Welcome to 2018!

Welcome to the New Year of 2018!

This is the second year of this blog and I'm hoping to help you - as well as myself - along in the fight against our cluttered homes.

I started this blog last year in the hopes to get my cluttered home under control in some way; and it did a lot more for me in so many ways.

It was a type of therapy, a type of diary to not only show that I could get in and work out what was keeping me in some of my worst ruts around, but it also assisted me in making the biggest choices in my life of how to let go of old things; and replace a number of items with just one.

This year is going to be a good one, though.

I'm going to box up a whole lot of my art and craft gear in the hopes to move house in the next year or so. I've been wanting to move for the past 3 years; but no banking institution will loan me money. I don't have bad credit - I'm on pension and nobody will look at us because we usually don't have anything the bank wants in case we can't make the repayments. So, I'm stuck.

I want to get out of the stuck rut of living in such tight quarters and into a proper, larger place so I can spread out a little more and have a room for my art gear... and my precious items which should be on display, will be and will be used more often. 

My goals for this year are:

* Go through my wardrobe and clean it out.

* Clean up the Home Office completely.

* Clean up the Living Room to the best of my abilities.


These are the biggies... I really want to use the space I have right now until I move into a better place. So, what are your goals for this year? Please do leave a comment below and let's see if we can help each other through our decluttering together? 

Clothes

This week, I've been looking through my clothes. Now, I didn't plan to do this; I was looking for a jumper to put on - as it became really cold one day - and pulled out three jackets which didn't fit me, and tossed them onto the floor to donate.

You see, I did buy them to wear - but I just simply didn't wear them at all. 

With one of them, I can get into it, but I can't get out of it - and that's not a good thing when you need your clothes to be nice, and yet easy to wear.

So, I looked through my clothes and found there was a fair bit of clothing I just simply didn't wear or fit into anymore. I've put it off to one side and have popped it all into a bag to donate at my local Vinnies or op-shop. 

You have to remember that with your clothes, you are wearing it, not somebody else. What you wear has to make you feel good about yourself; so when you go out op-shopping and you want to find a particular look for yourself, it's best to go on what makes you feel great - and not what other people say about you. If you feel great in something, but somebody says: 'Oh, yuck, don't like that.' that's their taste, not yours. It could also mean that they're trying to get that piece of clothing from you for themselves as well - I've seen that happen.

Okay, this weekend's challenge is your music collection - if you have cds, vinyls/records. Now, it's great to have this kind of collection in our houses, but it's also good to have under control as well. Sort out what you want to keep and what you don't; what you've been playing for the past few years and what you're not playing anymore. Now, remember that music is very much like fashion - it flips and flops in and out of the public eye so quickly that unless you're a diehard fan of a band, it's best to make sure you're doing the right thing. Don't go toss out all your vinyls of Pink Floyd because you think it's best to get it all on cd; then regret it later on. I've seen this happen to a guy who traded in his vinyls of John Lee Hooker and when I bought all 4 of his double-vinyls, he came back 2 days later and wanted them back; and couldn't get them back. I heard he burst into tears in the record store in front of the owner. Now, being into your music and a collector of music are two different things... be careful what you do with your music. Now, the next thing you do, is go out to your local newsagency and buy an index book - a large one - and index your music collection so you know what you've got. This will be a great thing for you to keep track of not only for when you move, but also for insurance purposes.

Small Things

I've been busily working away at smaller things lately. There's the entertainment unit - which was filled to the brim with VCR tapes I'd like to see on dvd. And then there was my wardrobe that I worked through again rather successfully.

And now, I'm looking at the smaller things in the house. You know those things around the place, they make the machine of the house work more efficiently, smoothly and easily. I had to only look around for the past week because I had no money to put towards it.

But today was pay day, and I went out and did my grocery shopping and bought the things I needed to make the house run better again. 

I bought two of these work caddies to use around the house. One is for the upstairs bathroom, and the other is for the downstairs area. I think they'll work really well! And them being both red will make them stand out too. I'll be able to put them away in the same place every time and they'll work out for the house each time too. 

Then there was the garden hose connections I had to buy new ones of because the old ones were broken by people stuffing around with them too much. So, I bought good, expensive ones and I just hope nobody screws with them. I hate to use profanity on here, but really I just don't need somebody stuffing with my property when I'm not here. And disconnecting my own hose when I need it there to use to wash my car or water my lawn isn't a choice. If everyone else around me can have their hoses connected without a worry, why can't I? 

Anyway, I hope nobody breaks these ones. 

But the house is coming along so well! 

I've begun knitting a throw for my bed; using all my yarn that I have in the suitcase up the top of my wardrobe. This will get rid of the yarn stocked up in there... and make something nice and colourful. Otherwise, I've been getting rid of crappy yarn I no longer need and can't use or want to give away either into the bin.

I scored a new iron through my Fly-Buys and it's a Panasonic... it's lovely, light and I could iron with it forever! I used it the other day and didn't want to put it away. Now, that's a first for me!

Anyway, I'm still going through my bedroom and looking at things to see if I need them. My money box collection is bigger than I first thought; and yet most of them are empty. And I'm looking at what clothes I really do wear compared to the ones I just love to have because they look good.

Yep, it's the small things that I'm looking into this time around... really, isn't it the devil in the details that keep things going? Of course it is.