New Homes

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Posted on January 31, 2017

Just as it is wise to be conscious of your consumption when buying stuff, I try to be equally thoughtful when it comes to letting go of possessions that are no longer required.

Sometimes they can no longer be repaired and the rubbish bin is the only option. However, more often than not the item may be of some use to someone – either in its current form or to be disassembled, repurposed or recycled.

It has taken me a couple of weeks but with a bit of patience and planning I have managed to re-home a variety of things which were unearthed during our latest round of decluttering the workshop.

My first action was to contact the local Men’s Shed to offer a variety of power and hand tools as well as some drill bits and miscellaneous handyman bits. I do not have a photo but the gentleman who collected them was very grateful and I am pleased that they will be put to good by a local community group. It really ticks all of the boxes to my way of thinking.

I listed the rest of the things on a couple of local Buy, Swap, Sell pages on Facebook. I chose to give the things away as finding someone who can use them is more important to me than recouping any money.

We sorted through the many cans of paint and decided that a few of them were no longer required mainly due to changes in the exterior colour scheme. These are being picked up tomorrow.

The recipient is also taking this sprinkler.

Someone else asked for these couple of cable reels. We have 2 with long extension cords on them but these are excess to our needs.

I did not think the inflatable pool was going to find a home but it has now been requested as well.

I feel sick at the knowledge that some people choose to do a massive declutter over a single weekend. They achieve this by hiring a skip and throwing everything they no longer want into it with no thought to the end result of all of this stuff end up in landfill.

By taking my time and thoughtfully rehoming them, all of these items will continue to be used and people in my community will benefit.

Something Different

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Posted on January 22, 2017

As I mentioned at the end I my previous post, I spent the remainder of yesterday far away from my sewing machine.

If you think of the room with my sewing machine as my hobby area then the workshop is GMan’s hobby space. From time to time we have a clean up and usually declutter a few more things. Yesterday we had another go but this time the focus was the contents of the storage cupboards under the bench rather than some of the bigger garden items.

We decided to move all of the various jars and containers of nails, screws, rivets etc from the shelf in the cupboard to this set of shelves which we had inherited and mounted on the wall some time ago. We had not really used the shelves but it is now much easier to see what we actually have.

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I finally found a solution for storing the various extension cords. This metal bracket which came from my father’s workshop has been mounted just above the bench.

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We could not complete the final bit of organisation until today as we needed to buy some plastic plugs to allow us the screw into the concrete block wall to mount the shelf to the left of this photo.

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We have yet to put anything on it but there is plenty to choose from. The shelf beside it was the subject of one of my very early blog posts – almost 6 years ago.

I found it interesting to re-read that old post because I realised that all of the items mentioned today actually belonged to my father – even the re-purposed tins cans for storing screws – on the bottom shelf of the first photograph.

And what inspired us to do all of this? It was trying to find suitable screws and the correct size drill bit for another handyman project. That will be revealed tomorrow.

A Particular Passion

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Posted on January 8, 2017

During the holiday break I have had time to read and post in various groups and forums. I participate to varying degrees in several groups. I find that many of them have quite a narrow focus, sometimes to the exclusion of all else.

Some of the topics covered include:

Frugal Living
Zero Waste
DeclutteringMinimalism
Veganism
Upcycling
Buying Nothing New
Simple Living
Plastic Free Living

I dabble in all of these to some degree apart from veganism although we have reduced our intake of red meat to quite a modest level.

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At times it seems that I am not sufficiently passionate about any single topic, however, I feel that they are all inter-related and one aspect can support another.

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Hence, this blog contains posts which cover and wide range of topics and I hope you will find something of interest to you.

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Please let me know if there are particular topics which you would prefer to see more of or less.

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One Year On

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Posted on October 15, 2016

It is almost exactly a year since I wrote this post about decluttering emails in October last year.

I was astounded to see the number of emails which I mentioned was well in excess of 4,000 in all folders at the time.

I had regularly kept it to around 500 or less since then until it blew out of control a bit while we were on holidays and I have not been super diligent since our return.

