My January declutter challenge - an update!

After Christmas the house always begins to descend into chaos. Along with newly acquired items, being out of routine with everyone at home for a couple of weeks means that I really feel the need to get everything back under control. I always enjoy a declutter challenge to start the new year, but as I've already reduced things a lot over the last couple of years I didn't want anything too drastic.

This year I decided to set myself the challenge to get rid of five things every day in January. Although I mainly concentrated on my own personal items, I did include some household things in my totals as I'm the one that's responsible for maintaining our home.

I found the first couple of weeks very easy. In anticipation of the challenge I had been eyeing up a few things that I knew could easily go, and I had made a note of some areas that I wanted to tackle. I kept a running list in a Notes document, and it was very satisfying to watch everything stack up.

I made the biggest difference in my clothing. I went through all of my clothes and was really ruthless. I passed on my suit, which I last wore to a job interview in around 2008 before having children. I can't even squeeze into it any more, and if I find myself heading to job interviews I'll need something that actually fits me well! Also, do people even wear suits to interviews any more?! I passed on three pairs of smart black trousers that I used to wear to work in an office - I don't need anything like that at the moment and if I do find myself in an office I have other nicer clothes that I can wear.

Photo credit Bernd Dittrich

I cleared out lots of space on my bookshelves, donating over 20 books. My jigsaw cupboard is also looking emptier, with 9 jigsaws passed along. Those spaces won't take me long to fill though!

I tackled toiletries and expired medication, shoes, my craft stash, candle holders, and random things in my kitchen drawers. I sorted through my filing cabinet, I went through all the various paper ephemera that I like to collect - postcards, leaflets, pamphlets and so on. I've been through all the obvious areas in my home that collect clutter, as well as working my way back to some of the deeper storage areas that I like to sort through from time to time. 

I spend a lot of time at home, and the biggest benefit to me of a challenge like this is that it encourages me to think about my surroundings. I'm very affected by untidy spaces, and I have emotional reactions to things. Some of my possessions can cause me to feel a negative emotion whenever I see them - like an expensive item that turned out to be a waste of money, something I bought on a whim that was never used, or a gift that wasn't right for me. Removing these things means that I feel much happier and calmer when I look around my space. In addition I enjoy donating good quality items to charity and hoping that someone will find them and appreciate them in the same way that I love a secondhand bargain.

If you feel inspired to declutter then I've written all about choosing a decluttering challenge that will work for you - along with the advantages and disadvantages of each!

Autumn 2023 - And what I've been up to lately!

I thought it was time for a bit of a catch up! Here's what I've been up to lately:

Reading

I did another order with Wob a few weeks ago and I also did some charity shop shopping, so I'm quite well stocked up on books to read at the moment! I also make regular use of the Amazon Prime Library and free Kindle books. Some of the books that I bought were ones that I borrowed from the library during lockdown and really wanted to read again, like Where the Crawdads Sing, Great Circle and The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. 

I really enjoyed the Elon Musk biography and so I've started reading Steve Jobs also by Walter Isaacson. This one isn't quite as gripping - it's pre-Tik Tok and so you need a longer attention span to get into it! Also I'm not quite as interested in the early history of computing as it's a bit before my time. I'm hoping that it will pick up a bit once we get into the iPods, iPhones and so on.

Watching

Harry and I are still working our way through Red Dwarf. We have finally made it to the end of all the episodes that I've watched! Now we have seasons 10, 11 and 12 to go, and I've just discovered that there is a very short season 13 to watch too, so there's plenty to go with for now

I've really been enjoying A Small Light on Disney+. It's a biographical drama of Miep Gies, one of the secretaries who helped the Frank family hide in Amsterdam during World War 2. I'm very familiar with Anne Frank's diary as I've read it many times over the years, and last month we visited Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam. But although the Frank family and others do appear in the series, the focus of the story is on Miep, her husband, and the risks that she and many others took during that that period. It's fascinating, because the diary very much focuses on life inside the Annexe and this takes a look at the wider historical picture of what was going on outside. I would absolutely recommend it!

Crafting

I've been having a lot of fun crafting with Hama beads again. I worked on some Halloween projects and I have some more ideas as we get closer to Christmas.

I'm also quite into jigsaws at the moment. I had a big clear out of my jigsaws recently because I had so many. I used to do some reviews for Ravensburger and I'd collected quite a few which I knew I wouldn't do again. I found myself re-visiting a brilliant channel on YouTube which I used to dip into a couple of years ago - Karen Puzzles - and it inspired me to get into puzzling again. There are so many beautiful jigsaws out there! I started by treating Mia to a Squishmallows jigsaw that we could work on together while my husband was away and it was really fun, and not as difficult as it looks, she loves her Squishmallows. I've now got a few puzzles lined up on my wish lists for birthday and Christmas, and I'm thinking very seriously about attempting a 3000 piece puzzle in the New Year (I can't start one now because we'll need the dining table for Christmas dinner!)

