m

[educatingarti]

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

That sounds fun :)

I didn't declutter anything today. Well unless you count returning a heavy bag of beginner reader books to work (I'd taken leave today for my hospital appt but had to go in to photocopy stuff for my DLA form) that have been hanging around for ages. I will mostly be at home tomorrow though so I will try and do a few random bits.

I've got DS in my bed (he was sleeping horizontally - as is the law with small children - when I came up just now) so I'm going to read simplicity parenting on the iPad :o - won't manage much before falling asleep though!

I thought Simplicity Parenting was waiting for me at the library but I must have misremembered the alert they sent me.... It turned out to be Unconditional Parenting. I may just get SP on my eBook.

Freecycled some cloth nappies that didn't fit my boys' bums and organized the change table for more efficient workflow. Organized sheets onto 2 shelves by size rather than all jumbled up. This task took me less than 5 minutes and has been on my to do list for literally weeks.

It's amazing how little time some jobs take, Itchy! I have a little clock in the bathroom and the battery ran out about 4 months ago. Took me 2 mins to replace yesterday...

Since we've paid off our debts (hooray!!!) I'm reluctant to buy any new clothes for me because I want to start saving, but most of my clothes have got holes or stains. Mending again last night and I find I love it! DS1's new school uniform is going to cost £££ (state grammar with uniform you can get from asda except blazer but PE kit is made especially for the school and only comes from one shop...) so I want to avoid spending unnecessarily.

On dc and toys: ds2 has no interest in or attachment to soft toys whatsoever. Ds1 is 10. We have a jute bag full of em and they rarely get pulled out. But ds1 has taken all his toys from the bag and arranged them in a nest around the top and bottom of his bed while being careful to make sure none of them get squashed. It's really sweet. He also wants loads of hugs. I think it's something to do with the mixed feelings about the move to high school in Sept! It's only one bag of toys and I'm glad I didn't get rid of them in the last round of minimising. We also have a tub of dressing up clothes that gets raided every time kids come to play. Why is it that the 1st 3 years of a child's life seem so long (and it feels like 8 hours between 6am and 9am) and yet the next 7 years whips by?

I think Simplicity Parenting on toys is great and I wish I'd read it 10 years ago instead of 2.

harriet - regarding little jobs and clocks - My living room clock is still showing GMT! I have however eventually got round to adjusting the kitchen clock to BST and replacing the battery in the clock in my workroom!

I could really do with getting something concrete in the way of de-cluttering done today. I'm working this morning though!

I like mending too Harriet, but again it is one of those jobs I avoid sitting down to do, but then when I do eventually do it I enjoy it!

Loving the SP book so far! It's very accessible and I don't find it preachy (as some parenting guides can be IME). I found myself heaving a sigh of relief when I read the bit about filtering out the adult world. This is something DH and I feel quite strongly about and we never have the news on TV when the DCs are awake. I don't want my DCs growing up too fast. They don't watch commercial telly either (only DVDs - though way too many, screen time is somewhat out of control ATM...) and so far DCs don't seem remotely bothered about watching Ben 10 or whatever else their friends are into. Yet.

I was about the little girl (Marie) having her accessible books whittled down to six, though. SIX?!? No can do, sorry :o BUT I will definitely go back to rotating the books they have - I think it'll be 3 buckets' worth, and I'll put 1 out at a time. Goodness knows what we will do about all the non-fiction though. They're all on a bookcase that is falling apart (that said, at least they do have a place for the moment, so not so high a priority really).

