365 Less Things??

Since my major decluttering mission is over but I still have the major ‘minimalist’ bug I am going to try something new.  I have been a follower for a while of a blog called 365 Less Things.  And obviously, the idea is to de-clutter one thing per day.  After the huge purge of my home, I am not sure if I have 365 more things that I can remove, but I am sure going to try … anything that helps along the road to minimalism!  (And I'm already running over a week behind ... eek!)

Day 1 – My first item is a bit sentimental.  My Nana used these along with the rest of the set as her ‘everyday’ dishes. I don’t have the rest of the set, don’t know where they went, but these have been sitting in a Rubbermaid box, wrapped in newspaper since 2007.  I guess that means that I don’t use them, so I am taking a picture and into the Garage Sale they go!

 Day 2 – I’ve had this stuffie since we went to Hawaii when I was a child, probably about 30 years or so.  It sits in a box like so many other things that I have kept over the years.  Hawaii Lover has seen better days.  Picture and the donation box here we come!

Day 3 – I thought this might be worth some money – WRONG!!!  It was my Poppa’s, it’s a lovely little book but does no one any good sitting in a box not being admired.  I’m going to ask my brother if he would like it.

Day 4 – In 2005 my husband and I took our first trip to Las Vegas with my brother and sister-in-law.  I made the same little scrapbook for both of us, but again, memories aren’t memories in a box.  I scanned each page and saved it on a disc so I can look at the pictures anytime I want.

Day 5 – This photo book contains pictures from when my step-daughter was born.  Again, does not good in a box, so the pictures are getting scanned and the book is Garage Sale bound!

Day 6 – This is a picture of my Nana (isn’t she lovely?).  When she lived in the retirement home, the ladies got together and did a calendar (a la Calendar Girls) to raise money for addiction treatment for women.  All of the ladies in the calendar are wonderful but I like my Nana the best and would like to look at this picture more often – it’s getting scanned!

Day 7 – I am taking these bills to the bank with the rest of our miscellaneous money.  Not worth anything but I don’t need it sitting around here!

Day 8 – My Cabbage Patch dolls are in the Garage Sale already and these can go with them!

Dealing with my Sentimental Clutter

For the last couple of weeks I have been dealing with a huge amount of sentimental clutter – and I mean a huge amount!  For some reason I have no problem taking pictures of my children’s artwork and chucking it out once the excitement of their new picture/craft has run its course but when it comes to dealing with my own keepsakes and memories it’s a different story!  Why is that?  In trying to become more of a minimalist this particular section of my journey has been the hardest so far by a long shot.

We are planning an international move and I know that not everything can come.  It’s not the furniture or lamps or even some of the artwork that bothers me, it’s all the things that I am sentimental about.  Over the years I’ve gotten rid of many things I thought were sentimental only to discover later that I had no need for them but now I find that I have afgans and quilts and bedding that my Oma, Nana and Mom have made for me and they now sit in a bag in the basement, unused, gathering dust.  I have a Lane Chest in my crawl space full of memories, photos and items that just sit there.  My children have no interest in them, they don’t understand what they are or what they are for, so what do I do with it all?

I found these really great ‘clauses’ that I am going to follow for all of my sentimental clutter:

The fire clause. Ask yourself what you would want to take with you in case of a fire. This is a great way to determine what you truly value.

The function clause. Decide what in your home has a purpose — and what doesn't. Ask yourself why you are holding on to the items that don't have a specific use and decide if the space they are taking up is worth it.

The someday clause. In most cases get rid of the things you are hoping to use or wear "someday". Chances are someday will come and you won't like the thing anymore anyway.

The happiness clause. Last but not least, keep only the things that make you truly happy.

As you go through your stores of sentimentalities, make three stacks:

Stack 1: Items that can be scanned, photographed or digitized for saving

Stack 2: Items you want to display proudly on shelves or other areas in your home

Stack 3: Items you can donate or sell

It’s hard to be ruthless when it comes to memories, especially when it is a memory of a loved one past, but I’ve come to realize that my memories are in my head, my heart and that is where they will always be.  I now have a wonderful collection of memories that I can look at, a few that I can touch and a couple that I can look at and the memories are still there – they always will be.

Mission Decluttering #5 - Kitchen & Nook

This is one mission I am TOTALLY dreading!  Just the same as the living room and office, the kitchen in our house is never clean!  It feels like we work in a short order kitchen most of the time.  I’m trying a mixture of two methods here.  Let’s see how it goes!

