After waking this morning to my husband’s goodbye kiss, I lay in my warm cosy bed trying to decide if a cup of tea was worth getting out into the cold for. My mind began to wander to the question of what will I have for breakfast. Deliberately, my pantry provides ingredients for a limited choice, rolled oat porridge or toast. Granted the accompaniments to these basic choices vary, so it isn’t as boring as it sounds. This morning, however, I felt like something different. So I got to thinking about what else I could throw together from my fridge, freezer or pantry. This lead me to the train of thought ~ What is there that I want to use up. Once again an intentional limited choice. It came to me in that moment that I had a packet of parathas in the freezer. At that point I stepped outside the box and began thinking how could these be used as a breakfast dish.

So, for breakfast this morning I cooked up my paratha, folded it around a generous portion of banana slices, switched off the burner and allowed the residual heat to warm it through. Once plated up, I added a generous slurp of maple syrup, a dob of cream and a sprinkling of slithered almonds. I have to say it was delicious.

The moral of this story is that all manner of things can be used up in ways not necessarily intended. And sometimes in ways actually intended that you just haven’t thought of. You see I have had banana roti (similar to parathas) on a visit to Malaysia once, so this wasn’t really an original idea, simply a convenient recollection.

Just yesterday I retrieved a piece of black felt from my garage. Thinking that I would probably never use it for a craft project, it was waiting there to be donated to the thrift shop. While putting something away in my buffet drawer it occurred to me that I could use that felt to line its drawers with. I attended to this task immediately rather than just putting the felt back in my craft room for another day.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not trying to send a message here that it is a good idea to keep things because they may actually come in useful one day. What I am suggesting is that if you are considering decluttering something potentially useful, figure out that use now and utilise the item. If you can’t come up with a use then simply let it go. Similarly, if you feel wasteful of your hard earned cash by decluttering such items, do the same. Figure out a way to use them up, outside the box, so you don’t feel bad about it. If you can’t do that, then let them go.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a souvenir.

Eco Tip for the Day

Food takes a lot of resources to produce so never let it go to waste. Have a few recipes handy that are great for using up left over bits and pieces, like curry, quiche or bubble & squeak.

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

Three years of decluttering and all of a sudden I have a deadline. I have a little under four weeks to do my best to ensure that what we own will indeed fit into a much smaller dwelling. Going from a two car lock-up garage to a single car space with no storage cage means we can only keep from the garage what we are willing to fit into the apartment. Aside from that there are a few things we will offload from the inside of our house and that should be all that needs doing to make the move. We may get even more ruthless once we are in, because we don’t want to go from a decluttered house to an over stuffed apartment.

At this point in time I am so glad I started this mission to minimise our belongings well ahead of time with no real deadline. Decluttering with a deadline can potentially be a very stressful responsibility. One never knows in life when such a situation might occur. So there is no time like the present to start this process.

Having executed my mission over a long period of time has given me the freedom to let go when I am ready, take my time to sell what I want to sell and find good homes for all of the wonderful stuff that I knew would not fit my intended lifestyle. Performing the same task quickly has the potential of being not only stressful but also fraught with quick decision making that could prove costly. Either by not having the time for selling or by letting go of things that may need to be replaced.

I have no doubt that slow and steady decluttering is a far more relaxed approach to decluttering. What do you think?

Today’s Mini Mission

Choose an item that you don’t want in your home that isn’t yours and then ask the owner if they are willing to declutter it. Perhaps they don’t care about it either.

Eco Tip for the Day

Save electricity by not turning on electrical appliances, like irons, hair straighteners etc, too long before you use them and by not leaving them on while you decide to take a break during the task.

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

Finding Colleen’s web site really was an eye-opener for me as I did feel overwhelmed by stuff at the time but didn’t really know where to start. I just moved in with my boyfriend and we both had lived in shared flats before, so we had a mixed jumble of furniture and household goods and got help and cast-offs from many relatives as well. So I was in that new apartment surrounded by lots of stuff that didn’t really match and didn’t really fit either. Moreover as he liked his stuff and I liked mine, of course we didn’t want to give away our own stuff but would have preferred the other’s to be sold, donated or trashed. You know how it’s always easier to point out other people’s trash, as you have no sentimental feelings about it and it might also not suit your taste as well as things chosen by you. As there was not much money to spend on this project and we both have a “no-waste”-mentality, so trashing wouldn’t have come easy anyway, I was so glad to find Colleen’s website and her slow-and-steady approach. From the first day, I stuck to it and it really wasn’t hard to find one thing a day to give away or recycle. I also tried to implement the “one place for everything”- strategy soon, which meant that we joined all our office supplies, tools etc. and started using them up instead of bringing new things in due to not knowing that we already owned something like that.

