The march towards Minimalism continues...

[MissAnnersleyismyhero]

Hey all, thought I'd make a new thread to encourage us all to keep going on the journey to minimalism!

I've hit a wall ... threw out lots of clothes which didn't fit/ripped/never wore. Now looking at things like - basic t shirts. I have lots of long sleeved ts that aren't ideal, but they are grand for bumming around the house in/wearing to bed. Help me!

Okay people - do as I say, not as I do

Peonies I have a couple of t shirts I wouldn't wear out of the house but I really like them ( a NYC one from my holiday and an I heart Nerds one which makes me laugh!) Can you choose a couple for slumming in and get rid of the rest? I don't mind that mine won't see the outside world anymore but 2 of these don't take up much space and I DO wear them.

everton I got into a great habit (fallen off the wagon at the mo) of running a sink full of hot soapy water at the start of meal times. I did the washing up as we went along. When I was doing this we didn't use the dishwasher at all. And the bounus was that no food dried onto things so it was easy to wash too. We have got the DC down to one bowl and plate each and that HAS continued and DOES work. Just need to do that for DH and me now! Also, can you make items multi task? My serving bowls have become my mixing bowls. The milk jug is a gravy jug too. DH's pint glass is my homemade mayo pot!!

I also have 3 grey hoodies, none of which I would wear outside unless going to an exercise class or yoga. I have a problem.

I think it's time to get ruthless.

We run our DW at night. Unload in the morning so dirty things can be hidden in it during the day. We only put pans and prep/serving dishes in after the evening meal. We do a quick wash up of these after lunch if necessary so they are ready for evening cooking. There are four of us so it does mean we need 12 plates per day which isn't exactly minimalist but it works for us. We have colour coded glasses which are left out all day as we usually drink water or squash in the day. We do have other glasses in case we drink something that leaves a residue during the day and for guests.

I find it really hard to minimise crockery etc because although there are only 4 of us living here, we have DSD generally staying EOW, and sometimes other friends of theirs too

We have too much crockery, but what I have done is chuck all the chipped/dd stuff and stuck to a theme of blue-and-white patterned stuff from Burleigh so it's not all identical but it is cohesive.

With glasses I chucked a lot out and got a set of sturdy stacking tumblers and stacking pobby wine glasses, they were all we had for about 2 years but already we have somehow acquired champagne flutes, 2-3 pint and half pint glasses, 4 large tumblers...

Clearsomme - I wish our DW was predictable. We seem to generate just over a load per day, so there's no predictable times for switching on and unloading so it always seems full! I'm cutting back the crockery today for our experiment after getting DHs agreement but not worrying about kitchen equipment so much. My theory is we might be able to routinely switch it on every night if it's just equipment as that will never be more than a load in a day and I won't need to touch it until after the morning rush if there's no bowls/plates/mugs in there. Plus if we only have to hand wash our personal utensils it will not seem too much of a chore as they're quick to do.

We also have a beautiful set of crockery we inherited from a grandparent which we'll never get rid of (sentimental/nostalgic reasons, but it's also EXACTLY our taste too) but we hardly ever use it. If we only have workaday mugs and plates for us, then we will be forced to get the gorgeous stuff out for guests, which is how it should be really, spoiling our guests with beautiful matching everything and treating us to the gorgeous matching stuff every so often.

Jimmy - your sink idea is great. I'm going to do that, starting with my lunch right now :)

Frankly I am just that you have dishwashers! I would love one. As it is we are struggling with keeping up with the dishes, I had got into a routine doing it in the day but due to this relapse I can't stand up long enough.

MissA with your slouchy clothes could you work out how many you would use in a week and stick to that many? So if you had two days off a week you would only need two because then you'd wash them?

I am not really on board with minimising kitchen things, I must admit. I think more in terms of minimising faff rather than plates. Washing up the same plate 3 times in a day, with 3 different bowls of hot water, is purist minimal, but to me it's making more work! Like Clearsomme, I like having enough plates, sharp knives, measuring jugs etc to complete what I need to,do in minimal time, without adding extra washing up onto the task list. It would be different if we didn't have a dishwasher, or we had a tiny kitchen,but we luckily have a dishwasher and some space so I use them to,stay as time rich as possible IYSWIM. It doesn't bother me that there are lots of plates on my plates pile, it's still just one pile.

We are skanky I know, but we are also out of the house a lot. Our routine is basically that the dishwasher goes on after dinner, every night. Anything from that day that didn't fit in gets washed up that night. Every morning the dishwasher is emptied, or failing that, we are lazy about clearing up after breakfast and lunch. In practice, if I do complicated cooking or extra baking I can see that extra washing up will need to be done, and I do the washing up as I go along thing (which works especially well at breakfast).

Maybe the key is to have equivalent amounts of everything. If you have one sharp knife, you will be washing up often, so you might as well have minimal numbers of plates and measuring jugs. But if you have a whole day's worth of knives and plates but only one measuring jug, and find you end up washing up the jug 3 times in a day, that's a mismatch. Either buy an extra jug, thus saving the washing up time, or reduce your number of plates and knives to save the 'stuff'.

Fuzzpig I keep thinking we need to simplify cooking too. DC have school dinners mostly so often end up eating sandwiches, then I cook for just DH and me. Daft. One thing we do, that helps, is we eat the same meal 2 nights in a row. No hardship, it's just normal to us but it cuts down the planning and cooking time, and I also think it saves money as there are fewer different ingredients to buy each week.

That's not a bad idea really. The stroppy mare in me is railing against it but I think the DCs wouldn't mind, I could always just serve different veg or something.

I'm not at all sure this will work so we're just giving it a go for a few days. I'm just conscious that it's an area of disproportionate annoyance in our house so I want to see if we can improve it.

