When out picking up a few groceries the other day, I noticed a woman getting her handbag checked as she exited the shop. Nothing unusual about that except the lady had to rest this bag on a nearby store display in order to open all three compartments that were so crammed with God knows what that she could barely get the zippers open.

There was no chance she was about to steal anything because quite frankly she couldn’t possibly have fit another thing in. Although she quite possibly had already stolen 3 paperbacks, half a dozen DVDs, a flat pack bookcase and 2 bags of potting mix  the way that thing was heaving at the sides. Honestly her bag was like a filing cabinet with handles.

Seriously ladies, how much do we really need to carry with us for a couple of hours out at the shops. Depending on what she was carrying in that thing I am sure this Lady could have parachuted into Siberia with that handbag and survived for a month on the contents. MacGyver eat your heart out.

Ok, so I am getting a little carried away with myself but really, aside from your purse, cell phone, maybe a note pad and a pen, your keys, a few feminine heigine products and a little lipstick what else do you feel you need for one short trip that you simply can’t do without. Men manage to leave the house with a wallet in their back pocket for heaven’s sake.

After seeing this woman I went home and cleaned out my handbag and aside from several old grocery lists and some old shopping dockets my bag was looking OK.

So if you haven’t started de-cluttering yet maybe this is a good place to start.

Today’s give-away

Colleen’s Helpful Hint for the Day

To clean your washing machine just run it through a cycle with 2 cups of white vinegar. Why not throw your shower curtain in the machine at the same time and it should come out clean and mildew free.

Although my toiletries are one of those things I have well and truly under control, sometimes certain items do seem to multiply and then reach their expiry date while I’m not looking.

Sunscreen is one of those items that tends to do this due to a number of reasons like…

• An unplanned trip to the beach where a “pink pelt” like me has to lather on the sunscreen or that pink soon turns to blistered red so you duck to the nearest convenience store to buy a bottle.
• A planned trip to the beach where you forget the sunscreen and rather than go all the home you are forced to buy another bottle.
• A family picnic to the park where you forget the sunscreen and you borrow someone Else’s bottle, forget to give it back and can’t remember which family member owed it.

Needless to say now you have four bottles of sunscreen, two of which have passed their used by dates, taking up space in the bathroom cabinet.

This is only one small item but the same story applies to lots of different things. For example…

• The extra suitcase you bought while on holidays in America to bring home all the stuff you bought because things are so cheap over there
• The extra esky (Cooler) you bought last Christmas because you had a big family BBQ at your house and didn’t have enough room in the fridge
• The snow chains you had to buy because of unseasonal weather when visiting the mountains last April.

Need I go on.

The next thing you know you think you have outgrown the house you live in and start looking for another “dump site” with a bigger garage. It used to amuse me when I lived in the USA how many cars in our neighbourhood were parked on the street or in the driveway because the garage was full of other “stuff”.

Check around your house today and find one of these things and relegate it to the “get rid of” pile. Just remember you always have the option of borrowing things when in need, then you just give them back when you are done.

Two bottles of sunscreen past their used by date

Colleen’s Helpful Hint for the Day

A slightly damp microfibre cloth is great for removing deoderant stains, dust and other accidental marks from your clothes. I keep one handy in my bathroom cabinet just for this purpose.

While cruising the Internet looking for inspiration on the topic of decluttering I found a few interesting articles that take downsizing and minimalism to greater extremes. I am not prepared to go to that extent, not at this point anyway, but they were inspiring and made me feel that what I am attempting seems like a walk in the park.

When I say “a walk in the park” I don’t mean it demeans my efforts in any way, it just helps me see the bigger picture and I now feel very comfortable that the small sacrifices I am making are not such a big deal.

Some of the topics to google when looking for such articles and websites are:

• Simpler Lifestyle
• Downshifting
• Minimalist Lifestyle
• Voluntary Simplicity

Have a look at some of the links I have attached to these topics and you will see what I mean. Giving away a DVD is chicken feed compared to giving away the DVD player or the electricity for that matter. It puts things into a whole new perspective.

Today’s giveaway is a water flask that I haven’t used since I stopped playing softball in 1999.

Colleen’s Helpful Hint for the Day
Use an over-the-door multi hook hanger to organise long necklaces. It will keep them from tangling and you will easily be able to see and choose which to wear.

Today I just wanted to point out that just below the photo for each days Post there is a tiny word “comments”, if you click on that you have the opportunity to leave feedback,  share your stories or even mention an area of decluttering you might like help with.

I would love to hear from you and appreciate your tips and views.

Yesterday I had a comment from Janetta who has been inspired to start decluttering again. She is even reducing by  a bag of things some days because they are only small items.  As I have said before “Every Little Thing Counts” whether alone or by the bag.

Below is a list of small thing that I used today to make a Reusable Car Bingo Game for my niece and nephews.

• 2 Laptop Screen Protectors
• 2 sheets of chipboard
• 3 Sheets of coloured paper
• 4 whiteboard markers
• Screen clean sachet
• Plastic Box

These were all excess items and resources taking up space in our office/craft room. The screen protectors were from a laptop we no longer have. The whiteboard markers were from a stockpile no doubt at risk of going dry and useless in the drawer waiting to be used.

