One Thing Leads to Another

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Posted on January 17, 2015

This morning I decided to clean the bookshelves in the office area. I knew that they were quite dusty and that there was some stuff lying around that really didn’t belong there.

As I started to remove and clean the books I decided to sort them out and see if I could cull any more. Getting rid of books seems to be fairly difficult for us but in the end there were nearly 60 books that have not made it back onto the shelves.

We have 2 identical tall shelving units from Ikea and it now looks as though one of them may be able to go to a new home. I am confident that we will never need more shelf space as we both have Kindles and buying a physical book is a rare occurrence.

Here is one shelving unit cleaned and all of the shelves filled with books.

These are the 2 boxes of books which will be finding new homes.

The other unit is a work in progress.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of spare space on the other shelf which is the reason I think that it can go. The random books are ones that I am unsure as to whether they should stay or go. I intend to re-read them and in fact read some for the first time. Why didn’t I read them when I first got them? Maybe I did not really like them. Anyway, I will be working on this pile over the coming weeks and deciding which ones I want to keep long-term and which can go.

The collection of Australian Geographic magazines will need to go elsewhere – probably the bottom shelf of the shelving unit in the lounge room. There is 23 years worth of them – we stopped subscribing at the end of 2011. I have never read them all so maybe it is time I did. I used to joke that I would read them when I retired!!

There is also a shoebox of stationery items which can probably go in the cupboard. Then there is the pile of photos that need to be sorted any scanned…………one day!!

This is the cupboard which holds the 4 drawer filing cabinet. I am in the process of trying to source a 2 drawer one to replace it as we have condensed the contents into 2 drawers. When this eventuates we will use the top of the cabinet as a shelf and add another shelf a bit higher up. There will then be plenty of space for the stationery box and photos.

If I had to nominate one room that is difficult to declutter, then the office would be it. Mind you, we have managed to get rid of quite a bit over the past year but there always seems to be more.

Do you have a particular room or area that is your nemesis when it comes to decluttering? Please share your stories.

Planning a Picnic

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Posted on January 12, 2015

On Saturday we were going to be out for the whole day so I decided to pack a picnic lunch. We knew that we were going out for dinner so it seemed ridiculous to consider ‘eating out’ twice in one day.

This is where we had our lunch. It is not out in the country but a suburban park about 4km from the Brisbane CBD. There is a bus depot across the road and a major freeway and interchange a few hundred metres in another direction, yet it was a quiet and peaceful oasis where we stopped for our picnic.

We unpacked our picnic set and cloth, added the food and drink and we were ready to tuck into our feast.

I had made a mixed salad of lettuce, capsicum (red peppers), cherry tomatoes, cucumber and cheese as well as a couple of hard-boiled eggs. There were rice crackers and some mango chutney as well. I packed some walnuts and dried figs to finish and the whole lot was washed down with lemon cordial and soda water.

A pleasing note is that the lemon cordial, mango chutney and soda water were made at home, the chickens provided the eggs and the cucumber and tomatoes were picked from the garden.

Just a few minutes spent planning meant that we saved at least $30 and were able to enjoy some of our favourite foods in a pleasant setting rather than doing battle with holiday crowds at a cafe or food court.

Sewing My Stash Sunday – 2

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Posted on January 11, 2015

I don’t usually get much sewing done during the week and it took until this afternoon before I did any. I was determined to achieve something as part of this challenge so here it is.

I have made a start on a polo shirt for The Duke. I bought the fabric about 14 years ago for this project and it never got made. I have made the tab front, stitched the shoulder seams and done one sleeve and side/underarm seam. I had not done a tab front for well over 10 years, but like riding a bike, you never forget.

With striped fabric it is important to match the stripes. You can see the matching on the tab front in the picture above and the side seam in the following picture. It is impossible to match the stripes with a set-in sleeve due to the shaping.

Next week I hope to show you the completed polo shirt and what I am doing next. It feels good to know that I am using up materials that have been hanging around for years.

Modifying My Diary

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Posted on January 10, 2015

My personal diary which I showed you here is working well and does not require any modification. However, I also have a work diary which is an A5 size and quite slim as it has a week to a double page. However, it is missing one vital ingredient – a marker ribbon.

I did not realise this until I was using it last week so I decided to get creative. I found a length of narrow red ribbon in my sewing collection and was going to cut the length I needed and tie it onto the top spiral. Then I reconsidered and realised that by doubling the ribbon and looping it over the spiral I could avoid cutting the ribbon.

Now I can easily remove the ribbon at the end of the year and I will still have a usable length for another diary or different project.

The finished product is working well and it is much easier to find the page I want quickly. I also can use the second length to mark a different spot if I happen to be working on 2 areas at the same time.

Friday Filing

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Posted on January 9, 2015

As promised, here is my Friday filing post. Not much has changed since last week. We get very little mail so there is not much to deal with.

The Range News is our local (free) newspaper which is delivered on Thursdays. I have read it this evening to make sure I am not missing out on any important local news and now it has been filed in the recycling bin.

Other than that, there is a new insurance schedule now that we have had the policy amended to account for our new car. It has not been filed in the filing cabinet as I need to contact the insurance company as I think the description of the car is incorrect which has resulted in a higher premium than it should be. I will make that phone call on Monday.

We are both in the process of reading the ReNew magazine about alternative technologies. I think this is published every quarter and we keep them in a magazine holder for reference after they have been read.

The hand-written sheet is a rough list of some of the things we want to achieve in the house and garden this year so that stays there as a reminder of our plans.

Previously, these few pieces of paper would have been scattered on the bench and really irritated me but I am finding that having them in the basket has reduced the annoyance factor to zero.

Do you have any tricks to keeping on top of the paper clutter and filing?

