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.

How many of you have things lingering in your home that were bargains too good to pass on.
You know…

• that pair of shoes that really are a size to big but they were only $10 (you wore them once and they gave you such terrible blisters that you will never wear them again)

• the set of cutlery “they were just about giving away” that will come in handy when you have a dinner party for 12 even though your dining suite won’t accommodate more than 8.

• the tent that was half price at the camp shop (when you actually went there to buy a travel jacket) that you had to have for when you go camping one weekend soon (that was 4 years ago)

• that DVD you got for $5 on the clearance heap that you barely managed to tolerate the first ten minutes of which has been relegated to the deepest depths of the DVD drawer

Need I go on? There are no end of stories like these that I have heard or fallen prey to. There is a lesson to be learned here.

A bargain isn’t a bargain if you get little or no use out of it.

These things become like a house guest that won’t leave who’s just taking up space and not paying rent. You know they are there but you can’t bring yourself to tell them to leave but you feel guilty about letting them stay every time you come across them.

A couple of ways to avoid this trap are:-

• Don’t read the special catalogues
• Don’t check out the clearance bins in the shops
• Only go to the shop if there is something specific you are shopping for and stick to the plan.
• Never stop at garage sales
• Avoid seasonal sales

Sorry to all you shopaholics out their but admitting you have a problem is half the cure.

This is the DVD I mentioned above. Sorry Adam I really am a fan but not of this one. I love Mr Deeds though.

As I have mentioned before I do a bit of paper-craft.  For one reason or another over time I have accumulated a stockpile of handmade and shop bought greeting cards which take up valuable space in my craft area, an area that I really do need to downsize in.

With fear of continuing my scrooge reputation that I established in my Day 86 blog I am now going to tell you how I intend to minimise this greeting cards situation.

1. First of all I am not going to buy any new cards no matter what.
2. If I don’t have an appropriate card for the situation I will adapt a card I already have.
3. I will try to remember to send everyone on my birthday calendar a card this year (Quite often I forget).
4. I have a card organizer that I will set the cards up in  so I am less likely to forget.

I am quite confident in the fact that the people I care about will be happy just to get a card and that I don’t need to go out looking for “just the perfect” card  in order for them to be pleased to hear from me.

Today’s giveaway

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.

It can be very helpful to read about other peoples experiences with de-cluttering their homes. There are so many helpful tips out there on the big Wide World Web and I will explore more of them and add some more links on my page as I find time.

I have noticed while reading a few over the last couple of days that the biggest mistake for most people is setting to0 high goals. I believe, one day at a time, one room at a time, one drawer at a time are often goals easier reached and less daunting to consider.

Do what works for you and if something looks too much to handle move to another area that you feel more comfortable with. Some days you will be keener than others tackle the big jobs then.

Today while writing my blog I scanned my craft area knowing that there must be something there that could go. I found an old binder  with school photos in. I have three perfectly good photo archive boxes that these photos could easily fit in, so I moved the photos to there and have put the binder in the donation box. Now I have a nice space where I can put the birthday card file that has been crammed somewhere else untidily for months.

We have all seen advertisements for product that enticed us into believing that “I just can’t do without that!” and “I must have one!”  We have fallen in love with the idea that the advertisement is selling. I say idea because even though the idea is great that doesn’t mean that the product is going to live up to the expectation that you have drawn up in your head.

The tip today to save you money and wasted space is to get on your computer and look for product reviews for these “must have” items before you rush out to buy them. Granted you can’t always believe the reviews either but if there is any doubt that the item won’t live up to your expectations and is probably just going to become a dust collector in you home, then you need to think twice about buying it.

I need a new mixer at the moment but the one that seems to suit my need the best doesn’t have good reviews so I am taking my time looking for alternatives that may work better for me. Lets face it if it is something you don’t need immediately you can take a bit of time to shop sensibly.

My item for today is an old pair of reading glass I have kept “just in case” but the nose rest are broken off and that causes irritation to my skin. It is time to go.

I have a part-time job selling furniture and quite often I encounter people who are wanting to buy chairs to go with an old table that great aunt so and so left to them. They are looking for chairs because even though the table is going strong the chairs that go with it are no longer safe to sit on.

Now more often than not these people admit that this is a beautiful well crafted piece of furniture that should be appreciated for what it is but the fact of the matter is that they would prefer that is was being appreciated by someone else. They have kept it purely because it is a heirloom and has been passed down through the family for years and cousin so and so would be appalled if you were to get rid of it.

There in itself lies the solution to this problem, offer it to cousin so and so for them to love and cherish and pass on to the next appreciative relative. If there is no-one else in the family who wants it I believe that leaves you free to sell it to the highest bidder.  Sometimes these things can fetch quite a pretty price and sometimes that is the only thing we like about them. Why not cash in now.

The old tools that are today’s item are one of those things that were kept by my husband for years for just the reason mentioned in today’s blog. I hope they have gone to someone who has an appreciation for this kind of thing and be much enjoyed by their new owner rather than stuffed in a cupboard in the garage.

On January 15th my give-away for the day was wedding invitations that I made for a friend’s daughter’s wedding. My husband said that was a cop out and not really purging anything yet I thought this was one of my best donations yet. You see I have a lot of papercrafting items such as tools, cardstock , paper, adhesive, embelishments…. but I really haven’t been doing a lot of papercrafting lately.

I have previously made the invitations for the engagement party and when I was asked to do the wedding invitations I thought what a great oportunity to contribute to their special event and purge some of the supplies I had sitting useless in cupboards and drawers.

This generous offer of time, effort and supplies made me feel good not only because of the purge but because I have saved the couple quite a few dollars as well and enjoyed the creative outlet.

Don’t forget the object of this exercise of 365 less things. The contribution doesn’t have to be big it just has to be everyday to make a difference.

Today’s object was another item we sold on eBay.