Simple Living Lesson #6 - Outgoing

Do you love these flowers?
 I took this photo at a photography workshop last year.

Hey all! I am happy to have you back here, following along with the Simple Living Lessons from Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life. Last week we talked about streamlining the incoming clutter in the house - the junk mail.

This week involves finding ways to streamline the clutter going out of your home. For the two years or so I have been on a major cleansing, decluttering path. I have purged clothes, toys, kitchen gadgets, pretty much everything thing in sight.

How does your household deal with outgoing clutter? What works in our house is the Donation Station. We have an Ikea laundry hamper in the corner of our spare bedroom where outgrown clothing and unused household items are stored until I have a chance to take them to the second hand store. 

 
Between clearing the drawers and closets and bins and shoes for my Forty Bags in 40 Days Challenge (more on that later in the week) our donation station is pretty full! I think I'll be making a trip to the VV Boutique later this week.

Another way to help streamline the flow of excess clutter out of our home is to have an out-of-here shelf. We have a little area in our front entryway where I put anything that needs to be returned - library books, something to go back to my mom's house, something to return to the store. If I have all of the "outgoing" stuff in one place, hopefully I'll be more likely to remember to return it to its rightful owner when I leave the house.

Of course, if you are very organized, you may have a Sell Pile. I will be honest, I'm pretty lazy and most of the stuff I am purging I couldn't be bothered to try to sell. However, if you are purging things of value, you may benefit from some Craigslist postings. A couple of tips though - price things to sell, so you aren't holding on to them for ages and ages. And if it doesn't sell quickly, maybe you need to rethink selling it and just donate it!

Sometimes you need help with a big purge, I have a couple of cute little sidekicks!

If you are following along with these Simple Living Lessons, you are already practicing some of these decluttering techniques. Hopefully I can give you some tips on other ways to live more simply. I don't think I will ever be finished purging things out of the house (kids grow out of clothes and toys, I get bored with decor items) but hopefully with less stuff in the house, we have room for more living!

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it! I will hopefully be linking this post up with A Bowl Full of Lemons, Delightful Order and Joyful Homemaking. Have a great week!

Simple Living Lesson #2 - Underneath

Welcome to week two of my Simple Living Lessons series. Were you here for week one? The first lesson in the Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life series had us explore our vision for simple living. Everyone is going to have a different definition of Simple Living, and it was so helpful to actually map it out for our family.

This week called for an actual challenge! The challenge is called "Underneath." Can you guess what part of my life I had to explore? You got it - my underwear drawer!! The theory is that if the condition of your undergarments is in chaos, then it's likely that the rest of our wardrobe is in chaos too.

I took a look through the knickers and cleared out and uncomfy or ugly pairs. If I haven't worn them in a year, they went out. Same went for the sock drawer. Since I wear flip flops or sandals as often as possible, I really only needed about 10 pairs each of dress and white socks. I tried on all of the bras and bathing suits and donated any that I don't wear regularly.

For "extra credit" I am going through Miss A's and Miss E's socks and undies drawers too - they each have socks and tights that they have grown out of that need to go.
I know that the intention of this week's challenge is to spur us on to examine the rest of our wardrobes, and I'm sure that is a project that I will be undertaking later on in the series.

The last time I cleared out my closet I was hugely successful, but never actually extended the clothing purge to the socks and undies part of the wardrobe collection. Now that I am organized "underneath" my mornings should flow just a little bit easier.

Please check back for next weeks' lesson called "QUIET." Not sure I'll have much success with a challenge called Quiet with two crazy monkeys hopped up on Halloween candy, but I am certainly willing to try!
I am going to tie some of the Simple Living lessons in with another challenge I have put on myself lately - purging 40 bags of stuff from our house in 40 days. Hope you'll check in and see the progress!!

How was your week? Did you map out your Simple Living plan? Will you take some time to organize from "underneath" this week? Good luck!!

40 Bags in 40 Days

Pinterest!! You all encompassing, totally addicting place of inspiration! You have done it again! Totally sucked me in! Have you ever typed “Organize” into the Pinterest search box just to see what you get? Here’s what I got: This-Crazy-Idea-That-Could-Just-Work!

The plan is to fill forty bags with excess “stuff” from our home to purge in forty days. I have mapped out forty places in the house where I can search for items to send out of the house. Some bags will be filled with donatable items, and will be sent off for a good cause. Other places, well I'm sure a good few bags on this purge will be filled with actual trash/recycling - you know old lotions and creams that need to be tossed, paper, paper and more paper that keeps creeping into the house... you know the drill, right? 

I have tried to do big purges before (quite successfully if I do say so myself!!) but this idea seems like it might be a fun (maybe?) way to coincide with the Simple Living Lessons that I am working through week by week.

Toy purge pile from a previous exodus from the house!

