Welcome to day 30 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. I love storage containers. My pantry is filled with food in tupperware and similar containers. This makes items easy to locate and use. The picture above is my actual storage system. Larger plastic storage bins house crafts, seasonal clothes, Christmas decorations etc. However, we can sometimes overdo the storage containers. They can become very handy places to keep things that maybe have passed their use by p

Welcome to day 31, the last day, of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Saying goodbye not only to this 31 day declutter series, but saying goodbye to the things you no longer want or need in your life. I am a fan of Marie Kondo - www.konmari.com. She has 6 rules of tidying, and some I have quoted in this series. Her Rule 6 is Ask Yourself if it Sparks Joy. She states that only you can know what environment makes you happy. Keep the things that bring you joy, say go

Welcome to day 29 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. I have read that there should only be 5 things on your office desk... your computer, your phone, pens, notebook and thank you cards. Would your office space pass this muster? If you are fortunate enough to have a whole room as an office, or just a bench space somewhere, is it as tidy as you wish? If the answer is no, then this article is just for you (and also me at times). When deciding to clean our office sp

Welcome to day 28 of decluttering your home and mind. Only 3 more days left in this month of decluttering. Hopefully you have gained some valuable hints and ideas from this series so far. Delicious is a the great feeling I get on clean sheet day when fresh linen is on my bed and feels fabulous going to sleep that night. Linen is something that can get shoved to the back of a cupboard and forgotten about. Fitted sheets can lose their elastic, sheets can become threadbare or st

Welcome to day 27 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Now that I am a super efficient organised person (insert laugh here), this is my amazingly wonderful process for warranty and instruction manuals. You may have a different system, use it if it works. Have you got that drawer or space where all the warranty and instruction pamphlets accumulate? I did, and when finally sorted them out, there were booklets for appliances I no longer owned! Also, I have had applia

Welcome to day 26 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Before I give some hints on decluttering jewellery, I want to share with you an experience that happened to me in the last twelve months. My home was broken into and a lot of items were stolen. I had all my jewellery locked in a cabinet, they took the whole cabinet as well! It is devastating to be violated in this manner. The situation becomes more agitating when you have to fill out police reports and then in

Welcome to day 25 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Where to begin in the garage? It can be the perfectly set up workspace, or a jumble of things to use later. I have a 3 car garage, where 2 of the bays are dedicated to my crafts and storage. I leadlight (stained glass) and do some woodwork framing, so this takes up a bit of space. It did get very disorganised at one stage. The garage tended to be a dumping ground, where things were stored just in case they bec

Welcome to day 24 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. This is my beautiful car on the beach in Western Australia. My friend Judy and I had just driven from the east coast of Australia to the west coast, and celebrated with a morning swim in the beach. I love my car and want her to look her best. I once suffered from CHAOS .. Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. You know the feeling, the house is just not visitor worthy. Well, sometimes my car suffers from that too,

Welcome to day 23 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. First step for today is to gather all your handbags and backpacks into one space. Spread them out where you can see them all at once. Often this step is scary, when we realise just how many bags we have. Next, empty everything out of the bags and backpacks and sort the contents out. All cash together, all makeup together etc. Did you find that you have multiples of things, or did you find something you forgot

Welcome to day 22 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. If you have been reading this series, you will notice a common theme.... Use it or get rid of it. The outfit above lived in my wardrobe for a few years, only worn once. Doing this cleanse last year, I decided to wear it more often, and this is a picture of me having great fun on a fabulous night out. With occassional wear it can be difficult to cleanse, there are some outfits that we have that only get worn fo

Welcome to day 21 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Ten more days in our series to enjoy. What is this strange photo of mine? It is all explained at the end of the article. We are still sorting out our clothing, one step at a time and today we focus on T-Shirts, pants and skirts. There are many sorting methods we can use to decide what we want to keep and what we should cleanse, as well as different ways to store our clothing. My favourite storage method is the

Welcome to day 20 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. How long since you have ridden a bike, or used your exercise equipment? Let's face it, the world's most expensive coathanger is often an exercise machine. We buy these things with the best of intentions only to have them sit silently and take up space. Their only purpose is to make us feel shame that we aren't using or wearing them. If only our intentions helped us be as fit and healthy as we wanted to be, I w

Welcome to day 19 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Below is a photo of my great-grandmother Margaret Maria McMillan, born in 1885. Sadly, I don't know how old she was, or the occasion the photo was taken for. In the good old days, before smart phones and digital cameras, we had hard copy photographs. Sometimes they were framed and on display, sometimes they were gathered into a photo album, and often they were stored in a container somewhere. 1. With printed p

Welcome to day 17 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Meant to make our lives easier, kitchen appliances tend to either sit on the bench, or are hidden away in hard to get to locations. Cords get in the way, often the pieces are not all together, and it gets frustrating. Some deserve their prime real estate of the bench space, such as a frequently used kettle. Others are like relatives we are ashamed of, and only get seen once or twice a year. Is this one of the

Welcome to day 16 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. The purpose of decluttering is not to get rid of everything, it is to keep those things that still have meaning to you and discard those that no longer serve their purpose. Another hard task, what to do with the physical items that have great memories? My children have grown and left home. Their childhood toys etc. ended up remaining at home with me. I often think I value these items more than my children do,

Welcome to day 15 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Outwear includes coats, jackets, jumpers, sweaters, hats, gloves etc. In my local supermarket yesterday there was a collection bin for donations of these items for the less fortunate. It was great to see so many donations that were destined to be reloved. The word love is important. Do you really love that item of clothing? 1. Is it is good repair? If not, repair it or repurpose it. 2. Does it suit its purpose

Welcome to day 14 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. One of my favourite garments; my unmentionables, my knickers and underwear. (The picture above is not my underwear lol) My mother always told me, wear clean undies in case you are in an accident. I imagined the ambulance personnel looking at my underwear, and yelling out, "we can't take this one, her knickers aren't transport worthy". Do we have any underwear that is untransport worthy? Does it fit? There is n

Welcome to day 13 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Today is an easy declutter, but one that we often do not get around to doing. Find all your medication and put in one spot to sort it out. Are we still taking the medication? Keep it safe. Check the expiry date. It is easy to put new medication on top of old ones, and then use the newer ones first. Rotate your medication by date. If we are no longer taking it, get rid of it by taking it to your local pharmacy.

Welcome to day 12 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. This could be a difficult sort out for a lot of people, especially women. Today we can look at our shoe sort at home in 6 simple steps. Are there any shoes that we just don't wear anymore? When I sort out my shoes, I immediately place these unloved and unwanted ones outside my front door, to remind me to get rid of them. Either give them away or throw them away. Do any need repair? Are we not wearing them bec

Welcome to day 11 of decluttering to free your home and your mind. Yesterday's article about crafts had an actual photo of my bed and bedside drawers. I thought I was doing well, as the only things I have on top of my drawers are a lamp and a beautiful Cloisonne bell that I brought on a trip to China. That was until I saw the glass front of the drawers and my clutter inside them. How embarrassing! Drawers are a great place to dump stuff into, often with the intention of sorti