Moving from house to house, changing cars, motorbikes and furniture results in the accumulation of redundant keys over time. The time has come again to purge those keys that we recognise but no longer need and some that we have no idea what they belong to. There is always that element of ~ I hope there isn't a locked box somewhere that I am about to through away the key to ~ but if we haven't discovered that locked box in the last three years I don't suppose it is going to miraculously appear next week. And even if it does how important can it be. Now that's better! It may just be … [Read more...]
Simple Saturday – Cindy’s Shed
Even a major clean up can be fairly easily managed if you don't try to bite off too much at once. In this case, it was time (way past time) to clean our shed, which had not been attended to in the nine years we've lived in our house and which, in fact, contained items left behind by the previous owner. I spent a month working on it, once or twice a week, and never for more than an hour, except for the extremely pleasant afternoon I spent decluttering five bags of mulch and compost and some ground covers on a flower bed I enlarged. Here's how I approached this task. Unfortunately, we are in a … [Read more...]
Landscape Clutter
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom What is landscape clutter? Well, I’m a big gardener, but I’m not referring to anything you might see in the yard. No, landscape clutter is clutter that you are so accustom to seeing out-of-place that you no longer recognize that it’s out of place. It’s become a part of the landscape of your home. Here are some examples of things that have been landscape clutter in my house: A cocktail dress that hung in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room for 3 or 4 months A piece of furniture that we moved out of Clara’s room with the intention of … [Read more...]
Simple Saturday – Communicating your needs
Recently I received a pair of photos from Willow which demonstrated her frustration with items cluttering up her kitchen bench. Even though this is a launch area for stuff coming in and out of  Willows home there wasn't a lot of items out of place once she removed the things that had just accumulate during the course of a day. The problem was the items that had landed there and not been shifted for some weeks. I will let you read her email so you get the full picture. Willow wrote :- This counter is higher than the kitchen counter and would normally be used as an eating bar, but my … [Read more...]
No Brainer Decluttering
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom According to my mother, a successful and busy real estate agent for 28 years who has looked in thousands of closets, my husband and I are an anomaly: he has far, far more clothes than I do. He’s not a clothes horse; he’s gentle with his clothes (unlike me, I’m sorry to say), so they last and last. He wears a standard American working guy wardrobe: khakis, Dockers, button down shirts, polos, and t-shirts on Friday and the weekends. He gets a couple new dress shirts a year and a ridiculous number of new t-shirts (his work, conferences, and other people’s … [Read more...]
Decluttering for people with allergies
A guest post by - Nurchamiel - a regular reader and commenter A clean, tidy and declutter house is very important for asthmatics and people who suffers from hay fever. Unfortunately, sometimes clutter enters our home and it is time to clean it up. I would like to give some tips about decluttering as an allergy sufferer. To some, the tips may sound a bit extreme, but I have noticed that if I follow these tips, my outbreaks are less severe and less frequent than if I don't. If you have an extreme sensitivity to dust and dust mites (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) hire a professional … [Read more...]
Creating Enthusiasm by Changing your Thinking
For those of you overwhelmed by the decluttering task ahead of you I would like to give you hope. I am going to ask you to do five simple things, and I want you to focus on the effect those things have on your mood. It is important that you carry out these tasks in one short period of time in the order given. Please do not read ahead to the next task until you have completed the previous step. First Task If you haven't completed all the mini missions for this week I would like you to choose two but only carry out one of them for now. If you have completed all the mini missions I set for … [Read more...]
The Black Hole
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom Black hole - In astronomy- an object so massive that nothing, not even light, can escape its gravitation. In modern usage - a place where things get lost; a place or thing into which objects disappear and are not expected to be seen again. Do you have a black hole in your house? I bet you do. Maybe it’s the kitchen or dining room table, the chair in your bedroom, your desk, or the bench by the front door. It’s the place in your home that attracts everything that comes into your house and once there is difficult, if not impossible, to re-home. I have a friend … [Read more...]
Before and After Cindy’s Art Closet
Saturday Quick Post - by Cindy I fought the art closet, and I won. What was removed... A velvet art book 2 Idea books Some origami paper & instruction book 2 Set of glitter glue pens A package of horse stencils. All these were donated. I also gathered a bunch of little tidbits for the craft corner of the 2nd grade classroom and threw away a huge number of little bits of dry, dusty and yarn-wrapped junk. … [Read more...]
UFO – Unidentified Frozen Object
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom In Honor of Tuesday's Mini Mission Imagine your freezer, nice and tidy, not too empty and not too full. Now imagine dumping it all out on the floor, scrambling it around, and shoving the frozen food back in willy-nilly. Whew! That's a mess. Now double the amount of food and really cram it in there. That's what my freezer looked like last year. I decided to do something about it. Just like with any other major decluttering and organizing project, before I began, I got boxes and my label maker. I was ready. I did this cleaning in winter in the garage, so there was no … [Read more...]