How much un-necessary stuff do you keep in your car. My car isn’t to bad (I don’t think) but I will let you be the judge of that. Below is a list of the things that are currently in my car, I am literally sitting in it while typing this list.

In the trunk/boot

• Jumper Leads
• Blanket
• Recyclable shopping bags x 10 for grocery shopping
• Plastic crate to store the above items

Glove Compartment

• CDs x 8
• 1 pair of sunglasses
• Car size Yellow Pages
• An old rental car receipt
• Registration and Insurance papers
• Car warranty papers
• Tyre warranty plan
• Old shopping dockets x 6
• Car cell/mobile phone charger
• Pen
• Old sunglasses bags x 2 (empty)
• small snap lock bag
• Car log book

Centre Console

• Cell/mobile phone charger (different phone)
• Old shopping list
• Candy wrappers x 2
• i-Pod Jack cord

Front Passenger Door

• Pair of scissors

Driver’s Door

• Broken i-Pod jack cord
• Pizza specials flyer
• Spare reading glasses
• Whiteboard marker

Other

• Umbrella
• Windscreen sunshade

As I said “not too bad”. The items in red are items I removed while conducting this exercise. I could probably still remove a few more items but I am comfortable with things as they are.

Now go take a look at your car. How many un-necessary items can you find and while you are there remove them. If you have items that you often transport in you car such as  sporting gear, strollers, seasonal gear like snow chains  etc that aren’t always necessary try keeping them in an organised fashion near to where you park so you can quickly throw them in if you need them.

Now when you are unexpectedly required to pick up a few extra passengers or you have to rush your pet off for a emergency trip to the vet you won’t be wasting precious time trying to make space in the car.

ITEM NUMBER 104 OF THE 365LESS THINGS

Our little townhouse doesn’t have a lot of closet space so there won’t be room for this item anymore so off it goes to the donation box

Colleen’s Helpful Hint of the Day

Leather furniture needs tender loving care for it to last the test of time. Some leather particularly semi aniline needs to be cleaned every 6-8 weeks and conditioned every second time you clean it. The cleaner removes all those nasty things like sweat and dust and the conditioner replaces the polyurethane coating which protects the surface from stains etc. Different leathers need different care. A good web site to read up on this subject is http://www.texicote.com/

There are a lot of ways we go about trying to justify why we should keep the clutter that we have around out homes. Here are a selection:-

• I may use it some day.
• I am sure it will come back into fashion.
• So and so gave this to me.
• If I keep it long enough it may increase in value.
• I might loose weight and it will fit me again.
• It has sentimental value.
• Everyone has one of these.
• I paid a lot of money for it so I am not getting rid of it until I get my money’s worth out if it.
• Maybe the kids will want it when they grow up.
• Maybe the kids will want to give it to their kids when they grow up.
• I may want to read that again later on. (when I have owned it long enough that I can’t remember reading it in the first place).
• It is a piece of history.
• …and the list goes on.

You do need to remember to weigh these pros against the cons before making a rational decision. Here are some of the cons.

• I already have five of these.
• I have no-where to store this.
• I can no longer see the top of the dining room table.
• I may lose a few pounds but this will probably no longer be in fashion then anyway.
• I can always borrow this book from the library if I want to read it again.
• Maybe I could fetch a good price for this if I sell it since I don’t use it anymore.
• We can no longer have visitors because we can barely get through the door of the spare room because it is so full of clutter (not always a bad thing ha ha)
• If this does come back into fashion it will probably be inappropriate for my age by then.
• On the rare occasion I need one of these I could borrow one from so and so.
• It will deteriorate over time so someone might as well be using it now while it is still useful.
• The kids would have taken it when they left home if they wanted it.
• I am not going to forget the good times we had if I get rid of this.
• Everyone has one of these but I never use mine.
• and once again the list goes on…

So please consider both sides of the situation before you decide what stays and what goes and try to be neutral about it. You will never clear the clutter if you keep justifying keeping things.

