Rule number one of de-cluttering…

Just because you have something that was given to you as a gift doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of it.

A quick story to emphasise this point. When moving house once when I was a teenager we were packing up a clock that had hung on the kitchen wall for as long as I could remember and for just as long it had been 10 minutes fast. One of us said to Mum “Isn’t is time we got rid of that stupid clock it has never kept time properly” and my Mum’s response was “I can’t get rid of it, it was a wedding present”.

While carrying the box  the clock was sitting in up the stairs to the new house, it fell out of the box and smashed to a hundred pieces all over the stairs. My mother laughed and said “well that’s the end of that”, swept it up and seemed quite happy to see  the last of it. She clearly didn’t care for the clock and had kept it all that time just because someone had given it to her.

Lets face it, people don’t scope your house for the gifts they have given you when the come to visit, and if they do well that’s just a little weird. Maybe they will learn to stop buying you stuff that is not appreciated and is only likely to make it to the next garage sale.

This goes both ways so next time there is an occasion where gift giving is appropriate, donate something to a charity on their behalf or buy them something consumable like chocolate,  fresh flowers or a fruit basket.

Todays item is a bike that has rarely been ridden in the ten years since I bought it. I am donating it to “The Bike Guy” in Newcastle who collects bikes from all over and passes them back on to anyone who drops by who wants one.

How many of you have all the following cleaning products cluttering up that space in the laundry cupboard,  under the kitchen sink or in the garage.

Microfibre Cloth & Water
• Window Cleaner
• Car Wash
• Floor Cleaner

Toilet Cleaner
• Drain Cleaner
• Mould Spray
• Bleach

Cream Cleanser
• Metal Cleaner
• Stove Top Cleaner

All Purpose Spray
• Shower Cleaner

Carpet Spot Cleaner
• Pre-Wash Spray

In my experience you only need the four products hi-lighted to do most of the cleaning jobs around the home. Toilet cleaner with bleach will do the job of all of the products in the same group.  Carpet spot cleaner will double as a pre-wash spray when doing the laundry and in my experience will do it better. Water will do the job of window cleaner, car wash and floor cleaner when used with the right micro-fibre cleaning cloth/mitt. All of the products in the cream cleaser group with do much the same job as one another and the multi-purpose spray will cover most of the other jobs that need doing around the home. Micro fibre really is the key to a clean home not chemicals. So cut down on the chemical, it not only save space it save money as well.

Today’s item is another pair of shoes that haven’t been worn in the last three years.

Lets face it, we all have clothes in our closet we haven’t worn for some time that for one reason or another we are reluctant to part with. Well, today I have a plan to help you sort out your closet and at the same time take away the difficult part of that task, choosing. Pick a friend someone you have known for a least a couple of years  who you trust and value their opinion. Ask them to help you go through your closet and decide for you the items that they feel need to go. Since they have known you for a reasonable amount of time they will know what clothes they have never or rarely seen you in and because you value their opinion they should feel free to tell you which items are out-dated or just wrong for you. You never know you might both have a bit of fun in the process.

Today’s item – A pair of Doc Martins although good, rarely worn.

Today I would just like to revisit the idea behind 365 Less Things. There are times when we all look at our living space and think it really is time I went through everything and got rid of all the clutter around here. The problem is that when we stand back and look at the job as a whole it becomes very daunting and quite frankly we give up on the task before we even begin.

The better approach is to tackle one small task at a time, in my case one task per day. I don’t even concentrate on one area at a time I might just see something during my daily routine and think “I don’t need that” or “I might just sort through that drawer today” and that becomes the task for the day.

If you keep the task small it never appears to big to handle and doesn’t become a huge chore. When you are doing the days task you will likely see something that you can deal with the next day and so then you have a task in mind for tomorrow and one task flows into another and suddenly you realize that it is no effort at all.

SOME SMALL TASKS TO GET YOU STARTED

• Clean out one kitchen drawer
• Take the accumulation of metal coat hanger back to the drycleaners next time you go.
• Go through your sock drawer and throw out the orphan  and holey socks
• Pick one pair of shoes you never wear anymore and toss them out or put them in the donation box.
• Empty one shelf in the pantry and don’t put back anything that is past its used by date or that you are unlikely to use.
• Go through the pens you have in drawers around the house and throw out the ones that don’t work.
• Fishermen, look in your tackle box, there are bound to be a few rusty items that are now all but useless.
• Check the coffee table drawers for old magazines that you haven’t looked at in ages.
• Get the kids to go through the toy box and throw away any broken items and donate the one they have grown out of.