However over the time, mostly happily hauling small or big bags of stuff to the thrift store every other week, I hit frustration a couple of times. Even after months our apartment wasn’t near to a minimalistic state, we still own quite a lot which isn’t really necessary, just because we or one of us doesn’t want to let it go.

We didn’t drastically reduce our space or furniture and it still seems to be rather well filled. So I asked myself more than once: What did I do all this time? Is there progress at all?

Last september I took a few photos of parts of our apartment, namely shelving units etc.

Here you see our bookcase in the living room then and now. Can you spot the difference? (I can’t help that the after picture is darker, this is due to our winter weather)

Before and After

Oh yes, it is still full, but note that all that left this bookcase, left for good, while many other things that cluttered other parts of the apartment have found their way in: This suitcase (which holds our yarn stash and knitting needles) had no home before – it was somewhere underneath the sofa or somewhere else on the floor. Same goes for the basket which is now next to my sewing machine – it holds sewing/mending work in progress and was underneath the sofa as well. Also, our bookcase now holds the wrapping paper, my clarinet and three unused canvases that had no real home either.

Mostly books and CDs have been decluttered, but also a few other things, like two vases that went to the thrift store, the little black laquer tray I gave to a friend or the pin cushion which now fits in my sewing kit.

So, yes, although we still have a full bookcase, although there are still many purely sentimental items in it, I can spot a difference in the before and after photos and I know that this means one less moving box for books, which shows to me that I am, after all, making progress, as slow as it may be.

Since Sanna first sent me this post she has decluttered even more. Proof that, over time, one is prepared to relinquish more and more items that once they thought they never would. A job well done I’d say. Below is a very current photo of the decluttered shelves and below that a collage of the Before After and Now shots just so you can compare the difference. As Sanna said when she sent me the new photo this week….

“I just looked at the “before” picture myself for the first time in a couple of months. Wow. I’m amazed by the difference! Taking pictures really does help to see the progress. I wouldn’t have remembered how cluttered it was.”

The shelving unit now

Before                                                                                   After                                                                              Now

Today’s Mini Missions

 Last but not least I am once again going to harp on about those tchotchkes collecting dust around the home. They have to be cleaned, they have to be housed and they take up valuable space that could be used for something useful. I am not saying get rid of them all, I certainly won’t be. Just do yourself a favour and lighten your space and your work load. Declutter a few more this week.

“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

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you have a lot of nicknacks adorning your home. Usually a home full of nicknacks also has additional furniture to house those nicknacks. Pedestals and little tables for them to sit on, china cabinets and bookshelves crammed with them, open 3D frames hanging on the wall containing more tiny bits and pieces. Just the thought of it all makes me wheeze and sneeze. So here are my questions…

• How important can each and every item possibly be to you when they are crammed onto shelves where you can’t even see half of them because they are hidden behind one another?
• How often do you actually take the time to look at each and every one of these items?
• How clean is your home on a daily basis when there are so many of these items that you can only bring yourself to dust them once a year?
• How much time and energy do you even have to devote to maintaining your home in this state?
• How easy is your home to clean properly when so much wall and floor space is covered with the furniture or props holding these items?
• How much money has been spent acquiring these items while renovations and repairs have gone begging on the structure you live in?
• How much more could you enjoy and appreciate your favourites among these items if the overall quantity were fewer and less crowded?
• If you died tomorrow would you really want your loved ones to have to deal with all your stuff in their time of grief?

If you do have a desire to reduce your collection in order to make cleaning day easier but you are having a hard time letting go it is possible to desensitise yourself from this anxiety. All you have to do is choose an item that you care the least about among the collection and let it go. If you feel any pangs after parting with an item remind yourself of your goal of easing your cleaning burden. Give yourself a day or two to establish the fact that you have barely noticed an item’s absence and then choose another least loved item and again let it go. Continue on with this method and I am sure you will end up letting go of more items than you ever thought you would.

