Tag Archives: decluttering

A Labour of Love

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My father was a keen photographer. This was mostly before the days of digital cameras and definitely prior to mobile phones that included a camera. It is almost 24 years since Dad died and I wonder what he would think of camera technology today.

In fact, a large percentage of his photos were slides which he catalogued and stored meticulously. After his death we were left with an enormous collection of slides spanning 3 decades up until 1979. He generally had prints of photos after that time but it is the slides which I want to focus on in this post.

My mother, along with my siblings and I, realised that we could not continue to store these slides forever as they were not easy to access and view and their relevance would quickly fade with passing generations. While the slides were broadly catalogued, most of them did not identify specific individuals. We were all involved but Mum and my sister undertook the bulk of the work to do the first round of discards. This included any that were badly damaged, were of unknown places or people. The next step was to scan/digitise those which we felt could be worth keeping. Mum created digital folders for each of her 4 children containing copies of all of the photos which included that particular child. It is now nearly 4 years since Mum died and the responsibility for the preservation of the images from the slides passed entirely to me and my siblings.

I had all of the digital copies and my sister had all of the physical slides. When we were together at Christmas we went through them again to check that none had been missed in the scanning process. I then brought the slides home with me as I could see that there might have been some useful information on the frame of each slide, however, I needed a magnifying glass to check. This is what I have been working on intermittently for 2 weeks and that step is now completed.

I have cut each slide in half. I am not really sure why but it just feels better to have done this before discarding them in the bin and ultimately to landfill.

The next step is to curate the collection and choose the best photo where there are several of the person or group of people. I will make sure that each digital file includes the names of people in the photo as well as the location and date as best as I can ascertain. I will sort them into folders as part of my larger project to organise all of my photos.

I know that my children and grandchildren may not want to retain all of these photos, however, by doing this I will be providing them with an organised, curated collection with no expectation that they retain them. They will easily be able to see what they want to keep (if any) and discard the rest.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to enjoying some of these relics which have not seen the light of day for a long time and sharing the stories behind them with other family members.

This is a particular favourite – a style statement from a holiday in 1975.

A Continuing Quest

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A sense of order in my sewing room seems elusive at times but I do continue to try. These shelves contain most of the fabric and sewing equipment that I have on hand and it could certainly be arranged a bit better.

I am not a massive fan buying heaps of matching containers to ‘organise’ spaces in my home. I generally use whatever I have on hand but it is also important to consider what stuff actually needs to be kept and organised and what actually needs to be decluttered and moved out of our life.

Most of the baskets that you can see previously belonged to my mother for a variety of uses and I have managed to re-purpose them. The shelves have also been moved from other areas of this house as I chose not to use them as the previous owners had done so.

Even the drawers, cupboards and 2 glass shelf inserts had been by left unassembled when we bought the house. I found the glass shelves particularly useful as they divide each cube into 2 smaller spaces.

When we were on holidays our travels took us directly past an IKEA store in Queensland so I took the opportunity to purchase 2 more sets (4 glass shelves) to further increase the functionality of the unit.

I installed them yesterday and am looking forward to some more re-arranging to improve the storage of my sewing fabrics and patterns.

Here is a close-up of one of the new shelves. The existing baskets are a perfect fit in these spaces.

Notes From the Sewing Room

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I finished the piece of patchwork I was working on and that is now with a lady who will quilt it using a longarm machine.

I then turned my attention to a bit more tidying up in the sewing room which seems to be a continual work in progress. I noticed a couple of pieces of Christmas fabric along with some fabrics which had a definite Christmas feel to them.

So, I made these two tote bags.

I am not sure where they will end up but I think they are rather gorgeous.

My storage space is definitely not well-organised but I keep living in hope. These cube shelves were repurposed from their original location in our walk-in wardrobe and a lot of fabric was simply unpacked from boxes and shoved in to spaces wherever it would fit. I know I can do better and I am working towards that goal.

The previous owners also left two unused glass shelves for these cubes and I added them which makes the size of the cubes more functional for small baskets and other items.

Here is a close-up of one of the glass shelves.

I have decided to get get 4 more of these from IKEA next time we are in Melbourne so watch this space for future improvements.

Meanwhile, I continue to work on various sewing projects with the goal of using up some of my stash.

These pieces will become a couple more tote bags for our local Community Pantry.

Creating Space

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You could be excused for assuming that this post is about more of my decluttering efforts. However, it is not.