For the first week of the planned 40 bags in 40 days, I am going to tackle:
1. My "unmentionables" drawers (socks and undies)
2. B's "unmentionables" drawers (socks and undies)
3. Miss A's drawers
4. Miss E's drawers
5. The drawers and cupboards in the master bathroom

I'm sure hoping that I'll be able to sort it all out in the order of the list. We'll see how it goes!! Wish me luck!!

Becoming Minimal-ish

This is totally not my living room - it's the "ideal" minimalist living room

Over the past two or three years I’ve been taking a meandering minimalist journey through life. I have been decluttering my house; purging items I don’t feel bring value or beauty or have necessity in my home.
I’ve taken carloads of excess household items and clothes to the second hand store for someone else to enjoy.

I have challenged my husband and daughters to purge 100 items each on a weekend– and we succeeded.

And yet it seems like we still have a lot of stuff. Like a LOT of stuff. My kids have a ton of toys they only sometimes play with. I have a TON of stuff hanging around “just in case” I need them someday.
Even though my journey is still a work in progress, and I know that I have a long way to go, I think I need to set myself some rules to help guide me on the path to being a minimal-isht.
I follow a few famous minimalists (Leo Baubata, Courtenay Carver) who inspire me to live with less, and as much as I appreciate their guiding principles, it is hard sometimes to rationalize the idea of actually having empty rooms and empty shelves when the kids keep filling them up with toys and crafts. It’s going to require a bigger philosophical shift than I have taken so far.
I know that I am never going to be a true minimalist, but I think if I can guide my rules with a minimal-ish tilt, I may be successful. I’m still working on the minimal-ish rules, more on those tomorrow.

It's G.O.N.E.!!

The horribly ugly, barely functional brown wooden shelf thingy is officially out of my garage.
Yesterday I spent two back breaking hours purging, cleaning and moving shelves in my garage ~ more on this later. This horrible piece of furniture has been staring me in the face for about three years, practically begging me to leave.

And now, this beast is on its way outta my house. Forever.
That’s all for now.

300+ Item Purge COMPLETE!

Alright, I thought it was going to be tough purging another 300 items from our house. Surprisingly though - it didn't take long at all! My brother made a comment on my facebook post about our weekend project that there would be nothing left. Well little brother, I managed to get well past my 300 item goal without even attempting to purge in my own closet, the kitchen or the kids toy room.

I am so proud of my girls! On Friday night, I had them contained (in the bath) and brought a BIG basket of stuffed animals in to them. I held each one up one by one and Miss A & Miss E were REALLY good about adding toys to the donate pile! I was really really impressed!! I did end up vetoing a couple of Miss E's picks for sentimental reasons (and because I know that she will likely be asking for that specific toy all of ten minutes later!).

I started in Miss E's room. Now that it's time to change over to summer clothes, and since she has finally grown a couple of inches, it was time to dig into the big bin of Miss A's hand-me-downs. I reorganized her closet so that all of her pretty dresses were hanging on a shelf that she can reach and purged a ton of clothes that she has finally grown out of - this child has been wearing size 2 clothes for almost two years!!

While updating Miss E's clothes with size 3 dresses, I decided to go through the three huge vacuum sealed bags of baby clothes that I had been storing in her closet. Since our family is complete now with two princesses, it was time to let go of the vast majority of the baby clothes. I did keep a couple of my favorite baby girl outfits and shoes for the girls keepsake boxes, but managed to make my 300 item + challenge by purging over 300 baby items alone!

Altogether, between Miss A, Miss E and I, we managed to purge over 450 things from the house! While we were working together, I told the girls about William Morris' quote: 

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.  

It really helped the girls to put into perspective that they need to pass on to other children toys that they do not play with any more, and clothing that could benefit another child. The girls were really receptive, but Miss E did keep stopping to ask if we could keep her Big Brown Bear and her favorite board game. So sweet!

How was your weekend? Did you challenge yourself to clear the clutter?!

300 Item Purge - Weekend Project!

TIMES THREE!

The weather out here is back to cloudy and gross, so the girls and I have undertaken a MASSIVE challenge for the weekend. Remember a few weeks ago when we spent 15 minutes on our first 100 Item Purge? We gathered up 100 Items that we didn't use or love in our house and put them in the donate pile and sent them on their merry way. It was fast and easy and we had a great sense of accomplishment when we cleared out some of the clutter.


This weekend, since the hubs is under the weather, the girls and I are going to EACH purge 100 Items from the house. It's time to do a changeover from winter to summer clothes, so I'm sure a good few items for each of the kids will come from the clothes that they have outgrown. I'm hoping that the girls will also be willing to part with at least a few stuffed animals.


I plan on clearing out our drinking glass cupboards, a few more items from my clothes closet, and some books. I'm sure it won't take long to get to 100 items each!
Check in with us later this weekend to see the progress that we make! Do you have a weekend project to share? Let us know, maybe we can organize together!