Rearrange and spruce up your collection as you progress so as to have it looking the best it can. Bringing all your favourites to the fore.

Hopefully you will advance so far with this task that you start to empty furniture items and can also remove them to create open spaces which are easy to clean. Just thinking about all the balls of fluff, dust mites and possibly even mould and roaches that can hide in all these nooks and crannies makes me cringe. And although that may sound a little melodramatic it is entirely possible. In Australia these are also places where venomous spiders (Redbacks and Whitetails) can lurk.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter any old manuals or warranty papers that are out of date or you no longer have the items for. This is one of those areas of paperwork that builds up over time. Be vigilant because paperwork can be very daunting to deal with when allowed to accumulate.

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

Cindy

“If you’re going to do something, do it right.” vs. “Something is better than nothing.” Isn’t it amazing how, for every piece of folk wisdom, there is an opposite piece of wisdom? I think for decluttering, “something is better than nothing” should rule the day.

This weekend, I wanted to take the box of Easter decorations up to the attic and bring down the boxes of camping equipment. I didn’t do those things – any of them. Even though all the Easter stuff wasn’t together (the girls are still eating treats out of their baskets), I could have brought the camping equipment down. I don’t have to take one thing up before I bring another thing down. Something would have been better than nothing.

True, I’m annoyed that a certain small person made a mess on the dining room table and is now skillfully ignoring it, but there was still something I could do without feeling like I capitulated and cleaned her mess for her. The newspapers could be gathered and put into the recycling, and those towels on the table were put there by some large person doing the laundry (me) and not by some short person making a mess (her). Something would be better than the nothing that got done.

Can’t declutter your whole wardrobe today? Just declutter the shirts. Or just the short sleeve shirts. Or just the belts. Something is better than nothing.

Don’t have time to examine and deeply think about every book you might be ready to say good bye to? Make a quick trip through the shelves and pull out the books you know you’re done with. Something is better than nothing.

Know that your yard needs attention and is starting to be a cluttered landscape? Bring in one or two toys the kids have scattered or trim up one bush if that’s all you have time for. Something is better than nothing. (Then puts your tools away – you don’t need to replace one kind of clutter with another.)

Something. It is better than nothing. And something then something else then something else will eventually lead you to a decluttered house.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter and tidy your medicine cabinet or similar storage.

Eco Tip For The Day

Save electricity close off rooms that don’t require heating or cooling. If you have a ducted system only heat or cool the rooms that need it.

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

Little things add up to a lot. Overlooking them when decluttering, because they are insignificant, won’t allow you to declutter to the fullest extent. You would be surprised how much space in your home is taken up with lots and lots of small objects. During my declutter mission it has always been exciting to declutter the big things like furniture or storage systems.  However, I have also taken joy from decluttering the smallest things because without that the big things would not been emptied and able to go.

Likewise, bringing small items into your home, because their diminutive size makes them seem harmless enough, will undermine your decluttering efforts.

Also, small inexpensive objects are often not treated with respect and cared for appropriately because they are just that, small and inexpensive. But the cost of these little things also adds up when we lose, break or waste them just because individually they seem financially insignificant. No doubt landfill sites contain many of these objects.

The photo above shows a very small selection of the little items that were decluttered from my home last year. There were many more in 2011 and 2010 and also more this year. Seeing this small selection gives you a visual on how they begin to add up. Remember this the next time you consider something small and lean towards the idea that it won’t make any difference to keep it.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter a, not too, sentimental item.

Eco Tip for the Day

Reuse cereal bags to ~ wrap lunches, coat chicken with seasonings, bag carrots to keep them fresh, store cut onions…

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

Deb J

One of the rules of engagement we have learned from Colleen is to constantly be weeding out the things we no longer need. That’s what we are doing when we “declutter one thing a day.” With her Monday Mini-Missions she has been good to give us items to consider decluttering so that we don’t even have to really think about it if we follow them. Our work is already planned for us.