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Last night I made a start on clearing out the emails and made some more progress with the task this morning. After being at about 1,900 emails we are now back to a more manageable 470 or so.

Despite the number of emails, I am pleased that I have generally been better at regularly cleaning and culling my inbox and have renewed enthusiasm to keep it this way in the future.

During the process of tidying up the emails, I have also taken the opportunity to action some emails that I had been hanging onto as I needed to ‘do something’ before deleting them. Sometimes this was as simple as adding some details to my ‘Contacts’.

Four Fabulous Days

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Posted on October 3, 2016

I have had the most glorious 4 days at home. Friday was a well-earned day off followed by a long weekend. Most weekends I am left with the feeling of wanting a couple more days to try to catch my tail. I would not say I have done everything but I do have a degree of satisfaction that I have made some progress beyond the basics of washing and meal preparation. The best part is that I have worked steadily but not frantically for some of the time as well as simply doing nothing at other times.

Here is a snapshot of what I achieved:

Washing and ironing – the first 3 days were brilliantly sunny with a breeze so all of the washing was done and dried which left me with a pile of ironing. I tackled this with enthusiasm since I was armed with a new iron as well as the ironing board cover that I made on Friday.

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Shopping – most weekends I buy enough fruit and vegetables for the week as well as a few things from Aldi and Saturday was no exception. However, I also drove a bit further to go to Morayfield so that I could stock up at Simply Good, where I buy all of the flours, dried fruit, seeds, nuts and legumes that I use. I do this every 4months or so. Spotlight is nearby so I took the opportunity to have a look and found the fabric to recover the mattress for the day bed.

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Decluttering/recycling – as we change and re-arrange furniture there is often some to move along to someone else who can use it. This weekend I listed 4 outdoor chairs and a large pine chest of drawers on our local Buy, Swap, Sell Facebook page and they have now gone to new homes. I also tidied and sorted the shelves in the wardrobe in the sewing/spare room and put a few things in a bag to go to the op shop.

Gardening – when I was at the market buying fruit and vegetables, I noticed a neighbouring stall selling seedlings. I bought and planted out basil, beetroot and capsicum seedlings. GMan mulched the shrub we cut down a few weeks ago and planted out several native trees and shrubs.

Outdoors – we have taken a few more steps towards finishing our outdoor living area on the verandah. The newly painted table is back in position as is the day bed, albeit without the mattress yet. I spent a good portion of today cleaning up the large concreted area under the house. This is a lovely cool area in summer and I am trying to make it more useable. I sorted and stacked various building materials so that they are in a logical order and easily accessible.

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What a shame that I have to go to work tomorrow – there is so much more that I could do here at home.

I will some more details of some of the things I have mentioned tonight in upcoming posts this week.

Patience Pays Off

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Posted on June 4, 2016

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about cleaning up the workshop area downstairs. One of the photos showed the old kitchen cupboards which we had been using as storage in this area for the last 7 years. We decided that it was time for them to go as the chipboard was all breaking up and we had eliminated enough stuff to longer require them as storage.

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GMan cut the shelving into smaller pieces and broke down the cupboard shells and drawers. We only have a half size (120 litre) wheelie bin so we filled it with the cut pieces each week for 4 weeks.

Now it is completely gone.

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The alternative was to pack it into the ute, drive 20kms to the nearest rubbish dump and pay about $15 to dump it. The end result is the same – it goes to landfill, which is not ideal but there is really no alternative for this sort of thing. However, we managed it at zero cost to us because we chose to take our time and dispose of it bit by bit.

Meaning of Materialistic

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Posted on May 22, 2016

I read an interesting question online today.

How do you become less materialistic?

The first thing to do is to define the word ‘materialistic’. I resorted to the dictionary and this is what I came up with.

Materialistic – excessively concerned with physical comforts or the acquisition of wealth and material possessions, rather than with spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values.

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

So, how is a materialistic attitude determined? Nature, nurture, genetics, stage of life?

I am sure that at least some of our attitude towards possessions stems from how we were brought up and the attitude of our parents.

