Category Archives: Decluttering

Rescued & Re-homed

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Although we did get our dog from the Animal Welfare about 8 years ago, he is not the subject of this post.

It may seem strange to bring something into my home when I am constantly decluttering but I rescued this ring binder from the rubbish pile at my office yesterday.  However, it was brought home with a specific purpose in mind.

2012-04-18 01When I was sorting out things on my sewing table last weekend I was confronted by a number of loose pattern pieces that I had drafted from my Enid Gilchrist pattern books.  I put each pattern in a separate plastic sleeve (I have a box a spare sleeves in the stationery pile) and wished I had a spare ring binder.

My wish came true when I saw this brand-new folder containing obsolete training information destined for the rubbish.  I put the contents in the confidential recycling and brought the folder home.

2012-04-18 02Here it is with the pattern pieces in sleeves (on the left) and I have also placed the pattern books each in their own sleeve as they are rather fragile from age.  I still have some more to sort out but this will help to streamline the paperwork in the sewing room.  It is good to know that I will easily be able to find the pattern pieces when I need them.

2012-04-18 03Here are all of the patterns stored on top of the sewing cabinet.

What storage methods do you use for sewing/craft books and patterns?

Stopped in the Tracks

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It is one thing to declutter stuff from your home but even better is to stop it before it gets in the door and gains a foothold in the house.  I was reminded of this theory with respect to junk mail when I read the most recent post from The Recovering Dabbler.

Delona’s post is specific to the US but we have our own problems with junk mail here in Australia.  For many years we have had a ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker on our letterbox which generally stops the hand-delivered supermarket catalogues and the like.  Posted mail is a little more difficult.

Some years ago I grew weary of receiving an endless stream of pre-approved credit card and other offers with Reply Paid envelopes.  I used to just throw them in the recycling but one day decided to return to the sender in the Reply Paid envelope.  This meant that the company had to pay the postage and also use somebody’s time to open and read the returned mail.  I did not return the application form but simply a couple of random pieces of paper such as pizza vouchers or something else equally unrelated but most importantly I included a slip of paper with the following statement typed on it:

“Give consideration to my precious time which is being wasted on opening your unsolicited mail, by refraining from sending it in the future.”

Although my name was not on any of the returned information the company were able to decipher my information from the embedded barcode on the Reply Paid envelope.  The offers ceased quite quickly.  Within 3-4 months of initiating this strategy my unsolicited mail went from an average of 2 pieces per week to nothing and has remained that way for a number of years.

No unsolicited mail saves me time, mental energy and frustration.  The trees and paper that are not used are also significant over time.

Perfect For The Kitchen

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Today we picked up 4 chairs for our breakfast bar.  A friend was selling them since she is moving house and they are not the right style for their new home.

The are perfect for ours and the fabric even matches with colours in the benchtop.

2012-04-01 01Our previous ones were black vinyl ones on a chrome base.  They had an adjustable height but 2 of them have lost the gas in the adjuster.  They will probably go on Freecycle.  The other 2 have gone to Belle who has just moved and has a small breakfast bar so they will be perfect for her children.

We have spent the weekend helping her to move house and also sort out and declutter lots of ‘stuff’.  Things are looking much clearer and more streamlined and I know she is happy with the result.

As well as giving our stools to Belle, we have brought some things home that are useful to us.  One is the lawnmower, which originally belonged to my mother but was no longer required when she moved into a unit.  Now Belle has moved into a townhouse and is no longer responsible for the garden maintenance so the mower can now replace ours which recently died.

With family at all different ages and stages of life we often find that furniture or other items that are no longer required can be passed on to another family member.

Plus 1=33

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It is not even Day 1 and I have decided what my 33rd item will be – a short sleeve red and white striped t-shirt.  We are going to our daughter’s place to help settle into her new home.  Moving day was today.

Here is what I will be wearing.

2012-03-31 01The forecast is 28C in the city where she lives so I am thankful that the travel pants are lightweight and can be zipped off to make shorts.

She and I are hoping to do some serious decluttering.  I think it will be easier to make decisions when it is not my own stuff.  It will just be a matter of convincing her of what needs to go.

Project 333 – Ready, Set, Go….

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Well, it is almost April 1st so I spent some time today getting ready for my first involvement with Project 333.  See this post to find out what it is all about.

Here is my cupboard with most of what I have chosen for my project.

???????????????????????????????There are 2 pairs of trousers missing as they are currently in the laundry basket.  This makes a total of 32 items so I thought I would keep a spare space, in case I thought of something else.

Here they are listed.