We arrived home a couple of days ago after a brief road trip to Sydney to attend a family wedding. The outfit I had made worked well and we had a delightful day. It was very special to be able to spend time with all of my siblings, children, niece and nephews as our family are ‘scattered to the four winds’. In fact, it was the first time that we had ever all been together.

The wedding was a significant event and the latter half of this year has been neatly divided, at least in my mind, to ‘before the wedding’ and ‘after the wedding’. This leads back to the title of the post.

Rehoming physical stuff is not the only type of decluttering. There is also digital decluttering which I have mentioned in the past. This link will take you to several posts on the topic. Then there is mental clutter.

I have found that ‘to do’ lists seem to get a bit of a bad rap recently. They are deemed to be everything from non-productive, inhibiting mindfulness and inducing guilt and sleeplessness. I guess it depends on personal use and expectation of any list, however, I have actually found the exact opposite. By writing things down/creating a list it releases the necessity for me to remember things.

As a retired person, I do not have the time-frames, constraints and expectations of being in a paid job and answerable to an employer. Everything I do is my own decision and choice, however, I do not choose to drift aimlessly through my retirement years. I am not driven by deadlines and certainly do not beat myself up if everything on the list is not finished by a certain time.

I enjoy the knowledge that I have recorded tasks/projects and I am not wasting mental energy on recalling or prioritising them. I add items as I think of them or they come up in conversation with GMan. It is nothing fancy – just a simple list in the notes section of my phone. I add and delete items almost every day. Some are extensive and long-term, others will be completed within the next 24 hours. But most importantly, I do not stress about tasks achieved (or not) nor let the list dictate my life.

Here is a sample of some of the items currently on my list.

Tidy sewing room
Clean fridge
Make marmalade
Make new cover for dog bed
Mend socks
Update Google calendar

Some of these have been on the list for well over a week and I am not losing any sleep over them not being completed. They will happen one day. Meanwhile, we are heading out this evening to listen to some live music at a small local bar.

Packing Priorities

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We now have a contract for the sale of our home. While the contract is still conditional for a couple more weeks, it is time to really start moving forward with preparations for our move.

I have been sourcing previously used packing boxes and today I packed up 9 boxes of books from the bookshelves in our office/library area.

With a little over 7 weeks until moving day most of my focus is going to be on preparing for the big day and blog posts will mostly reflect that over the coming weeks. I will cover various aspects of how we handle the preparation.

It is 17 years since our last move. We have spent much longer in our current home than anywhere we had lived previously. However, we have decluttered and simplified during that time and it will be interesting to see how that impacts the moving process.

When we came here both of our daughters had left the family home but only relatively recently so we still had quite a lot of possessions that related to them but that is no longer the case.

More information on our future plans will unfold over the next few weeks.

Clutter -Free in ’23

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The title of this post is taken from a comment I read a couple of days ago in a Facebook decluttering group.

My first task for the new year is not physical clutter but that insidious beast – digital clutter.

I have previously written on several occasions about trying to keep our emails under control. In fact, while re-reading past posts on the subject, I found mention of the ‘All Mail’ being between 1500 and 5000 emails at times. Over a number of years I have managed to consistently keep the total to less than 500, then 250 and even hovering around 150. The last few months have seen me cull them further to keep ‘All Mail’ to less than 100. Right now it is 66 which is very pleasing.

I found this post today which is a really helpful reminder of all the ways digital clutter can accumulate.

There are so many corners of your phone, computer and the internet where digital clutter may be lurking.

Every time I open WordPress to write a new blog post I am confronted by the fact that I have 73 posts in draft format. What?? But no more. Today I checked each and every one of those drafts that have accumulated over the almost 12 years of writing this blog and found that most of them were no longer even remotely relevant. The majority were not much more than a title or a few words. So, I had a great time deleting them all. I now have 3 drafts which I kept as I believe that they have the makings of posts worthy of publication in the future.

I do not keep thousands of photos on my phone as I regularly download them to the laptop and delete from the phone. However, I have not been as diligent as I could be with the next step of sorting and cataloguing them. The folder of ‘Camera Imports’ has multiple folders that have been downloaded in 2022 so I am working through organising them at the moment. Sorting a lifetime of photos is not a job for the faint-hearted so I try to break it into small blocks.