Additionally, most of us go through what I would regard as an acquisitive phase during early adulthood as we set up a household which is independent from our childhood home. During this period there are often children added to the family and along with that comes additional possessions.

At the other end of the scale there are those of us who no longer have children at home and are perhaps already retired or soon to be so. Many of us are looking to remove clutter from our lives.

However, I think a materialistic attitude is more than simply having lots of stuff. To me it means that a person places more emphasis on material possessions than values.

I cannot get enough of this video which is brilliant.

Nothing Matches…….

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Posted on May 3, 2016

……..but at least it is tidy. The workshop area contains a mish-mash of storage cupboards and shelving. It does not look particularly pretty but is effective.

Yesterday was the last day of our long weekend and GMan decided to continue his goal of clearing up downstairs. On Saturday he had swept and water-blasted the open concreted area under the house so yesterday he turned his attention to the workshop area. I do not have any ‘before’ photos but here are a few shots of the end result.

The dismantled cupboards in the right-hand photo are from our old kitchen (renovated 7 years ago) which were repurposed as temporary storage. They are now destined to be rubbish as the chipboard is all breaking up and we simply no longer need them. GMan will cut them into smaller pieces and gradually dispose of them via our regular rubbish collection.

Cupboards and shelves were re-arranged. Worn-out or useless rubbish were discarded. Items no longer required were listed on Facebook Buy/Swap/Sell sites. Bits of wood were cut up for firewood.

The area is by no means decluttered completely but we have got rid of some stuff, made sure similar items are stored together and generally know what we have.

As always, it is a work in progress but it feels good to have taken another step towards keeping only those things that we really need.

What I Wear – 4 Month Update

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Posted on April 4, 2016

I have now completed 4 months of recording what I wear each day. I began this project on 1st December last year with express purpose of trying to understand how often I wore the clothes I had and whether they were truly the best selection I could have. This has evolved a bit more to include a challenge to buy as little as possible in 2016.

I have removed another item from my wardrobe which has brought the total down to 91. It was this long, lacy cardigan which I had bought from the recycle boutique and although I had worn it twice, I found that I consistently overlooked it when making my choices.

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Although it is a lovely Mela Purdie piece it is simply not me so off it went – back to the boutique where I am sure it will find a grateful owner.

We are beginning to see slight signs that summer will not go on forever, although rather than saying it is getting cooler it is probably more appropriate to describe the weather as “less hot”.

So, for the past month it has been more of the same – mostly summer dresses or shorts and tops. There has not been a lot of scope for variation but that will come.

I have now worn 70 of the 91 items in my wardrobe. The remaining 21 fall into 2 categories ‘Winter’ and ‘Special’. The first includes jackets, coats, woollen cardigans and pullovers and long-sleeved tops. The second is a lace cocktail-length dress which I wore to a wedding 3 years ago and would be my ‘go to’ outfit for any similar dressy occasions as well as 2 pairs of travel pants which are exactly that – lightweight trousers that zip off to shorts which are perfect for travel. I do also sometimes wear them at home during the cooler months.

Therefore, I am pleased to say that I have worn everything that is appropriate to the weather during the last 4 months. However, not all of it will necessarily make the cut to next summer. Having a limited selection of clothes forced me to carefully appraise whether I felt an item was really perfect. 2 pieces that won’t make it are these camisole-style tops.

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They are past their best and I am not sure whether the necklines have stretched slightly or I am being a bit more discerning but I feel as though they sit a bit low for my liking. I will buy some more of a similar style but will take the time to look around and find something that is ‘perfect’.

That is it until next month.

Clean and Uncluttered

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Posted on March 16, 2016

Last weekend I was doing some general housework and I cleaned and polished this small table.

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The furniture polish I use is a quantity of the cheapest vegetable oil I can find with a few drops of essential oil to create a pleasant odour. I use either lemon or lavender oil. I put a small amount of this mixture on a soft cloth (old t-shirts are good) and apply to the timber then rub it in and buff.

I washed and ironed the doilies and then replaced the ornaments.

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