I am sure the kids will be thrilled with the result and I am happy to have purged yet a few more things.

Here is the photo of the Bingo Game I made for the kids.

I once came across and article in a scrapbook magazine with a survey to determine whether the reader was a scrapbooker or a collector of scrapbook supplies. This may seem amusing to some but there is an fine edge that one can easily slip over when at the height of a crafting obsession.

This  applies to all crafts and hobbies, woodworking, quilting, knitting, beading, model making… the list goes on.  So beware and try to put a limit on the amount of supplies you allow yourself to amass. It is very easy to get carried away.

Tastes change, trends change and life changes and one day you may get board with the current hobby, become unable to continue the craft for physical reasons or change your lifestyle and be unable to accommodate your hobby. Then you are left with a huge collection of supplies to get rid of and the guilt trip that goes along with that because of the amount of  money you have spent on something you no longer obsess over.

For Example, I used to do a lot of scrapbooking and papercrafting and although I still use my supplies I don’t use them nearly as much as I once did and they take up a lot of  space in my craft room and I am now more interested in beaded jewellery making.

I am slowly using up my supplies but if you think you won’t, don’t despair, try selling them on eBay, or to a friend who still enjoys the hobby or there is sure to be a craft group around who would be happy to take them off you hands.

Today’s item is a old set of drill bits that belonged to my husband’s grandfather. He sold them on eBay to someone who will get new joy out of them I hope.

I have discovered that uncluttering is the cure for resorting to retail therapy.

How often do we use retail therapy to make up for times when we feel down, disappointed, bored and other conditions of the mind. What does this kind of therapy do to improve the situation? Usually it just adds more problems like credit card debt, guilt and regret.

It has amazed me how quickly I formed a dislike to shopping once I committed myself to my 365 day resolution to de-clutter my home.

Now when I get spare time I don’t get bored, I use that time to find the next thing I am going to get rid of or try to come up with a subject for my next Post. This leads to a satisfaction that I am using my time constructively and am less likely to feel down. I generally feel better about myself and my bank account is looking healthier too. Not to mention the satisfaction that I am helping others by donating items to charity.

Another item that has not been used for so long I can’t even remember why we bought it in the first place

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 heard somewhere recently that it only take two weeks to start breaking out of old habits. The idea being, if you can persevere and ignore the cravings to continue in your old habit for two weeks, you will start to notice physically and mentally the change in your behaviour at this point and start to realise you can cope with the changes.

Hoarding is a bad habit that most of us have an addiction to to some degree. A bad habit that for the sake of a neat and clutter free environment we need to break.

According to the two week rule mentioned above once we set our mind to de-cluttering instead of hoarding we should be able to break the habit in a very short time. So ignore the craving to collect and push ahead with the process of ridding your home of unnecessary stuff and before you know it you will be cured.

I must say after 87 days of my resolution to de-clutter I am surely cured and can’t wait to find the next thing in my home to give away, throw away or sell off.

Just to prove my point today I have sorted through my scrapbook magazines with a little more ruthlessness this time and found another pile I am willing to part with that I wasn’t so sure of only two days ago.

While looking in the linen closet to determine whether there were any old towels I could throw away my attention was drawn to some rolls of gift wrap and a box of gift bags. Which got me thinking about the chest full of other gift wrap paraphernalia in the closet down stairs

Now you may think what I am about to suggest is strange but I will explain my thinking as we go along.

I rarely buy gifts (This is strange to most people). I live a long way from most of my family, postage costs are ridiculous and they all can pretty much afford to buy anything they would want anyway, as can I.

Not to mention the fact that I am embarking on this lifestyle change of de-materialising and not bowing to the continual bombardment of the retail industry insisting my life would be so much richer with this product or that.

So I pulled the chest out of the closet and started to sort out the gift bows that have already been recycled several time during past Christmases and threw away all the ones that looked like they had been recycled too many time already. This reduced the number enough so that I could empty the chest into a small  drawer in the guest bedroom.

As we have been selling a number of items on eBay lately and have run out of brown paper to wrap boxes in for mailing I have decided  I will turn the gift wrap inside-out and use the white side for wrapping boxes  the next time I need to mail something. I have plenty of new and used gift bags I can use for any occasion when I might need them in the future.

I transferred my children’s keepsakes into the lovely chest I had emptied therefore eliminating one more box out of the shoe cupboard.

As a result of this exercise I have de-cluttered, recycled, re-designated (I love to live outside the box) and reshuffled creating a little more space.

I would just like you to know that my family and friends understand that gift buying  is not necessary to a loving relationship. My family would prefer I spent my money on the travel to come and visit them and my friends would rather enjoy a day together going to the movies,  having a meal together or something of that nature. I am not a complete scrouge.

Oh! By the way, I am going to a wedding this weekend and the couple, who have been living together for a few years, have the good sense to have a “Wishing Well” so people give money as the gift and they don’t end up with a house full of unneeded clutter.

These are the bows that found their way to the garbage today.

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.