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’s mini missions address items that you may not have considered decluttering in the past. You may not even consider the idea when you see what they are, but I thought I would make the suggestion anyway and allow you to give them some thought. I no longer have any of the items mentioned here and some I never did. With all of these items you could instigate a trial separation where you don’t use them for a month and see how you cope. If, like me, you have none of them them consider items closely related to them, for some you could declutter items stored in them.
Monday – Consider decluttering your home phone. Do you really need a static phone as well as a mobile for each person in the household?
Tuesday – Consider decluttering your second television or the third one if you have that many. Let’s face it how much time do we really need to waste sitting around watching TV or videos.
Wednesday – Do you really need an alarm clock when your cell phone can carry out this task. Consider decluttering it.
Thursday – Declutter a piece of furniture, especially if its only purpose is to hold items that need dusting.  Hopefully your previous decluttering efforts might have freed up such a piece by now.
Friday – Declutter a filing cabinet. Once you have decluttered your accumulated paperwork and have become realistic about what you really need to retain in the future, perhaps decluttering your filing cabinet, or at least downsizing to one with less drawers, would make sense. The lack of excess filing space may encourage you to stay on top of the paper clutter in the future, having no place to store it out of sight out of mind.
Saturday – I have mentioned this next item before but not often. Consider decluttering your second fridge or freezer. I know that some people use theirs for economic purchasing reasons but if that is not the case do you really need it. Many second fridges in Australia are used almost purely for storing beer and soft-drinks (soda), neither of which are good for you when consumed in large quantities and/or too frequently.
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.
We need to declutter the second fridge. It isn’t plugged in, but we can get $50 from the local utility and they’ll haul it off, I just need to arrange a time and keep the path to it clear until it’s gone. Neither half of this has proven easy, but it would be really nice to have it gone. I have the next week off, maybe I can clear the path and just suck up committing to a date 2-4 weeks in the future for them to show up.
I don’t like a cell phone as an alarm clock because it’s too tempting to check it One-Last-Time before sleep, and that both keeps me awake because I’m doing something and because the spectrum the light is in keeps my brain rev’d up. While there are apps to help with the light spectrum, it’s still engaging me at time I should be settling & sleeping.
Hi Kayote, I hope you will commit to getting rid of that fridge. Wow, the space that would free up.
Also I challenge you to resist temptation and put that cell phone beside your bed for a week to break the habit of being enticed to check it that one last time before bed.
These are some interesting missions. I am looking at getting rid of my mom’s land line and getting her a cell phone. Her land line has gotten so expensive and for no reason that I can see. She doesn’t make that many calls nor does she get that many. A simple, cheap plan will do and she will be happier. I just have to find the time to do it. Neither of us has a TV so we don’t need to worry about that one. I don’t like the alarm clock on my cell phone so will keep my alarm clock. No furniture to get rid of. No filing cabinet but I do have a fire proof safe that I plan to get rid of once I have all my files out of it scanned in and on the cloud. Don’t have any extra fridges or freezers. So, I have two things to work on.
I thought perhaps you would have none of these things Deb. Although technically you don’t as one of the things is your mom’s and the other just a related item.
No extra TV, no extra fridge/freezer, no alarm clock nor do I use my phone (never needed an alarm, do it in my head), already replaced our four drawer filing cabinet with a one drawer which is part of a desk.
Keeping the landline for now (special deal combo with Internet and Sky) and display cabinets are scheduled for departure when we downsize in a couple of years. Slowly reducing contents.
So on track! Excited tomorrow we are flying to Sydney then a three week cruise to South Pacific islands!
Hi Janetta, I don’t suppose your cruise will dock in at Newcastle on the way back to Sydney. We could spend the day together if it does.
Ah Colleen I would LOVE to have done that but sadly it doesn’t!
Bummer! When do you arrive back in Sydney.
Janetta – do you mean you tell yourself what time you need to wake up and you just do it?
Yes! Have done all my life and never overslept.
