The minimalist quiche

[educatingarti]

This is a new thread to replace the minimalist journey one which is nearly full!

How annoying MrsP. I think the only times that has ever happened with me (and its been hardly ever) I have consoled myself with the fact that if I had kept it I wouldn't have been able to find the bloody thing when I wanted it anyway!

Silent that is a good idea I like to be able to see what he is spending though - I don't trust him with his own account!!

Just had a moment when I stood back and realised just how much there is still to do. Its made me feel a bit sick. Because I have been working away quite slowly there has been no immediate transformation, and I'm getting used to how the flat looks without seeing the benefit iyswim I've also got my mum coming to stay next week and she is as neat as a pin. Nothing is ever out of place in her house and everything in it is useful or beautiful. Sickening! (She lives alone though - no spendthrift husband or grubby two year old to battle with!!)

Pixie get your mum to help you tiday and sort? Or is that asking for trouble?

ASk your mum to entertain the grubby two year old her grandchild while you get on with more de-cluttering?

Sometimes I wish someone would just come and do it all for me, or at least stand over me and say "keep" or "out". But I feel that may be missing the point

Ok. All stuff to sell is in a tidy mountain of plastic boxes. I think I'm going to car boot it all in March unless I can find an eBay friend in RL to hold my hand through the process...

pixie my Mum is also a neat freak. She has given up on commemting on the state of my house, to me at least. I am never going to care about perfect tidiness as much as her. She is good at helping with cleaning and stuff though.

hobnob I think having someone help you can be quit good. If you are prone to procrastination, as I sometimes am, a friend sees things with a fresh pair of eyes and can help you part with things. I had a great childhood friend who used to help me tidy my bedroom, and me hers. It made it less of a chore.

I have done a deep clean of my bedroom today and in the process I have several pairs of shoes for the charity shop. One pair I've never worn and was hanging onto them as it felt like such a waste of money to get rid of them. I finally realised that them sitting there never getting worn is just as much a waste of money.

My two ebay items have a couple of bids and loads of watchers so I should have a few more pounds next week. :)

Me too Hobnob. I need a booming voice to say "Don't be so bloody stupid! BIN IT!" at crucial moments

My mum would probably be glad to help but I would feel weird on two counts. Firstly the utter shame of it, and secondly, its her holiday. What kind of a holiday is it, sorting through someone elses mouldering old crap?

evening all, can I come in and sit a while
I'm very scared of decluttering but absolutely determined to no longer live as I do

can I buy a label maker?

I already have a laminater (sp)

oooh where do you live issimma?
I have cake and cheese and lemonade

Marking place for when I get round to decluttering

I love decluttering other people's stuff! Much easier than doing my own. Happy to oblige if you are in the Bristol area.

I'm not sure if this is a turn in the right direction but we're now looking at moving the furniture around in our (very small) house. There's an armchair I've got my eye on on Gumtree to create a reading corner. I'm also back to longing for a chaise longue. As we haven't got rid of anything big, I can't decide if this is moving in the wrong direction as it's more stuff but it will make the house work better for the three of us.

Thanks to piss-taking by stylish colleagues, DH has finally got round to sorting through his shirts and socks. He still has far too many IMO but there are less now and they all fit.

Welcome Trin. We will whip you into shape in no time

I would looooooove a chaise longue Queen. We have the most uncomfortable sofa/ futon thing in the world, fondly known as "the park bench". Due to the ridiculous layout of our flat we cant get any decent sized pieces of furniture in.

queen I think it's perfectly ok to get furniture that makes your space work better for your family!

Hello Trinity! I have a label maker.

Another pile of books ready (for fatbrain.co.uk this time because webuybooks didn't want em).

Good things are happening here. My friend had a spare ticket for Les Ballets Trockaderos at the weekend and I asked Sport if he was up to looking after the kids instead of assuming he couldn't. (He has a chronic health problem, and usually I use that as an excuse for not doing things). I had a great time and Sport & dc managed fine without me, of course...
I got a leaflet for adult beginner dance classes. (This becomes clutter if I don't actually go to a class, of course!)
I got my dad's acrylic paints out and ds2 and I both painted after school.
We danced around the kitchen to Dolly Parton and Queen after dinner. (Classy).

I think this is happening in part because I'm letting go of physical things that make me sad, guilty or dissatisfied and because I'm doing regular mindfulness practice for the 1st time ever. I feel like I'm making space, slowly, for living now instead of putting my life on hold till everything is in order.

This thread, at its best, feels like that scene in The Secret Garden when Mary first gets into the hidden garden and gets on her knees and starts to clear space around the green shoots...

No real decluttering today, but filled a bin bag with wallpaper. Peeling off poorly-attached wallpaper is a real pleasure of mine. :)

So hoping to move dd's cotbed and all other stuff out of my room soon. Which should leave space for my possessions.

I'm giving myself until next Christmas to fit into pre-pregnancy clothes. Hoping giving up breastfeeding will make weight magically fall off, but suspect it may require also giving up biscuits. At least being back at work keeps me away from my home biscuit tin for the duration.

It's paper that keeps breeding round here despite my best efforts. MrNC is severely dyslexic so never throws any out in case it's important - so I find sneaky piles of junk mail mixed in with important papers. At some point I must tell various charities to stop mailing me bumf except for one annual confirmation of my donation, or I'll cancel.

Fell off the thread again, why is that happening?

