On Fridays at 365 Less Things I share with you my favourite comments from my wonderful readers and my favourite web finds of the week. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.
Favourite Comments. Enjoy!
Here are one wise and one amusing comments left by dizzy this week.
And the Change post this week resulted in some great comments from… Melissa ~ Lucinda & Loretta
This comment is from a readers who had not commented before. Shelley welcome to 365 Less Things and thank you for sharing your story.
Favourite Web Finds. Happy reading!
Here is a post for LucindaSans that tells about some decluttering inspire by Andréia, one of your fellow 365ers.
Here are two good links from Tony at We Do THis Only Once. Read them here and here
This post from The Change Blog ~ Facing Your Biggest Fears may be based on a situation much different to letting go of stuff but the principles can apply to both and many other scary situations.
Moni sent through this link to a great online resource for those readers in the USA looking for a place to donate your gently used unwanted stuff.
Today’s Mini Mission
Declutter excess plastic kitchen storage items. I have discovered that there is often just as many of these items waiting to be used as there are ones in use. This means to me that, for the most part, I have more than I really need or else the majority of them would be in service most of the time. I think it is time I gave a few more to my daughter.
Eco Tip For The Day
Plan ahead and get all the ingredients you need, for a recipe you are following, from the fridge at once, rather than opening and shutting it several times letting the cold air escape.
It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow
Colleen, it’s been a great week full of great posts and interesting comments.
I think I don’t have any plastic container left to declutter (I only have two left and these are our go-tos for when we take lunch with us, they need to stay), but I do have a thermos flask that is leaking. I’d like to get a replacement cap, but not sure if that’s even possible. Maybe I’ll do the research for sunday’s contemplating mission and get rid of a couple of surplus glass containers for friday. 😉
Wow Sanna, I wish I was that plastic free. I dare say I never will be because my pantry ingredients are all in Tupperware canisters but I would like to eliminate many of the microwave dishes and other storage plastic. As I said in the mission I have been giving more and more to my daughter because I have found I don’t need so much now that the kids have left home. I am sure I can live with even less though because I have a set of glass bowls I prefer to use. This will be a slow and steady declutter as I figure out what I need and what I don’t.
Lots of good stuff this week from everyone! I had been accumulating plastic food containers (margarine, lunch meat, etc.) after having gotten rid of a whole stack because especially the little sour cream containers with lids are fantastic to use for my cut-in primer and paints, but there are definitely a bunch that can go to the recycling!! I also use the containers from Hillshire lunch meat to take my lunch to work. Dang handy!
The Facing Your Biggest Fear was really awesome. Appreciate the link!
Hi Michelle, at least you are reusing your “throw out” plastics before they go into the recycling. I do this with curry takeout containers. I have a friend who makes food for someone not so well off and I give her these containers to use. Not so many these days though since it is just Steve and I now we tend to dine in and save having to waste plastic at all. I also use them to donate collections of small items to the thrift shop and to put aside batteries in to go to eWaste.
I am glad you liked the Facing Your Biggest Fear article. I thought it was good too and can be applied to all sorts of situations. I might read it again.
Colleen, I have a friend who is addicted to curry. 🙂 He orders premade sauce off the net. Gave me a pack once and it was quite delicious.
I borrowed a cookbook from the library and have been thumbing through the recipes. I was flagging pages so that I could copy just the ones that I would really make and I was getting a lot of flags on the pages, so I went ahead and ordered a copy of the book. I really admire the format and the instructions seem very simple and clear. I am determined to try one new recipe a month. But the deal I made with myself is that at least one and preferably two other cookbooks need to leave. I have one cookbook that is only potato recipes; it’s 2 inches wide and I have made one potato soup recipe. This may be a book for a quick thumb through and then simply copying the one recipe. Right?
Some very good coments and links, Colleen. Moni, thanks for sharing the link to the Stuff Shop. I have bookmarked it. Tony, I like the two links you shared also, especially the one about toys.
Colleen thanks for another week’s recap of great comments and inspiring web links 🙂
My pleasure Megan S.
Hi everyone! I have been chugging away all week at everything that I dragged down from the ceiling storage. Each day I have made sure something has left the house but I’d like it all to be all done NOW! Still have plenty to get on with but am starting to see the floor again. I’m not putting anything back up until it is all done though.
I am surprised how much ‘residual’ stuff is left over when a box is cleared out. There is the stuff that going. Great. Stuff that is staying. And there is always a few items which don’t fall into either category. Dizzy – as you’re doing your garage/launch pad too, have you found this? I do recall from other times that these eventually seem to be dealt with but seem to take a surprising amount of time and effort to disperse.
Duvet inners. We have always had spare duvet inners but we seem to have surplus at the moment. All are the right size for the beds in the house. I think we used to put an extra one in the duvet cover when the kids were younger, but they find that a bit much now. I want to keep one spare for guests and the eldest probably will leave home in the next 1-2 years. Anyone got any thoughts on whether I should keep the extra ones or not?
Hi Moni,
Yes my garage is in a state of flux – constantly because I am still sorting it all. I bring things out and separate it into piles of recycle etc. It is taking time as I am mindful of how I am disposing of it. I’d love to throw the lot but I can’t. I am trying every avenue before Landfill. That is why I am constantly surrounded by stuff in the garage, but hopefully not for long!!
