Gift giving and receiving can be a touchy subject for 365’ers and their relatives. The best compromise to date, is the gift card or vouchers. However, reports show that $1 billion dollars worth in 2013 weren’t redeemed and $2 billion dollars worth in 2014. No wonder retailers love gift cards! Money for nothing!

This made me consider the gift cards that were floating around my kitchen drawer and decided to use these as part of my decluttering mini-missions. It turns out I had three – one for $25 to a supermarket, one for $20 at the shopping mall and one for $100 dinner at a local restaurant.

The restaurant one (received Jan 2014) was due to expire later this week so we made a booking. As for the supermarket gift card (May 2014) – it isn’t my usual supermarket, which is why I didn’t have an arrangement in place to redeem it and the shopping mall one is fairly recent (Nov 2014) but I didn’t have anything in mind for it.

Why do so many gift cards expire?   Why did what amounted to cash sit in the drawer?   Dollar notes wouldn’t lie around for 6-12 months.   Colleen noted that once upon a time such things would have been a gift from heaven for the average family, especially the grocery card.

Colleen brought to my attention an interesting angle.  Why do we keep so many ‘just in case’ items in our house, if we struggle to use up virtual money, surely this proves we don’t need to keep stuff we don’t use.

So how do we avoid expiring gift cards?

Keep gift cards in your wallet, not the kitchen drawer and try to plan purchasing around them.   My usual supermarket sends loyalty vouchers twice a year and I wrap it around my loyalty card so it gets used at first opportunity.  If it isn’t a store that you frequent, note the expiry date and load a reminder into your phone.   There are also sites such as Cardpool.com, Swapagift.comand GiftCardRescue.com to sell or trade, but as I live in New Zealand I checked on Trademe (like eBay) and people are selling their cards there too.

Another idea I feel deserves mention, for small residual amounts left on a card, instead of letting that money expire, use it to make a donation.Websites such as…

Charity Choice ~ www.charitygiftcertificates.org/GCE/default.aspx

and Gift Card Giver ~  http://plywoodpeople.com/projects/gift-card-giver/

…stockpile cards and combine them into higher-value gift cards that are donated to the needy and worthy charities.

Is there something as a gift card giver that I can do to make it easier for the receiver to redeem?   Low end cards got the thumbs up in my research.  A $25 Wendy’s gift card is more ‘do-able’ than a $25 gift card to an expensive fashion store which will require the receivee to spend more than they were gifted to buy anything. Cards that required the receivee to travel out of their way to redeem were listed as the next most likely to expire and ‘unlikely candidate’ also got a mention ie if Grandma isn’t an iPad aficionado, don’t give her an iTunes app card..

So what did I do with my remaining two gift cards?   I don’t actually need anything at the moment but my daughter is off to Tech this year and needed to set up an iCloud account which required her own Apple ID which in turn required some sort of credit card to attach to the account.   As she doesn’t have a Visa card, she was unable to complete the setup.   I had a moment of inspiration, what if I used the two gift cards to purchase iTune gift cards to load against her AppleID? I purchased two $20 cards and a chocolate bar, both of which were gratefully received.

I’m not sure what to call this….re-gifting-gift-cards? Re-purposed-gift-cards? Re-redemption-cards? The gift-card-that-kept-on-giving?

I wasn’t keen on the swapping this bit of plastic for a new bit of plastic, but on the other hand I didn’t receive gifts that I didn’t need and I am grateful as I was able to use them to create a solution and saved me parting with cash.

 As for the restaurant voucher, I’m looking forward to dinner on a balcony overlooking the white sand of our local beach, and even better to express her appreciation my daughter has offered to drive us to and from the restaurant, as long as we don’t mind travelling in her ancient two door small Nissan Pulsar with no air-con and listening to her music. Eminem is a small price to pay compared to a taxi in the holiday season in a beach town and it means my husband and I can both enjoy a bottle of wine that was also a gift.

So 365’ers, what gift cards and vouchers do you have lurking in your home that you could set a goal to use up over the next week or two?   Do you have any clever suggestions for gift cards whether as the giver or the receivee?

Today’s Mini Mission

Wednesday – Declutter and item of clothing. I decluttered a dress, not because I wanted to it simply worn out. Split down the back worn out and not worth repairing because the fabric had worn so thin.

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.