1. Clean your kitchen before you start.  Put away your dishes from the dishwasher and sink, wipe down your counters. This way you won’t have to move stuff around or look for space to put things when your hands are full.  Start clean, finish clean – what an a-ha moment!

2. Start with the drawers. Utensil drawers first and move down to pots and pans drawers if you have them. Pull out everything, wipe down the inside and outside.  If it’s clean the less likely I am to put stuff back in that I don’t use.

3. Return items that you only regularly use. If it’s broken, a duplicate or worn do not put it back. Only the things that I am actively using stay in.

4. Throw away the garbage, put your recycling in your bin, and put everything else that didn’t make the “I always use this” pile into a box.

5. Continue with the rest of the drawers. If there is an item you don’t use, don’t keep it around ‘just in case’ or because your Mom used to keep it around. Put it in the box and move on!

6. Now start on the cupboards. By pulling everything out cupboard by cupboard, this way you can really see what you have. Do you need all of this stuff? Ditch those plastic containers without lids and extra empty jars you’re storing.

7. Finish ALL the cupboards – not under the sink yet (that’s a mission in and of itself).

8. How full is your box or basket looking?  Think you’re done?  Not yet, I’m moving on to the pantry!

9. I LOVE a clean pantry … especially since I spent days creating a lovely, easy to use Mason Jar pantry.  However, when the other half doesn’t jump on the bandwagon, it makes putting groceries away a very looooooong task!  Two things when cleaning out your pantry:

•  Is my family going to eat this?
•  When?

If you answered no to either of these questions, don’t keep that item in your pantry until it expires and you have to throw it away. Donate unopened items to the food bank, soup kitchen, or local churches.

**As you work on your pantry decluttering, make sure you wipe out the drawers and shelves as you go, too! Get rid of the stuff that doesn’t belong there. Pull out organizing tools you don’t use.

10. Look around and make sure you have gone through each drawer (don’t forget the one under your oven!), each cupboard and the pantry and celebrate!  Enjoy your new decluttered and minimized space!

11. Close the box (or boxes in my case).

What did I let go of this time:

·         2 full bags of tealights

·         A set of fabric placemats (we have bamboo ones that are super easy to wipe down, so I’m not sure why I got the fabric ones – OK, I liked the colour!)

·         Half a dozen mugs that were shoved to the back of the cupboard

·         2 flower vases

·         Cream and sugar set (bought those for Christmas dinner and didn’t end up using them)

·         Gravy Boat (same as above)

·         More than 20 sets of chop sticks

·         7 forks, spoons and knives that came from who knows where

·         A box full of miscellaneous Ziploc containers with no matching lids

·         A box full of baking sheets, muffin tins, loaf pans, etc. (I love to bake, but I don’t need multiples of everything)

·         A set of mixing bowls (again, don’t need multiples)

·         Slow cooker (always meant to use it, never did)

·         A set of funky napkin rings (does anyone use those anymore?)

·         A pair of Salt and Pepper shakers

·         A serving platter that had a huge chip out of one of the corners

·         Half a dozen assorted sippy cups and thermos’s

·         2 lunch boxes that were purchased for the girls but they never used

·         2 books on wine

Seriously???  All that crap that we NEVER use!  Ahhhhhh – that feels (and looks) so much better!

For a mission that I was totally dreading, it wasn't so bad afterall!

Mission Decluttering #3 - Closets

In our teeny tiny home we have GREAT storage closets! A huge linen closet in the girl’s bathroom upstairs, a front hallway closet, a back hallway closet and a closet in the developed basement, it’s great even though none of stuffed to the gills by any means, but it still allows us to store out of season coats, etc. out of the way!  That doesn’t mean however that they don’t need a going over!

For our closets I utilized a little method I picked up from a friend of mine who is super organized and it’s how she does all her organizing (and really how I should be doing all of mine).  She uses the STOP method. S for Sort, T for Toss, O for Organize and P for Put Away.

First stop, the linen closet.

1. Sort – so here I set my watch for 20 minutes and dove right in – Keep, Donate/Sell, Put Away, and Garbage.  Surprisingly, it only took me 20 minutes to sort the entire 4 shelves of my closet, maybe that’s a lot I don’t know, but I was impressed.