Keeping track of my ‘Contacts’ is another work in progress. I need to tidy and update them where necessary and check that the same information is on both my phone and the computer. Although it is not a digital issue, I do also have a physical hard-copy address book which I am not quite ready to let go of yet. I will cross-check the information in there with the digital contacts list.

I really think that the key to successful digital decluttering is a regular schedule of maintenance as outlined in in the post I linked above.

Do you have any particular tips to share on this topic. I would love to hear how you manage your digital resources.

Storage Solutions

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In the eleven years that I have been writing this blog I have intermittently made attempts to organise my photos. Little by little I make some progress. I recently uploaded the entire collection to the cloud but this post is not strictly about the photos.

While I was sorting through them I found random photos I have taken of different storage solutions that work for me. Here is a selection.

Rolls of wrapping paper in a repurposed shoebox.

In the cupboard in the spare room. Various bags sorted into categories for reuse. A beautiful old tin which is full of buttons (also sorted and bagged). A plastic tub of all our CDs. They have all been ripped and saved on the computer but we can’t quite bring ourselves to get rid of them.

Folded teatowels in a repurposed timber box which lives in the linen cupboard.

The plastics drawer with containers stacked in piles. This needs maintaining regularly.

The cupboard in the office is constantly evolving.

Storage is not an alternative to decluttering but it does help to be able to maintain a level of organisation. However, I do not advocate rushing out to buy specific matching containers. As these photos show it is possible to utilise various containers that you probably already have available.

Maintenance Mode & Mundane

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If my first few posts of 2022 were anything to go by, you would think there was always some huge activity going on here every day. I am sorry to disappoint you but that is not the case.

Yesterday included a routine doctor’s appointment, changing the sheets on our bed and a couple of loads of washing as well as cutting up some pruning I had done a few days prior so that it will break down more quickly in the compost.

This morning I decluttered some emails as well as the cane basket which sits on the kitchen bench next to the phone. It is our ‘dumping spot’ and occasionally needs a review and overhaul. The contents include a notebook, pen, pending correspondence etc.

I also shredded a small quantity of paper. We choose to handle all of our paper and cardboard at home rather than putting it in the recycle bin. The shredded paper goes in the nesting boxes for the chickens. Some lightweight cardboard is shredded for addition to the compost while the heavier cardboard becomes a weed suppressant to go under mulched areas in the garden.

The administrative maintenance – emails, shredding, notes and correspondence – done regularly means that I never need to have a huge declutter of these things.

Finally, we went shopping to top up our grocery and fruit and vegetable supplies.

Hidden and Forgotten

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My recent clean-out of the linen cupboard resulted in a few things that did not make the cut to go back in. There were various reasons for this and one item was simply because it had been pushed to the back of the cupboard and forgotten.

It is a 100% handwoven cotton rug. I inherited this when it came with a free chair I picked up from Gumtree some years ago. The rug was quite grubby but it washed up well, albeit with what looks like a couple of small rust stains. Anyway, it has been lurking in the cupboard with no particular purpose.

I realised it would make a great picnic rug and we could keep it in the car with the picnic set. It just needed a bag.

I have several cotton drawstring bags which sets of sheets came in and I decided that sewing 2 of them together would make a perfect carry bag for my newly-purposed picnic rug.

Ready to go in the car.

A Fresh Approach

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Tidying up the linen cupboard has been on my mental ‘to do’ list for a few weeks so the first day of a new year seemed like a good time to tackle it.

While it may not look too bad in the scheme of things, I was not happy with how things were grouped. I have assimilated several pieces that belonged to my mother as well. The various boxes and baskets were my first step in the process which was done a couple of months ago and that had certainly made a difference.

I pulled everything out, critically assessed each piece and repositioned a couple of shelves to make better use of the space.

I am rehoming a couple of items but most of it did go back. I tried to keep bedroom, bathroom and kitchen items grouped together as much as possible.

Top shelf: gym towels and beach towels

2nd shelf: Bathroom – towels, handtowels, facewashers and bathmats

3rd shelf: Bedroom – sheets and pillowcases

4th shelf: Kitchen – teatowels, handtowels, aprons and serviettes

5th shelf: Doona covers and tablecloths

The tub at the bottom now contains extra towels and facewashers that are not currently in use as well as an assortment of doilies, tablemats and odds and ends that I am not quite ready to let go of yet.

I have used some of Marie Kondo’s methods re standing items up. I find it works for me in some instances.