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[educatingarti]

This is the new minimalist/decluttering thread! I hope everyone likes the minimal title!

Purrpurr you'll hopefully get some more helpful replies, but I segregated mine & my OH's things so that he had to clamber over and through his junk. Things like we have back to back desks and his needs to be tidy, so when his papers encroach on mine I simply push everything back and he then has to sort the pile out. Ditto our bedroom. He likes to give visitors a guided tour and his side of the bed is by the door, so visitors saw his crapulous mounds before noticing his handy work with shelves etc.

I've decided to store that bag he rescued from the recycling until he buggers off goes back to work next week. In the meantime I'm adding to it.

Oops, posted too soon. There's a set of glasses in the garage which he was going to give away 4 years ago, we've never used them so they are going. DDs will have some outrgrown clothes in next few weeks to get rid of too.

Purrpurr that sounds really distressing. I don't have any wise words and can't write at length now but I will look out a couple of links on "living with a packrat" that might be of some use, hopefully.

Joining the thread for a bit of motivation. I'm never going to be a minimalist, and tbh don't even want to be, but at the moment I'm a lot too far in the other direction and have really lacked motivation.

However the sunshine has given me a bit of oomph -I've freecycled a large item of toddler furniture (DC are approaching secondary age , I've found a taker for a bag of old magazines, I've been to the recycling point with old shoes, dead kettle and a lightbulb, I've sorted out two giant bags of school uniform (DD off to secondary) and outgrown clothes for the chazza (one saleable, one rags).

Yesterday I washed and ironed all the curtains, and I toddled round the house evening with my iPhone and this thread in one hand, tidying away with the other and binned / recycled a good couple of carriers of stuff - and I found two of the things on my "where the hell has that gone?" list - hurrah!

Still a long way to go, (the dining room table ) and DD in particular is a terrible pack rat, but I hope having people in the house over the summer will motivate me and I'll keep checking in with you lot for a boost .

Hey all. Good Morning! Just came across this blog and thought I'd share this:

www.nourishingminimalism.com/2013/01/7-reasons-to-live-minimalistic-lifestyle.html?m=1

Will catch up on posts asap, grumbling baby calls!

Welcome to purrpurr and very dull.
I have the opportunity today ( if I don't waste it) to spend some time sorting out my office/workroom.

I sorted through a small (well, relatively speaking :o) pile of clean clothes this morning and managed a whole plastic bag of rags to get rid of. I also collected together a few toys that fit in categories, and found a place for them.

DH cleared the table but really it just served to remind us we need to get the bigger problems sorted first or it's just moving stuff around rather than tidying. I was planning to rest all day today but I think I'm going to have to do at least another hour and make sure I do some on every day off even if I feel crap because otherwise it'll never be done.

I shredded 6 pounds of old bank and credit card statements yesterday - 6 whole pounds (is it sad that I weighed it first ?) So now my filing has only 12 months of paper in each section, plus I've finally faced the total of the credit cards (that we no longer use, but only pay the minimum each month on - how stupid are we, honesty ), and have a Plan for clearing it all.

Annoyingly now that it's the holidays I'm working from home, so I've had to take a couple of bags of stuff back from the office. On the plus side, it means i need to clear my desk of domestic paperwork/general Stuff in order to spread out the work files, so by September, I should have new habits re domestic paperwork.

If it wasn't so hot here, I'd've had loads of junk chucked out, but once it gets to midday all I want to do is lie around melting.

purrpurr do you have somewhere you can temporarily store the pantry crap? Yesterday I chucked all the random crap from my kitchen into a tub and put it in the spare room. When dh saw how much nicer it was he was quite impressed, I told him "we can just put things back as we need them, I haven't thrown anything out!" In a few weeks I will broach the idea of freecycling whatever's still in the tub.

How old is your daughter?

