One Busy Week

Well, I haven't really had time to get in and do any decluttering of my house - but I helped my Mum out on Monday; and she got a lot done there.

Today, I jumped in early and mowed the lawn, washed up, cleaned up the living room, did some laundry, threw out some rubbish into the bin and put away some other things into the bathroom. There was a huge list of things I did in the morning, and then I went off to the gym.

Yes, I make time for the gym - always - as it keeps me fit and healthy and my mind sharp. Remember that about keeping yourself fit; this will also help you declutter your place in more ways than one.

Then, once home, I put on 2 loads of laundry, took off the dry stuff from the clothes horse and took it all upstairs, and had something to eat and drink (proteine) and then began looking at what to eat for dinner. 

By around 9:30pm, I washed up everything, wiped down the counters, and cleaned up all the newspapers in the living room and put them into a bag to put by the side door. This will go out tomorrow morning first thing, as I'd already locked up the house for the night. 
I took the clothes I scored from Mum's house upstairs, along with all my shoes, bags and other laundry upstairs too. It's all sitting in my bedroom waiting to be put away; which I'll be doing when I wake up tomorrow morning at 6am. 

Why the early hour? Well, we have the termite inspectors coming in to look around the complex after 7am... and I want the place to look okay for it. It may not look perfect, but it'll look okay. 

The weekend challenge for you this weekend, is to go through your bathroom and sort out your 'goo collection'. I know I've asked you to do this before, but please it's good to go and do it again. The 'goo collection' is the unused shampoo and conditioners you've collected, the facial creams you've got hidden at the back of your medicine cabinet and other 'goo'-like things in containers which you just don't use and are gathering dust.  

Believe me, there'll be plenty of them.

Now, if they're almost full, take them to your local community centre and donate them. They will love you for it. But if they're almost empty, throw them out. You'll feel so much better for it.

Let us know how you go in the comments with this one. I did it a few days ago and tossed out some old night cream, old day cream and old hair treatment and shampoo which was a year past its used-by date... eeww! 

Cooling Off

It's Sunday, and I just looked out the window of my home office to find it's raining! Wow! It's been so long since we've had any rain lately here in Brisbane. Sure, we had some rain late last night, but it didn't last.

Well, over the last few days, I've had a good talk with my Mum, who wants to get in and seriously clean out her house. I've told her to look up Peter Walsh's Facebook page and and work on his 31-Day Challenges from a few years back, and do a few of them every day. I hope she does a few of them from a couple of years ago, and jump-starts that feel-good feeling of cleaning out... it really does help to do this.

Then, tomorrow, I'm over there for a few hours to help my Mum clean out the first big thing. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is... it's not right to divulge that information.

Anyway, I've been working on my place, seeing it's cooled off here now to do something in the morning without sweating too much. 
On Friday night, I was watching tv and I kept looking over at my big Donation Box - which wasn't cleaned out - and eventually, I got up during a commercial break and pulled it over and cleaned it out. It was chock full of newspapers I 'might use' for packing. I filled 2 rubbish bags and tied them up to be put out the next day!
After that, I put my donation bags I'm using to take to the car into the box and have begun filling up the box and bags ... the living room looks so much better.

This morning, I got in and washed the floors of the kitchen, the hallway, and the laundry and toilet - all downstairs, after breakfast. It was all so dirty and grubby. And this afternoon, I'm going to get into those two boxes I promised myself on Friday. 

These places are my plague places in the house - the places I avoid - the floors, the emptying of the old stuff from the Donation Box (ie: newspapers) and the boxes which need emptying in the office. And today, those boxes in the office will be looked into next. 

Donation Day!

Yesterday, I filled the boot of the car up and took off on a big day of donating my unwanted goodied to a charity store with a friend of mine. It was great! I make sure I get my cloth bags back from the store and then I take a good look around and see what I might need around the house.

And you know something? 

I'm buying less and less at op-shops now I know what I want in my house and cleaning out more and more.

It's a great feeling that after a few years, you get to know what you need and what you want. But you also know when you need help in which areas too. 

I've been purposely cleaning out my house and giving away things for some time now, and now my Mum has asked me to help her out - I'm so proud to help her. But I have pointed her in the direction of Peter Walsh and his 31-Day Challenges first, so she gets an idea of how to get in and do just 10 minutes first off and then take control back of her home and her things. I am going to help her out with packing everything away and will take some things to the op-shops... but I'm still cleaning out my place and it'll be another year before I'm completely tidied up on my own I still have some archive boxes to fill and other things to work out too.

Now it's the 1st, February, it's time to get stuck into the other different things around the house. You know, the things we tend to forget. 

And this is what the Weekend Challenge is this weekend. Find a place in your home you've been avoiding like the plague and sort through it. I really mean, pull everything out, attack it, and if you're really disappointed with everything in it, and don't want anything of it, donate or sell it. But if you can see potential in some of it, sort through what you want, what you don't want and organise it properly. This is the weekend to get into your first avoided project in the house. I really believe that you can do it! 