Hello from Colorado! Already got rid of the land line phone 10 years ago. But now I am deleting very old messages on my phone plus other items (lists) I actually keep on the phone. Thanks for this reminder!
Pat in Colorado — getting cooler here this week.
Well done finding a related declutter Pat. I might do a little of that myself right now, now that you mention it.
Hi Colleen,
These are some great missions! I’m going to be a bit of a disappointment though… because I’m not ready to do some of them…
We still have a home phone (land line) and use it mainly to screen calls and for the internet. If there was a better way to get internet here, that phone would be history! (We are waiting for FIOS, but they have no plans to set up in our area)…
We have one TV and if it were up to me, that thing would be out of here. My husband likes to watch it though :p
I did give up my CD/alarm clock some time ago but replaced it with a light up dial watch that lays flat (low profile) so that I can check the time as I dress, etc. I don’t like to use my phone for this, the screen is too bright.
When my daughter leaves (hopefully within 2 years) we will re-evaluate the furniture. It’s hard to know what we will need then, while she is here 🙂
I have 2 file cabinets… one is inactive stuff… We reference it sometimes (travel info, work related stuff, household, sentimental)… The other is active stuff (financial, health)…. I do go through both file cabinets periodically and trash or shred stuff as it becomes redundant, so I feel okay about them for now.
Thankfully, I can report that years ago we got rid of the fridge that the former owner of our home left in the garage 🙂
The GREAT thing I have to report is that my husband, bless his heart, got rid of all the dead batteries recently!!! There was a temporary “hazardous collection” point nearby and he jumped on it!!! Those batteries (mostly AA) have been collecting for years! We had 2 coffee cans completely full of them! 🙂 🙂 🙂 I told him that I want to reduce our dependence on batteries from here on out because I hate worrying about how to get rid of them :p No more battery operated candles here 🙂
No worries Peggy, the mini missions are always just suggestions. If you aren’t ready you aren’t ready.
Good for you husband getting rid of those batteries, I did the same thing last week. Mine had been building up for a while but the place I drop them off to is no longer on the way to everything else I do or close to my closest bank branch so hadn’t got over there in a while. It is good to see the back of them though. The sad part was that when I went to donate the foreign coin I had to my bank, as I had done in the past, the teller told me they don’t take the coin. It seemed as if she had no idea they ever did and wasn’t inclined question her knowledge with the other teller even though I told her they did it in the past. I wasn’t impressed.
We had two tvs at home. One in the bedroom and the other in the studio. I chose to get rid of the one in the studio as it was just sitting there taking up space.. the best part is I made a few bucks off of it.
Good for you Lorena. Although they say watching TV in you bedroom isn’t conducive to a good night sleep. But who knows if they are right.
Lots to think about here. We keep our landline phone because our cellphones have a very basic plan and we can’t use them to call outside the country so the landline is our connection to family in Europe. We did finally get rid of our second TV, it was an old CRT one and I had difficulty finding anywhere that would accept it – in the end we had to arrange for hazardous waste pick-up. I was most relieved to see it go, which was funny in a way as it was our first color TV and we really felt like grown-ups when we got it 30 years ago! A side-effect of letting that go was that I gave away the TV armoire to someone in my neighborhood and I am loving the extra empty space in the room. Definitely feel like progress is being made!
Ha! One big declutter leads to another in the case of TVs sometimes. Well done you Christine.
Hi Christine, any reason why you don’t just video chat with your family overseas rather than use the phone?
We have done it a couple of times with my dad, but he seems to find it all a bit complicated so rather than explaining it over and over again it is just easier to use the phone! I’ve never tried it with my sister, I’ll have to ask her about that. Also I tend to have very long conversations with them so I just put my phone headset on and do basic chores like laundry or ironing or emptying the dishwasher while we chat.
The home phone is one I’ve been dithering about for some time. I will contact our provider tomorrow and make enquiries,
Second TV – probably not at this stage as we have two lounges, however Im sure one of the kids would happily take one off our hands if we asked them to. However, under the topic of the 2nd tv, the video-dvd combo is going to go to my dad at some point in the near future, it also occured to me last night that since the advent of TV On Demand apps and netflix that the TIVO no longer gets used. Hmmmmm. So if we wall mounted the tv we would not need the entertainment centre. That could be my Thursday piece of furniture.
