Mini Mission Monday ~ Useful but too plentiful
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.
I am basing today’s mini missions around one of my old clutter weaknesses and that is ~ useful items that make my life easier, more convenient or just added variety of choice. Â While some of these items did simplify my workload many did more towards cluttering up my home than making it more functional. So below I will give you a list of the ones that have long since been decluttered and you can give some thought to the necessity of these items in your home, if you indeed even own such things.
Monday – At one point I owned four types of vacuum cleaners. Each one of them were used on a regular basis. A big upright vacuum for heavy cleaning, a stick vac for quick once overs on in-between days, a hand vacuum for small spills and my iRobot vacuum because who doesn’t love an appliance that does all the work for you. Although all these vacuums made clean up tasks slightly easier in their own way they also required storage space and were frankly a little in the way of overkill. I now have two, the heavy duty one and a hand vac, and the jury is still out on whether the hand vac is really useful enough to justify the amount of power it must use sitting on standby 24/7. If you have several vacuum cleaners, brooms or mops analyse what you really need and declutter what you don’t.
Tuesday – Kitchen utensils are another thing I had more of than was convenient to search through when I needed the everyday items. One would think the useful items would remain on top because they get used often but like keys in a handbag they had a habit of working their way to the bottom. Do you really need a melon baller, a garlic press, an apple corer, a julienne grater, a crinkle cutter… These are all items I used to own and amazingly enough the food I make without them now tastes just as good. So if you have a bunch of fancy utensils getting in the way of  the useful stuff why not pare down a little.
Wednesday – Stationery was another category that I once had a weakness for. I had cute paper, cute paper clips, cute pens, cute erasers, cute push pins and a selection of ordinary stuff so I could save the cute stuff for good. 🙄 When the children are in school one does need much more of this stuff but I found that I had so much that three years after they left I gave the excess away because it just wasn’t getting used up like I thought it would. Also as the tech age took over even a little bit of this was too much because we digitised most of our bills etc. Evaluate your stationery and your need for them and declutter the items you have too many of or have no use for at all.
Thursday - Like kitchen utensils I found that baking pans and trays were another thing that accumulated over the years. Cookie trays, loaf pans, muffin pans, cupcake pans, square tins, round tins, spring form pans… you name it I had usually more than one of them. These things came in much more handy when the kids were still at home but even then a cake tastes much the same whether it was round, square or made in a spring form pan. Yes, if you bake a lot or are particular about these things the thought of living with less of them would be unthinkable. However I am not Martha Stewart and at my age the less cake, cookies and tarts that are around my house the better. We tend to only indulge when we go out for a coffee. That is not to say I have gotten rid of them all but there are certainly fewer now than there once was. Do you have a greater quantity or more variety in the way of baking pans than you truly have aspirations to use? Then perhaps it is time to let go of a few.
Friday – I also used to own more mending items than were ever going to be used in a reasonable amount of time. As a result many elastic items perished, many reals of cotton sat unused, fabric remnants awaited their call up to patch items, and those unique spare buttons that come with new garments were stored in the sewing kit long after the garment has worn out or been passed on. Granted, back in the days when the children were young, I used to sew more but now I don’t. Now I buy just what I need when I need it, I have reduced the cottons and buttons to more generic colours and styles, and the fabric remnants have long been decluttered. If your mending kits has more stocked than it need be then give it a good declutter keeping only what really will come in handy in an emergency. Any other repairs can wait.
Saturday – This last item doesn’t really fit with the theme of the day although they are useful in there own way. They are also still plentiful in my home and I have devised a plan to declutter them as the current plan of wear them out throw them out isn’t working quickly enough. The item in question is socks. Some get worn a lot, some not so often. So here is my plan. I am going to put them all in a box in my closet, when they get used they will be laundered and put back in the drawer where they usually reside. Any that are still in the box at the end of the season will be either thrown out or donated depending on condition. If you have too many socks or perhaps scarves, ties or other clothing accessory now is as good a time as any to declutter the ones you don’t use or like so much.
Sunday - Sunday is reserved for contemplating one particular item, of your choice that is proving difficult for you to declutter. Whether that be for sentimental reasons, practical reasons, because the task is laborious or simply unpleasant, or because the items removal requires the cooperation of another person. That last category may mean that the item belongs to someone else who has to give their approval, it could also mean there is a joint decision to be made or it could mean that the task of removing it requires assistance from someone else. There is no need to act on this contemplation immediately, it is more about formulating a plan to act upon or simply making a decision one way or another.
Good luck and happy decluttering
Eco Tip for the Day
Don’t leave you car idling for unnecessary periods of time such as when you pull over to use your cell phone. 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting your car.
It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

