Anyone want to join me in a minimalist journey?

[lucysnowe]

I've been reading a load of minimalist mum blogs and have been brainwashed inspired . We are undergoing some building work at the mo and the amount of stuff everywhere is absolutely doing me head in. Once it is finished I want to have a ginormous sort and throw out. We are getting a tumble dryer and I plan to start culling clothes, sheets, towels etc, with the aim of getting ALL washing done each week and not have massive full up bins cluttering up the place. Next: toys, ornaments, and random bits of paper. Anyone fancy doing the same for the New Year?

We're ditching, re-arranging and slinging stuff. My head/house feels better for it but I have to keep reading blogs/books/threads to remain motivated in my quest.

A few months ago I binned three large boxes that were sat on the landing. Low value, bulky random stuff it would have raised a tenner at most. DH did a carboot a month later but it was worth £2.50 a week not to have it sitting there.

harriet, I think I've posted up thread, but I keep two sets of bedding for each bed, plus a couple extra cot sheets and pillow covers for spare.
I change the beds once a week and a week is plenty time for it all to be washed and dry, so having more than that would be excessive.
I drastically reduced the number of towels we have, but we still have plenty. We have no tumble drier and towels can take a while to dry.
That being said, I may get rid of a few more when I'm more on top of the washing.
Training ourselves to reuse towels several times has helped with the ridiculous amount of laundry I used to have to do though.

I can't remember where I read it, but there was one take on minimising laundry by actually having 30 days worth of clothing in order to only do laundry once a month. This seems a reasonable approach if you're just adults, so no food spills to go mouldy, who are time poor and use a laundrette for example, but would not work for me when a lot of what I wash is cloths for cleaning faces and banana sodden t-shirts.
On the other extreme is the 6 items or less challenge, where you have a tiny capsule wardrobe, but will need to wash every couple days at least. If you're on your own, this will mean less than a full load, however if there are several of you, making up a load every day or two will be easy.

So it's about what will be efficient for you and your own family I guess.

harriet I think that is a very valid reason - we don't have a tumble dryer for environmental reasons and even with our very wonderful ceiling dryer we couldn't manage to dry sheets and towels in time to put them back into use straight away. Plus I would feel very stressed about having to get the sheets etc through the wash right away. I already only have two sets of bedding for our bed - never saw a need to buy more - but the rest of our bedding and towels I plan to sort out tomorrow.

It's all about that balance isn't it? I keep coming back to mm's definition of 'what we need and no more': I guess you could say that 'need' varies a bit with lifestyle choices though obviously we shouldn't be stretching that to say that we need four sets of bedding for the spare bed and heaven knows how many towels for a family of three...

blackbag I'm making similar mutterings having listed stuff on freecycle. Am using ebay for £5+ items, and am at the low resale value of pretty much everything. Still, I will have more space once the baby clothes are sorted!

I probably don't need as many towels and sets of bedding as we have, for sure! Thanks, blossom and iwipe. Balance, and focusing on what works for your family - v wise.

We managed not to accumulate too much stuff this Christmas. I won't get much sorting/sifting done till next week, but I managed 10 mins to weed out some of those young adult paperbacks from a couple of shelves. DC acquired loads of good books but as I'm letting go of other books, this feels ok!

Maybe we're minimalist extremists but we only have one set of bedding each - one for me and DP and one for DD (slight lie as we have a summer and a winter one which get used at different times of year).

One of us always gets the bedding washed, dried and the bed remade within the day but that's more that we don't have anywhere to leave it overnight. I strip the bed when I get up instead of making it, DP then hangs them up when washing is done, outside on line or inside on DD's bunkbed. I thought most people did this.

Maybe we're quite manky but we only wash our towels once a week. DP and I both have a bath towel and hand towel each and DD just has a bath towel (Scooby Doo though).

It sounds like some of you do serious amounts of laundry.

We generally use bath towels at least 3 times now, so 4-6 a week for the adults in total I guess. 2 for the kids and 2/3 hand towels. Our towels are mainly white, so they just go in with other white clothes to make up a load as and when. I'd prefer all our clothes to be dark colours to save me sifting through to make up suitable loads.

