Wardrobe workover

About two weeks ago it suddenly turned quite cold her in southern Queensland.  We have  been enjoying a wonderful autumn with beautiful warm days and cool nights.  Autum is my favourite time of year.
For the last couple of weeksI have been needing more than ust a light cardy in the mornigns and eveings and have been digging to the back of my robe and into crates to find my warm stuff.  It was time to do the seasonal swap.

I have some space saver hangers which I use to store my off-season tops.  They are excellent! You simply hang them in the robe and hook five hangers through the holes.

 Then you just drop one of the ends and five items now take up the space of one!

I wouldn't want to use them all of the time as it slows access to the clothes.  I had my winter tops on it and now it has my summer tops.  I don't have enough space in my robe to have all my clothing out at once.

In the process of swapping the tops over, I went through the summer tops assessing each.  I had quite a few that I just didn't wear at all this last season.  Many were now pilly and old so out they went.  I was telling myself that I could use the old tops for around home or doing chores - but really how many such tops does one person need?  Others were uncomfortable but I had hung onto them "just in case" - why I thought I might want to wear something that is scratchy or doesn't quite sit right, I don't know!  Quite a few "work" tops and skirts got to stay as they will be needed when I eventually return to work outside of home. 

I now have a gap in my robe!

For now i will pat myself on the back and be pleased that I have once again culled.

Keeping one's vows

Do you know what is the hardest thing about decluttering?  It isn't parting with things, 'though that is pretty hard.  It is keeping it up long after the initial momentum has passed and saying "No thanks" to all the lovely possibilities that come along later.

Sometimes I do well at this and sometimes I just don't.

This week has been a major test for me.  I have been helping a friend to pack, unpack and much decluttering.  I am sore all over and tiiiiirrrred.  I am sure she is feeling even worse since my memory of my big move is still fresh.  But I digress...

My friend has been getting rid of much kitchen stuff out of necessity.  she has gone from a large kitchen with much storage space to a small one with very little storage.  Yesterday in her new kitchen as I unwrapped items we kept a big box and put many things straight into it. 

Do you remember all those chip and dip platters from the 80's?  yes those.  They are a storage nightmare with the dip holder attached to the platter.  I got rid of heaps of them in my cleanout and now my friend has gone from about eight to just her favourite two.  As we have all discovered, they don't get a lot of use, but one or two is handy. 

I have done so well with most of the stuff she is decluttering.  Most of it, I can easily look at as i put into the garage sale box and leave there.  some it it however keeps calling to me.

I keep telling my self that I don't NEED it.  Oh but I WANT it.

check out what I just can't resist.

Cute little hand painted, gold edged glasses.

Set of six

In the cutest box

kinda says it all really

I'm in Luuuurve.

BUT, I don't need  it.  i don't even know what they are for!  I have been having some interesting coversations with myself over these glasses:

• they would be good for Port - I can count on one hand the number of times in a year that I drink Port (and still have fingers to spare);
• If I don't use them I can simply re-home them - yeah that's likely (not);
• I do have space in my glass fronted cabinet where I could store and see them, even if I don't really use them
• they may be valuable - who knows I may now be the proud owner of something actually worth $.

sigh.  I have a few more knots left in me over these glasses yet...   For now they can keep sitting on my bench and I will keep admiring them and prabably not part with them. :) and call myself a happy hypocrite.

Instant Art

On the weekend we helped friends pack.  As we were packing they were decluttering. yes, if you are wondering, this is our second lot of friends who are packing and moving within a very short time... perhaps we started something? : )
The friends who moved recently have lots of stuff that they have also decluttered and are going to hold a garage sale in a month or so to sell it to rasie $ for their daughter who is going overseas later this year.  Sooooo I offered to take all the decluttered items from one lot of friends to the other.

Can you see where this is going?