Alarm clock, I have been using my phone for some time. I took to this option like a duck to water, well because of our cat who somehow made the connection between me hitting the snooze button and me getting up = feeding him. So he would visit during the night and keep bashing the alarm clock snooze button constantly.
I only have a small filing cabinet at work, for work.
Fridge/freezer – yes we have a spare on in storage at work but adult son has dibbs on it, he describes himself as ‘pre-settled down’
Hi Moni,
That note about your cat really made me laugh! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Me too, that is very funny!
Peggy Christine & Colleen – yes he is sort of smart – he knows that heat comes from the heat pump/air con unit we have in our M Bedroom, however he thinks HE turns it on with his mind as he will stare at it until someone humors him by using the remote.
Smart Cat!
I don’t have any of this week’s missions, but think they are such good ones.
Got rid of second tv a month or so ago, have a small travel alarm I use if I need to get up early to catch a plane. Got rid of landline phone over 5 years ago and figured out I had saved nearly $3,000 with that choice alone. Not to mention not getting those annoying telemarketer calls any more.
Thumbs up to that Calla.
Good suggestions Colleen.
Land line is connected to security system and for calls to Europe, so has to stay for now.
Only have one TV, no second fridge or freezer.
I don’t like my phone as my alarm either. I try not to check my phone and would prefer to leave it out of my bedroom.
We have no furniture to declutter at this moment either. I have a piece in mind for the future which is currently used by my husband. It will take some planning, but will be worth it. You just gave me the idea though. Thanks for that.
Oh I wish I could get rid of the filing cabinet. Maybe that should be my winter project. I have too many papers still. I want to go paperless, however paper is a procrastination point. I usually do a ” get rid of 20 pieces of paper day” on the week-ends and for some reason this is still my weak point. I am off to get rid of some right now:)
This week’s missions caused a chuckle! I had just said to hubby, “we are getting rid of the sofa table…I am tired of dusting it!” It had family pics on it (top and bottom) and they had to moved off, table dusted, frames dusted and then put back. It’s a gorgeous dark wood that shows every single speck of dust! Hubby said, “you’re getting rid of all our furniture!” Had already sold the coffee table last year!
The one tv we had went out the door 3yrs ago along with the cabinet it was stored in.
No home land line, use my phone as my alarm (it has several settings to choose from and I found one I liked).
No file cabinets only desk drawers and I am pitching something each time I open them!
Keeping my little freezer though. I buy bread from the discount store and stock up on meat deals so we put it to good use.
Cannot tell you how many times I mention to folks, “I know this great decluttering blog…you should try it!” Just love reading all the comments!
Hi Karen, I think you may have already left me behind when it comes to decluttering. Ha ha! No TV, I bet you get much more useful stuff done than most people.
And thank you for the great plugs you give out for 365 Less Things. The readers comments are the best part of it these days.
No 2nd tv, fridge/freezer, alarm clock in our room or filing cabinet. B the kids each have an alarm clock because having a mobile device if their room would be a disaster! We still have landline which I use for work purposes and telling telemarketers that again I do want my ducts cleaned nor cable nor…. Am thinking of switching to mobile only.
We took the china cabinet out of our house two weeks ago. It didn’t fit in our current dining room so we’d put it in the living room. But it took up a whole wall, so my wife took everything out of it, culled out over half of the collectibles, and let it go. I’ve been disposing of books for quite awhile now, so we were able to get rid of one bookcase. That leaves us with one. Both my wife and I have lost a good deal of weight this year, so we both have gotten rid of a lot of our clothes. We feel better physically and emotionally with the lost weight and extra space in our house. I love empty space now!
Jeff in OK
Way to go Jeff and wife.
Jeff – it is a surprising byproduct of decluttering is often weight loss, strange but true. I read a book on it by Peter Walsh and he had a few theories on the topic. Way to go you two!