I began to think about this when a friend from church asked me to help her with decluttering. Her husband was just placed in an Alzheimer’s group home and she is well aware that many of the items in her home will no longer be used. The house is cluttered due to taking care of her husband and trying to deal with his disease. She may move to a smaller house and closer to her husband’s group home. She wants to begin the weeding process. She especially wants to be rid of the clutter that accumulated while having the day to day care of her husband. I tried to come up with a list of mini-missions that would help her without overwhelming her.

After explaining to her the idea of decluttering one item a day and looking for things that are broken, soiled, the wrong size, no longer used, or seldom used, this is what I came up with. Oh, I also explained the idea of having boxes where she could accumulate things to toss, sell, repair, or give away. I explained these could be dealt with along the way as time permitted.

1. Start with storage areas first. It took me a great amount of thought to decide to have her tackle this first. But I realized that all the clutter on all of the surfaces in the various rooms had to go somewhere and if it needed to be kept it couldn’t go into a storage area if it was already full. I know that Mom & I used to be guilty of the habit of just stuffing something in a storage area when people were coming to visit or the mess got too overwhelming. How many times have you cleaned up the house by putting it all in one room and closing the door? Her first week’s worth of mini-missions was to go through her garage storage cupboards one cupboard a day. The second week’s missions were to go through her pantry, the guest closet, the huge linen closet, the guest room closet, and the large set of storage cupboards in her laundry room. Like most of us, when we open a drawer or cupboard we tend to declutter whatever is there not just one item. I told her that was fine but it really was okay to do one item a day. She was to repeat these mini-missions until she felt the storage areas were ready and she could move on. This would give her some working area where she could store her decluttering boxes until it was time to move them out.
2. Next she was to go through each room, one room a day, and start putting the clutter in the room where it belonged. She didn’t have to put it away yet. She just needed to have it in the right room. Again I thought about this long and hard. I realized that getting the clutter to the room where it belonged helped me to know if I had too much of that item and helped me to know how to put things away in that room when the time came. I again told her to do this until all the clutter was properly distributed.
3. By this time the clutter would have been transferred to the proper room. The storage areas should be decluttered of everything that needed to go and she should be ready to start doing the nitty gritty item at a time decision making. Her first room to declutter completely was the living room. For her it would be the easiest, would give her a good handle on how to go about the process of really decluttering and would give her a public room in good shape. I told her that for each room she tackled there was a formula to follow. Again I told her to do this as many weeks as it took to get things decluttered.

1. Day 1 – declutter the surfaces of furniture (magazines, books, nicknacks, etc.)
2. Day 2 – declutter the floor (rugs, storage items, piles)
3. Day 3 – declutter the storage areas (drawers, shelves, closets, etc.)
4. Day 4 – declutter the walls
5. Day 5 – declutter the furniture (do you really need it all?)
6. Day 6 – declutter anything else that might be specific to that room

4. By this time the house should be in pretty good shape for the time being. She should be able to go through each day and find one thing more to get rid of but the house would be in visiting condition and she would not feel the weight of the mess on her shoulders.

I am hoping that this will give my friend an easy way to declutter without being overwhelming and yet with results she can see. She is being slow and careful about making any decisions about moving so she doesn’t have to go too fast until she decided whether she will move or not.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something that has been sitting in a storage area for quite sometime but still isn’t being used.

Eco Tip for the Day

Choose water based latex paints over solvent based paints when painting your home. Never use lead-based paints. (Tip curtesy of Greenpeace USA)

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

Have you ever felt you need to make changes in your life, whether that be adding something healthy in, or stop doing something that isn’t good for you. Have you ever decided those changes are too hard to make and give up before you begin. Well, just like our small steady steps in decluttering you can also utilise this approach with other good habits you would like to implement.

I am using the 365 approach to cut back on the amount of coffee I drink. My goal is to only drink coffee outside of the house which of course isn’t everyday. I started out by not drinking coffee at home after 4pm for a while. Then I stopped imbibing from midday onwards. At this point I don’t have coffee at home unless I have had it by 10:30, the next step will be breakfast only and after that not at all. Much easier than cold turkey don’t you think.

