I make a lot of suggestions and give a lot of advice on deciding what may or may not be clutter in your homes. However, ultimately your decisions are your own because no one knows better than you as to what you consider clutter in your home and what you don't. No matter what the choices, everyone's ultimate goal when it comes to minimising their possessions is, and should, be their happiness. What you are happy to get rid of and what level of minimising is entirely up to you. Quite often these goal post move as time wears on, and that is fabulous, but the end result should be what you are … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Is Your Clutter a Pile of “Should”?
My in-laws are visiting, and I was thinking about my father-in-law. He really likes to do home improvement projects, to work on his own vehicle, and he's done some truly outstanding woodworking projects. My husband is not really like his father. No one else I know works on their own car, my husband can only do the simplest of woodworking, and although he does home improvement projects, he doesn't love it. Yet at least some of his clutter reflects who he thinks he should be (see his Dad, above) and not who he really is. The fancy name for this is "aspirational clutter," but I'm going to call … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom – Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom I live in a neighborhood where the houses are all about 50 years old and are between 1500 and 2000 square feet. Most have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a 2 car garage or carport. Almost all are one-story houses. The house just around the corner was a bit smaller than most and had been poorly maintained. When the original owner decided to move last year, it wasn't long before the new owners knocked the house down to the ground and scraped away the foundation. A few months passed and contruction began on the new home. The architect left the house plans in the permit … [Read more...]
Simple Saturday ~ Book Review – The Overspent American
The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer by Juliet B. Schor was published in 1998, but the information seems as relevant today as it did more than a decade ago. The book is geared toward middle and upper-income families, who seem to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, no matter who the Joneses are. "The Joneses" are our first error, according to Dr. Schor. In the past, our Joneses (or reference group) would be our neighbors, who all lived in houses about like ours, drove cars similar to ours, and likely had two adults and only one … [Read more...]
Children’s clothing
I have been struggling to find time to wrote my blog posts over the last few days because my parents are visiting so today I will keep my post short. Being that the mini mission for the day is to declutter the outgrown, worn or unloved clothing that is hanging in your child's wardrobe I though it appropriate to make a few comments on that subject. There are several reasons why is does not pay to overindulge when it comes to children's clothing... Wasted money ~ why buy a whole lot of clothes that are going to get rarely worn before your child grows out of them. You really only need … [Read more...]
Day 282 The seven deadly sins
Pride    Envy   Gluttony  Lust   Anger   Greed  Sloth If loosely translated you could associate five of the seven deadly sins to clutter. This may seem a bit like hitting below the belt but sometimes that's what it takes to make people realize the error of their ways. Pride - otherwise known as vanity is a sure trigger to the collection of numerous unnecessary items. How many things do we buy just because we want others to see how trendy, clever, sporty, rich, beautiful... that we are. We don't use these things in the privacy of our own home, we just want the world … [Read more...]
Day 248 Not so big homes
Today I want to draw your attention to a web site that I discovered thanks to Stephanie who writes a blog called Renouncement . I first met Stephanie through a comment she left on my blog back in Day 208 and I featured her blog on Day 210. As always I went over to Stephanie's blog to check it out as I always do when someone new leaves a comment. On her About Me page she had listed among her favour books one called Not So Big House. Being the curious little munchkin I am I was intrigued and had to check it out. So I did what all computer savvy folk do and googled it and found this interesting … [Read more...]
Day 243 Memory clutter
There is one thing or actually a big group of things in my home that are looking down the barrel of being decluttered before the 365 days are up. The group in question are my old sports trophies. I have mentioned these before and still haven't done anything about them but the day of reckoning is coming. Trophies come under the same banner as souvenirs and little trinkets that serve no other purpose but to remind you of days gone by. They scream "look what I did", "look where I've been" and maybe even the sad cry of "I'm living in the past". Personally unless your future appears dull and you … [Read more...]
Day 194 Too good to use
I received an email from Cindy recently with a list of topics she thought would be good to address on my blog. The one I chose for today is an issue I am sure we have all come across during our decluttering efforts. This is one of those dilemma decluttering issues. Here is some examples Cindy had to share with us... The trouble with owning something "too good to use" One on my friends started using her "good" dishes after hearing this story: A woman who had married a widower was using the good dishes of the previous, now deceased wife. She (the first wife) had never used the dishes, … [Read more...]
Day 115 Supersize Vehicles
My posts from day 110 and yesterday got me thinking about a combination of the basis of those two subjects., oversized homes and unnecessary cars. What about unnecessarily large cars. How many people own cars far greater in size than their everyday needs. When we lived in America we owned a V8 Mustang and a seven seater van. We loved both these cars, the Mustang because, well it was a V8 Mustang convertable, who wouldn't and the Van because whenever we had visitors from Australia this vehicle had enough room to fit everyone in and it was roomy and comfortable and handy to have when we … [Read more...]