We also need to massively simplify our cooking. On Monday we had one of our favourite dishes, a dinner that involves the blender, two levels in the steamer and a wok, plus chopping board and two knives. That was on top of the 2-pan plus grater pasta dish I'd already done for the kids... Lunacy! But we love cooking, and value fresh from-scratch food highly so need to explore ways to make the kitchen work more smoothly around that rather than having to stop our occasionally ridiculous cooking habits because they're actually very important to us IYSWIM.

It's not all 30 implement dinners by the way: we're having last night's dinner again tonight :) We often have the same thing 2 days apart if it's a casserole or something else that benefits from sitting, which helps mix it up a little.

I probably should wait until a new thread starts, but heyho... Can I join you? I've been checking out the minimalist threads off and on since they started, don't think I ever posted though. But I'm looking to kick-start my efforts to sort out our belongings, and this discussion has resonated with me more than any of the other 'get yourself organised' threads around.

I am untidy, and have always been untidy (as my parents will attest). But not happily so, it makes me feel stressed and at times overwhelmed. I have two boys, 7 and 4, and I have realised that my untidiness is encouraging them to be the same, and this makes me even more stressed and is setting up a really bad pattern for the future. My 7yo even has latent tidy tendencies, but the state of the house is overriding these. I am untidy because I am rubbish at putting things away, it's as simple as that. Yet I can be pretty ruthless in getting rid of things, I don't form strong attachments to belongings. So cutting down on stuff, making sure things have places, and then just bloody well putting them back there seems to be the way to go.

Sounds simple!

fuzz that's such a good idea. I only have 1 day off a week in termtime and in holidays would tend to get dressed most days so I think 2 outfits for lounging is probably enough.

welcome aalya have you seen the book "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying"? It is really good and fits your story of being untidy and it making you unhappy.

Also the toothbrush principle - I presume that your tooth brush is always in the same place every day, you can always find it etc - there's no reason why this shouldn't apply to everything else in the house too, with a little practice

Thanks Peonies - I have both books . Just need to apply the ideas!

I struggled a bit to buy into some of Marie Kondo's, the appreciation of your possessions stuff in particular! Though I absolutely agree with her that contrary to a lot of advice, it is much harder to get properly organised gradually, it needs a sustained effort until everything has a place and is in it.

We are still struggling from having moved into this house a year ago - lots of things have just never had a home. Yet for the first time I have a garage, a loft, under stairs cupboard, walk-in cupboard for coats and shoes (was so chuffed about that!) - so plenty space, but poor storage and no systems.

And getting other people to use the systems as well is another matter...

Aalya we have lived here for 6 years and hardly anything has a place

That was meant to be a

Ditched a laundry basket full of stuff just now. Some character jigsaws (we've generally been reducing any character stuff anyway, so it made the decision easier!), some crappy activity books they'd been given. Given how crap I feel it's a big achievement :)

My aim for today is to move round the Trofast in our room. We have two of the tallest units (equivalent to 12 of the shallowest drawers), we moved them out of the DCs' room ages ago as they had such little space. One is downstairs and the other is in our room. They've both had toys in but aren't really being used effectively. Some drawers just full of random crap instead, some empty spaces etc.

In our room we also have a chest of drawers - it's Ercol that my mum sort of inherited and passed on to me, so I've never considered getting rid, but the thing is one of the drawers keeps sticking! So for the last, erm, two years or so (!!!) the middle drawer has been sitting on top. It's fecking ridiculous.

Anyway, what I'm thinking of doing is emptying the Trofast in our room (we have plenty of spare drawers so shouldn't be too hard) and using that for our stuff instead - underwear, also towels and bedding which currently have no home and are scattered all over - and in the case of bedding left so long I never know if they're clean or dirty . I'll empty out the Ercol and see if mum wants it back when she returns from her holiday, or we can get rid - it'll fit in dad's car easily.

fuzzpig that sounds like a great idea. I've no idea what Ercol furniture is like but I'm imagining you will get a great big space in return for getting rid of it!

Personal achievement - I didn't buy the DDs a lovely felt Halloween bag each from Aldi today. I know they would love them and would use them for the next few days to play with but then they would be forgotten. We already have lots of unused play bags. They were cute though.

Well done on resisting that purchase Jimmy.
We got a bag from the clothes recycling charity today so I guess that'll be one of the missions for the weekend.
DH has sold some games online. He uses the cash generated to buy new ones so we still have as many but the new ones are more likely to be played. The ones that are going require gathering a particular number of board game geeks on the same night which is a lot more challenging than it was 15 years ago, now they all have jobs, other halves and kids.

I sympathise clear

I love games, they make me so happy. Actually it's one of my aims of minimalism - to have more time and space (both mentally and physically) to play them more often!

I have been sorting jigsaws and board games today, coincidentally! I had an enthralling afternoon counting jigsaw pieces to check which of the DCs' puzzles had bits missing, and I regretfully have put aside my 3000 piece jigsaw that I got as a birthday present to go to the charity shop (though didn't count those pieces! Confident that there's nothing missing!) - I just don't have any place that I could complete it, it would take the whole dining table at its most extended. So a la KonMari, I thanked it and sent it off to a better life.

AalyaSecura I would love a job checking that jigsaws/board games have all their pieces. I find it relaxing!!

3 bags to the chazzer today. 3 boxes of DD1's outgrown clothes boxed up and waiting for DH to put them in the loft.

Need to list a few items on Gumtree. Embarrassingly, a couple of them are last year's Christmas presents for DD2 .

It's my mission next week to really go for it and get this house looking fab. I have been doing this for so long, I must be nearly there