The same method can be used to give up soda drinks (soft-drinks, pop whatever you call it), processed food, fatty foods, sugar laden treats, fast food, simple carbohydrates in general… whatever you feel is not contributing to your good health, the way you feel or the way you feel about how you look.

You can also reduce the portion size of these treats to begin with rather than, or as well as, reducing the number of times a day you usually imbibe. Cutting back is cutting back no matter which way you go about it. By continuing to reduce you will eventually find you no longer feel such strong cravings for these things in your life. And the joy of feeling so much better about yourself is the extra payoff to encourage you to stay strong.

Also, you may think you need to add a little exercise into your daily routine. You are reminded every time you are confronted with a set of stairs that your fitness could stand some improvement. The mistake a lot of people make is to think they have to do at least an hour of exercise three times a week for it to be of any benefit. They also think this requires expensive equipment or gym fees to accomplish. Approaching it in this fashion is fine if you think you can manage it but if the thought of that is keeping you immobile then once again the small steady steps approach might be the best to get you started. If you can manage to find ten minutes a day at first to go for a brisk walk then that is better than nothing.

You can also choose to take the stairs instead of the lift. Take the parking spot the furthest from the shopping centre entrance (quite often this is actually quicker and saves gas in your car). If it is a rainy day I will often climb my internal stairs twice per trip. That is if I am going up for some reason, I go up, I come down, and then I go up again, do what I have to do and then do the same in reverse on the return trip. It is great exercise and because it is done in short bursts and although I raise my heart rate, which is good, I don’t raise a sweat, therefore not needing a shower at the end of my exercise. Do this a few more times and I have added quite a bit of aerobic exercise to my day. It may not sound like much but the idea is to build on this as you start to feel fitter and keener.

Even things that are, in moderation, fine for you can actually become bad when overindulged in. You have found this out through how your shopping habits contributed to your clutter issues which in turn affected your peace of mind. So imagine how bad for you things are that weren’t even good for you in the first place. It is in your best interest to at least try to improve personal habits whether for health reasons, energy levels, for your own mental well being or perhaps to improve an external appearance that you aren’t happy with about yourself.

We have discussed before that resistance to old habits can be well established by 21 days so why not give it a try. What have you got to lose except maybe potential heart disease, insomnia, gout, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, skin problems, bowel issues, tooth decay… and even a few pounds if that is your goal.

Today’s Mini Mission

Consider decluttering your second television or the third one if you have that many. Let’s face it how much time do we really need to waste sitting around watching TV or videos.

Eco Tip for the Day

Taking care of yourself can mean consuming less, consuming fresh and consuming natural all of these things are better for the environment as well as you.

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

Once clutter has built up in ones home there is no doubt that it is going to take some effort to expel it all. This task can appear  monstrous, frighteningly so,  which is likely to set off the fight or flight reflex in our minds.

Most people have either one tendency or the other, fight or flight. If their natural reflex is to fight then they will likely just knuckle down and get on with the task. The most distasteful outcome facing these kinds of people is being beaten, so watch out clutter, here they come. However, there is a chance that, approaching this task in an easy come easy go manner will not be very thought provoking and it is likely that, these brave folks may be back to square one soon enough. So don’t feel bad if you are not the fighting kind. I used to fight my clutter but it always used to return for a rematch.

Then their are the people who tend mostly towards the flight reflex. In this case they can’t very well run from the clutter so instead decide to just try to ignore it rather than confront it. Naturally this option will be totally unproductive unlike the attack mode which at least for a while will yield the desired result. It is also highly possible that the clutter situation will only get worse while these folk drown their sorrows by buying more stuff, only making the situation worse.

But never fear there is a third alternative. It is kind of like the one a stage performer might deploy to alleviate stage fright. In this case though we aren’t going to pretend our clutter is naked, that won’t work. 😉 But we can convince ourselves that it isn’t as scary as it might originally appear. Lets face it, you are the one who fed that big scary clutter monster so you can slowly starve it to death as well. Firstly you stop feeding it and then you quit looking at it as one big scary thing but instead as small individual battles that you can fight and win. Then one day you will realise that the big scary clutter monster has shrunk in size to something not quite so foreboding. No longer appearing that it might swallow you whole.