Listening to

I listen to Spotify in the car on the way to school and back, and that's a lot of listening time. But I found that Spotify was just playing the same songs over and over, and it really annoyed me that it was choosing what I listened to. So I found how to turn off the feature that auto plays songs, and I stopped choosing the curated playlists like Daily Drive. Instead I downloaded lots of albums, mainly ones that I used to listen to as a teenager, and I've been working my way through them. When the album has finished it just stops and I have to consciously choose what to listen to next. It's working really well for me, and it's also reminding me of songs on albums that I loved but haven't listened to in years because they aren't the most popular songs from the artists. 

Playing

I still love playing Pikmin Bloom on my phone! I started playing when it was released two years ago and it's still keeping me interested. Every month there are different challenges which can be a little frustrating at times, especially if you don't spend any money to play, but I find that it often gets me out for a walk during the day if I need to plant some flowers in a particular colour or walk a certain number of steps. I also like playing when we are travelling as I can pick up different seedlings, it's quite limited around where I live and play.

Working on

I've been trying very hard to stop the scrolling on my phone, especially constantly checking of the news and never ending websites like Reddit. Reddit is great for keeping up with hobbies, but I found that I was spending longer reading about about other people doing a hobby than actually doing it myself. It has really helped, my mind feels much clearer and I feel like my attention span has increased.

Looking forward to

This last half term of school always seems like a long one as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, especially after such a warm, sunny summer. I really hope this winter isn't as cold and long as last year! But I'm already looking forward to Christmas and spending time together with family. We also have a holiday booked for Easter which is the one that was cancelled in March 2020 due to Covid, and although it's a way off yet it's definitely one to look forward to!

What have you been up to lately?

My goals for June - update

I can't that believe another month has come and gone! It's been a quiet month over here hasn't it, but I've not forgotten about the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the month. Here's how I got on with them:

Don't obsessively scroll the news websites. This has been a failure. All sorts of emotions lead me to scrolling - anxiety, boredom, tiredness - and having made a good effort at breaking my Twitter addiction, the news websites have unfortunately become a replacement. This month we've also signed up for an Apple News+ subscription which has massively increased the number of news stories that I now have instant access to. I need to find a better outlet than my scrolling but I'm struggling.

Throw away or recycle at least 5 things per day. This on the other hand has been a major success. I do well with a daily target of items, it really encourages me to root around in the back of cupboards and find lots things to get rid of, and usually more than five each day. 

Just some of the things that I put in to the recycling or threw away this month - instruction leaflets for things that we no longer own and unnecessary ones, old bank and credit card statements, old electrical items that go out with the general waste for separate recycling, Gu ramekins, recipes that I won't try, broken kitchen utensils and cardboard boxes that I was saving in case they came in useful. 

Think about taking part in the local garage sale trail. I'm all signed up and already have several boxes ready of things to put out! It's a decluttering exercise for me rather than a money making one, so most of my things will go in a big box out the front marked 'Free', and after lunch I'll probably move most of my sale items to that pile too just so that I can get rid of them.

Try three new recipes. I sorted through all the recipes that I had cut from magazines over the last goodness knows how many years and found three to try. One was a big success - a Mexican dish with beans, sweetcorn and spicy wedges. Another was also really good - pasta with a cheesy, buttery sauce and lots of green veg. Only one didn't work out - butternut squash and gnocchi. I like gnocchi but this recipe tasted very plain and the butternut squash is a pain to prepare, so I won't be making that one again!

Don't pick up my phone as soon as I wake up. This was a failure. The trouble is that I find it very difficult to get myself up in the morning and I find that the brightness of the screen as I scroll through the latest headlines really helps to wake me up. If I avoid the phone I end up falling back to sleep!

Play the piano every day. Another great success, I have played the piano every day and found some old favourites and new pieces to play. One piece in particular that I've really worked at was A River Flows in You by Yiruma which is a beautiful piece and that I can now play to a decent standard.

Tidy up the front garden, in particular the area around our front hedge. This is an area that we can't see from our house or driveway, so I'm keeping the area tidy more for the benefit of the neighbours than us. I hope that they appreciate it, because it was quite a bit of work to start with and now that I've done the initial work I'm feeling the pressure to keep it looking tidy!

So a bit of a mixed bag this month. I am finding setting myself these monthly goals really helpful, it definitely gives me something to focus on, and so I'm busy thinking about how I want to challenge myself in July, stay posted!