Sort of stalling on the initially amazing progress here. Officially we have started sorting the porch/hallway at the back of the house that functions as our "utility" area so there have been more dump trips but it feels as though progress is suddenly slow. There are a lot of boxes of stuff for selling in the front hallway and a number of boxes of old documents for shredding/sorting in our room so I don't exactly have the clean minimalist spaces I desire.

Harrietspy, talk to me about your mindfulness practice! This is how I came to all of this too. I have made a "mindfulness space" where I used to have a cubbyhole of doom... I wish I could link to the pics of before and after, it sort of exemplifies the whole process. I have been doing mindfulness for nearly a year now but I find regular formal practice very difficult to manage.

thunks I'm doing an 8 week course (once a week) for stress. We all come together with a trainer once a week and are given 'homework': the 1st week's was doing a body scan every day (with a cd), this week we have to alternate body scan with a mindfulness of breathing exercise. We're also supposed to do a few 3 minute mindfulness practices every day but I find it harder to stop and do those than I do to make time for the 20-40 minute practice!

I've had Jon Kabat Zinn CDs for a couple of years but it's only with this course that I've done the practice every day. I'm finding that doing it with a group (even though the daily practice is on my own iyswim) is really encouraging.

Yo Trin!!! Welcome to the pleasure dome! You will love it once you get going!

Marking my place. Lurked at the beginning of the year as have resolved to lead a simpler, more minimalist life but then we've all been ill so it's been on hold. However, feeling better now and can't wait to get started!

I live in a 4 bed room (but 4th really is a tiny box room) semi with my dh, ds (14), dd1 (9) and dd2(3). Every room is cluttered to a degree and paperwork out of control, as are clothes . Also books. And toys. And as for the garage and sheds....so I have my work cut out!

Going to read whole thread later today for inspiration :)

My shed of doom is being put off until nicer weather is upon us. DH also needs to help with that as there are lots of heavy items in there. Also most of it is his junk.

My ebay items have loads of watchers now. They are only small and not exactly taking up loads of space but if I get money for them then I will be more willing to let go of other clothing items for free.

My music magpie stuff has finally gone and I just need the snow to stop so I can get to the charity shop with another 4 bags of stuff.

Interested in mindfulness, will look into this more.

I'm studiously ignoring most of my cupboards of doom though the spare room of doom is slowly getting a bit more sorted! (very slowly).

Was hoping to get rid of a landline corded phone via freegle this morning but it looks like it may be a "no show"! . I need to be able to add something more to my "out" list!

Hello TrinityRhino - this is such a lovely thread, I'm a latecomer but have been made really welcome. Not remotely a quiche. More like an open buffet...

Oh harrietspy I should get back into my mindfulness practise. A teacher at school taught us all to meditate when we were 16 and going through GCSE stress (Dr. Gold if you are out there and reading this you were a WONDERFUL teacher). I find it hard to make the space for it these days - occasionally I'll do a walking meditation on my way to work. But I could do with more of it for certain. Thanks for making me think about that.

Sorry about the declutter-too-far MrsP but maybe it wouldn't have been exactly right anyway (she says hopefully, straws in hand!). I have had that slight pang of regret when I look for something and realise it's gone. But then I have to look around at our flat and think - 'but if I'd kept all my 'just in case' stuff, what would it look like in here?'

I had a lovely surprise at the weekend. I told DH that we really needed to set aside time to do the garage and he said 'I did it this week when I had those two days off work. It's all sorted - the only things left are the furniture we need to return to X and Y. We'll hire a van in a couple of weekends'. Done. The Garage of Doom is done and I didn't even have to get involved. What a hero.

So - there is one thing niggling me. We have three or four big plastic boxes which contain our camping gear. We love camping, but at our new flat we don't have room to store it. We can store it in BIL's garage, but he doesn't live near us, so we'd have to go to his every time, and then go wherever we were going camping which would be a faff. But I had another idea. I wondered if there might be a family/couple living near us that want to go camping, have the space to store the gear, and would be prepared for us to share ownership of the gear with them. So they wouldn't pay us money for it - they'd just provide the storage space and we'd provide the gear and we'd have a 'timeshare' type arrangement for who gets to use it when. Does that sound like a crazy idea, or possible? It's very much just an idea at the moment... And it would have to be 'nice' people who'd look after the gear...

My next charity shop run will be on Friday - already starting to gather things into the 'out' basket that sits at the bottom of my wardrobe. So far there are two pairs of shoes, a few books and CDs in there. Going to add some clothes on Friday morning and then drop everything off.

Hello to TrinityRhino - feel free to just sit and watch for as long as you like!
Hi too to Toastie and Thunks - try not to fall off again will you

Trinity - if you wanted to start - maybe you could just start by finding one thing to chuck out every day?

Oh yes, Trinity, I can vouch for educatingartis advice - one thing a day is how I started. I decluttered just one thing a day, every day and stuck to a one-in-one-out rule for everything else. I built up momentum very gradually. I'd been doing it for about a year before I started to get rid of things that I'd been really clinging to. For the first six months it was just stuff like 'oh, an empty diary from 1996. Yes I could keep it on the off chance that I'd use it as a notebook, but no, it's going'. Just one thing like that per day - usually they were such 'easy wins' that I felt like I was cheating. Then after about six months I started to blitz individual areas and was a bit more ruthless... and now, two years on, people are amazed when I say we're going to do some decluttering on the weekend 'But you guys don't have ANY clutter!'.

Do just hang out with us. You don't have to throw away a single thing if you're not ready to, but just one thing is the best place to start.