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Doodle
So, it’s the New Year, a time to look forward with new plans and hopes.
I’ve often wondered if the New Year has different significance in different parts of the world. (Of course many cultures and religions have dates different to the Western world use of January 1st). Here in the UK, in the northern hemisphere, January 1st,  is the traditional time for people to start diets and new exercising regimes – ironically at probably hardest time of the year to do so as winter is just kicking in and it gets dark by 4.30 pm. as does the need for warming comfort food.
Historically, in this country until 1751, New Year used to be March 25th. This seems to be an eminently more sensible time to deal with the sense of promise that the New Year seems to engender, with spring springing. As a professional de-clutterer, this is reflected in the fact that work goes very quiet over the dark winter months, but come spring the phone starts ringing.
My gesture to New Year, New Start this year was to tackle my underwear drawer. Though to be correct, I don’t have a drawer but three wicker baskets on a shelf: one each for socks, knickers/ bras, and long sleeved undertops.
I finally cleared out the mishmash of my old limp underwear covering various sizes I have been and bought in new:Â I now have just four bras, Â Â (plus two for sport) and 10 pairs of knickers. They feel fresh and fit perfectly (I got measured for the bras) and remind me of that lovely childhood feeling when starting the new school year with new uniform and fresh exercise books.
There is something very life affirming and self valuing about new underwear.
All my holey sock have gone out and been replaced and I’ve got 5 new silky thermal long sleeves vests (includes some for outdoor exercising), getting rid of what I had before that were all becoming a little less than fresh .
How’s your underwear drawer, if I may be so bold?
Today’s Mini Mission
Declutter something made from glass or china. Crockery, figurines, eye glasses, glass beaded necklace…
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
Hi Doodle, yes sometimes decluttering is about realising when things are past their best and to switch them out. Not buy new ones and leave the old ones there cluttering up the place.
Such a simple step but one many find difficult. I have certainly had to train myself to get rid of the old on acquiring replacements – it isn’t happen naturally.
This weekend a very unattractive, non-fitting bra went into the garbage. Last week a pair of holy undies went. I checked the socks, but they are all good. My MIL gives socks as a Christmas gift and I am about 8 pairs ahead of schedule right now. LOL
Michelle – is this the same MIL who gives all three adult sons the same gift but in different colours?
I where two pairs of socks at a time most of the year Michelle (little miss cold feet) – that would use them up quicker, lol.
My husband brings me at least one pair of panties from his boys trip to Amsterdam every year. I have worn very few of them because they are almost always the wrong size or too overtly sexy to be worn under clothing! I have recently started to throw them away and I think I’ve persuaded him to get me a “consumable” this year instead 🙂
Hello Tracey – your comment made me smile and a wicked through crept into my head. 😉 With regard to undies, I don’t know about some stores, but the big box where I buy them, I cannot try them on first. The last time I bought some, they turned out to be way big. I thought about tossing them yesterday, but if laundry gets delayed some week, well then I guess I’ll be sportin’ granny panties! Cheers!
Tracey – I heard a funny story about a guy who was asked to bring home something consumerable from Amsterdam and he bought these boutique cookies from a sweet old lady in her charming shop, all beautifully packaged. And then the sniffer dog picked him out at the airport, guess what the secret ingredient was?
Consumable panties Tracy, lol??
Moni – my aunt got stopped at Australian customs once by sniffer dogs – turns out her standard, over the counter throat sweets had some dodgy ingredient in them.
Although I am not into drug taking, I would like to be that sort of little old lady – full of surprises and not conforming to expectations.
Doodle, ha ha! That’s exactly where my brain went.
Doubling up on socks sounds like a good idea to me. My feet are always so dang cold. 🙂
March 25th was originally the New Year? Awesome, that’s my birthday. In New Zealand we have Matariki which is the Maori New Year which they revived the celebration in 2001, its time with the first rising of the Pleiades constellation – its not as big a deal as 31 Dec/1 Jan (these occur during the annual summer shut down and holiday season) – but it is gaining popularity as a Winter celebration. This year it will be 28 June.
Right-o yes New Year is a good time of year to go thru the ‘unmentionables’ – you’re armed with New Year’s Resolutions to have a better life and there are plenty of sales on to restock.
We had the opportunity to sell our bedroom suite which was in storage but it had to include our headboard and bedside drawers which were in use. My hubby promised to make a new headboard and a bedside tables, but he’s been too busy painting the house to do so as yet. I always had a drawer for undies, a drawer for bras and a drawer for socks and it was nice and simple, but initially I was making do with a cardboard box. Then I was able to borrow a bedside drawer which had one drawer with a bookcase underneath, but at least I could have my alarm clock and book. What I have discovered is that everything does actually fit into one drawer – I do have to be vigilant about it not getting messy but now we are thinking we could build a suspended drawer (just one drawer) as I remembered Deb J has a bedside shelf rather than bedside drawers, as we have gotten used to something more compact.