This weeks missions reflect the kinds of thing that I have decluttered in the last week. Lets see if you can find some similar items to declutter.

Monday – Declutter a small piece of furniture or a storage container. I decluttered two bedside tables that had been storing DVDs.

Tuesday – Declutter some digital media, CDs, DVDs, CDRoms, old VHS tapes… . Due to the bedside table declutter some DVDs also were decluttered.

Wednesday – Declutter and item of clothing. I decluttered a dress, not because I wanted to it simply worn out. Split down the back worn out and not worth repairing because the fabric had worn so thin.

Thursday – Declutter an item of jewellery. I decluttered a necklace that I had put aside to deconstruct for craft purposes but never have.

Friday – Declutter a kitchen utensil or two. I decluttered two utensil holders that had served me well in the past. I’d kept them in the back of a cupboard for a while “just in case” but am now satisfied that I have no further need for them.

Saturday – Declutter a couple of toys. I let go of two largish plastic animals, once again kept for craft purposes. Due to the reshuffle that inspired the decluttering of the bedside tables some things had to be fitted in elsewhere. The obvious choice to look and use was my craft storage area, so some things had to go.

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

Go digital for as many paper items as you can ~ Bills, reading material, recipes, communication…

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

I was reading through the posts from my friends on Facebook and came across one where the poster said, “I think I can truthfully say that I kept every award, essay, art project, homemade book, concert/performance program, birthday/graduation card, sheet music, script, report card, club photo, and every other piece of information regarding my K-12 experience.  So…I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.”  She also commented that it all only took up one big storage tub. 

My first thought was, “Why is she keeping all of that stuff?”  Why would she even want to?  There seems to be three types of people, those who are sentimental about everything, those who want to keep some items but not all and those who see no need to hold onto things like this.  After some thought I commented back that I thought she should go through it all and figure out exactly what was really important to her. Once that was done, she should take pictures of those things and, since she is a scrapbooker, create some layouts for those pictures. 

All of this started me thinking about people with children and what they need to do with all of the “keepsakes” that come into the home on a daily basis.  Say you have a toddler who frequently draws/colors a masterpiece.  What do you do?  Maybe you have a school age child who comes home often with essays, returned test/quiz papers, award certificates, and numerous other paper based “keepsakes.”  What do you do? 

I decided to see if I could discover some solutions that would preserve these without taking up space somewhere in the home.  Here are some of the solutions I came up with.

Create a website with a page devoted to each child’s life.  You could make this a private website that only a select few could see.  On it you could post pictures of their artwork, etc.  Not only is it a permanent record of your child’s life but it can be shared with anyone you choose. 

After displaying a child’s work in a prominent place for a week or so take pictures of the best of the work and at the end of the year create a few pages of their life that year for a scrapbook about them. 

Set up an account on a site like Flickr where you can display pictures.  Again, you can secure this so only those you select can see what has been placed in your folders. 

Declutter all but the most significant awards, etc.  What is left place in page protectors and then into a binder. 

While many years ago I let go of my numerous childhood keepsakes, I found that I still have some things that I really have no need to keep.  It is interesting how easy it is to let things like this build up because I have the room for it.  I plan to scan some things before decluttering it all.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter, by recycling old plastic plant pots. I recycled a few of these last week.

My friend Wendy sent me a photo the other day of a box of magazines she was decluttering. Wendy is very practiced at decluttering, having been reading 365 Less Things for many years. It is how we met in fact. So I was a little surprised at how many magazines she had to declutter. She has been renovating for some time, which is now about finished, and these were home decor magazines for inspiration.  As it turned out she didn’t reference then at all for the reno so out they went while she was decluttering her bookcase.

I am glad she sent me the photo because it inspired me to write this post on my opinion of magazines in general and why I  feel they are such an insidious form of clutter.

My first thought on this subject, judging from past experience, is that magazines are expensive to purchase and usually contain more advertising than actual interesting articles. Once you also eliminate the articles you aren’t interested in, all you are left with is about one third of a magazine that you paid good money for. And then I doubt there is anything in that one third that you couldn’t have sourced free on the internet. And that advertising I mentioned is there to tempt you to acquire stuff that is likely to later end up on your declutter list

Then there is the futile exercise of saving magazines for those few articles that you might want to refer back to later on. Or cutting them out and filing then in plastic sleeves in a folder somewhere. My experience of this is, without proper, time consuming indexing, it is difficult to find those articles again when, or if, you ever do want to reference them. This is another form or aspirational clutter. And once again it is so much easier to find this information on the internet, with a few key words typed into your computers search bar.