The decluttered items from one friend are passing through our space on their way to another friend and their ultimate out-of-all-our-lives desitation.  yes this is dangerous territory 'casue then I get tempted by it all.  Some of it will just go straight from one place to another and some of it I will actually sort through because we have a young adult who is currenlty setting up home and needs/wants all sorts of things.  I told her about the bags of old linen, boxes of kitchen plastic ware and partial sets of glassware etc and she got excited.  sigh.

Soooo, here comes the confession...
I was putting stuff aside for YA to look through later today and I spotted six little inspiration quotes in black matting and I'm afraid to say they called to me.  "Dee, we're cute and you like us, so why not find us a nice home at your place?"
I resisted and told those cute little matted quotes that I really don't need them.
but they kept talking to me saying, "but there are six of us, a set, and you have some very blank spaces."
I reasoned with the little matted quotes and told them that if I couldn't find a suitable home and get them housed within an hour then they were going out. !!! the last of the tough stands.

I walked into my laundry where there happens to be six empty, white doors.  Well it looks like the little matted quotes found a home on the doors to the cupboards in my laundry.  They won! I got them up with double sided mounting tape, resisted the urge to 'fix' them or frame them and now they are instant art.

Here is the AFTER pic, complete with cat-assistant/supervisor.

The BEFORE, so you can see that it is an improvement.

and the during, with wooden spoon used to getting the spacing right - what can I say, it was close at hand in the laundry tub as my soaker-pusher, and the ever-present cat, observing all that I do.

 ... and one more gratuitous cat on lap with laptop shot taken just as I started to write this blog.  He would prefer to be my only laptop but will tolerate the competition since it is emitting additional warmth.

Shed adventure

The pace of our dee-cluttering has slowed, but not stopped entirely.  We have homes for most items and it is so much simpler to keep our small house tidy.  There are still areas that need decluttering as well as the need to keep vigilent lest we be once again taken over by stuff.

The shed is our biggest scary space still to be tackled.  The shed is Hubby's domain.  Hubs has a hard time parting with stuff and tends to hold onto things ways past their usefulness.   He is also a master procrastinator.  That makes for a tough combination - a hoarding procrastinator! 

I have been trying to 'help' him with this habit for many years with everything from nagging, to leading by example. Not much has impacted his thick shell, until now. what has made the difference?  It's hard to pinpoint it to any one thing.  I know he said he wanted to do it differently; though he has done that many times before with no behavioral change.  He saw me get stuck into it and experienced the difference in our home.  I think it had something to do with the smaller house and necessity, but that still is not all of it either.  When I ask him about it, he shrugs his shoulders, says that he finally gets it a bit more, sees the difference it has made to our lives and still finds it very difficult to actually do. 

I am so proud of him!  He has changed so much and done things that he didn't think he could do.

This weekend we finally tackled the shed.  We had unloaded about 6 boxes before I  thought to run and grab the camera, so it is already emptier by the time I took these pics.

Yep its kinda scary.

Once we had unloaded a heap of boxes from the sheed, hubs and I spent the next hour or so going through some of them.  We tackled the scary computer/technical boxes.  There were two large packing boxes plus a couple of other smaller boxes.  Most of the contents of the two large boxes went into the trailer.  Hubs was amazing, he happily, willingly made decisions about which things to keep (not too many) and which to get rid of.  We sorted the get rid of's into three piles: dump, sell and give-away. 

And before he could change his mind :) we loaded it all into the trailer, along with the results of the previous weekends decluttering and headed off to the dump.

There was a sweetener though... I bought this for hubby on eBay last week and we were to go pick it up on saturday afternoon.  the shed needed to be clear for it to fit, the trailer empty to pick it up and now hubs had a place to store some of the real treasures that he owns.

'scuse the flash in a tin shed at night.   One happy hubby.

There is still a heap to do, but now hubby has some better storage and can hopeuflly feel good about getting it into use, so we shold get the shed done fairly soon... and the rest of the shed conttents out of our undercover area.