I wouldn't like the insecurity of not knowing that there would definitely be dry bedding to put on in the evening Queen, though if you know your own system, I'm sure you know that it'll be dry, but it's one thing I like to have spare. But just the one spare set.

Most of my laundry is due to my messy children. Trying to come up with some work arounds though.

Hello, can I join in?

I'm single, no DC. Live in a dinky studio flat, no attic or garage, my storage space is basically one cupboard! I'm drowning in a whole load of shite

I have to take washing to the launderette - will be sorting washing machine in 2013! - so I have quite a lot of clothes, four sets of bedding and about 7 towels. It means I don't have to do washing every week, it's bloody expensive (!) but my dirty laundry pile often gets out of control.

Bedside table - I use a chair, so I can have my book, water and phone by my bed but no drawers to stash clutter :)

I got rid of my telly but noticed I'm now on the Internet more than ever, just swapped one screen for another.

I have an eBay pile that I didn't manage to shift before xmas. Is January slow for selling, would it be worth waiting till Feb/March?
I've got some summer clothes to sell, think I'll list them April/May.

Queen, it sounds like you have a great system going.

Our stuff wouldn't dry in a day (cold, cold house!) so I couldn't do what queen does. (Respect due, though! Most impressed). But I know that having less bedlinen will focus my mind and make me get stuff washed rather than leaving it lying around.

boerwar I am totally with you on the screens. This is my major challenge for the coming months.

Yep, harrietspy I think I need to give myself one hour a day.

I have a lot of digital clutter, as PPs have said. 100s of photos and docs that I could probably delete. I subscribe to about 150 blogs on Google Reader. This needs serious culling!

I need to deal with my physical clutter first though :)

We're a one wash a week for towels and sheets family too. We do have several sets but tend to wash and dry on the same day and replace with the same stuff. Which is a reason to cull the linen draws I think...

Hi all, not been on since before Christmas. My next projects are going to be bedding, towels and books.

Bedding and towels will be easy. We don't have too many for our bed but have loads of old kids sets that don't get used. Towels there are too many of. A whole bunch of random sizes and colours bought for the kids by others.

The thing I will find hard is the dcs book. DD is only 18mths so a lot of books still have a future with her. However we have loads. I need to go through them and keep some of the really nice ones nad free up shelf space for my boys in their room. First to go will be the huge encyclopedia sized story books boight for ds1 (9) when he was born. Never even read due tp their huge size and weight.

harriet about the towels/sheets and tumble dryer and environment: We would still be using our tumble dryer everyday as a family of four regardless (like Queen I am quite an extreme minimalist so we have only had one set of bedding per family member for ages) so I guess I'm saying we don't put it on extra for our towels and bedding. The tumbler dryer dries a mixture of clothing/sheets/bedding and I use the Dylon colour Catcher sheet things in the washing machine so I can do mixed loads, so we don't put it on separately just for a bath towel. I will definitely have more than one hand towel though for drying hands when it is physically in washer/dryer.

We don't line dry, (apart from the childrens Mini Boden printed skirts etc, tumbling tends to fade the print) with tumble drying I know that if I fold the instant the dryer stops stuff rarely needs ironing and it can be put right away. We're a one car family and I walk everywhere, so I guess the tumble dryer is my enviromental splurge?! Hoping that offsets our carbon footprint...

So general stuff about laundry:
It took me ages to work this out, but having more clothes for example doesn't mean less washing. You will still wear things for approximately the same length of time and then need to wash that item. With a family of four, we get a full load including towels/sheets etc at least six/seven times a week. I think it is the same for towels, having more doesn't mean less washing/drying, the towels will still be used for certain length of time and then washed. I guess this is talking about family laundry though, if it was a single person or a small family it would be different.

Having more clothes/towels just mean having to deal with more physical laundry around the home, a bigger laundry pile waiting to be washed that can be abandonded for that little bit longer because there are reserves in the drawer and needing more space to store it in bedroom. And for people that iron a bigger ironing pile too.

Of course, if a family simply line dries laundry then of course this needs to be taken into account.