I don’t know whether I can help with the Doona/Duvet situation. I have a Summer and a Winter quilt for our beds. In one way I wish I didn’t but I am glad when It’s like now and I’m freezing. My hubby works away so for two weeks the Winter Doona is on our bed. For when he is home I switch to the Summer weight doona because he is so HOT!!! He is a walking radiator and in bed I feel like I’m frying. When he goes back, on with the Winter doona!! I have the spare for the Karri Tree incase he gets chilly and I have a medium warmth one for the spare bed and sofa bed.
Maybe you could use the suck vac bags to store your extras in and see how you function with less for a while, the bags are great, minimal room and dust and critter free. If you really feel you don’t need them and are completely free of the’ Justin Case’ gene then maybe there are some families nearby that can make good use of your extras, or the the Salvo’s and Vinnie’s always have a Winter Doona appeal. 🙂 🙂 🙂
My dilemma at this very moment is Doona/ Duvet covers. I have just realised that none of them will fit the Karri Trees’s doona!! hahaha. We got him a queen size when we moved here and he decided to buy himself one of those comforter packages. That thing is a pain because it is all in one, if it starts to look yuck and crumply you can flip it but the whole thing is one and I generally put him a spare cover on it. So far I have had to get it cleaned twice and it is huge. I think I’ll have to get him to search for a cover that matches the design. I love the look of a comforter but they are painful when they are too big to launder regularly! I have an abundance of double sized doona covers and probably too many queen size now as well!!! Now I need help!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Well, it’s a problem because they are chunky to store aren’t they… What I do now is forgo the guest one – guests in summer get my winter doona and vice versa with a blanket added on.
I had a slow start to the week but today managed to put a whole carton of books to the donate pile, and straight into the boot of my car. It hurts to remember how much I paid for those hardbacks. I checked the eBay prices & it’s just not worth the trouble of trying to sell them. Just about another 2,000 books left…
A scarf has gone to the consignment shop. That’s now about 30 items gone there & I’ve recouped some money from that. Do thrift shops want coat hangers?
I love reading your earlier posts – such as using bath gel in the liquid soap containers, and cleaning the shower wall with unwanted shampoo.
Hi everyone, it is a rather cold, rainy Sunday here and after visiting a highly staged showhome yesterday I have renewed my decluttering efforts today. Have been listing items on freecycle all this week – and happily watching things leaving – but today decided to list a heap more, including a few items which I’ve been sitting on the fence about. Have decided to put it in the hands of the clutter-gods as to whether they stay or not.
Hi Everyone,
Oh my what a great line up of links, loved looking at everyone’s sites and reading all the goodies. I took a particular shine to Tony’s links about money and toys. What great guest posts. They both really struck me because they are both so here and now for so many.
I am very much entrenched in helping our niece and her future husband stay on the straight road that isn’t paved with credit cards. Young love and dollar signs in the eyes are not how you want to view the world. Young love yes!! but not with the added ‘oohhh lets buy this cos it means we love each other!!! Money is tight for them and I am diligently dropping all the clues to have a successful week and keep it in the bank longer!! I probably drive them mad but I’m sure they love hearing about and laughing at how their Aunty & Uncle lived in a caravan and saved and saved to rent a unit and then buy their first real bed so they could get rid of the camp beds that they had borrowed, and how we salvaged an old formica table out of my parent’s shed and found three mismatched chairs, one each for us and one if we had a visitor, too bad about more chairs, we’ll have to wait till someone chucks some out hahaha!! and that our first real brand new dining suite was an outdoor setting made of really thick plastic and cost actual money, a few cushions and a tablecloth and it was trendy chic!! Who am I kidding it was crap and crap it stayed but we had something to sit on and eat off whilst we planned out finances and ways to get into the ‘credit trap’. Yes I say to them “Been there, done that” got the statement to prove it!!! That lovely ‘thing’ is cool!! Whack it on the Hire Purchase and we’ll have it now yahoo, we have designer furniture FAB!!! Until it keeps rising in price because we couldn’t afford to make the whole payment at the end of the month!!! Yeah we had cool stuff but by the time we paid the ‘freakin’ thing off it was the most EXPENSIVE COOL THING EVER!!!!! AND we sold it (for like ‘not a lot’) anyway because it just wasn’t us!!! What a horrible cycle to get on. I will chip away at them and I pray that sounding like a hammer on an anvil, will guide them to a Wedding Day full of excitement and love and happiness, not a niggling thought of ‘OH MY GOD’ how will we pay for all the extras”. My wishes for them and everyone else I know, NO BAD DEBT and NO CLUTTER!!!
‘I’ll start with the TOY STORY, next month, give them time to digest my last offering Hahahahaha!!!
Have a beautiful day 🙂 🙂 🙂
Dizzy, you are a hoot. You just keep right on bugging your niece. Somebody needs to do it. It scares me how young people these days think they should start out with what their parents took years to have. Those magic little cards aren’t so magic and we always have to pay in the end, usually with a lot more money than any of the items were worth.