A similar defence can be used against those occasional frightening individual items that the thought of dealing with fills you with dread. Items like that thing your mother gave you that you don’t want, you never liked, but you are afraid to get rid of for the fear of upsetting her. Don’t beat the object up to be something it isn’t. It is just an object. You don’t like it, you don’t want it, it now instills fear in you. Is that the sort of object that any sane person would allow to linger in what should be their tranquil living space? No of course it isn’t. In this case the monster is either your mother or your own mind playing tricks on you. Either way the goal is a tranquil home and this object is not contributing to that. Worse still it is having the opposite effect. Take your chances and let it go.

So as you can see clutter doesn’t have to be scary. A tweak of your mindset can make all the difference. I am not going to pretend this is as simple as I make it sound. Perhaps a revolt against ones default setting would be more accurate, but if that’s what it takes then it is worth the fight.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter and reshuffle a drawer that is such a shambles you can never find what you need in it. Junk drawers are not a necessity, in fact they can be a nuisance.

Eco Tip for the Day

Today I will share a recipe for a friendly all-purpose spray. I put this together using two recipes/ideas from a great web site called One Good Thing by Jillee. You will need…

• A 500ml Glass Jar
• Skins of a least 3 lemons (collected from previous cooking sessions)
• 250ml (1 cup) white vinegar
• The 600ml trigger spray bottle from your last all-purpose spray.
• a good squirt of dishwashing liquid (environmentally friendly of course)
• 1 cup of water

1. Put the lemon skins in the 500ml jar and top it off with the cup of vinegar.
2. Leave this to steep for a few days. This softens the vinegar smell to a nice lemon fragrance and I dare say the lemon also adds grease cutting power and more.
3. Strain the vinegar from the lemon skins and pour into the spay bottle.
4. At this point prepare your next batch of lemon vinegar reusing the same skins. I have been using the same skins for months now.
5. Add the dishwashing liquid to the the spray bottle and top off with the cup of water.
6.  Put the lid on and give it a little shake. Now it is ready to use.

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

Over the last week there have been two comments that inspired this post. One from Sanna expressing her excitement about decluttering a box of little bits and pieces and another from Moni suggesting that decluttering one book at a time is easier for her than contemplating getting rid of the whole collection.

Some people may think that decluttering will go on forever at this pace but I have found quite the opposite. Sometimes decluttering doesn’t even begin when a person looks at the big picture and feel there is too much to lose. This is especially so when a person has been avid about collecting certain things over a long period of time and/or feels personally attached to this collection. Book lovers are a prime example of this. When faced with the prospect of having to decrease their collection by one entire bookshelf they may want to run and hide. Give them the task of removing just one book and the task isn’t so difficult. Empowered by that achievement the task of finding another and later another and another gets easier.

After reading Moni’s comment I decided once again to apply this logic to my craft supplies. I went to my pantry and grabbed a coffee jar that had been set aside for just such a purpose. I took it to my craft room with the intention of slowly filling it with beads as I decided I could live without them. I began my quest in a box where I knew resided beads that I was not so enamoured with. I chose a few to put in the jar intending to stop there. But then I started thinking that there were others I could happily live without. Sure I could have made something from them one day but I have no shortage of other beads to choose from so why keep ones I have had for ages yet never used.

Once I was on a roll I decided to go one step further. Could I get rid of enough to condense a couple of boxes down to one. Sure enough my momentum brought me to having a full jar of beads to donate as well as one divided storage box to go along with it. It may not look like much but I am very happy with my efforts.

Your momentum may not carry you this fast but it sure is easier to convince yourself to let a little bit go rather than a lot.  My experience is that this, less traumatic approach, is more likely to result in a repeat performance. My dramatic craft room declutter mostly took place this way. A little here and a little there. Once you condition yourself to letting  go it becomes easier and easier. In fact more often than not my desire to reduce eventually overrides any desire I have to keep things and I end up decluttering far more than I thought I would.

Today’s Mini Mission

Shoes are another kind of item that need reassessing on, at least, a seasonal basis. Get all your shoes together and decide whether you really use or need them all. Declutter those you don’t.

Eco Tip for the Day

On a rainy day put out a few large containers to collect water for use on the drier days to irrigate your potted plants. Best to use containers that have lids because if not used quickly the sitting water can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

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