I am speaking from experience here. I once used to save every issue of several paper crafting magazines and save clippings from catalogues etc. Now I find all the inspiration or information I need with the tap of a few keys. No, heavy lifting, no allergy issues from the dust when dragged out after long periods, no having to dust them in between times, no big bulky bookcase to store them in, no wasted money, no wasted trees, no frustrating advertising, no agonising over if and when to declutter them, and no constant aspiration of actually doing something with the information in those articles I once thought I couldn’t live without.

So tell me why is it that you buy and save magazines, though I doubt you will tempt me to return to my old habit.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter, by recycling, some old plastic containers you kept aside for storage but find they are building up over time and you now have too many. This used to be a mission I carried out on a regular basis but I don’t seem to buy as much takeout anymore so the containers get used until the wear out.

“If we do not feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more?” — Unknown

Eco Tip for the Day

Think twice about buying paper products. Natural old growth forest is better for the environment than cutting them down to make way for fast growing trees for paper pulp. Even the recycling of paper is a water and power intensive process.  Mind you this tip is a bit hypocritical of me being as I am a paper crafter.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

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.

When beginning this post I didn’t have a theme so I thought I would just begin making up random missions. However the very first mission yielded me a theme so I ran with it in the hope I could come up with six missions to match. As it turned out this was an easy set of missions to come up with. Good luck finding your examples of these and happy decluttering.

Monday – Declutter, by recycling, some old magazines that you no longer reference. I don’t have this problem because I find magazines to be a complete waste of money these days. You can read about that in a later post this week.

Tuesday – Declutter, by recycling,  some glass bottles or jars that you thought might come in useful some day. I found several of these building up in one of my upper kitchen cupboards last week.

Wednesday – Declutter, by recycling, some old plastic containers you kept aside for storage but find they are building up over time and you now have too many. This used to be a mission I carried out on a regular basis but I don’t seem to buy as much takeout anymore so the containers get used until the wear out.

Thursday – Declutter, by recycling, packaging materials that you haven’t got around to using for a long time. My hubby took care of this mission last weekend.

Friday – Declutter, by recycling old plastic plant pots. I recycled a few of these last week.

Saturday – Declutter, by recycling, old papers from your filing system or keepsake box that no longer need to be kept. Be ruthless about this because paper is one of the most insidious kinds of clutter that can be a pain to deal with if you don’t stay on top of the task by eliminating on a regular basis.

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

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

I received this story from Claire at the bottom of a long list of comments to Wednesday’s post. It is a cautionary tale of a near catastrophe all in the attempt to save some meaningless stuff. She learned more than one lesson through this experience. One is don’t risk your neck to save something far less important, and the other, sometimes you must make a choice of what is more important in your life. In her case the choice was pets or stuff likely to be damaged by said pets. Here is what Claire wrote.

“Colleen, I have a decluttering story I don’t know where to post but knew someone here would appreciate!  It goes along with a recent comment where we were discussing how many vases we all have in a different post.  I remarked that we have five vases that I could think of and could probably get rid of one or two of those.  

Well, last night at 11 pm my cats decided to chase each other onto the dining room table which they have done several times since I have been letting them play together (one is 2 years old and one is 6 months).  I have two matching vases on the dining room table – I used to have three but the 2 year old knocked one off when he was 6 months old…..and then there were two.

Well, as you can guess the cats knocked over both vases last night and I spun around from the kitchen sink to see this and ran into the dining room, about a distance of only 10 ft.  The vases were rolling across the dining table – when I bit the dust and slipped on our polished concrete floors.  I landed on my leg, rear and bad arm.  Thankfully my husband was running in from the other room and caught both vases before they hit the concrete.  I sat on the floor another 5 minutes laughing and crying.  It was pretty comical – if it hadn’t hurt so much!  I’m lucky to be just a bit sore today but I cringe at how close I came to hitting my head on the stone countertop or corner of the glass dining table.  