Floral skirt
Black skirt

Grey trousers
Black 3/4 trousers
Jeans
Narrow-leg jeans
Charcoal travel pants

Pink suede jacket
Black cord jacket
Pink quilted vest

Turquoise cardigan
Black cardigan
Grey/cream polo-neck jumper

Turquoise striped shirt
Blue/white pinstriped shirt
Black/white striped shirt
Black/cream patterned shirt

Black/pink striped top
Black/pink squares top
Pink top
Red/white striped top
Black/white striped top
Black/white striped top

Navy rugby top
Navy/striped rugby top

Bronze/pink scarf

Black handbag (not shown)

Black knee-high boots
Black ankle boots
Black shoes
Red lace-up shoes
Sandals

I will be putting other clothes back in the wardrobe as I don’t want to move them to another room.

I have put aside 5 pairs of shoes to go – I will try to sell them on Gumtree but otherwise they will go via Freecycle.

I have not culled many clothes as I do not have a huge collection.  However, a few things will be re-homed.

2012-03-30 02This is a black polar fleece vest which I re-modelled from a hand-me-down and it is really too big so out it goes.  The shirt is a cotton sleeveless one but the colour is not particularly flattering now that my hair colour has changed significantly.

2012-03-30 03This pile are a bit too tight so I have decided to put them in a bag and if they are still too tight in 12 months they will go.  There is a skirt, pair of trousers and 2 jackets.

2012-03-30 04This shirt has been well-worn but has lost its sharpness of black and white – looking decidedly grey.  I love the style so I plan to de-construct it to make a pattern.  Off to the sewing room for this one.

I will endeavour to update my progress each day.  Hopefully there will be more successes than failures.

If you are joining the Project 333 challenge please feel free to post a link to your blog in the comments.

Simply Baking

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Decluttering is not just about throwing out the piles of junk gathering dust in the basement.  Nor is minimalism about having a sparsely furnished apartment with almost no sign of human habitation.  They are words which are open to interpretation but the over-arching concept is to simplify our homes and lives so that we can make time and space for living.

It is important to keep baking and cooking simple.  Creating meals from scratch can easily lead you to acquire all manner of ingredients.  All too often these are used once and then end up relegated to the back of the cupboard.  I have a well-stocked pantry that has the basic ingredients that I use to create the meals we eat.

I also regularly make substitutions to new recipes so that they fit my ingredients.  It is easy to be conned into having many varieties of one ingredient, such as sugar.  There is caster, white, soft brown, raw, Demerara and numerous others.  I use raw sugar for most general use.  I also keep soft brown sugar and caster sugar.  If a recipe demands a specialty sugar that I feel cannot be satisfactorily substituted I discard the recipe.

Flour is another example of many options available – white, wholemeal, organic, stoneground, plain, self-raising.  I prefer to keep both white and wholemeal.  I use white flour for pastry, pasta and making roux for sauces but other than that I tend to use wholemeal or half and half if I want a lighter texture.  I only buy plain flour and add baking powder to make self-raising flour as required.

2012-03-28 01I buy my flour in 5kg bags from  Simply Good.  I also buy my baking powder in bulk from the same store.

2012-03-28 02The baking powder is sold from bulk bins so I fill a recycled paper bag with it and then decant into the large glass jar. which is in my stock cupboard.  I refill the small container in the pantry as required.  Please do not not confuse bicarbonate of soda (bicarb) with baking powder.  Baking powder is a combination of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.

2012-03-28 03With basic ingredients to hand it is easy to bake for your family where you know exactly what is in the food.  I made these muffins this morning with the last of some bottled cherries I had bought a couple of years ago – not sure why?  The recipe was the basic muffin recipe from the book, “Down to Earth” by Rhonda Hetzel.  You can find out more on her blog.

2012-03-28 04I made a zucchini quiche for dinner at the same time.  I always try to cook more than one dish when I have the oven turned on so that the power is used efficiently.

Have you tried to simplify the ingredients in your pantry?

What Shoes to Choose?

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As part of Project 333 I need to include footwear in my 33 items.  This is my real challenge as I have 19 pairs of footwear in my cupboard.  That does not include my slippers, gumboots, old sneakers for gardening and old Birkenstocks for around the yard.

There were 2 pairs of dressy black heels which were given to me – virtually brand-new.  After more than 12 months I have worn one pair once and never worn the other pair.  They were not even in my wardrobe but in the cupboard in the guest room.

Here they are.

2012-03-26 01And the other pair.

2012-03-26 02

They are both destined to go to someone who can wear them and benefit from them today rather than sitting in my cupboard with me worrying about them going mouldy in the humid weather.  These are the first ‘casualties’ of Project 333 – Autumn 2012.

