R E C Y C L E         R E C Y C L E

R E C Y C L E

The Word for Today  is so simple yet so important. If you are not using something then it is just taking up space. There are so many ways to RECYCLE your unwanted goods that very little should go to waste.

• RECYCLE by giving things you don’t want to a charity, friends, family or even a casual acquaintance.
• RECYCLE by selling your items on through web sites like ebay or advertise in you local newspaper or through you work Intranet.
• RECYCLE by putting all unwanted items made of cardboard, paper, metal or recyclable plastic in your recycle bin. All those old tax papers, storage boxes, school papers etc fall into this category.
• RECYCLE by sending your old computer components to companies that dismantle, recycle and dispose of this items responsibly.
• RECYCLE by re-purposing an object. I used the fabric out of an old pair of my husbands jeans to make a patchwork calendar holder. My mother-in-law uses old fabrics to make handbags. You know I use old cardboard boxes to make my ebay packaging. An old teapot makes a lovely planter pot. This is just a drop in the bucket of ideas for re-purposing.
• RECYCLE by repairing items rather than throwing them away. Sew on a button, stitch up a hem, replace a hinge, put a new clasp on that old necklace you love, re-paint an object and give it a new lease on life. Take a class and learn a new skill you can use to carry out these tasks with ease. Hardware stores often offer free classes on household repairs and there are no end to the places in your local community where you can learn skills of all kinds.
• RECYCLE by googling. This may sound strange but there is so much you can learn with a little investigation on the Internet. Search for “How to repair…” or “Alternate use for…”  or “local charities” it is that easy.

So when it comes to RECYCLING your clutter the choices are endless so please don’t just send your unwanted items to landfill let someone else get the most out of them if you aren’t.

ITEM 177 OF 365 LESS THINGS

One more for the donation box

I want to lay down a challenge this week to all you readers out there.

THE CHALLENGE

Find at least 5 consumable items in your home that have been lingering on a shelf somewhere. My definition of consumable is something that can be depleted or worn out by use.  Concentrate on choosing these items over similar items you prefer to use until they are all used up and no longer cluttering up your home.

Possible reasons for lingering

• didn’t live up to expectation
• for some reason you just stopped using it
• just have so many of a similar item to choose from
• bought a similar item you like better
• Something from a pass-time you don’t do so much any more

Items examples that might come under the term consumable…

• Bottle of perfume
• Craft supply item
• Cleaning product
• Toiletries product (Shampoo, body wash, moisturiser etc)
• Food item
• Product samples

I know I have a list to choose from and I am sure most of you have your own little secret stash. I will give this challenge two weeks and I will share with you on Sunday the 20th of June how the challenge worked out for me and I would love some feedback on how you all went.

I am looking forward to the challenge I hope you will join me.

ITEM 159 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This dome clock was a wedding gift, its pendulum was damaged during a move some years back but we kept it all this time because it was a gift. It is long past time to let it go.

Questions to ask yourself when you are deciding what stays and what goes when decluttering

• How long since I last used this:- If you are keeping an item just because maybe you might need it some day then it is probably clutter.
  
• Is it still useful to me:- Do I still use this item or even participate in the activity that this item is used for if not then it’s clutter.
  
• Is it in working condition:- If an item is broken and you do not have the expertise to repair it or you are not prepared to pay the price to have it fixed then it is clutter.
  
• How many do I have and how many do I need:- If you have multiples of a certain item but only ever need one then it is most likely clutter.
• Do I need this item for the information it contains:- So much information is right at your finger tips these days on your computer and it is constantly updated do you really need to keep a library of books whose information may or may not stand the test of time.
  

• Do I like it:– If you are keeping something that was given to you even though you do not like it, it is definitely clutter

• Do I really need this item in order to remember good times or lost loves:- If it is an item that has purely sentimental value yet you never get it out and look at it then there is a good chance you don’t need it to remind you of the good times you had and the wonderful people you have known. If it means so much to you put it out where you can see it if not let it go.
• Am I keeping this item out of guilt:- I paid a lot of money for this so I hope one day I will get my money’s worth out of it (old hobbies, sporting equipment, expensive clothing all fall into this category). These are the items you need to cash in on now and sell while they are still useful to someone else.

ITEM 149 OF 365 LESS THINGS

As you can see we have been very busy in eBay lately this camera case was free with the camera used to take this photo with. We did not need it. It sold for $25.00

Today I thought I would just make up a list of items that will likely perish when left unused for a long period of time.