Here’s the decluttering part – I KNEW this would happen!  I knew someday the cats would knock over one or more of those vases again and just assumed that at most I would lose another vase and would have to clean up 1,000 pieces of pottery from the concrete floor. That would have been bad enough.  But I didn’t calculate that one or two of us would be risking our neck to run to catch them.  Something told me when the first one broke that the others were an accident waiting to happen, I should have gotten rid of them then.  So last night, when I finally got up off the floor, I put both of those vases in a box in the give away pile!  Bummer is, I still think they are pretty and really like them!  They are just too unstable for a house with cats.  Lesson is, I guess, what you think might happen probably will, and might even come with a consequence or two that you didn’t imagine!  Stuff isn’t worth a broken bone or worse……”

Have you ever encountered a clash between lifestyle choices and your home setup ~ pets and breakables on display, kids and pale carpet, allergies and furnishings, furniture and floorspace, kitchen gadgets and cupboard space, fashion and closet size, husband and decor choices (ha ha), laziness and tidiness, convenience and order… .  No matter what the situation there are choices to be made. We need to decide what is more important to us and then take the necessary steps to act of those choices. For Claire it was the cats, the vases or be prepared to clean up the mess rather than risk life and limb the next time the cats are up to mischief. I sure, she loves the cats, and it is hard not to act on impulse in the face of calamity so the safest thing to do was to declutter the vases. Yes she could store them in a cupboard somewhere, but for what? To bring them out when there are flowers to display and add extra potential mess to the inevitable. I don’t think so.

So be realistic about what is most important to you. There are always compromised to be made. Consider all those compromises when choosing what to keep in your home. I know I would choose piece of mind over stuff any day.

Today’s Mini Mission

If you have stuff stored under beds in your home take a look and see if you can find something there to declutter.

“If we do not feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more?” — Unknown

More than one person commented last week that they can’t believe they are still finding things to declutter after years at the task. And what I say to that is ~ rejoice and be glad. Usually after most people do the usual kind of quick declutter they find they are back at square one a couple of years later. With a slow and deliberate declutter one gives a lot of thought to their habits of acquiring and holding on to stuff. Being aware of these habits makes it much easier not to make the same mistakes in the future.

The reason why years later they are still finding things to declutter is because they grow more and more willing to part with more and more stuff. It isn’t  because they have recluttered their homes, instead their homes are getting less and less cluttered all the time. Usually less cluttered than they ever thought they would. And having well entrenched systems to offload the clutter makes the task simple.

For example ~One reader (Peggy) last week commented on how she decluttered some extra hand lotion by putting it in the bathroom at her favourite coffee shop. On later inspection she found that it was indeed getting well used. That is just one example of some clever thinking on how to dispose of stuff. But I digress.

I am glad to be still finding things to let go of in my home. I am also happy to be vigilant about decluttering something in place of any new thing coming in. I don’t waste my energy worrying about the clutter I simply stay ahead of it by loosely following that one in-one out rule we talked of last week. When I say loosely, I don’t rigidly remove something immediately that something else comes in, but I am intuitively aware of any small build up and rectify the situation fairly speedily.

So don’t be concerned if you are still finding clutter after a long time. Also don’t have any expectation of an end date to your decluttering journey. This isn’t really a finite task anyway it is a change of lifestyle. And positive change in something worth sticking with.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter something hiding, and rarely if ever used, in the back of a kitchen cupboard.

Eco Tip for the Day

It takes but a second to flip off a switch, so don’t leave lights on when you leave the room.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

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.

This week some out of sight our of mind items have been decluttered from my home. Actually in my case they were out of sight but there isn’t much I own that is out of mind, but you get the idea. My husband reassessed our storage cage in the garage and threw out lots of boxes. On my quest to answer Moni’s question about how many vases do we all own, I found some utensil stands I am sure now that I will never use again, and more empty jars than I realised I had, up in the deepest depth of the highest kitchen cupboard. So what do you have lurking in those out of the way places that you rarely look in? This week’s mini mission will help you find out.

Monday – Declutter an item lurking in your attic, basement or garage space.

Tuesday – Check if there is something in your keepsake box that you are willing to let go of.

Wednesday – Declutter something hiding, and rarely if ever used, in the back of a kitchen cupboard.

Thursday – Declutter something other than clothing on the floor or high shelf your closet.

Friday – If you have stuff stored under beds in your home take a look and see if you can find something there to declutter.

Saturday – Find something to declutter in your laundry or linen cupboard.

