So I tend to bite off more than I can chew. A few months ago the opportunity to have everyone out of the house for a weekend seemed like the perfect time to do some major cleaning up. I had high hopes. I was going to tackle the worst room in the house. It was filled floor to ceiling with boxes from the move and just had enough floor space to walk a thin path around it. Since the move had taken place some five years before I had the brilliant idea that it would be no sweat to clear out that area. But where to start? I mean of course you wanted to start near the door so you could make sure you … [Read more...]
Fine Tooth Comb
Right now I am working on our inventory of possessions, which is a task we have to do for insurance purposes when we are moving to a new location. This is in case something gets damaged during the moving process. If it isn't listed on the inventory it isn't compensated for as loss or damage. This task gives me the opportunity to identify every item in our home and either add it to the inventory or make the decision to eliminate it. It is nice to know that I have been through the entire kitchen this week and have only felt inclined to declutter four little things. I am very happy knowing that … [Read more...]
Staging your home for you
In Cindy's post yesterday she talked a little about staging a home for selling purposes. This got me thinking two things ~ 1.) Why wait until you are about to sell before making your home look good. 2.) A home can look good without being impersonal such as they suggest in this staging process. How nice would it be were your home in a state where it looks good enough to show people through at the drop of a hat while still having those personal touches that make it feel like home? Keeping in mind that people viewing a home, with the intent to buy, will look in your storage areas to see how they … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday
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. There are definitely specific items that, in excess, make your home harder to keep tidy, organised and efficient. For today's mini missions I will make some suggestions of items to declutter and why they can have a negative effect in your home when in over-abundance. Most of the items I mention … [Read more...]
The easy things to declutter
In order to write this post today I took a look back to Day 64 of my declutter mission. This was the day that I first began to blog about my resolution to declutter 365 things. Since then I have often written that the simplest way to begin decluttering is to start with the easy things. Looking back on the photos and list of items I had decluttered prior to blogging proves that this is exactly what I did. Many of these items had never been used, hadn't been used for a long time, I didn't like for one reason or another or I had too many of. The items came from places all over the house, from … [Read more...]
Deprivation
Since I have brought us back to the subject of being open minded, now seems as good a time as any to write a post about our state of mind when it comes to stuff. I was reading a post this morning, which I will link to on Friday, and one quote really stood out for me... "Most of us have so much – much more than the majority of the world at least (and more than our primal ancestors ever dreamed of), yet we live with a misplaced sense of deprivation." ~ MARK SISSON This statement puts into words something I wonder about often. I think about it from all aspects. There is the "Have" side … [Read more...]
Too Hard Basket
Today's mini mission is to declutter something because it requires dusting and you don't like it all that much anyway. Have you ever considered how much time you spend cleaning things in your home that aren't even necessary to your happiness or survival. Or perhaps you avoid this task until the dust is causing hay-fever, someone is coming to visit and it looks embarrassing or the humidity is turning that seemingly innocent dust into a breeding ground for mould or mildew. Or perhaps you don't even realise that this dust could be causing health problems. My son's bedroom used to be a huge … [Read more...]
From the Archives ~ Reassess what need is
I brought this blog post up from the archives to once again make the point of what need really is as that is the theme for today's mini mission. I mentioned many time how little we really do need as opposed to what we "think" we need. We really only need food, water, shelter and love, it is a little more complicated than that but not as complicated as we tend to make it for ourselves. You only have to look at the photos of all the things I have decluttered from my home to see how much stuff we had that we thought we needed or wanted, only to find that sooner or later we discovered we didn't … [Read more...]
These are only so many hours in the day
We all know there are only so many hours in the day. How many of them do you want to spend… ...looking for things you need but can't find among your excess stuff. ...looking for things you didn't put away where they belong. ...choosing what to use or wear among an overabundance of stuff. ...moving things in order to clean your home. ...running around like a mad thing cleaning up every time someone is coming to your home for a brief or long visit. ...dusting trinkets that aren't even really that special to you. ...struggling to make things fit into, what ought to be, your more … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom – Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom I live in a neighborhood where the houses are all about 50 years old and are between 1500 and 2000 square feet. Most have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a 2 car garage or carport. Almost all are one-story houses. The house just around the corner was a bit smaller than most and had been poorly maintained. When the original owner decided to move last year, it wasn't long before the new owners knocked the house down to the ground and scraped away the foundation. A few months passed and contruction began on the new home. The architect left the house plans in the permit … [Read more...]