Oh yeah, if I used a tumble drier I'd be tempted to just keep one set of clothes each.

This is all excellent and making me think!

Been doing a post-Christmas tidy up this morning (although the decs are staying up till Epiphany) and there are a few presents that are going straight into the re-gifting box. Is it bad that I feel no shame about this?!

harriet I've been doing the same. I feel guilty but I know I'm being sensible - trying to have a frugal year as well as a minimalised one...

Bag of newborn baby clothes going today (freecycle), and someone else has offered me a bag of bigger clothes. I like this muchly - good for my wallet and the environment!

My NY resolution is to work on reducing screen time. Don't want DC to think my iphone is actually attached to my body...

Harriet I am feeling slightly guilty as I've already taken some presents to the charity shop... But why did my inlaws give me a plastic tool set?! DD is too young for it as it has quite a few sharp, pointy bits, it's obviously useless as everything's plastic, I'm not a child so I'm not going to play with it... It's a good joke present as I'm always complaining DH doesn't do any DIY, but what am I meant to do with it now?!

Hi all

Hope you all had a great Christmas! Very inspiring to read all your posts, and pleased to find everyone is as obsessed with laundry as I am :) Well have officially started the decluttering now. Have filled about 10 bags, am feeling pretty pleased. BUT we have recently got more roof space so am tending to add things to that as well - and the packed-to-bursting shed! but can deal with those things as and when... The kids' new room looks fab and I plan to keep it as uncluttered as possible, putting toys and books etc in another room. Antoinette, don't feel guilty, I have already done the same with some pressies I got that I know I won't use.

Have only just discovered this thread so I'm just marking my place for now so I can go and stick the kettle on and read all 16 pages!

I've started decluttering recently and started in the bathroom. Smallest room in the house so I felt a nice sense of achievement when I'd finished. I built a new cabinet to house our bathroom cleaners and " bathroom bits" in and got rid of stuff we'd been accumulating for years. It felt great and I'm now very possessive over the cabinet and police it's contents! I don't want a jam-packed cabinet of crap, I want a nice tidy orderly one!

Onwards and upwards with the rest of the house so I'm looking forward to reading all your tips

Ooh love love love this thread! Have started decluttering dd's bedroom by making a pile of clothes for charity shop to make way for all the new clothes she got for xmas and sorting toys & games that she no longer plays with to give to our childminder. am feeling v guilty & silly for the amount of xmas presents we bought her, wish we'd given money into her savings a/c instead & that I'd found this thread sooner!

Small steps today...DH is obsessed with saving every lidded plastic container we get and they are taking over the kitchen. I just brought a few bags of them to the recycling and already feel a bit lighter :)

I've listed a bunch of books on amazon and also have three bags for the charity shop; I've pruned my handbags and bags and have got rid of 8 that I never use; I have a bag of clothes for the charity shop and another for recycling; shall press on and make a start on a pile of paperwork.

Yep, small steps. Old VCR and tv to the dump (but DH won't part with the videos . 2 bags of eBay stuff identified, and now, thanks to some v generous relatives, I am looking forward to trying the eBay app!

I need to do another cull of toys. The kids are very possessive of the mountain of cuddly toys gathering dust in the corner of their room so unless I do a stealth mission they're here to stay. I am also irrationally wary of throwing out too much in case they get bored mid year as their birthdays are all right before Christmas. I know they claim to be bored all the time so I don't know what my logic is there.

We are getting precious little achieved with colicky baby. We need to farm the kids out and have a blitz.

Hello all - I've been following this thread, and keep getting inspired by the ideas and being too busy to post! We are having building work done too and I really want a calm, minimalist space once we have the house back together. So far I have filled a large box with clothes and DVDs and am sorting through and selling on eBay/Amazon. I am keeping a spreadsheet of my earnings to keep me motivated. The thing I am struggling with is my CDs. We have them stored away in several boxes, as we only really listen to music on the iPod/iPad or Spotify now. But I am emotionally attached to my CD collection... I think I have to be ruthless, or achieve a state of Buddhist detachment and just let it go (am conflicted right now!).