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

Learn some simple mending techniques so you can get the most our of your clothing.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

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.

If you only took a stocktake of everything in your home that is only there out of convenience rather than necessity you would shocked. And if only you could convince yourself as to how inconvenient, and sometimes costly, those convenience items really are then you would probably be able to find a lot more stuff in your homes to declutter. I am going to be keeping and eye out for such conveniences in my home this week. And today’s mini mission will drawer your attention as to what some of those items may be in yours. So, happy decluttering.

Monday – Declutter a small single use gadget in your kitchen. Really consider how much time it saves you, on what sort of frequency and whether the time saved is then wasted on the awkwardness to clean the item or in finding it among the plethora of other equally not-so-convenient items.

Tuesday – Declutter or start a use-it-up challenge on consumable items that you have multiples of. Toiletries and cleaners are always a good example of this. Because they generally last a while so there is no need to have a replacement on hand until these items are in imminent likelihood of running out. Anything beyond that is a waste of space in your cupboards.

Wednesday – Declutter or start a use it up challenge on gift wrapping items. Usually one needs to leave the home to acquire a gift so why not acquire a gift bag at the same time in future. There is really no need to keep a large assortment of these items in your home.

Thursday – Declutter some excess crockery items. If you have layers of crockery that you never get to the bottom of then you have more than you need. Toppling layers of plates, variations of items that perform the same task, rows of coffee mugs that you never get to the back of… . Yes it is convenient to have lots so you don’t have to clean them too often but that just makes for a cluttered, messy and unhygienic kitchen.

Friday – Start a use it up challenge on a throw away convenience item that is not so environmentally friendly, and vow not to replace it. Paper towel, cling wrap, any sort of wet wipes, bottled water…

Saturday – Declutter a number of small items that you have dispersed throughout your home to save the small effort of walking from one room to another. Multiple trash cans, pens, notebooks, nail files, hand lotion, reading glasses, hair ties, charging cables…

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

There are many convenience items that are less than environmentally friendly yet are quite easy to live without. Cling wrap, paper towel, wet wipes, throw away shopping bags. Consider learning to live without them. Remember REFUSE, reuse, reduce, recycle.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

I received the following comment from creativeme on Wednesday and thought it would be a shame if anyone missed it so had to make a post of it. Also I wanted to add my 10c worth, of course! It was meant to publish yesterday but it wasn’t finished and I was sick. So here it is, better late than never.

“I’m getting better at this.
Especially with the food! I have found that I go through this journey of letting go of stuff, what I am really letting go of is FEAR. I think I was afraid that I might not have enough in the future or it would never go on sale again or that I might not be able to afford it later or it might be taken away somehow. Lots of latent fears that kept me wanting to cram MORE into my pantries and any other space that could fit cans or boxes (garage, basement, under the bed). I have finally got to the point that I trust there is enough money around for food, enough food around to buy, the sales ALWAYS come around again and even if it is taken away (really, who would take it?), it can ALL be replaced.
Every canned and dry good in the house now fits in the kitchen! I still have enough to make pretty much any recipe I can think of at a moment’s notice, but not crazy amounts of each thing. In this part of the world (west coast Canada) we are encouraged to have 3 days emergency supplies in case of earthquake. No problem here! But at least I am no longer a sweet target for looters like I was before! LOL
And with the newly found spaces where food used to live, I let it simply be S P A C E, sigh, it’s nice to have breathing room!”~ creativeme

The one thing I most want to add to what creativeme had to say was this ~ Simply fear of changing old habits seems to paralyse people as well. So many of us don’t adapt to the present when phases of our lives pass by. For example ~ I swear that, out of habit, many parents continue to cater for a home full of children once the kids have all left home.

Crafters have a fear of letting go of materials in case sometime in the future they will somehow conjure up the enthusiasm and creativeness to use them. I know I am guilty of this at times. I am much more ruthless these days though.

And let us look a the futility of that fear. If an item isn’t necessary to comfort and survival how much emotion should we waste on worrying about its place in our lives anyway.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter an item from the laundry of your home.

“If we do not feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more?” — Unknown

Eco Tip for the Day

Release items in your home so that they are available to others who truly have a use for them. Butter, for the environment, that others use your used stuff than go out and buy new.

For a full list of my eco tips so far click here

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow