clutter challenge number 4

today's sixty second de-clutter happened because I was planning a felt making workshop.  The boxes of dyes and miscellaneous textile supplies.
The dyes were not too bad really but time had moved on and now I use gallon containers for the dye rather than 1l bottles.  A stock take of the box revealed old paper towels, some empty bottles and other bits and pieces.  Now that the old bottles are gone, there is room for some of the gallon containers in the box and therefore more space in the cupboard...

Flushed with success after only 30 seconds, I spied another box in my textile workshop that continues to bug me.  Miscellaneous.  Having replaced a white plastic bag with a clear one, I can now see at a glance what is inside.  Some bits and bobs have been re-homed or offered for sale and it all now fits in the box.  A total of two minutes and I am off for a cup of tea.

A few days into this and the sixty second de-clutters have achieved more already than a day-long tidy and sort session.  And the total time spent is probably no more than ten minutes.  It is a powerful tool that somehow gets around resistance.  Probably because your brain thinks a minute is painless and not scary...

It's a funny thing, because we have kept on top of clutter and had a 'one in one out' policy for years, but it seems to creep in during the night.  having a home based business doesn't help.  Nor does being too busy to focus on home stuff.  So this year, the focus is changing to more home based time to garden, look after our house and just hang out. 

Clutter in your handbag, rucksack and car

Does it really matter if you have a load of bits and bobs in your bag or car?  To get started, clear it all out of the car or bag and make a pile. Then you can sort through everything.  And you will soon know!  I really didn't think this needed doing, but as it was only a sixty second de-clutter, thought I might as well go through the stuff.  That's the power of the sixty seconds, it unblocks because hey, it will only take a minute...

First, I discovered I had a nifty car booster for a flat battery.  I knew I had the compressor but had forgotten about this wee thing, which means you can jump start without another car to help and without lifting the bonnet. Oh, and the spare coat and wellies I keep in there for winter emergencies were in the house and I had forgotten to put them back in the car!

So a quick tidy of the car, which took two sixty second de-clutters in total (one for the boot and one for the car interior) and I was all set for the winter weather.  I added some more screen wash in a bottle and a blanket too.  And now I also know the spare tyre is inflated correctly and have even added a few snack bars for emergencies.  Amazing what organising the car does for your bad weather driving confidence.

So inspired, I moved on to the handbag, or wee rucksack in my case.    First thing was the mini torch I keep in there, which had a flat battery, so I put that right. And how exactly had so many bits and bobs accumulated,  left over from previous trips?  Three tubes of mints when one will do, a phone charger that I had been hunting for, which had somehow tucked itself into a corner, umpteen paper serviettes saved in restaurants.  These have now been added to the tissue box.  A pair of gloves too many. And there was the tiny pen knife that should have been in the bike bag, I had been looking for it everywhere.

  Another sixty seconds was all it took to sort those things.  Potential future hassles have been avoided and life actually feels better.  Partly because I am feeling rather smug I suspect!  So yes, it is well worth sorting out your bag and car and takes all of three minutes.

You will notice too, that a couple of lost things that turned up during this process.  De-cluttering the car and bag sooner would have saved all that hunting time.  The more you keep on top of clutter, the less time is spent looking for stuff.

life moves on...

So Knit 1 Bike 1 is a success! The book has been published (get your copy at www.createwithfibre.co.uk ) the exhibition opens 14th oct 2016  at the borders textile tower house in hawick, Scottish borders. Being away for ten weeks alone and by cycle changed so much and things have been changing ever since.

We have been de-cluttering and i realised how important it is that i grow food. So this summer we grew lots of it and had many WWOOFers (volunteers with worldwide opportunites on organic farms). Not that we have a farm, but seriously growing veg in a suburban, vertically challenged garden qualified us as wwoof hosts.

 I am focusing on what is important. It can be hard to figure out what that is and has taken a year to re-focus and figure it out.  Change is hard.  Turns out i want to live on a lot less again and to work part time so that i can get out on the bike more. We did that when getting out of debt but our motivation was less thereafter.  Now it is more again and it feels good.

So here is our progress to date:

• Hubby has sold a lot of tools etc from the garage. Loads more space
• We have had gardening volunteers and grown lots of food.
• We have sold the caravan and a vehicle and vehicle a campervan
• My tiny studio space now has amazing shelving and space to actually work in
• I have been steadily assessing my clothes and have even less than before
• I bought some additional,  very lightweight camping gear including a stove 
• Create With Fibre has grown and i have help with admin etc
• Our daughter is assistant weaver
• Hubby re-designed the website and has helped with the business too
• we decided to stay put after years of wondering whether to move house
• This has led us to become more engaged with the area where we live
• And the ongoing project is to simplify still further

And here's the big news - 

We have decided to offer simplicity and downsizing mentoring and to have people stay at our home for workshops and retreats. They will be bespoke and we hope it will often be just a couple of people coming to see what we do. So if that is you and you want some help to re-design your life, get out debt, and look at work- life balance, get in touch mail@createwithfibre.co.uk 

FOOD STOCKPILE UP DATE

In February I wrote about my food stockpile. The pile had a theme – all those so called health foods that you hear about. I say ‘so called’ because they don’t make you any healthier lurking in the cupboard, and in fact make your wallet a lot less healthier.

