My 365 things uncluttered
It’s amazing what comes into the house, under the name of decoration 🙂
I’ve had these bundles of sticks for a while. They looked cool there for a second, but boy, are they dust collectors 😉
They can be great for warming (or filling) up a corner or a nook, but right now, I want my space to be clean and uncluttered. And a couple of “dust collecting bundles of sticks” just aren’t cutting it.
So I’m sorry my dears, but I think it’s time you leave the premisses.
I have this “box” full of chargers, hard drives, computer cables, network cables, converters and a whole lot of other computer related nicknack’s. You name it, I’ve got it 😉
I just installed a couple of drawers in a Ikea unit – the drawers are going out of production so they put them up on 50% sale! I’ve been thinking about installing some drawers in the unit for the last couple of years, and I realized, that if I was ever going to do this, it was now or never!
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the drawers can not hold as much stuff as the boxes I used before… So a clean up was unavoidable (and desperately needed if you ask me) 😉
I pulled all the data related “junk” out of one of the boxes, and went about decluttering… All the stuff in the pile of mess picture came out of that red box, I can not believe how much it held.
I’m sad to say I did not manage to get rid of, as much as I’d like. I always keep all the belonging part to a item, that I own (if I ever give the item away, I like giving it as a complete set), even if I might not strictly need all the parts belonging to the item.
There is still a lot of computer stuff left in the house. But for now at least, there is a small pile of stuff, that is going out-the-door 🙂
Month three! My gosh I thought I had spent February focusing on my digital clutter, but February don’t even hold a candle to the month of March.
Unfortunately, getting that focused on digital clutter, have taken away some of the focus on tangible decluttering, and it’s time I step it back up in the month of April!
Looking at my monthly tally this month, you’d think I’ve done nothing. I might not have been decluttering to much, but I have still been up to a couple of things 🙂
MARCH TALLY of things “out-the-door” = 12 items and 7535 emails
So what else have I’ve been up to? Well let’s see, there is:
Ice cream with silver specks? Nope, no more, absolutely not!! I’m done, my dear old ice cream scoop, I’m done picking silver paint out of my ice cream.
You have worked really hard over the years, spooned tons of ice cream, to me and my friends, and I really appreciate it, but it’s time to let you go.
I’m sure you don’t mind, me swapping your worn body out, for a new green shiny ice cream scooper thingy 😉
It’s been a month since I posted my email declutter challenge article, where I stated I would try to de-stuff my email at work by at least 7000 emails in 30 days.
Actually, it’s probably been closer to 10 000 emails de-stuffed, you see I did a little “boo-boo” in the middle of my clean-up. I wasn’t sure if I had consolidated all emails into my outlook mailbox, so I moved the folder I wasn’t sure about.
Turned out I had already copied it before, so suddenly I had two examples of a bunch of emails! I sure really appreciated getting another 2100 extra emails to clean up… (yes, that me being ironic!)
But anyhow – I did it, I did it 🙂
There were moments it didn’t look like I would make it, I was forever staying put at about minus 1500 emails, but I just carved away some dedicated time, and this morning, I managed to sort out the last ones, that got me past the 7000 mark.
I went from 19592 email down to the current 12061 emails I’m at right now. Thats 7535 less than when I started. Yu hu!!!
As you can see – I’m still not done, and I don’t think it’s going to get any easier, but since I’m on such a good roll right now, I think I will continue with fase 2 of my email declutter challenge.
What is Face 2 you’re asking? Well, let me tell you, it’s another 5000 emails be-gone!
And when am I gona be finished? Another 30 days from today…!
I can’t believe I just promised 5000 emails in 30 days – oh well, now it’s down on paper – so I guess I’m commited 😉
For some reason, every time a stay at a “fancy” hotel, I always end up with some of their shampoo/shower gel/body cream bottles in my luggage. It’s a curse! But they look pretty and I can’t seem to contain myself 😉 They are just sooooooo cute.
I don’t have a lot of them, but I’ve been saving the pretty ones for my guests. And I always lay out a nice towel and some “hotel” shampoo/shower gel for them to use, when I have people staying over.
So why haven’t they gotten used up long time ago? Well it turns out, my guest tends to bring their own stuff! And not only do they bring their own stuff, they even leave some stuff at my place if it’s almost used up. So what happens? Well, I get an even more excess of shampoos and shower gels.
Enough is enough! I’m sick of all these small bottles/tubes “hanging around” taking up space. So this year, I decided to use them all up myself 😉
So here they are – all used up 🙂
NB! A little note for the thrifty out there 😉 Since the hotels tend to toss what’s left of the soaps, shampoos when you leave the hotel, you might as well bring it with you, and use it up at home. It’s what I do!
I have a friend of mine who loves going to the Texas renaissance festival. It’s on, every year, outside of Houston. I’ve been there a couple of times, in, I think it was 2007, while I lived in Houston.
It was so much fun, and off course I got a little carried away, and ended up buying a leather vest and a long knife/dagger, as part of my “outfit” 😉
Now that I’m no longer living in Houston, I haven’t been back to enjoy the Texas renfest. And there are no renaissance festivals here in Norway that I know off.
So I think it’s time to let the “outfit” go. It’s not like I’m going to drag my vest with me, should I happen to be in Houston, at the time of a renfest.
I love the look of my dagger, so I’ll keep that (at least for a little longer) it’s seriously cool 😉 But the leather vest might as well go. I’ll never use it again. Should I ever decide on acquiring a renfest outfit, I have a different look in mind, that this vest won’t work with.
So, bye, bye, my dear vest… it was fun while it lasted 😉
I’m two months into my declutter challenge! It seems like I have focused mostly on digital clutter during February, but even so, there are a few other items that went out-the-door!
Below is an overview. You will see that some I count as one item, and some I count as individual items.
FEBRUARY’s TALLY of things “out-the-door” = 45 items + 2200 bookmarks and 2450 emails
And then there are the non tangible items – the digital deletes:
Actually I never got started 😉
When I moved into my house I bought a bottle of floor treatment, for future maintenance.
Last week when I went through my china cabinet to get rid of manuals, catalogues and so on. I also came across the manual for how to treat my wooden floor. Looking through it, I decided to have a look at the bottle I got, since I’m thinking about maybe giving my floor a “spruce” sometime this year.
Turns out the guy at the store have given me the wrong thing. In my kitchen cabinet a maintenance WAX, an not a OIL refresher is gleaming back at me 😦 So what can I do? Well the bottle of wax is 6 years old, so it’s not like I can go back and complain!
So guess what? Out the house it goes 😉
At least now I know what to get, when I finally get around to needing a floor refresh 😉
I have a serious bookmark issue –
Having had pc’s both at home and at work, like forever, I have collected a few bookmarks to websites over the years. Throw a few smartphones and iPads to this mix, and you can see my problem 😉
How bad can it be, you might ask?
Between all my devices I have somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 bookmarks!!!
I found that the work pc alone have close to 1000 – whoa!!!
My new personal computer have around 300, and I have backup from old ones, with close to another 1000 – 949 to be exact.
Android phones/iPhone/iPad? Don’t have a clue – I can’t even think, to have to, manually count them – but it’s looking like at least 200+
Adding this to the email challenge I’ve started, it looks like I’m getting into a bit of digital clean ups these days.
So what did I do? Well – I’m proud to say, I got around 1900 of them deleted 🙂
Minimalist Sometimes 