• Elastic:- Found in webbing in sofas and chairs – Clothing items particularly underwear – Fitted Sheets – Bandages – Hair Bands
• Electrical Appliances:- Especially anything with a heating element
• Foam linings or filters:-As in Ski Goggles – Some Vacuum Cleaners
• Plastics:-Some soft plastics go sticky and some hard plastics go brittle.
• Rubber:- Seals on washing machines etc – Rubber Bands – erasers
• Leather Goods: Leather items need cleaning and conditioning on a regular basic and can go stiff when not taken care of and also mouldy if not stored properly
• Photographic Gear:- If not stored properly mould can grow and eat into camera lenses leaving permanent scars. Films will perish and colour slides and photos can loose their colour and clarity over time.
• First Aid Supplies & Medications: Medications and ointments go out of date and bandages perish – Eye Droppers (rubber)
• Drive belts: Both times my clothes drier has gone into storage the drive belt froze into a D shape and made an awful clonking noise and had to be replaced
• Glue: Items that are glued together such as shoes
• Pens: The ink dries up and/or the ball gets stiff and scratchy
• Batteries: Remember to remove batteries from toys and gadgets if they aren’t being used as the batteries can ooze acid and ruin the item.
• Food: This one is a no-brainer
• Wine: some are meant to be stored some aren’t.
• Make-up: The oils in them can go rancid and smell bad.
• Textiles: Clothing or afghans made from acrylic or polyester – Baby clothes,  yarn, jackets and other woolens may become moth eaten if not stored properly. (Submitted by Willow @ willowscottage.blogspot.com )

I might consider making a page out of this list so if anyone has other items that experience has shown  suffer from being unused please let me know.

ITEM 146 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Here is one of the items on the list above. When sorting through the ski gear to sell on eBay I found that the foam lining on these goggles had perished making them unsellable.

Ingredients:

1 Kitchen cupboard                                   40 Recipe Books

1 plastic crate                                               1 Pinch of Common Sense

Method:

1. Open the kitchen cupboard where you keep you recipe books.
2. Take all of the recipe books out of the cupboard.
3. Use your common sense to determine whether you actually ever use these books or are ever likely to. Keep in mind that you can Google any recipe you could possible want and or borrow recipe books from the library.
4. Take the plastic crate and load all the books you have determined you don’t need into it.
5. Put the crate into your car and take it to your local charity.
6. Celebrate the space you have just liberated in your kitchen cupboard.

I still have about a dozen books that I want to take a closer look at before adding them to the 365 less things but once again that can wait for another day after all there are still 220 left.

ITEM 145 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Here is the pile of cookbooks that I ruthlessly decluttered and I don’t imagine I will ever miss them.

Decluttering is a much easier task when it is a team effort. I can’t imagine what it is like when the effort is one sided or worse sabotaged with one person doing all the work while the other is under-minding their efforts by bringing more clutter into the home.

That said, I want to take the opportunity today to give credit to my husband for the way he has embraced my resolution to remove 365 items of clutter from our home this year. This would be a much more difficult quest if I had to do it alone and especially if he was not prepared to co-operate because the clutter is not all mine

It was his idea to start the blog in fact and he reads and edits it everyday. I am glad of that because I am guilty of a lot of typo and spelling mistake clutter and he is very good at removing it for me. I had no idea how to go about starting the blog which is why it was day 67 before it got underway as he was overseas due to work commitments.

This week I actually told him he needed to slow down a little as I am the one who has to come up with something to write about each day and it is not easy when I am not exposed to subject inspiration because he is doing all the decluttering. He took it in good humour as it was meant to be – but really love,  slow down!

He is very good at revisiting areas that he has worked on before and being more ruthless at each pass. This is especially so with the sentimental items. He is also having some success with eBay having sold numerous items that would otherwise have gone in the trash or been hard to part with had there not been some monetary gain.

So thanks Love you are doing a great job. XXX

ITEM 143 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This robotics kit was one of those items I am sure my husband would have had a hard time parting with if he could not have sold it on eBay. He only got $105.00 for it but that was better than having sit in the garage where wasn’t being used.

I may have mentioned before that I have a note book that I use to keep track of things to do. Whether that be decluttering and daily chores, subjects for my blog or duties I intend to get around to eventually. I find it handy to be able to jot down ideas as they come to me because I have a tendency to forget ten minutes later and that is very unproductive.

Lately I have had this back-up of eBay stuff to list, mail and await pick-up so I haven’t had to do much else to keep up with the one item a day approach so I have been exploring my home finding projects for the upcoming weeks and that is where my trusty note book has been very useful for storing ideas for the future.