One Week

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Posted on January 8, 2015

It is now one week into 2015 and this morning I woke up to the shocking news of a targeted terrorist attack in Paris. Like many others around the world, I was both sad and angry to hear this news. However, I was heartened to see the defiance of ordinary citizens in major centres all over Europe. They took to the streets in their thousands to show their support for freedom of expression.

Like them, I have a life to live and am not going to be sucked into the cycle of reporting on this and no doubt future ‘bad news’ stories.

I looked back at this blog post from New Year’s Eve when I wrote, “Meanwhile, I tried to keep my focus on blogging but there were times when I just felt too overwhelmed by events in the world around me to write about simplifying our life.”

One my my resolutions, if you wish to call it that, was that while I would keep abreast of news events here in Australia and also globally, I would not let the news define me.

I tend to deal in reality and don’t lay much store by clairvoyants, horoscopes, tarot cards or any of the other multitude of ways to “see” the future. I did laugh though, when I read a horoscope (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) in our free Mx newspaper at the train station yesterday. Normally, this paper would be well in the recycling but I brought it home to finish the special holiday edition of the Sudoku puzzle. This is what my Aries prediction for 2015 was:

“Random events will continue to occur around you. There’s no order to the universe. Life is meaningless. Stop trying to find meaning where there is no meaning. You cannot control the uncontrollable, so stop imagining there are arbitrary rules for dividing up and understanding existence by indulging in horoscopes.”

I liked the phrase, “you cannot control the uncontrollable”. There is definitely some value in that.

Meanwhile, today I will do some paid work as well as ironing, preparing dinner and perhaps some more sewing.

A Little Bit Every Day

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Posted on January 7, 2015

My method of keeping things organised to to do a little bit every day, or in my case every evening. At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, I work full-time hours and long days because of the distance that we commute but that is our choice.

Last night I did the bit of ironing that was waiting to be done, one load of washing and hung it out then put the next load in the machine. It was not a full load so when we arrived home this evening I pulled the top sheet off the bed and that made up the load. It is all washed now and in the basket.

It has been cool and damp here all day so the load that is on the line is not properly dry even though it is under the verandah. The next load of washing will be hung indoors overnight.

This is a portable rotary clothesline which I find invaluable in the wet weather.

This hanging rack is usually used to hang shirts waiting to be ironed as well as ones that I have done but tonight I will hang the freshly-washed shirts on here to dry.

I will put the dehumidifier on in the closed room overnight, the clothes will be pretty well dry in the morning. This eliminates the smell that clothes develop if they are damp for too long.

Once the washing is hung out I will finish stripping our bed and remake it with fresh linen. Then it will be time to crawl into bed.

I am working from home tomorrow and will make it a short day so that I can catch up on a few more jobs here.

By spending a bit of time each evening on household jobs, I can choose what I do on the weekends.

Sew My Stash Sunday – 1

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Posted on January 4, 2015

I do not usually read heaps of sewing/craft blogs because they often feature projects or items that I am simply do not interest me.

However, I stumbled across this idea here and seemed almost too good to be true. Basically, I can sew or make whatever I like as long as at least 50% comes from my stash. I had pretty well intended to do this but had not thought of articulating my ideals quite so eloquently. I love sewing and am working towards decluttering more stuff so this challenge will definitely help.

My personal plan is to post each and every Sunday about what I have done in the preceding week which fits the challenge. This will help to keep me accountable and will also be an interesting future record of just what sewing I achieved in 2015.

To see what I did last week see my previous post.

Thanks to the lovely Leasa who decided to run with this germ of an idea and also StitchnSewCreates for linking to the original. Please check out these blogs if you are interested in this project.

Then when the pieces are too small for much else there is always the ongoing patchwork!

I know that my fabric stash is not huge compared to what some people have but it is getting to the stage of frustrating me because I have so many plans/ideas for a lot of the pieces and I simply haven’t got around to doing it. 2015 is the year.

UFO’s No More

Filing Friday (on Thursday)

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Posted on January 1, 2015

Welcome to 2015! A brand new year for you to make of it what you want.

I have been gradually decluttering for several years so there is generally only a few things here and there to leave the house. However, there are a couple of hotspots that just seem to invite clutter to hang around unless I am constantly vigilant.

In the lead-up to Christmas I was particularly busy at work so things got a bit neglected at home. Also, our car was badly damaged in a hailstorm at the end of November and was declared a write-off by the insurance company. So, as well as everything else we had to buy a new car, organise insurance, liaise with the towing company to collect the old car and so on. All of this resulted in paperwork, notes and phone messages on the desk. Everything was finalised on Wednesday – we have a new, insured car and the old one is gone so this morning I got up and decided that I had to sort out all of remaining paperwork.

I started with the desk, followed by the other hotspots which are the end of the kitchen bench and my dressing table. It then turned into a major clean-out of the filing cabinet and other folders so The Duke and I spent several hours working through it. Some papers had been carefully filed for up to 10 years without ever being looked at so we were really ruthless.

Apart from clearing the papers that were in the previously identified spots, I actually have nothing to show for our efforts except that the contents of the filing cabinet have been reduced from 3 drawers to 2. Everything was relatively neatly stored – it was just that much of it was no longer relevant.

The desk is mostly cleared – there are just a few more things that I need to put away.

I just need to set-up the pedometers so we can actually use them rather than be lurking in the bottom of the filing cabinet!

This end of the kitchen bench is one of the most frustrating hotspots – the pile of papers never seems to go away completely. It may seem counter-intuitive to put a basket here to dump “stuff” in but my theory is that it will be contained rather than expanding and spreading its tentacles across the bench. I have also designated Friday evening as “Filing or Fling” so everything that is in the basket by Friday evening will be dealt with accordingly. In a perfect world the basket would be empty but I will be surprised if that happens. 🙂