The item making the trash bin today are two old magnetic photo albums. These things can be a killer of your precious photos and I am working on removing all of my old photos from this kind of album.

Colleen’s Helpful Hint of the Day

To save water when shaving. Part fill your bathroom basin with a little warm water. Use this water to wet your hands and wipe over your legs making them damp. Use a little body lotion or moisturiser and rub over damp legs. Now shave your legs, rinsing the razor occasionally in the basin of water. When you are done use a damp face cloth to wipe your legs and allow to air dry the rest of the way. Now you have nice smooth legs and they are moisurised as well.

If you are thinking about having a garage sale to off-load your clutter here are a few pointers you might find helpful.

Choose Wisely: Only include clean, usable items that don’t look like they should have gone in the dumpster. If you have some items that are still useful but a little neglected give them a bit of a clean up before putting them on display.

Pricing: Make sure you clearly mark the prices on all items you are selling. You can do that in many ways but here are a few suggestions

• Stickers: Write the price clearly on small stickers and place on each item.
• Colour coding: Sort you items into price groups. Using a pack of mutli-coloured stickers allot a value to each colour according to your groupings. Place the approcriate coloured sticker on each item according to the price you hope to fetch then make up a couple of charts depicting the colour code for the customers to read. You may need to resort to the first option for the odd items that won’t fit into a group for some reason eg. higher priced items.
• Group items according to price and make up signs to place at each price point. The problem with this method is if people move things around, and they will.

Note: I hate going to garage sales that don’t clearly mark prices. You then have to ask every time you want to know the price of an item.

Be Flexable: Be prepared to be flexable with your prices because people will haggle.

Convenience: Have some old shopping bags handy to make it easy for the customer to carry their purchases as they may be on foot or had to park a little way away. Maybe some newspaper of similar would be useful for wrapping breakable items.

Change: Make sure you have plenty of coins and small notes available as people don’t always have the correct money. It would be a shame to lose a sale because you couldn’t make change.

Set up: Have all items selected and priced ahead of the day. Park your cars on the street and set up the sale in your garage the night before. This way on the morning of the sale you will be able to quickly do your last minute prep work and be ready to sell almost immediately. There are usually a couple of vulrures out there ready to pounce the minute they see any sign of life. These early customers are often your best customers.

Start time: I alway think a nice early start is the best way to go. As early as 7am because keen garage sale addicts are often out early to get the bargains and quite often have had enough by midday because they have other things to do with their lives, as have you.

What Day: Saturday is usually the best day to have a garage sale. If you are keen and have a lot to sell have it over two days, Friday and SaturdayI feel are best for this strategy. You get the eager beavers on Friday and still a good batch of keen garage salers on the Saturday. Often people are over it by Sunday. If the first day of the two day sale is going well you can always raid the house overnight and add more items for the second day and clean up even more clutter.

Advertising: It usually pays to advertise. The local free paper that gets dumped on everyones lawn is often the best option but the most popluar local sold paper is also good. I have had garage sales where I haven’t advertised at all and done very well, all it takes is a few strategicly place signs on the streets near by to attract customers.

Signs: Clear bold print stating GARAGE SALE or YARD SALE with a hugh arrow pointing the way is realy all you need. People going by in cars only have time to register that much information before it’s too late to change direction.Make enough signs to reach out to the nearest busy road so you attract plenty of potential customers.  Keep in mind that in some places it is illegal to place these signs but I have always found that so long as you remove them as soon as you are done there usually isn’t a problem.

Note: As mentioned above please remove all signs you have posted as soon as the sale of over. You or your neighbours don’t want people prowling up and down your street for the next couple of weeks looking for a nonexistant garage sale. Not to mention that old signs just make the neighbourhood look untidy and no-one wants that.

Presentation: You don’t want the sale to look like a complete shambles making it diffiult for the customers to view your merchandise. Group like items together ie. gardening tool, glass & china etc, electronic items, toys, car parts… Items such as clothing are best sorted into groups of ladies, mens, children according to age/size and hang all large items. People often won’t bother sorting through  huge hampers of crumpled up clothing because 1. it looks like the clothing isn’t well looked after and 2.it’s just to much trouble.

