Mini Mission Monday ~ Memorabilia

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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. Last weeks post ~ Memories are no stuff ~ deserves a little more attention than just one post. So this week I will dedicate the mini mission and another post to the subject. I feel this is important because this kind of clutter is often the sort that most people have trouble detaching themselves Continue reading

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Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ The Wedding Dress

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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom In honor of my cousin Jenny's wedding last Friday evening, I have pulled a post from the archives. I wrote this post after polling my friends about what they had done with their dresses. What did you do with your dress? The unanimous answer – I still have it or once, my parent has it. I have mine, which I still think is beautiful 15 years later. It’s hermetically sealed in a gigantic box and is in the top of one of the closets. This particular shelf is rather hard to reach, so the only things that would ever be placed on it are long-term storage items. I Continue reading

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Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Souvenirs

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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom The girls and I are still on vacation, having traveled 1500 miles (2414 kilometers) thus far from Austin, Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then to St. Louis, Missouri, by way of Memphis, Tennessee.  (Thank you Mom, for lending us your Prius.) Until today, besides postcards, which we purchased but also mailed, we had spent less than $10 on souvenirs. I bought a box of beignet mix at Cafe du Monde, and Clara purchased a pair of earrings, which she's already worn several times. Today we went to one of our favorite places in the world, City Museum in St. Louis Continue reading

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Family Heirlooms

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I received the following email from Jeff a week or so ago which is really what inspired me to focus on obligation clutter again this week. It is amazing the desperation we sometimes feel when faced with the dilemma of "I don't want this thing but it's family history so I really can't declutter it. What am I to do?" Anyway read Jeff's comment, where you will hear that desperation, and we will go from there. I really appreciate your wonderful posts. They, as well as other sites and books, have spurred me on to GET RID OF STUFF! I (we) have been successful in a lot of areas, but the one that Continue reading

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Curb the keepsakes

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A guest post by Julia St. Charles My mother's home is full of "too good to use" items and random objects from babyhood and toddlerhood. I'd love to write an open letter to young parents along the lines of: Dear Young Parents: If you are going to save mementos from your children's early years, please do not save everything.  Except for handmade or heirloom items, like the baby quilt Grandma made, or the hand-knit layette from Aunt Barbara, give outgrown clothing to Goodwill -- ordinary clothing will be both too physically aged and too far out of style for your imagined future grandchildren Continue reading

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Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Breakin’ Up Is Hard to Do

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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Are you hanging on to old boyfriend /old  girlfriend / ex-wife / ex-husband clutter? Breakin' up is hard to do, and breaking' up with the ex's stuff can be even harder. Some of the things you may have that remind you of him or her: fancy underclothes photos greeting cards and letters jewelry vacation souvenirs music (what do they call mix-tapes in the days of CDs and iTunes?) toiletries food that he/she preferred debt from outings or vacation that you took together or from his/her bad spending habits. a phone or texting bill that went way over Continue reading

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Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Sentimental to Whom?

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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Recently my in-laws were in town. They went to their storage unit and returned to my house with a glass pitcher that they thought we might like ~ it had belonged to my mother-in-law's great grandmother. My husband seemed eager (or at least politely accepting), and I had broken one of our two glass pitchers a while back, so I wasn't opposed to having it. It was not fancy or heirloom quality, just a pressed glass pitcher with a duck scene molded onto it, something that would be the equivalent of a Wal-Mart purchase today. I used it a few days later and proudly showed my Continue reading

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Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Photos, Photos Everywhere

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Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Memories and photographs, that's what's on my mind this morning. I was feeding the guinea pig and thinking back to Brownie, my childhood guinea pig. In my childhood scrapbook, which I looked through recently, I found one picture of myself and Brownie. He looked like I remember, and I was fairly fascinated by my 1970s outfit, but did I need this photo, or any photo, of Brownie to remember him? No, I don't think so, yet my children have dozens of photos of Thorn, Blackberry, and Corky, the guinea pigs who have lived with us. These photos are trapped on my computer, but we Continue reading

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Day 329 How to Bring Home the Memories without the Clutter

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A guest post by My Darling Husband, you can read more of his travel tales on his blog. After a month of souvenir assaults in Italy, Colleen and I managed to return home with just four new items; a t-shirt for Liam, glass bead earrings for Colleen, a book of our Venice tour (included in the tour cost) and a wonderful etching of Florence purchased from a local artisan. They all have special memories attached to them. Colleen's earrings match the necklace she bought in Venice during our first visit there in 2005, the etching evokes the splendour of Florence and the book helps us relive our Continue reading

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Day 275 Hang-ons from old hobbies

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Scrapbooking is a wonderful pastime, and I enjoyed it for many years. The problem is that by its very nature it causes an enormous amount of clutter. Supply clutter, tool clutter, souvenir clutter, photo clutter not to mention time clutter. I have rarely met a scrapbooker who can keep up to date with all the happenings in life that they wish to record thereby causing a backlog of all of the above mentioned items. Remember earlier this week, on day 272, I decluttered an old Rick Steves' travel guide that had been languishing in my bedside cupboard for three years. Close by that guide was also Continue reading

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