As for me? It's a box of books in my home office I'm going to go through - along with some paperwork, which is also boxed up on top of it. Yep, it's all going to be looked into, sorted and worked out. That's been my avoided project in my house. 

The Magazine Pile

Okay, we all have one - or more than one - around the house. And it's the pile, or piles, of magazines we have stashed around the house which we either say we read or have read and think we're going to keep for another reading.

Well, I gotta say, that most of the time, I'm right about re-reading my 'Good Reading Magazine'. I'll re-read it a couple more times and then? Well, I don't do anything with it. It gets put into a pile in my living room where it gathers dust - like anything else which doesn't get used.

So, what I'm doing today and tomorrow is looking through all the magazines I have stashed around my house (and no, I don't have 'reading material' in the toilets - that's just manky and nasty!) and I'm going to go through them all. 
A lot of my magazines are about art, reading and publishing books. So, there's not a single gossip magazine to be found. This is a good thing for me, because I'll be donating my magazines to a doctors surgeries and old folks homes where the people there can read up on books and writing - something which may be of interest to some of them. I can't give away a lot of my writing magazines because I'll need them in my writing; no matter how old they are, they're still useful to me. 

So, that's my weekend challenge for myself. I'm not setting anything for you for the long weekend... it's a weekend of chilling out for Australians and respecting the ancient lands we are now living on. I'll put in another Weekend Challenge next weekend when we go back to normal again. How's your house going? Getting there? I hope so.

It's Personal

I know it's a strange thing to talk about, but when you're decluttering, you come across a lot of personal items. These are probably things you don't want to part with, and yet you're not sure if anyone in the family want either.

I'm talking about your hand-written journals, magazines you bought about famous people from the 1980's and 90's, odds and ends you thought were great and then put them away somewhere safe and forgot about them until now... so, what I'm doing is collecting together a few archive boxes in a certain colour to make them my Personal Boxes. I've labeled them 'My Life' and I'm putting things into them that my family can go through (and I can add to or subtract from) during my life.

This makes things easier for when the time comes for you to move house. You'll know which boxes are which and where they'll go in your next place. I've colour coded mine and written on them. 
Now, I've only done this because I don't have big filing cabinets, and it's the best way I can work out what is my life stuff, my banking, my car, and other things which are part of the bigger picture of everything in my office. 

So far, I'm onto my 3rd purple archive box for My Life... yeah, I'm not making them boring and beige. They're going to be colourful and useful in my house. The funny thing is that I don't know how many of the purple boxes I'll end up having by the end of my life... and that's the thing, you won't have the same number as me either. So don't fret if you've got 10 of them or only 2 ... what matters is what goes into them. It's about you, and what you want to leave to your family - what really personal things which you want them to see, which really matters. 

Weekend Challenge Time!

Okay... I didn't get time to put in a challenge yesterday because I was out all day.

But, I think it's better late than never - right? Anyway, I've looked through my towels recently, and that includes my bath towels and kitchen towels. Now, I had to make sure I didn't need the kitchen towels - and to do this, I looked at them and wondered when I used them last. 

The bath towels is a little more different... I go on how threadbare they are. And to add to this, my Aunty keeps giving me bath towels for my birthday; which is a lovely way to making sure I always do them out and change the ones in my house. 

So, this weekend's challenge is to go through all of your towels - this includes beach towels too! And figure out which ones stay, which ones go and which ones are thrown in the bin. 

Now the ones which go to charity? Well, take them to your nearest animal shelter and they'll use them for bedding. I know I did this challenge last year, but it does work out to do this just after Christmas; as sometimes we receive these kinds of things for presents. 

By The Back Door

Isn't it funny how much we use doors, and yet we ignore how much mess is next to and around them?

Well, today, I nearly tripped over something next to my back door and I knew why - there was a huge mess there I had been ignoring for over a year. So, I got in and cleaned it up.

There was 2 rubbish bins - one of which I really didn't need - and the other was full to brim with art and craft things which were supposed to be tossed out last year. So, I went through the craft gear and sorted it out, figured out what I wanted to keep, what I wanted to throw out and put everything being tossed out into a big rubbish bag.
Meanwhile, I moved a red container filled with wooden sprung clothes pegs. Yeah, in my 'Crafty Peg' days, I went kinda nuts in collecting them. Now? Well, I'll never run out of them, will I? But my plastic ones are going brittle and I'm looking whether to get in and work on a collection of wooden ones for myself - thus why I haven't given away any of these ones.

Well, swept up the area, threw out an old cockroach trap and put an empty bin back, and the container full of pegs and it looks good. What I threw out was a really old bin, anything I didn't need and it all went out into the big bin in the car port. Yep, that's another bag of rubbish out of the house! I'm so pleased!