find some more I really can live without.

It can be very helpful to read about other peoples experiences with de-cluttering their homes. There are so many helpful tips out there on the big Wide World Web and I will explore more of them and add some more links on my page as I find time.

I have noticed while reading a few over the last couple of days that the biggest mistake for most people is setting to0 high goals. I believe, one day at a time, one room at a time, one drawer at a time are often goals easier reached and less daunting to consider.

Do what works for you and if something looks too much to handle move to another area that you feel more comfortable with. Some days you will be keener than others tackle the big jobs then.

Today while writing my blog I scanned my craft area knowing that there must be something there that could go. I found an old binder  with school photos in. I have three perfectly good photo archive boxes that these photos could easily fit in, so I moved the photos to there and have put the binder in the donation box. Now I have a nice space where I can put the birthday card file that has been crammed somewhere else untidily for months.

On January 15th my give-away for the day was wedding invitations that I made for a friend’s daughter’s wedding. My husband said that was a cop out and not really purging anything yet I thought this was one of my best donations yet. You see I have a lot of papercrafting items such as tools, cardstock , paper, adhesive, embelishments…. but I really haven’t been doing a lot of papercrafting lately.

I have previously made the invitations for the engagement party and when I was asked to do the wedding invitations I thought what a great oportunity to contribute to their special event and purge some of the supplies I had sitting useless in cupboards and drawers.

This generous offer of time, effort and supplies made me feel good not only because of the purge but because I have saved the couple quite a few dollars as well and enjoyed the creative outlet.

Don’t forget the object of this exercise of 365 less things. The contribution doesn’t have to be big it just has to be everyday to make a difference.

Today’s object was another item we sold on eBay.

The idea behind 365 less things is not only to rid our home of clutter but also not to replace that clutter with new clutter. I like to refer to it as “dematerialise”, that is to stop being a victim to the constant materialistic urge to keep up with the Jones or use “retail therapy” to put joy into my life.

I am now getting lots of joy sending things out to other homes that might need it more than I do and saving my hard earned cash to use where I feel I get more satisfaction, like travelling or going out for a nice meal somewhere special or paying off the mortgage quickly. These things may not appeal to you but maybe your old car isn’t going to last much longer and you keep thinking you can’t afford to replace it but at the same time you just spent $100 on that new blouse at Country Road and picked up the latest Bryce Courtney Novel you had been meaning to read. There goes $135 you won’t get back and you most likely couldn’t fit another item of clothing in your overstuffed closet and you could have borrowed the book from the library for free.

Think before you spend “Need, want, need, want” which is it and make the smart choice.

Today two pair of sneakers found their way to the garbage bin. Soon we won’t have to stack shoes on top of each other in the shoe cupboard.