EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

fannyadams

EH - your "Also I'm finding that focusing on particular areas where creating more free space will be of the most value is helpful - it's taking a form of quite logical joined up thinking though. I wanted to clear some of the front room bookshelves, but to do that I needed to decide what stuff i wanted to move from them and where I wanted those things to go. That in turn meant freeing up space on the shelves in the spare room, and that meant that the big clearance of the spare room cupboard last weekend was needed.  So it's a giant jigsaw puzzle of reverse-engineering through the problems, if that makes sense" made me smile as we call this "but first syndrome" in my home.
I need to move X to the garage, but first I need to move Y to the shed to make space for X, but the shed is full of zzzzz, but first I need to take zzzzz to the tip but first I need to line the car boot with a tarpaulin but first I need to move more stuff in the shed to get to the tarpaulin.... Well, you get the picture....
 

foxgloves

We are having building work done this year & we've both gone into full decluttering mode. I can't believe I've still got stuff to declutter as I did a major challenge last July, which I covered in my dfw diary. It was my own version of that one where you declutter 1 item on the 1st day of the month, 2 on the 2nd, etc, right through to 31 on the 31st. Everywhere looked so much tidier after that, but yesterday I reorganised some of my stuff onto a different unit & suddenly had a full bin! If the mere thought of builders results in more sorting, reorganising & decluttering, then that's got to be a win!
Charity bags at dawn!
F

EssexHebridean

Haha FA LOVING "But First Syndrome" and may well be stealing that to use ourselves! I do indeed get the picture! 

Foxgloves oh there's nothing like the threat of builder-related upheaval to focus the mind on clearing stuff, that's for sure!  And yes - it's amazing that we can still find stuff to declutter even when we've done it before isn't it - I wonder whether we just get better at letting go of stuff over time? 

Lemon_Tree

I love But First Syndrome as well, it's well in place in the LT household. We decluttered madly when we made a snap decision to move house 2 years ago. I've tried to keep it going but find some areas trickier than others

redofromstart

Dear me we absolutely have 'but first' syndrome here.  I've been trying to plot it back to what is actually first tonight but it's surprisingly difficult.  

EssexHebridean

It is difficult to keep momentum going LT - I said elsewhere that I did a HUGE declutter right through 2013 but I think you really need to just keep at it little and often as it feels like we've accumulated a lot of stuff since then - or maybe we haven't - it's just that we've got better at letting go of things now?   And yes redo - it would be very easy to track back forever trying to find the "first" thing I think and never get started as a result!    

Another chunk of progress last night though - I've detailed stuff over on the decluttering thread but we turned our attention to the spare room as it doubles as office space for when we're working on the Beer Festival volunteer role, and last night it was literally too cluttered to get set up in there as we needed.    The result is a far clearer feeling room already, even though there is still more to do. I may need a list for tomorrow and the weekend I think as I'm keen to keep this going now we've started. 

Lemon_Tree

Well done for clearing some space in your office. OH & I had a heated conversation about receipts today so I'm trialling a new, very simple, system. I've also decided we're getting rid of the filing cabinet that we don't have room for. 

fannyadams

My IRL friend posted this to her timeline on FB this morning.

savingholmes

We have but first syndrome - love the graphic too - that's us to a T. Well done on the decluttering so far. I need a Mary Poppins bag and trunk I reckon so I could hide everything.... Wherever I spend time in the house ends up looking like a craft explosion.... the living room, the kitchen, now DS's room (where the contents of my study went when we made room for a bed) etc. Hopeyou are having a fund weekend despite the weather.

EssexHebridean

Haha FA that IS my life! Superb!  LT good work on implementing a simple system - fingers crossed it will work! SH I just decluttered a trunk - sadly NOT a bottomless one though!

So the theme of the weekend was "more decluttering" really - seemed sensible allowing that the weather wasn't being kind really, was it! Friday I ran first thing, then got started working through some more general tidying in the bedroom, which lead to a boot bag and ancient wellies, 3 dressing gowns, a few more old makeup bits, some oddments that had gone past-it from my toiletries stash, some more items which are perfectly good but not right for me and some oddments of jewellery that I'll no longer wear all found their way to either the charity shop bag or the bin sack. Moved on to the spoare room - sorted out some drawers, found some more paperwork for shredding, and then to a couple of shelves - more stuff binned/CS bagged. 

Saturday morning was food shopping - Farmers market to start with, then Sainsbugs via dropping bags off at the CS. While we were in Sainsbugs I remembered that I had a voucher for extra Nectar points when I spent £15 on Tu clothing - and by chance there was a 25% discount off all Tu clothing... *whistles innocently* - got a nice hoodie (actually needed another one) a pair of slippers (much needed - and the old ones need decluttering now) and a pair of cropped running/fitness leggings which technically were NOT needed but it was such a treat to find a pair that actually sit at a nice cropped length even on my silly little legs that I just had to have them! Paid just under £23 for the lot and got my extra points too. I'm calling that a win. Food shopping came in at around the £20 mark as well if I remember rightly.  Then I had to nip along to the rugby club to do some photos for the guys in their new kit - but I'd already said to MrEH that I wasn't planning on staying, instead I headed back home and got stuck in to some more decluttering! Another cupboard and some shelves in the front room, a load of recipe books sorted and some ancient bottles of booze that were past their best or had been bought for making cocktails years ago and weren't likely to get used again. 

Yesterday we turned our attention to yet more cupboards - we now actually have space for all our coats in the coat cupboard - it's like some form of odd miracle! We also have 5 more bags to go to the CS and another 2 black sacks plus a load of loose stuff headed out to the bins as well - it incredible how we can have accumulated SO MUCH STUFF!  

Money wise the CC bill has arrived and I added up all the various bits of that at lunchtime ready to do transfers tomorrow. Total food spend over the weekend was about £60 - eek - but half of that was farmers market and aside from Sainsbugs there was also £10 spend in Al's yesterday stocking up on various bits and pieces that we buy from there.  In other news I got an email from Sky this morning confirming that they wanted to apologise further for the delay in sorting our broadband problems last month and so were crediting us another £32 - unexpected but we'll take it - that's already showing as subtracted from the bill amount for March.