Today I thought I would at least do one thing on the list and the item I picked was…

One less pair of shoes

This was an easy enough challenge and the aim was to fit all my shoe boxes on one shelf in my wardrobe. These boxes are clear plastic which made it easy to see what I had to choose from. The pair I chose turned out to be a prime example of if you don’t use it you can loose it because when I opened the box I noticed they were slightly mouldy and when I took them from the box  it became apparent that the glue holding them together had perished and the shoes felt crunchy in my hand . So instead donating them to charity they ended up in the trash can.

With that task accomplished I can move on to the next task on the list…Pare down the cookbooks again. With the ability to look up anything on the Internet these days there are so many recipes available on-line that I see no point in cluttering up one kitchen cupboard with cookbooks I rarely look at. I can borrow recipe books from the library as well if I want. But this is a job for another day.

ITEM 139 OF 365 LESS THINGS

The shoes mentioned above

Today I am giving you a tally of what has been thrown away, what has been given away and what has been sold on eBay since the beginning of my new years resolution of 365 less things. There is an upside and a downside to this count though.

The upside is that most of the items I have uncluttered from my home have either been donated to charity, given to friends or sold on eBay. As I have mentioned before the advantage to this is that they have gone to  new homes where they have the chance of being used to their true potential.

The downside is that the reason behind the fact that there has been so little thrown away is because we had a home full of clutter that had not been used to it’s full potential. Which means we should probably not have wasted our money on them in the first place.  I console myself  that some of the items were things my children had needed but grew out of and others were items that had become un-necessary due to the latest change of location but still there must be many things that were just a waste.

I am reasonably happy though that I didn’t have a home full of garbage and that the items that have been thrown away so far wouldn’t even fill a wheely bin.

This is the tally so far

• 21   have been thrown away
• 90  have been donated or given away
• 21   have been sold on eBay at the value of $553.25

In future I will keep a running tally of this break down under the heading Give away – Throw away – Sell under the Pages List in the right side collumn of my blog.

ITEM 132 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Some more scrapbook magazines I tried to sell two of these on eBay without success they have all been donated to charity

Previously I mentioned how a change of  location and or lifestyle can have an impact on the necessity for certain  items around your home. Our move from Seattle in the USA back to Australia has rendered our ski gear mostly useless to us as we are now 700km from the closest ski fields. Sure we might like to take a winter holiday to the snow some time but in Australia you can hire both ski clothes and equipment should that ever happen. We also have some items that no longer fit our children anyway. So I decided to sell it all on eBay.

Now I did my homework first and checked similar completed auctions on eBay to see how this type of product was selling and it didn’t look that great but I figured I would give it a shot anyway and take what I could get. The goggles in particular weren’t performing very well.

I am pleased to be able to say my auctions have gone very well. Everything I put up for auction sold and now there is a lovely big space in one of the cupboards in our house. The combined starting price for my auctions was $108.00 and the total amount that I fetched was $312.00, “got to be happy with that”. Those 4 pair of goggles I mentioned brought in $147.87 of the total.

Altogether I sold…

• 1 adult jacket
• 3 kids jackets
• 4 kids pants
• 2 pair of kids gloves
• 4 pair of goggles (2 kids 2 adults)

I haven’t had any feed back yet but I hope the buyers will all happy with their purchases.

ITEMS 127 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I have decided to list each combined auction sale as one item because otherwise I will be boring you with ski gear for the next two weeks as it is it will take ten days to get through it all. These two items sold for a grand total of $37.50.

So who has things cluttering up there home that they discovered that they are allergic to but have kept these items anyway. I know I do.

I found some incense cones in a cupboard the other day so I thought I may as well use them up. So I lit one up and very soon after  I started sneezing, wheezing and my eyes started watering up. Then I remembered that is why they had got relegated to the murky depths of the cupboard in the first place. So by now you can guess what the item of the day is going to be today.

This got me thinking about the acne wash I bought for my son some time back that burned his face. I am pretty sure that it is still in his bathroom cupboard. It is one of those – I paid good money for it so I am keeping it – items. This is just ridiculous because it is unlikely that my husband or I am going to need it at our age and we have no other children at home who are going to use it so why is it still here.

I am having dinner with a friend this evening who has a teenage son maybe he could use it. I will make sure I remember to ask her. At least I will feel better if I find it a good home.

ITEM 121 OF 365 LESS THINGS