Ishall, well done for tackling the paperwork and bills! It's going to be a long time before I attack any paperwork. I'm afraid I just let DH deal with all that . We do have a filing cabinet in our room but hardly anything makes it up there!

I am sooo lacking in inspiration today. And I NEED to continue what I started this morning because I left piles of stuff upstairs.

BraStrap That sounds like a good idea - slowly pulling off the plaster rather than ripping it off. From reading this thread, I/we need to sort the garage first, then that can be a temporary holding area for Pantry Crap.

My DD is 9 weeks old and has just got to the point where watching me do things is interesting (especially with often frankly bizarre running commentary from me) so I don't have any excuse to ignore the cupboard any longer!

Congrats on your dd purrpurr! My son is just a couple weeks younger. Love the running commentary, tbh sometimes it helps me get my head syzygy as I declutter out loud while pottering about with him in my arms, then put him down and attack an area with ruthless single-mindedness.

Straight. It helps me get my head straight. No idea what syzygy is, going to Google it now.

If it helps, you can pronounce it 'ziggy ziggy', that's what I did when I saw it. I like the idea of getting your head all ziggy ziggy!

God, I swear I never used to gibber this much rubbish pre-DD...

Oh and congrats on your DS :D

Right, I've made a start at last! Had a day off work so cleared out the airing cupboard, bearing in mind the posts upthread about having fewer towels and sets of bedding etc. I threw out approximately 15-20 (cba to count them) old, manky, random coloured towels of varying sizes, three double valance sheets that I was tempted to keep just in case but haven't used since I moved here four years ago so was ruthless and about 17 pillowcases in varying shades of cream/ivory/beige (I counted 12 of them, put them in the charity bag, then found more underneath the valance sheets ). I now have two large charity bags and two large black sacks of bedding and towels ready for the charity shop at the weekend. Also threw a few unused toys and a unwanted few clothes in there.

It feels good. My airing cupboard is neat and tidy. Can't wait to get on with the rest but work will get in the way until the weekend.

Nothing doing yesterday - I was trapped at my desk all day in the heat working on lessons for a summer school I am teaching at next week.

I only have until Saturday to sort out the house before the move - I leave for the summer school which is quite far away and then DH will do the rest. I know that as the packing becomes a bit more frantic I have packed things that I shouldn't have.

Should I open boxes to chuck things? There are some specific things in there rather than opening them for a general sort-out!

(The move is in early August while I am still at the Summer School, so DH is doing it alone)

Who's going to be unpacking?

me that's the deal - I did most of the packing, will continue to do bits and pieces until I leave for summer school (tip to self, do not abbreviate this to SS ) then he does the move on a couple of days in August, then I unpack when I get back.

His PhD thesis is due in on 30th September so he's feeling a bit stressed and short of time, usually it would be more 50-50.

To be honest, I wouldn't re-open boxes now to chuck stuff. You have already chucked loads and if you are unpacking at the other end, you can immediately set up chazza and trash bags and shove stuff in as you unpack. ( The only exception might be any of DH's rubbish items that you'd like to "get lost in the move"! - joking of course!!)

Yes, get the declutter system set up before you do anything else, good call arti.

One of my main problems over the last few years has been moving house three times, twice cheggers, once highly stressed and too quickly and with lots of assistance to get it done and I've been left not knowing exactly what we've got. I can't get into the loft, so only DH knows what's really up there. And the garage! Oh lordy the garage.
I really want a skip that's attached to ebay.

minimalist enough

Lovely article on the importance of a personal definition of minimalism - " I can be minimalist enough. Minimalism isn?t about winning, and it isn?t about a particular achievement. It?s about finding out what matters to you, and getting rid of the peripheral."

love it!

"Clearing out, to me, is about reducing the unnecessary clutter in your life to make space for what matters, and finding a balance that lets your soul breathe. It?s about stripping away the things you don?t need so you can focus on what?s important."

Couldn't agree more. Fantastic article BeCool
Thank-you.