2. Toss – anything ripped, ragged or stained should either be tossed or repurposed.

3. Organize - Once the space is clear, clean the entire closet; walls, shelves, doors and floor.  Refold all sheets and towels and stack neatly and return to the shelves.   I use quite a few plastic baskets in my linen closet to sort out all of the other items – toiletries in one, medications on a high shelf out of reach and I hate the plastic used to keep toilet paper and tissue boxes together so I take everything out of those and stack boxes or rolls neatly on a shelf.

4. Put away – anything not belonging back in the closet can be put away in their proper homes around the house.  The Sell/Donate boxes can be taken to storage and then toss the trash.

The rest of our closets contain our seasonal items so I like to do my seasonal sweeps.

 

There are 4 easy-to-follow steps here:

 
1.       Take everything out of the closet. Then, wipe down the shelving, walls and floors, dust and vacuum.
2.       Do a quick purge of anything you're going to donate; separate out anything that needs altering or dry cleaning.
3.       Put everything back in the closet hanging and sorting by color with most-worn items in front.
4.       Donate the remaining items; take alterations and cleaning to tailor and dry cleaner.

Since the closets only took me a grand total of 3 hours I am happy to report that I got rid of the following:

1 bag of donations (7 jackets – 4 of mine, 2 of my husbands, 8 pairs of shoes and boots – all mine!)

4 jackets (and 2 snowsuits) that have been washed and put away for use by Lily at a (much) later date
1 bag of extra hangers (metal ones returned to the drycleaner)
1 bag of garbage and recycling
 
Up next – Our Living Room & Office!

Mission Decluttering #2 – The Girl’s Rooms

I love my girls but their stuff can be overwhelming at times, OK, all the time.  I have never understood, in all my five years of being a parent, how children accumulate so much stuff in such a short period of time.  And it doesn’t seem to matter what room of the house they are in at the time but their stuff ends up in it, drives me insane!

But how do you declutter their rooms?  I decided that they should be involved, it is their things after all and they should have a say in what happens to it.  It is a good thing that ‘Spring Cleaning’ meant fun times ahead for the girls – otherwise I’d be hooped!

We started out tidying up their room, everything out from under the beds, clothes hung up properly in their closet and folded properly in their dressers, beds made.  At least that gave us a little room to start – but where to start?

Clothes:  In principle I used the same three questions that I used for myself.  However, when it came to does it need work done to be wearable – they’re 5, so it doesn’t really apply, I switched that for can Lily wear it later on?

We had three piles: Donate, Garbage and For Lily.

It was a long and tiring process.  Hard decisions were made, there were a few tears and a few arguments, but we wound up with one bag for donation, a half bag for Lily and a half bag (more or less) that was ready for the bin.

Next up was books, toys and assorted other things.

We finished up their room with a box of donations containing about two dozen books, 8 stuffies and a grocery bag of miscellaneous toys.  This part was WAY easier than the clothes – typical girls!  I did discover in this process that Isabel has a little bit of a hoarder mindset, she tends to want to hold on to everything, whether it has meaning or not.  She still is very good at the donating part, but each item needed a discussion or explanation as to why it should or had to go.

Feeling good about the last few hours having removed what feels like 500 pounds of ‘stuff’ from the twins room, I move on to Lily’s room.  You wouldn’t think that at 4 months old she would need a decluttering of her room, however a baby that grows fast gathers much clutter in a very short period of time.

Her room provided two boxes of clothing we lovingly gave to wonderful friends of ours who recently had a baby girl, a box of stuffies which we thought Lily would love (but what does an infant know?), and a box of miscellaneous décor items which seemed like a wonderful idea when we were decorating her room but just became clutter once we were done and happy with the clean look of her room.

Not bad for a days decluttering!

Up next – Closets!

Mission Decluttering #1 - Conclusion

Here’s a list of things that I removed from our Master Bedroom (including our closet and ensuite bath):

Donate

4 garbage bags of clothes!

Garage Sale

A ton of jewelry that I forgot I had taken out of my jewelry box ages ago, when I downsized my jewelry box to a jewelry roll (GREAT inventions those jewelry rolls!), book lights, page markers (why do I need page markers when I have an eReader?), 3 purses/handbags

Move to Other Spaces

I had my Nana’s Lane Hope Chest in our Bedroom but I moved it into our crawl space, it just didn’t fit in with our furniture and took up too much space.  It contains A TON of sentimental items that I am going to have to go through at some point – a thought which makes me cringe!