The rest of the shoes do get worn, albeit some not particularly often as they are specialty items.  These include high-heeled knee-high boots, hiking boots and hiking sandals.

If I am not going to blow my 33 items on footwear I am going to have to choose carefully.  At the moment I think these will be the ones that make the cut.

2012-03-26 03Black heels which I wear with my skirts.

2012-03-26 04Ankle boots to wear with trousers in cooler weather.

2012-03-26 05Everyone needs a pair of red shoes, don’t they?  These are the most comfortable shoes in the world and I wear them with my jeans/travel pants.

2012-03-26 06Sandals which I wear with summer skirts, dresses, shorts and 3/4 pants.  I need these as the weather is still quite warm and could be for another month.

I still have a few more days before I have finalise the list so there will be plenty more soul-searching yet.

If you are joining the challenge please post a link to your own blog or feel free to post a list of your items in the comments section.

Going, Going, Gone….

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Today we have spent the day at home catching up on several jobs.

The Duke painted the ceiling of the bathroom and I did the edges of the cornices and also the new architraves on the window and doors.  The ceiling is finished but the architraves need another coat.  We have had the dehumidifier running in the bathroom for most of the day to get the paint thoroughly dry.

Here is a photo which shows the new lights and also the painted ceiling and window frame.

2012-03-18 01I also sorted out various things in the workshop and space under the stairs.  Then it was time to list some things on Freecycle.  Sometimes I do not have much success and other days everything is wanted.  Today was a good day as I have found new homes for 3 small tins of paint, 2 spraycans of paint, a bathroom stool, the old showerscreen, some excess tiles from the laundry, tiling materials (adhesive, grout etc) and some timber slats.  It is great that other people will be able to use them and we have freed up a bit of space.

We moved the cupboard that had previously been at the foot of the stairs and it is now ensconced in the workshop.  All of the paint and painting equipment is now sorted and stored in the cupboard.

As is often the case, the re-arranging is a work in progress so is actually looking worse than when we started but that will soon change.

The showerscreen and mirror should be installed tomorrow so I am looking forward to that.  It will mean that I can then replace all of my china and ornaments back on the sideboard.  These were removed before the bathroom renovation so they would not be damaged when equipment was being brought in and out of the house.  Things will soon be back to normal.

As Poppet would say, ‘what is normal?’

Decluttering Mindset

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It seems that once you actively engage in decluttering a part of your life, regardless of whether it is physical or mental clutter, there is always more that you can find to do.

My home is far from totally decluttered but I have increasingly found myself applying the same principles to my space in the office.  I work in an open-plan office in a 5 star ‘green’ building.  Many people are resistant to the ‘rules’ attached to this standard, however, I am pleased that we have initiatives such as separate waste and recycling bins in the kitchen areas.  Compared to some others, my work-station is positively spartan.

2012-03-15 01Nevertheless, there are always bits of paper and other junk gathering so each day I check to see what else I can clear away.  It is much easier to work when everything has a home and you have only ‘enough’ of things like stationery supplies.

2012-03-15 02Neither of these desks are mine but I definitely am closer to the tidy than untidy one, thank goodness.  One day I will take a photo so you can see what it is really like.

On another note, Joanna asked what is in my make-up module.  Here is a list.

Liquid foundation
Blush + brush
Mascara
Lipsticks x 3
Eyebrow pencil
Lip pencil
Pencil sharpener
Compact mirror
Tweezers x 2

Apart from that I have a bottle of organic foaming face wash which lives on the shelf in the shower. There is a jar of moisturiser and rose hip oil which I use around my eyes in a different container in the drawer.  I do not use an fancy make-up remover – just the face-wash and water.  So, it is not only the physical stuff that is streamlined.  My beauty and make routine is about as simple as you can get.

What routines have you streamlined to make your life simpler?

Thank You & Snippets

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I cannot reply to all of your individual comments but please be assured I read them all and am touched by your support and kind wishes.  Thank you for taking the time to comment and I am looking forward to a fabulous second year of blogging at Organised Castle.

Things are pretty quiet here on the home front as I have been busy working.  However, by having the house reasonably decluttered and keeping things simple it is ticking along well.  We had a simple but delicious meal tonight – grilled salmon with lime and sea salt on potato mash with peas, carrots and broccoli.

We have also started some preliminary holiday planning for later in the year but more on that another day.

The decluttering continues – every day I usually manage to move at least one thing into the op shop bag.  I have 2 bags full to drop off tomorrow when I go into town to pick up some supplies.

Til next time.