Should really get dressed now and get on with stuff! Plans for this weekend (hopefully mostly today as we are going to the MN screening of Despicable Me 2 tomorrow afternoon!):
Find lid for new pen box
Find hole punch
Clear rubbish from bathroom (again...)
Gather all my hospital group paperwork and put in folder
Sort through big bag of random crap (there are several around...)
Fill one bin bag to go outside with anything that we don't need (ie not just household rubbish)

OK... GO! :o

on SP and books, I haven't limited the dc's books at all. Sometimes I think they'd benefit from having fewer out at once but I'm not sure where I'd put the not-out ones... 6 is a bit hard core for me too!

hi again everyone!

fuzzpig - I felt horrified when you mentioned the little girl and her 6 books! I guess that's for 2 reasons. As an educator, I do feel that children need access to books, both easy reads and more substantial literature and I do think there is something to be gained from growing up in a book-infused atmosphere. Secondly, from a personal point of view, I probably had over 1000 books as a child mostly paperbacks and all neatly arranged on one floor to ceiling bookcase in my bedroom) and they were real friends to me. I loved being able to browse and choose just the right book for the way I was feeling at that time and to relax with "old friends" as well as discovering new ones. I knew what just about all the books were from a distance, just by the colour of the spine! I may be a bit biased but I'd never want to take books away from a child. If they have decided they have "grown out" of particular books and are willing to give then away, then that is another matter.

1 large box of kitchenalia, odd vases etc gone, 1 bag of folders, clothes, books gone and another large box of smaller boxes (old tea caddies, sewing boxes etc. Also an empty "vintage" suitcase.

Have already filled two large carrier bags with clothes and shoes since returning home, these will be donated now on my way to Sainsbury's Yes!

Ok - so I am feeling decidedly less than wonderful and started doing a 20:10 to at least get something done.

The good news: - I have managed to declutter 6 magazines from my bedroom and tidy and dust. Next thing is to vacuum, strip the bed and put on clean sheets.

The bad news- I think my timer is broken
it is a white one a bit like this
It fell off my bedhead where I had precariously balanced it while I dusted the bedside table. It has stopped ticking. When I bang it, it starts again for about 5 seconds! If I was truly minimal I would throw it out straight away wouldn't I?

As I am not so truly minimal I actually have another one ( digital this time) that I use sometimes for teaching!

Throw it away!!!!

Do you have a phone with a timer?

It is working again now! (Unlike me!!)

I haven't done very well today. Everything seems to be going wrong! We went to the school fete and it was exhausting, I feel ill now.

I did manage to fill most of a bin bag this morning though so it hasn't been completely unsuccessful.

Seeing that we were on the very, very cusp of needing two removal vans for a tiny two bed flat with only minimal furniture (i.e. no bed in second room, no white goods) has really galvanised me. I have been ruthlessly chucking today and will continue to do so tomorrow. Every box does make a difference - we were 2-3 boxes away from needing a 2nd van!

I agree every little bit helps! It can be disheartening when you throw a bin bag away and the room looks no different... but I remind myself that even though it looks no different, the house is still less cluttered!

It is good to remember that Artemis. Despite an old freezer in the garage having gone today, my other big items' leads have all dried up. And I've had to bring down from the loft a lot of old baby/toddler toys for the wee man because he is no longer interested in his very baby toys. It doesn't seem long enough that they have been out of the living room! And they are bigger and don't all fit into the trug that his other ones did . I'm feeling a bit resigned to another 2-3 years of tripping over stuff in the living room. It'll be the vehicles next!

On the up side, with the freezer and crib and baby bean bag and gym out of the garage, it is slightly less of an obstacle course to get to the tumble drier. Summer project is to get a totally clear run through in time for the winter.

I had a mum friend round for the first time the other day and she has had her garage converted. I remarked on how I admired her ability to live without the 'stuff' dumping space and she replied that some people are 'stuff' people and she just isn't. With 3 kids I need to see her house for inspiration!

Ok, on a bit of a roll! Listed 12 items on eBay, collected another 2-3 large bags of stuff for charity including two silly "designer" plastic waste paper bins which have never even been used. argh.

Hi all, I was on the first thread and thought I'd pop back in - so glad the 'm' quiche is still going strong! Since Christmas I have been distracted by major building work (we've had two walls demolished, and every room gutted and replastered...). Unfortunately, we've had to live here whilst it's been being done and the stress has been pretty horrendous at times. I was so glad I found these threads when I did, as I did manage to get rid of quite a bit of stuff just before the building work started.

However we still have boxes and boxes of stuff which we've been moving from room to room during all the building work. Some of the stuff has been in boxes for the past 9 months, and we haven't really missed it! So I've decided to be much more ruthless about what we keep in future.