All these tasks really take very little time but you will feel good about it and you will be inspired to move onto a new task tomorrow. And if you are feeling more energetic one day do  more than one task and stock pile a few of the 365 things so you can have a day off every now and again, I do.

Lets face it, how much does one really need oven mitts to match the season or tea-towels or aprons or door mats for that matter. All these things are purely designed for wasting peoples money. I know you are probably thinking “Bah Humbug”  but really, isn’t Christmas supposed to be a religious holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus not a retail sell  fest to empty our pockets. I just hope someone gave me these oven mitts and that I didn’t waste money on them myself, either way they are doing into the donation box.

Sometimes to de-clutter can mean downsizing.

Today’s item is a set of speakers and a tuner that have been taking up an un-necessary amount of space in our lounge room for some time. Even though we have replaced these items we still have ended up with “Less Things” because we have replaced two speakers and one tuner with one small i-Pod Docking station.

This is an example where de-cluttering is costing money, even though we did sell the old items on eBay for $50 it cost $399 for the new item. Taking into account that my husband bought the speakers and tuner before we were married 23 years ago I am confident that we have got our money’s worth out of them and are justified and replacing them with an item that better suits our needs in the 21st century.

Sometimes we can end up with multiples of certain things hiding in several places around the house. The Allen Keys that are today’s discard are a perfect example. They seem to have bred like rabbits throughout our house, some in the garage, some in the office desk, some in the kitchen drawer and some in that useful tool kit we keep in the laundry. This causes a two part problem, firstly- that there are just too many of them and secondly- that when you do need one you may forget some of the places they are hiding and end up having to buy another because you can’t find the size you need.

This problem is in part due to buying flat pack furniture as there are tools provided with every piece you buy. The idea is to use them and throw them away. In our case though we move around a lot due to my husband’s job and this kind of furniture survives a removal better if it is disassembled. What we should have been doing is comparing the new tools supplied with the ones we already have and toss them away if it they are duplicate of others. Also we are too lazy to walk the extra few metres to the garage where it makes the most sense to store tools of this nature instead we like to keep them handy “just in Case” hence why they accumulate in every corner of the house.

My point is that a little bit of sensible organisation can help cut down on the clutter and save a few dollars simply by knowing where something is when you need it, putting it back there when you are done using it and discarding it if you don’t need it.

The idea behind 365 less things is not only to rid our home of clutter but also not to replace that clutter with new clutter. I like to refer to it as “dematerialise”, that is to stop being a victim to the constant materialistic urge to keep up with the Jones or use “retail therapy” to put joy into my life.

I am now getting lots of joy sending things out to other homes that might need it more than I do and saving my hard earned cash to use where I feel I get more satisfaction, like travelling or going out for a nice meal somewhere special or paying off the mortgage quickly. These things may not appeal to you but maybe your old car isn’t going to last much longer and you keep thinking you can’t afford to replace it but at the same time you just spent $100 on that new blouse at Country Road and picked up the latest Bryce Courtney Novel you had been meaning to read. There goes $135 you won’t get back and you most likely couldn’t fit another item of clothing in your overstuffed closet and you could have borrowed the book from the library for free.

Think before you spend “Need, want, need, want” which is it and make the smart choice.

Today two pair of sneakers found their way to the garbage bin. Soon we won’t have to stack shoes on top of each other in the shoe cupboard.

Today was a simple choice. When we first moved into our current home there was no dishwasher so I bought a dish rack to drain the dishes on after the laborious effort of washing them by hand. The sink area of this house was so badly designed that we soon decided that  we really had to have a dishwasher even though it may not be the most environmentally friendly choice. So now we no longer need the dish rack, it doesn’t fit in any of the kitchen cupboards and it will only rust if left lying around unused to out it goes.

One thing that is ever-changing these days is technology. I couldn’t count how many times we have upgraded our computers from when we first bought one in 1991. As you get more and more computer savvy and able to do things like build them yourself it is inevitable that certain components are going to get set aside for “one day” when you decide to do this or that with them. Somehow, “one day” never comes and every time you look at that ever-growing pile of “junk” you feel guilty or inadequate that you haven’t built that incredible “whatever” with it.

Give yourself a break, sell them on eBay or toss them in the garbage they are probably outdated now anyway  and only capable of making you feel like crap. This theory applies to numerous past obsessions that no longer really float our boat, like that old sewing machine that never gets used anymore, cupboard shelves full of unstarted aeroplane models  or scrapbook supplies that sit there reminding us how much was spent collecting them and now you never use them. There is a lot of psychology involved in “stuff” that we could happily do without so move on and don’t look back there is someone out there who  still has the passion for the things you once loved so set them free.