Combined Sales

Get together with a friend to have your sale. This is a great idea for several reasons..

1. You can share the set up work and the cost of advertising.
2. You can take it in shifts to man the sale so you are still able to get the kids to their sporting events etc.
3. Also you will have more merchandise which gives the sale curb appeal, that is it looks more intresting from the street making potential customers more likely to stop in because of the large selection.
4. You will have good company in the quiet times between customers

Have a Neighbourhool Sale. This is an even better stategy, why …

1. Advertising costs shared with a large group gives you scope to afford more ads over a longer period giving customers prior warning so they can pan ahead to be there.
2. More interest to lure potential passing customers.
3. People will come from far and wide if it is worth there while due to multiple sales in one trip. This is where the extra advertising pays off.
4. You can still join with a friend under these cercumstances so you still have all the advantanges mentioned above.

I hope these tips have been helpful and good luck to anyone who decides to give the garage sale idea a go.

Today’s contriution to the 365 things are these gel pens. I have found gel pens do not shelve well and soon dry up when not being used which is the case here, so in the bin they go.

Colleen’s Helpful Hint of the Day

To clean ceiling fans I aways find that damp paper towel is the best option. Take a roll of paper towel and a spray bottle of water up the ladder with you and you don’t need to come down until the job is done. It eliminates the need to rinse clothes which causes several trips up and down the ladder and a huge waste of water. Buy recycled paper towel if it makes you better about your impact on the environment.

Ahhh, procrastination how that can clutter up your mind and paralyze you into ineffectiveness. I can spend days on procrastinating about something that will probably physically only take ten minutes to deal with. How crazy is that.

At this moment there are four little white dishes on my craft table with unfinished projects, repair jobs and samples that await my attention or for the artistic inspiration to create something with. I look at them quite regularly and they annoy me no end yet I leave them sitting there taunting me day in day out while I find “better” things to do with my time.

At lease one of these projects is something that will be leaving my house once it is completed therefore designated to the title of  clutter while sitting there. I think today is the day to do something about it.

I challenge you to find some clutter in your house today that you have been procrastinating over and do something about it.

This is the necklace I created from one of the dishes on my craft table. I am sure my friend will love it and I am glad the procrastination is over and there is a little less stuff cluttering up my craft room. I also repaired one pair of earings, finished making a second pair, completed a necklace I had started months ago and packaged up some beads of my mum’s that I will start on today (hopefully).

Colleen’s Helpful Hint of the Day

I find the easy way to clean metal window frame channels is to use a stiff bristle artist brush and a vacuum cleaner. Scrub the channel with the brush and suck up the dust with the vacuum cleaner as you go.

I live in a townhouse so I don’t have much to care for in the way of garden or lawn but for what I do have I am endevouring to minimalise the amout of equipment and time required to maintain it.

I only purchase/aquire plants that can survive my neglect, requiring little watering or pampering in any way and hardy enough to cope with the varying climate we can get here at times.

When we first moved into the property we owned a lawn mower and an edge trimmer which seemed a little overkill for a lawn 5m long by 1.5m wide so my husband bought a rotory hand mower and gave the other items to charity.

After using the hand mower a couple of times I decided that was hard work so the next time the gardener that maintains the common areas of the property came to do his work I asked him what he would charge me to trim the edges and cut the lawn in the back of my home. He said he would do it for a carton/slab of beer at Christmas each year. “BARGAIN” deal done.

As a result of exploring options and choosing wisely when adding plants I now have a garden that requires little maintenance or equipment. Today I will send the last of the redundant gardening equipment that has been lurking in the garage to the give-away pile.

I might add we have no intention of ever again living in a propery that has big lawns and gardens so I don’t expect ever to have to replace the gardening equipment that we have purged over that last couple of years

Colleen’s Helpful Hint of the Day

If you should accidently write on a whiteboard with perminent marker just scribble over it with the whiteboard marker and it should rub right off.

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 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.