I've had chance to go through some of our remaining boxes this week, and it's mostly books and board games (which take up so much space, and rarely get played with). I've managed to take a few bags to charity this week, and have just sold another box of books and DVDs to We Buy Books, so feeling like I'm getting a bit more on top of things again.

Right now we have no bookshelves, pictures or anything at all on the walls - just clean white freshly painted walls! It is lovely to have a blank canvas and it's making me thinking carefully before we put shelves up / buy furniture. I do love the feeling of space in our house, but we do desperately need some kind of storage as well... So I'll be following these threads for more inspiration! I've found it genuinely life-changing to question our relationship with 'stuff' and work out what's really important.

I did the street sale today. It was good fun but tiring!
I made some money but spent half of it on gifts for MIL and SIL who both have June birthdays. ( There was a craftsman selling very original hand made jewellery.)
I need to deliver the stuff that didn't sell to the charity shop asap so I get that 'it's all gone' feeling. Unfortunately the boxes have to come back in the house temporarily because I need to take DCs somewhere in the car before I can get to the charity shops during their opening hours.

Some really excellent progress going on here! I'm feeling really stuck. I haven't sold any of the items (all listed at very good prices!) I listed on gumtree last week. Am going to try my husbands for sale board at work and then charity shop them I think. I'd rather give things away for a good cause than sell (like new) items for pennies to the pound. I also have a sink that I was going to try to sell on that I think I'll just freecycle. It smarts as it is new and there is nothing wrong with it, but it won't work with the taps (which also don't work - which is another thread). I'm just at my wits end with the renovation, so I think I need to just get rid and move on with all the little bits that need painting and touching up my life.

Eight items sold on eBay, mostly unappreciated gifts that I had been saving to re-gift, but tbh I am useless at that and prefer to give folk something I have chosen myself. I now recognise that so I can get rid of my stash. But I do want to regift a figurine to my brother at his wedding, which I know he and his wife will appreciate. The problem is I can't remember who bought it for us at our wedding - was it him and his first wife???

Is he likely to remember Hobnob, my DH doesn't generally know what we give as gifts for weddings

'moving on' is precisely what I want to do too, Wendy. I feel like kicking myself for all the money wasted on stuff for the DCs that hasn't been played with much - particularly because I know that they would play with it if it wasn't all over the house or buried in other clutter. (Don't think I explained what I meant very well earlier - it's not so much that they play regularly with absolutely everything they have, it's more that I know they would if they had it all organised and accessible, if that makes sense.)

I am making progress with the toys though, and I'm whittling it down without getting rid of anything they love. I feel much better having talked it through on this thread. Also with the money issue, it is annoying that we've wasted the money but I am looking at it as a life lesson that hopefully will be in the back of my mind whenever I am tempted to buy stuff.

It's kind of like attitude to food. I very much grew up as a "clear your plate no matter what" person but I have finally reached the mindset that if I am full/satisfied, then even if I eat the rest it is still wasted because it has made me feel too full. So it might just as well go in the bin rather than adding calories for no benefit.

I've finished chapter one of Simplicity Parenting now. I feel guilty about the ways we've messed up so far, but the book seems really positive about it never being too late, and while I am feeling daunted about how much there is to sort out, I am determined to do it!

I wish I could just go "fuck it" and sweep everything into bin bags DH could happily do this but I know my anxiety would be through the roof due to not knowing exactly what had been thrown out. So, slow and steady it shall be :)

3 coats to my mums house, a bag of redundant/ broken electricals for the tip, baby toys to be ebayed (time limit imposed on self for end of week) toys downstairs to be played with, and 2 big bags for the Chazzer.

Just got to fill up the car and hoover up the aftermath

The one time I left my DH responsible for buying a wedding present (as the bride was a work colleague of his whom I barely knew at all) he forgot and we turned up on the day, I assumed he had bought something off the gift list but he hadn't, had no card etc. I was

My friend has asked me to help declutter her house in exchange for some free coaching. I am ludicrously excited about this!

My work room is now looking gorgeous but I need to actually do sone actual work...