March tally!

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

1 ice cream spoon
1 leather vest
10 bottles of hotel “candy“
7535 emails at my work mailbox

So what else have I’ve been up to? Well let’s see, there is:

Cheating on Spring early this month with a lot of plants at the front area
The Liebster award 🙂 I still can’t believe it..
Starting the spring cleaning in the yard.
Unpacking my garden furniture,

Out with the old – in with the new!

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 😉

7535

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 😉

Hotel candy!

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!

No more Renfest

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 😉

February tally!

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

1 laptop
5 outdoor jackets
1 picture frame
2 picture mat’s (count as 1)
16 sheets of paper cut outs (count as 1)
2 manuals (count as 1)
7 magazines
27 catalogues
1 bottle of floor wax

And then there are the non tangible items – the digital deletes:

1900 web bookmarks
1500 emails at my work mailbox
950+ emails at my personal mailbox
and another 300+ web bookmarks (Feb 28)

No more waxing…

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 😉

Bookmarks

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 🙂

A lighter china cabinet!

I have this beautiful oriental cabinet, sitting in the middle of my Scandinavian style furniture.

Of all things in this wold to use it for, I keep a lot of catalogues and brochures, papers, manuals and bills in it. It’s also the place I put all papers I keep through the year, before they get archived away, come tax time 🙂 I might also put some of my magazine cut outs in here as well, oh yes, and the town-house community correspondence (I’m on the board.. actually thinking about it, I think, I am the board 😉 )

So you see, my little cabinet, is in a sense – my office storage.

Today I decided to go through some of the brochures, cut outs and manuals. The regular paper cleanup, is a March/April job, while preparing for tax time.

The catch of the day?
16 cut out sheets from magazines
2 user manuals for stuff I no longer own
7 magazines
27 catalogues and brochures

My oriental cabinet – what you think?

Email declutter challenge

I believe I need an email declutter challenge.
I’m completely into email overload, especially at work. I have lost all control, and looking at the 1211 unread email is just about to drive me nuts (yes, even more so, than I already am 😉 ) Talk about stress factor.

Enough is enough, I’m going to give myself an email declutter challenge for 2014. I’ll be deleting and archiving as best as I can. I know I can’t delete everything since I need to keep some for work, but hopefully I’ll be able to archive most of those, to our digital storage, so that my personal mailbox at the office no longer overflows. And I definitely have some old and “mouldy” emails I should be able to loose with not too much elbow grease 😉

As I write this I have 1,45 GB worth of emails in my work mailbox, amounting to 19592 individual emails! What on earth!!!!

My goal for this year – reduce to less than 500 MB worth of emails – how many individual are this? I don’t have a clue! Guess we’ll find out as I go along. I’m hoping that brings be down to less than 2-3000. That’s loosing 17 000 emails.

How? – Using the Inbox Zero concept.
I will be implementing the Inbox Zero system by Merlin Mann. What is the Inbox Zero, you might ask? It’s a simple but great concept of how to handle emails that comes your way. In short it is an system to help you take your email box from overstuffed (like mine) to zero – and then keep it that way. The system cover the skills, tools and attitude that helps you to accomplish this.

I just about “kissed the ground” when I came across this system a while ago. I had ever intention to start my 2014, implementing this system, but as soon as I walked into my office that first day after new year’s, all “hell” broke loose, and I have not found the time to actually sit down to do this yet. But tomorrow a new day is born – and it’s finally happening 😉

This concept might, or might not, be for you – but regardless if you have a small or a HUGE mailbox, I strongly recommend you reading about it anyway, even if you believe you have everything under control 😉 There might be an idea or two that could help you in your everyday email life!

I could do a quick write up of the concept, but I think I’d rather leave you in Merlin Mann’s capable hands on Inbox Zero instead.

My plan
As part of implementing this system, I need to de-stuff my horrible 19592 mail mailbox. So through 2014 I’ll give myself a couple of 30 days challenges to accomplish this. I’m starting tomorrow, and my goal for the first 30 days is no less than 7000 emails. “Starting a Tuesday in the middle of the month? Why not start the first of the month or at least in the beginning of the week?” You might ask. Well, why not? There is no more perfect day to start, than NOW 😉

Since the intention is to get rid of old emails all together, any new emails will not count against the 7000. By the time my 30 days are over I have to be down to no more than 12592 email left in my mailbox. (Oh my!! That’s a whole lot of deleting and archiving…)

Keeping track
For the fun of it I made myself a template, that I printed out. It is just a simple sheet, that you can easily make yourself, or you can print mine 🙂

Why don’t you join me? I’m sure you have one or two, to many…

Lets get started!!

Email declutter challenge – downloadable PDF

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