One of my major goals this year has been to make de-cluttering a permanent part of my life. Each month I can slowly see more and more progress in the house. In January hubby and I cleared out our wardrobe – all my clothes that didn’t fit me but that I couldn’t bear to throw away went into a wardrobe in the spare room. Slowly I have realized that my clothes in the other wardrobe aren’t that important after all and every few weeks a few have been going out in the charity clothes bag or to jumble sales. Last week I bit the bullet and got my sister–in-law around to do some ‘shopping’ as she is the size I am no longer. Off went my beautiful tops, jackets and trousers – some from my days of shopping in London and Paris (when I was single and carefree and smaller). I am much happier now knowing someone is making use of my clothes rather than having them taking up space in the wardrobe and as a bonus my sister-in-law gets to update her wardrobe for free. It is such a lovely feeling to walk into the bedroom wardrobe every day and find our clothes so easily without wasting time – we can even take visitors into it to show it off! As a money bonus we also now realize that we don’t need to invest money in more wardrobe storage space – we have more than enough room, the problem was too much stuff. If you find you just can’t give something away because of the memories you can always take a photo of it or perhaps turn it into something else if you are good at sewing.
De-junking Challenge 1
Checking my kitchen collection of recipe books last week I found to my surprise that I own 25 recipe books plus three recipe scrapbooks. Although I’ don’t know how many recipe books the average Kiwi owns I definitely think I would be considerably above the average, owning close to a small library – it seemed like the perfect project for my first de-junking challenge for 2011. An afternoon later of leisurely looking through recipe books I was down to 19 recipe books with a few more still to go once I have photocopied a few favourite pages. I was feeling very proud of my first de-junking mission of the year – this wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Until, that was, I realised with dismay that on the shelf next to my small library of recipe books was another small library of seven year old food magazines. It was a very good example of having things right out in the open that you pass every day and hardly ever notice or use. So my afternoon task today is to work my way through the food magazines pulling out the last few recipes I want to keep (but will probably from past experience never cook!). After that the magazines will be passed on to another family member to see if they can find any tempting recipes for their household.
Achievement so far: 1 spare shelf, one much tidier shelf.
Further action needed: Still need to de-junk more recipe books: Can I get it down to single digits???????
Clutter’s Last Stand
This is the title of Don Aslett’s de-cluttering book – one of my library books for my summer reading. I‘ve talked before about how important I think it is to take the time out every now and then to reflect on the ideas in de-junking books like this. For most of us our obsession with owning more and more things has been with us since our childhoods – it is not suddenly going to disappear overnight because we want it to, we need lots of support and inspiration from others – some may even need professional help!. This year I have decided not only to continue with my non-consumerism train challenge but also to start de-junking my life so I can actually enjoy and use what I consider important enough to keep after my de-junking clear outs. When I met my husband 12 years ago I could fit everything I owned in a car. In those days I didn’t even own a bed, I figured it was just as easy to sleep on the floor – hubby didn’t share my views and after a series of carpet burn incidents our first purchase together was a bed. Twelve years later we now own three beds despite the fact that the inhabitants of our household (myself, hubby and two cats) all share the same bed. De-junking challenge starts tomorrow…….