Garbage

This is embarrassing.  I took out an entire trash bag from our Master Bedroom/Closet/Ensuite.  Of course this includes recycling items (empty bottles, tissue boxes, etc.), but still an entire garbage bag!  And I thought I was clean!  Ewwww …

What’s next –

Mission Decluttering #2 – The Girl’s Rooms

Mission Decluttering #1 - The Master Bedroom

My closet is full of clothes that I no longer wear.  Mind you I just had a baby 4 short months ago, but all those months of maternity clothes and before that at my job I wore scrubs so I have a stockpile of clothing, shoes and accessories that I never wear!

And since every morning we have two 5 year olds and a 4 month old sharing our bed watching cartoons and reading books there is also toys, books and assorted clothes that don’t belong to my husband or I.  Along with that there are tags, buttons, glasses, toiletries and various other things that don’t belong in one’s bedroom.

So I am following three simple rules for my clothes:
#1.  Do I like it?
#2.  Does it fit?
#3.  Does it need any work done to make it wearable?

Pretty simple I think.  Will it work?  No idea, but I’m gonna try!

And then there are three simple rules for everything else:
#1.  Does it serve a purpose in my bedroom?
#2.  Does it belong somewhere else?
#3.  Will I use it?

That’s it.  If I start thinking about things too much I can probably find a reason to keep it or put it somewhere else in the house.

Let’s see where this takes us!?!

My So Called Organized Life

Have you ever had one of those moments when you wished you would have done something but it was WAY after the fact?  Being A-type you would think that I would think of everything, but sadly, this is not true.

I wish I would have taken (good) pictures before I started on my decluttering/minimalistic kick.  It would have been nice to have a record of just how far we (yes, I mean we, well except for our 4-month old, but even my husband participated for his part) have come.

My live more with less journey started about 3 years ago when we downsized from a 3,000 square foot house to a 2,300 square foot house and finally to our teeny tiny 1,700 square foot fully developed house!!!  With 3 kids … seriously!

I have always been an organized person, I hate clutter and I hate a mess, which is funny since I have 3 kids and my husband is a clutter bug, a serious clutter bug.  As in “but I might need it” type of clutter bug.  Drop clothes where he takes them off even though he walks past the closet where the hamper is to get to the bathroom type of clutter bug.  Get the idea???  Trying to wrap his head around this less is more philosophy has definitely been difficult, but he has come around and begun the process of letting go a little bit at a time in his own way.

The girls have been fantastic at this.  They have excelled really.  Once I explained to them that the toys and clothes they no longer used or fit into were going to other kids that aren’t able to have the same things they do, they filled up a box and a garbage bag all on their own.  Ahhhhhh, girls after my own heart!

My latest mission of more a minimalist came this spring when I decided to do a complete home inventory.  Have you ever tried that?  It’s a completely overwhelming task.  Room by room, item by item, every single thing written down, catalogued, and photo taken.  It’s incredible the things you have that you don’t think about, need or use taking up space that could otherwise be used.

I started thinking to myself just how ridiculous it was that we had so much stuff in such a small space.  If we wanted to pack up our lives, maybe put some stuff in storage and live out of an RV for a year or more why did we need all of this stuff?  And that is just what it was – STUFF.  Did it really mean anything to us or did we just feel guilty getting rid of it because we had paid money for it or it was given to us as a gift?  By in large, it was the guilt that made us hold on to these things.  We cleaned around them every week, we dropped stuff on top of them cause there wasn’t room anywhere else and we moved them from home to home to home just cause we thought we needed them.

Turns out, we didn’t and our space is becoming much cleaner and lighter for it.

What do you think?  Any thoughts on your own decluttering?  Have a mission of your own?

And so it is ...

So it shall be.  I finally decided to get off my duff (for lack of a better word) and start this journey my little family has endeavoured to begin.

What's the journey you ask?

On or around March 20, 2014 we are leaving Canada for a year long RV trip around Europe!  That's crazy you say?  Indeed - crazier even with twin girls who will be 7 at the time and a 2 year old.  What's that you say ... it'll never happen!  Ha, ha you jest.

Well, here's the deal - follow along as we purge our home, plan every detail from places we want to go, to budgets, to gear we are taking, our purchase of a RV ... you name it, we (well I will really) put it on here.

Really, when I look at the title we decided to call our first little blog (little in the sense of us not knowing at all what we are doing) it should have been more to do with planning our travel but our first stop along our planning adventure is living a more minimalist life.  Decluttering and freeing ourselves of the things that are not so important so that we can live a more unmaterialistic life with our kids!

Can't wait for the craziness to begin?  Neither can we!