Yes it was Moni. The year was (and still is technically) divided into quarter days: March, June, Sept and Dec 25th were all quarter days and the time for settling bills etc. Have a good look on Wikipedia. I use the 4 equinoxes (March, June, Sept and Dec 21st or there abouts) each year to review my priorities an how I m spending my time.
e storage, it can be very useful to be short term forced to do things a different way, because then you get to see the possibilities of change. A number of times I’ve been able to consolidate stuff from two storage units to one after being convinced we couldn’t do with less to the point of it not even being thought about, until like you and your 3 drawers, something has forced you to do with less for a bit.
Hi Doodle!
Given we’re not that far from the UK, the great scheme is of course similar in Germany, though it is probably a somewhat harsher climate in winter. Especially in the last years winters have been rather late here (last year we had snow until the middle of april). This year fits just right as we are now experiencing the first snow of this winter and the real cold is probably still ahead.
But still, days are getting longer again, slowly but they do, and this does make a psychological change for me. The worst months for me are November and December with their ever shortening days, although they’re milder than January and February.
However, maybe the climate is the reason why I’ve never been that enthusiastic about New Year’s resolutions. I’m usually having a physically slow start in the New Year with tackling paperwork and other organisational things in the first two months, reconnect via mail or phone with far away relatives and friends and so on.
There is however luckily a spring clean impulse later in the year and I’m relying on that to make headway with decluttering. 🙂
I’m sometimes getting socks and underwear for christmas as well (and fitting!), so the weeks after christmas are really a good time to go through those baskets again (yes, I have wicker baskets, too).
Hi Sanna, yes you definitely get harsher winters in Germany. We do get bouts of serious snow (though rarer in the south of the UK where I live) but because it is rare, it results in the whole country grinding to a standstill because we don’t have the infrastructure to cope with it.
This winter we have been battered by excessive torrential rain and very high winds and there is flooding all over the place.
I am quite sure the winter weather affects your New Year impetus – that is partly why I was curious to know what it is like to have new year in warmth, and if that changes anything. But like you, I think the onset of spring can have the desired affect. Though here in the UK it’s anybody’s guess when that may happen our weather is so unreliable.
The plus side on unreliability is that when we do get beauty weather, even if for just a day or two, it is truly wonderful. I remember visiting Virginia in the States one summer and couldn’t get my head round the constancy of the blue sky’s and not needing to take a cardigan with me, ‘just in case it got chilly in the afternoon.
All my trips to the UK and Ireland as an adult have been in winter or very early spring and I always loved the “warmth” over there. 😉 (even in Scotland it was way warmer than at home). I always figured in summer I’d much more likely be disappointed by the weather.
I’ve been to Virginia in summer once, too, and it was the first and only time I experienced having to take a sweater with me just for the purpose of not being cold inside of buildings. Haha. I’m just not used to excessive air conditioning. 🙂
Speaking for me, I have my own dates that prompt cleaning impulses, like upcoming easter or birthdays.
Oh yeah – air conditioning in buildings – forgot that – absolutely freezing!
Yes, our milder climate = a lot of rain.
Sanna – when I am fortunate enough to go and visit my relatives in Australia, I try to time it for Winter as that is about the equivalent of our Summer. They’re walking around in jeans and sweatshirts and I’m in shorts and t-shirts.
Moni, you certainly can’t wear shorts and t-shirts in British winter either, but it’s still kind of the same thing. 😀 I just enjoy being outside (wearing hat and coat) and not feeling cold and also the fact that there are some flowers blooming.
Hi Doodle – so nice to hear from a fellow de-clutterer in the UK – I have always felt a bit out on a limb here.
Will go and view my undies drawer today and deal with accordingly, look forward to more of your posts in due course.
Colleen – your page is a huge inspiration – many thanks
Hi Ruth *waves* welcome to 365 from a fellow Uker. I was lucky enough to meet Colleen last Autumn when she was on a trip over this neck of the woods, so any sense of being far far away has gone.
Consider your self in the world wide fold 😀 Let us know how you get on with the undies draw.
Another Brit here but I’m up in the frozen north (County Durham), although I’m off to Australia next month so I can wave at Colleen et al as well!
As I am coming to the end of a year long declutter (as in seriously hardcore) my knicker drawer is reasonably okay.
The problem now is that I have been so ruthless since last spring that I am now going back to where I started and culling all over again. Though to be fair, we did have an awful lot of stuff.
Hi Gillie, great to be hearing from a few fellow Brits – though I’m a soft southerner on the south coast compared to you hardy folk in the north.
I think with de-cluttering it’s a bit like peeling onion layers: as your de-clutter muscle builds up, it is very worth revisiting areas you have previously done, because you will get more ruthless with time (another good reason to start with the easy stuff because you’ll get better at dealing with the tougher stuff as time goes by).