Blueberries are a great example.

Yes they are healthy but not so great when they have travelled half way round the world and are 3 weeks old by the time we eat them out of their plastic punnet for £2.99 a go.

And ironically, here in Scotland you can grow blackcurrants very easily for nothing. You simply get a bit of branch off someone else who has blackcurrants and stick it in the ground. Hey presto, only a year later you will have your first abundant crop. They have just as many anti oxidants in them and are good in porridge, wine, jam, juice and so on.

Who has ever managed to grow enough blueberries to make wine, jam and juice and still have enough left to put on their porridge? We grow both, and the birds either don’t bother with the blackcurrants or there are so many that we don’t notice the difference. (NB the trick with blackcurrants is to prune back to the ground everything that has fruited right after you pick the fruit. It leaves hardly anything, but don‘t let that worry you. I treasure my handful of blueberries per bush, whilst struggling to pick about 20 kilos of blackcurrants off our 6 bushes...

Simply add some black currants to your porridge from the freezer. Put the £2-£3 you would have spent on the blueberries each week in a pot and treat yourself to a weekend away instead at the end of the year. And watch out for the marketing hype with any food, with the likely associated price hike.

some of our blackcurrant crop...

Anyway, back to the food stockpile.

I have had some successes using things up. The mung bean stew has been great. I have only four tubs left, and have been getting a tub or even half a tub out of the freezer and adding different flavourings, tins of tomatoes, curry powder, vegetables etc to give us a range of almost free meals. I have even tried it out on a number of visitors with very positive results, and even requests for the recipe.

NB I did, honestly, tell them the story of the wee black things (see Feb 10 blog entry!) and offer a menu choice. Not one person was bothered, and it led to some interesting conversations about food waste.

The Cajun powder goes well with the mung bean stew and it, too is diminished.

The dried onions, glutinous rice and dried shitake mushrooms have all gone.

The brown chick peas have almost gone. I thought they had gone but hubby re-organised the freezer after the door got left open and frosted it up. Behold! Another bag of pre-cooked brown chick peas. He thoughtfully thawed them out and they will no doubt go in the bin once no one eats them and they go off in the fridge.

I like the ordinary ones but not these. A friend suggested sprouting them, and guess what – they are yummy sprouted. So the dried ones have all been sprouted and eaten, and the ones from the freezer went to said friend who likes them fine.

I am ashamed to say that almost all of the rest is still there. I have remembered to take the glucosamine a few times, but not enough to use up a whole one. I am quite stuck with the pollen granules, red quinoa, almond butter and the miso. I ought to use them up but keep not doing so. I hereby resolve to do one thing a week to use something up…

I HAVE FOUND ANOTHER STOCK PILE!This one is art materials for children. I used to do one to one art work with kids who had problems and have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of poster paint, bubbles (about a litre of it but you dilute it with 80% water - HELP) PVA glue (500mls) and several of those glue sticks.

I have a grandchild who is working hard at using all this stuff up but reckon it could take her the rest of her life to get through all that paint despite her best efforts.

There is a wonderful book called ‘Material World A Global Family Portrait’, by P Menzel. He went to different parts of the world and got people to put all their belongings outside their home. These were catalogued and photographed and the photos are in the book. The book also details the food the family eats. It was striking how many of the families only get to eat once a day, or who just eat beans and rice all the time whatever time of day it is and are grateful to be able to eat at all.

The American family’s stuff took up half a block. There was a family in Ethiopia who had only the clothes they stood up in, some cooking pots and a pair of wellingtons.

That is why I cannot bear to just throw away all this food and stuff that I should never have bought and may still be able to use up.

Actual stuff such as furniture, books and clothes is much easier to let go of. The money is gone, and it is better to send it to the charity shop or sell it so that someone else can get the use of it.

But you cannot do that with old food, part used poster paints and glue sticks.

So my resolution is to not let these things into my life without careful consideration. That is where the problem lies. 
But how to remember when I am at the shops and I want something???

The hidden cost of clutter

Once up on a time,we lived in a bigger house and paid a mortgage. We had been working hard to pay off that mortgage for 4 years when we downshifted from the countryside to the lovely bungalow we now live in, which is in a village with shops and buses and friends.

Then my sister, who ironically still had two of everything at the time, lent me a book called 'Clutter's Last Stand' by Don Aslett.

Not that we had an unreasonable amount of stuff - at least I tell myself that. The cupboards were getting fuller all the time and we had bought more cupboards. There were five of us and you know how kids accumulate stuff...We had come to accept that really the house was just too small. It was smaller than those of many of our friends after all.

