Wood for the Trees

When I began decluttering it was easy, all the really obvious things, some of which I would fall over or stub my toe on repeatedly day after day (I'm looking at you highchair!) were easy to get rid of. The piles of baby clothes, bibs, rattles when my youngest was no longer a baby and I definitely didn't want more, were obvious that they could go on to live fulfilled lives outside of my house. However several car boot fulls later and I'm starting to slow down. I have definitely hit a decluttering wall. The one where I get things out of my wardrobe to give to charity, change my mind and put them back. The one where I go to declutter the bathroom and find only a couple of toilet roll tubes and a dead moth that I really don't want in there. But occasionally the one where I go through an entire cupboard and discover 2 extra placemats which I didn't realise we had to replace the ones we broke. I don't really consign to the Marie Kondo method of throwing away all you...

So the week started badly, I bought some of those dental floss on a stick (the stick being a handy disposable plastic holder) as I was seduced by the whitening claim. I discoloured my teeth some years ago by not reading the instructions on corsodyl to not drink tea after use. Although most of the stainage has been removed it is still quite brown inbetween my teeth where the dentist has advised only the hygienist has the tools to remove the stain from there. However as seeing the hygienist is expensive I had carelessly plumped for the cheaper more convenient option. So they'd arrived and I'd opened the packet and halfway through using one when it dawned on me that I'd basically just bought a bag of plastic to use and throw away. Fail. On the plus side I did sign up to get some bottled orange juice from the milkman thus reducing the waste produced from tetrapak (which is recycled in our area but even recycling uses energy and has by products). I also signed up to receive...

This is an area where I tend to have conflicting drivers. Mainly of the 'I will live eco and cheaply' Vs 'I'm so tired why did I not just buy dishwasher tablets?' To be honest making stuff doesn't take too much effort and especially when I think well I could just be properly eco and wash it by hand. But 4 people, especially the smaller ones do create an awful lot of washing up so the dishwasher is a concession in itself to survival at the moment. So I thought I would share with you my homemade cleaning products. (NB. This isn't a recipe I created, these are recipes I pilfered from elsewhere on the web) Dishwasher tablets 2 parts washing soda 2 parts Borax/Borax substitute 1 part citric acid 1 part salt Essential oils (optional) Mix together and pack into an ice cube tray. Leave for a few hours to solidify then they will come out as solid tablets. These also produce an endothermic reaction (takes heat from the surroundings) which is quite exc...

They say it takes about a month to form new habits. After decluttering for a month I am now more ruthless with sorting things. Stuff before where I would have dithered over whether it might be useful in the future now get heartlessly tossed into the charity box. I have come to realise that holding on to things because I don't want them to go to landfill is just creating my home into a mini landfill site. I do try to recycle, reuse or find new homes for most things but some things are just trash. The only way to reduce the landfill for these products are to stop them coming into the house in the first place. There is a campaign called  Zero Waste Week  which essentially challenges people to live without creating waste for a week to encourage them to create more sustainable habits going forward. I am going to do a slightly toned down version by stretching it out over the month of September and to reduce waste. So over the next month I am going to try to create some new ha...

So the declutter process begins. The first evening I was super revved up about decluttering and even managed to rope in my husband. (By rope in I mean he was sat in the same room working on his laptop and I interrupted him from time to time by holding up a book and shouting "Keep or give away?") And I ended up with a good ole pile of books released from their prison of the bookshelf. Then I got tired and the books stayed on the floor for a few days. Which brought me to my first learning lesson; it's all well and good decluttering but that isn't the end of the process, you have to then do something with what you have decluttered! I don't really like binning books, they're precious texts of information to me. Though some did have to go to the recycling box as they were in no shape to give away. I put some on Facebook and some went to friends, some went to the charity shop and the rest? Well they're still in a box under the stairs but at least they...

The clutter took 8 years of us living in the house to accumulate, we're not going to become a minimalist household overnight. The process takes time. Especially when you have kids as free time is often a rarity which then does not make you want to spend it decluttering. So first stem the tide of things coming in. 10 tips to reduce purchases: 1) make yourself stop and think, do I really need it? Before making any purchase 2) don't make impulse purchases. If you think of something you want add it to a list, take time to think about it. Do you still want it a week later? 3) When buying to replace broken or worn out items, make sure you do get rid of the worn out item too! 4) Unsubscribe from shopping e-mails telling you about bargains 5) Unfollow shopping adverts on your Facebook feed 6) 2 for 1 is only a bargain if you actually want 2 and half price is only a bargain if you want the item 7) Can you buy it digitally? Or borrow it if needed for a short amount of t...

So to try and tackle the mounting amount of paper clutter around the house I recruited the four year old. She is the source of most paper clutter around the house and takes pride in her artwork, even the stuff that comes home from school that looks like she spent all of 2 seconds on it. "Look at this mummy!" "Erm, it's a line on a blank piece of paper?" "Can we put it on the fridge?" "Must we?" She once caught me putting some of her artwork in the recycling and put me on orange for the rest of the day. So to avoid this I made her make the decisions. I gathered all the loose paper from around the house and told her to put it in one of three piles. Keep, recycling or take a photo then recycling. I thought most would end up in the keep pile. I was wrong. She was able to make decisions about which ones to keep and was happy for a lot of them to be photographed then discarded. Although we are left with a bigger keep pile than I would hav...