I find over time, I have started seeing my belongings in a new light and things that were I didn’t even think about getting rid of , are now at least considered. I’m am sure I have more onion layers to go though!
Doodle, great idea of decluttering your underwear drawer at the begining of the New Year. I have a very organized and decluttered drawer. But your post got me to thinking that I think I have a new goal for each New Year. Buy all new undies at the beginning of each year if I need them. I need to redo my bras. I have 4 but 3 of them are very old. I need to do something about that. I also think I will do this for my mom. She tends to go through undies faster than I do because she wears a different kind and they just seem to get tattered faster.
Thanks Deb J. It’s so easy to hang on to bras long past their best. I do it all the time. Once there elasticity has gone, they really aren’t working at their best. You can give yourself a better shape with a right fitting bra. Also, some of us fluctuation in size over the years but don’t update the size.
But I confess, every time I have a clear out and buy new I swear to myself that I’ll do it regularly form now on…. but never do,lol
Doddle, I think for me it is the problem of getting around to doing it and also hating to spend the money. I am tight with my money because there isn’t much of it. Grin.
I with you on the cost Deb! I am sure that defers my getting round to it too 😀
Deb J – I live within five minutes of an outlet store for a major underwear brand, and I still put it off and put it off. Its an awesome store as all their end of line stock from their stores around the country turns up in our store and they often have bargain sales of ‘nothing under $20’ but there isn’t always a guarantee of the right size. As I have two teenage daughters – and trust me on this – when they were going thru their rapid growth stage, bras were a regular expense in our house because nothing grew in sync. First the rib cage would grow and then a month or two later the cup size would change too. So we had an assortment of every size possible there for a while. And even though they are sisters, they have quite different bodies and found they needed different styles.
One day my husband asked if I could just buy them ones ‘to grow into’ – he didn’t understand why we thought that was so funny.
Moni, those outlets are nice. I find they seldome have things that look right on me though. Like everything when it comes to clothes and shoes I am hard to fit.
haha, went through my underwear drawer this morning before I read this! Sometimes I imagine I have “ESP” with people I’m close to, because we think the same thing at the same time… And I think of all the posters & commenters on this site as my pals, even though this is my first time commenting… I have been reading for a long time 🙂 We are all at our own spots on this same decluttering path, slowing down and speeding up at different points in our journeys… Although Colleen hasn’t met all of us in person, she has given each of us so much! I refer anyone I come across who shows interest in decluttering to this site. Many thanks to all contributors 🙂
Welcome to 365 Peggy – thank you for coming out of lurkdom. It’s great that you feel Colleen and this blog has given you so much help; I think many of us draw here feel that way. And how amazing you did your underwear drawer all ready. There does sometimes be something in the ether that connects people in unexplained ways.
I must say my undies are all decluttered and neat – it’s one of the first areas I was able to start letting go of stuff, thanks to 365lessthings – and now it’s just habit! It feels good to wear socks that fit and stay up, and to know my unmentionables would pass the test if I were in an accident, as our mothers used to warn us 🙂
Lol Jo, it must be a load off your mind to know you wouldn’t let your mother down if the unthinkable happened 😀
And for you it was one of the first areas you got control off – it is interesting where we all start.
Hallo Doodle, another southern Uk-er here. Isn’t it wonderful that people from all corners of the world can come together to encourage one another in their cluttering efforts. The wonders of the web never cease to amaze me.
Hi Sue, yes it is amazing and marvellous. I love the internet, it has been agreat way to meet like minded people in al sorts of different areas of my life. It certainly shrinks the world…and hopefully our clutter piles 😀
I bin holey socks after I the wear that gets them noticed and sny clean socks or underwear that has a date with the bin gets used to dust/clean with first. Great for fiddly jobs is an old sock on your hand to do around taps /banisters before chucking it. I have 6 bras and need to invest in new socks. The last lot of cheap socks were false economy so mid range socks will be purchased next time!
I bin holey socks after I the wear that gets them noticed and any clean socks or underwear that has a date with the bin gets used to dust/clean with first. Great for fiddly jobs is an old sock on your hand to do around taps /banisters before chucking it. I have 6 bras and need to invest in new socks. The last lot of cheap socks were false economy so mid range socks will be purchased next time!
Hi Kat – the trouble with me is I have in the past saved socks for useful cleaning purposes…and then never use them so end up with a cupboard under the sink full of ‘useful old material and holey socks’ that become a clutter mountain in their own right. So I have had to learn to just get rid, because at least where I live they can go to the local charity shop where they make good money out of ‘rags’.
Funnily enough, the last week of December I had the urge to go through my underwear and sock drawers; just as I was doing so, a girlfriend called and she had just done the same the day before. Guess there is just something about having organized undies for the new year!