Don's book is very funny, not at all preachy and is the 'original' clutter book, having been re-printed many times since it was first published 1984 by a guy who is actually a professional cleaner.
I laughed until I cried when I read that book, which is full of witty clutter cartoons and amusing stories, then lent it to a friend who did the same. Actually I left it in her front porch to see if she would guess who it was from. She did, of course.

Clutter is of course anything that you no longer need, even if it is not broken and is still useful.
So here is a wee clutter quiz - how many of these do you have?*those nifty little film cannisters
*empty margerine tubs
*used jiffy bags (unless you have a mail order business like me - when you find them you can send me yours.)
*spare parts for a car you no longer own
*paint in a colour you don't have on the walls any more
*old plant pots or margerine tubs that you don't use
*Oh - and what exactly is in your loft?

Well we had fun getting stuck in to what I now call Stage One Clutter.
Stage One is getting rid of rubbish such as old paperwork, cuddly toys, old jam jars and those margerine tubs. We still had every bank statement and pay slip we had ever got and lots more besides. it was all filed neatly, but lots of things got filed in that filing cabinet and not much ever made its way back out again. I got rid of 3 bin bags full of paperwork and had a bonfire. We were then also able to get rid of one of our 3 filing cabinets and put an easy chair in the office instead.

Stage two is stuff that still has some life in it but is not worth much, such as clothes past their best, plastic containers surplus to requirements, ornaments and old holiday souvenirs that are no longer fashionable and crockery that doesn't match. I see people down the car boot sale with this and it doesn't sell. Picture yourself looking at your junk as if it was someone else's and you will soon know.
I know it cost a lot in the first place, but face it - the money's gone and you are better spending the time on something else than trying to sell this stuff. donate it to charity and move on. A big clue here: if you are selling stuff down the boot sale and go home with most of your junk again and not much money you are at Stage One or Two.

Stage Three
Stage three is awesome! Finally this is where we realise that although the various types of coffee makers (etc) are all still perfectly good, we just don't need more than one and the space in the cupboards will make it a lot easier to get things in and out. It is stuff that is still good and worth some money. If you struggle to part with it, picture paying that money off the credit card debt or mortgage, using it to go on holiday or to help your daughter pay for college.

And - remember - almost evcerything you bought new can be got down the car boot sale. So if you do regret getting rid of anything, you can buy another for just what you sold yours for or even less. Here is a story to illustrate that point. Some years ago, I bought a £70 mini trampoline bouncer to keep fit. Once we had the kids there was no room for it any more so I sold it to a neighbour for £25.
The kids grew up and left home and I bought another one, new, for £25 because by then they had gone down in price. Net profit £45 and I had the space I needed in between times. Then I developed a minor medical condition that means I am not supposed to bounce. I sold that second trampoline and bought a step machine, reduced in price, for the same amount. This all took place over a period of some years but mini trampolines are still cheap should I ever want another.

So with all that in mind, we made over £1,000 selling stuff we no longer needed. We used some of it to buy new things we all really wanted, and made a point of getting the children something new with some of the money to encourage their efforts. Then went out for dinner as a family and paid the rest of it towards the mortgage.
These days stuff still accumulates and we still make buying mistakes. We try to just say 'the money's gone and sell it for what we can instead of having it clutter up our lives. I would be lying if I said we always managed it.
So once a year we try to have a clear out, as I swear the stuff comes in during the night of its own accord. Even with a 'one in one out' policy the stuff still accumulates, and we find reasons not to let something go.

We do keep a box in the porch for unwanted things though and that definitely helps. Anything one of us no longer wants can be put in the box. Having somwhere to instantly put the unwanted stuff makes a big difference, and visitors often have a rummage when they come to see us and make off with something. When those charity bags come round the doors all we have to do is take the stuff out of our box, dump it in the bag and its gone.

Anyway, the net result of our early dejunking efforts was that we realised that we didn't need a bigger house after all. In fact, we moved to a slightly smaller one.
We paid a chunk off the mortgage by doing it and although we had been paying extra off the mortgage for a while, getting rid of clutter actually helped us to pay the whole thing off significantly sooner than would otherwise have been possible.

Clutter tips:
1. Clothes don't seem to sell well at car boot sales, but good quality ones - eg Marks & Spencer, Next or other names often do sell well on Ebay.

2. Start with one drawer and dont try to do it all at once.

3. Think of the benefits when it is hard to let go of something - more space in cupboards, it is easier to find things when there is less stuff, you can do something else with any money raised...

4. How often do you use it? We got rid of unread books if the library had them. We never did get them out of the library to read and it was a relief not to feel guilt everytime we looked at the bookshelves. We bought some other books that we wanted to read instead.

5. If you only use something occasionally, such as extra glasses for parties, can you borrow or hire instead of owning?

6. Cleaning is much easier when you have less stuff.