A few different things have me thinking; how can I make my home simpler? We are really going to challenge ourselves this year to get out of debt. Almost always, the first thing you hear is to cut back. I listen to people talk about how they shop from the pantry, sell things, cut back on coffees out, etc.
So really, how long could you live off of the food that is currently in your house (or at least what is on average in your home)? How many gift cards do you have sitting around, unused? How many closets do you have stuffed with stuff?
I'm not looking for an inventory list or a contest to see who has the most waste or is living the most simply. I guess it's more a self reflection thing.
We're doing the same thing getting ready for baby. Both from a money/budget aspect and a "get rid of crap" aspect.
We went through all the bedding in our guest room and realized we had like 9 pillows or something between on the bed and in the closet. And our guest room is rarely used, lol!
I did a huge purge during Sandy (we didn't have power for 5 days & I was stuck at home--what better time to organize the entire house?)
Tosa recommended this book to me and it really motivated me to get rid of/donate a lot of our excess stuff. It's so much easier to find things and keep the house clean now that everything is where it's supposed to be. I even got all my clothes and shoes out of the attic closet and into our bedroom!
As for us, a couple of years ago we had a few mice get in and I through out just about everything in the pantry. Since then I've accumulated a few things, but for the most part it's stock ingredients that I use regularly. I need to go through it all again soon and dump or use the random things - like that Nestle Quick I realized the other day expired in 2009. My fridge has leaked since we bought the house, and as a result, it gets emptied and wiped down every two weeks, so it's pretty spotless. (although Dad was able to fix it over Christmas, so we'll see what happens now!)
My closets are another story. I hardly buy anything when it comes to clothes and generally only own enough for about 5 work days, plus some loungy stuff for the weekends. Problem is, I have about three or four different sets of these clothes for different sizes. Right now I'd love to purge it all, but I've just had a baby and have no clue what I'll be able to wear in a month or two. Maybe it's a little nuts, but I sort of want to shape up just so I can clean out my closet.
I think I'm going to get DH to help my spring clean one room every week for the next month or two. To be honest, I'll do almost all of it since he has such a heavy load right now, but if he can at least help clean out his closets and such, we could do so much!
We've done this sort of personal inventory the last year-ish. It's so liberating to only have what we need and to spend so much less time cleaning and organizing. It's amazing, too, that after a first pass of getting rid of things we could still find things in a second, third, fourth pass. Stuff that we chose to keep at first seems much less necessary now.
I filled my garage floor with stuff this Fall & gave it all away. I miss none of it. I went room by room, cabinets, drawers, closets & went through it all. Now we have 1 closet & 1 dresser per person though DD2&3 share one closet, plus 1 that is mostly cat/cleaning/photo stuff. Oh & a coat closet with 2-3 coats plus boots per person. We don't buy DVDs anymore. I have very few cleaning, makeup, toiletries, home decor anymore (stuff I used to buy a lot of). I have the beginnings of a long term "stockpile" of food in the basement but our kitchen cabinets/fridge are pretty sparse. I buy by menu & there is little overages except for a baking supply cabinet. My kids art supplies are excessive but I don't buy those anymore. Otherwise they have a lot if toys but I've eliminated a lot through the years...now it's mostly high quality toys. Watching Hoarders motivates the heck out of me. Lol.
We purge all the time, our house is pretty small, not a lot of room to hoard anything really. As for food, quite some time we have freezers stocked. Clothes, anything not warn within that year gets tossed and items not being used such as horse, dogs, stuff gets donated. If I am not using it, or anyone is not using it, we feel the need to purge completely.
We got rid of a lot of things when we moved. There is still quite a bit that I want to get rid of. If it has been packed up since July, I doubt we really need it. If it were completely up to me, our house would pretty much look like a show house with no clutter.
I planned on cleaning and organizing the kitchen cabinets during my holiday break, but that hasn't happened.
We will be moving from an almost 2,000-square-foot house to a less-than-1,500-square-foot house in a couple of months, so I need to purge like crazy. Right now, we have THIRTEEN of those photo box things holding DVDs on the bookshelf. Except for a few workout DVDs, I can't even remember the last time we watched one--we always look for new movies on Netflix or Redbox. If DH is against selling/donating them, I at least want to toss the cases and put them into a binder. Our closets are like black holes of crap. I have no idea how we accumulate so much junk. We also have a huge (at least to me!) kitchen with 13 upper cabinets and 10 lowers, and our new house will probably have about eight total cabinets. We're going to have to get rid of a LOT things like our ice cream dishes (they're very pretty, but who needs ice cream dishes?!), our excessive amount of wine glasses, the pots we rarely use, our cabinet that has nothing but candles in it, etc. You can't tell our house is cluttered when you come in, but as soon as you open a cabinet or a closet, you learn our dirty hoarding secrets.
I'm horrible about "stuff" I loove clothes, kitchen and table top decor things (pretty plates, napkins, linens, service pieces etc) I should get rid of some, and need to work on not acquiring more. I did donate a bunch of clothes recently, time to do it again!
Also, we could probably live for a month or so from the freezer/ pantry... Although there wouldn't be many vegetables being consumed.
In January we moved from a 1300 square foot house with a two car detached garage and a basement that we used for storage, now we live in a 795 square foot house with no garage and no basement. We got rid of truck loads of stuff and still filled up a large storage unit. We spent several weekends going through stuff in the storage unit and selling major items...furniture, lawn mower, tools, furniture, electronics, etc. Going through everything and organizing in the new house was kind of a life mission for us the past year.
One of the biggest issues in our old house was clothes, linens and blankets, and random kitchen shit. We have three very small closets, one for me, one for DH, and one that contains totes and a tool chest that's easily accessible. We share a chest of drawers. Our kitchen only contains things we use and we've actually managed to throw so much shit away that we have some empty drawers and cabinets.
Post by MadamePresident on Dec 30, 2012 22:07:02 GMT -5
We have gotten rid of a lot of things this year, due to cleaning house and getting ready for the baby. I also went through my clothes when I was pregnant. It was easier to get rid of things and be less sentimental when I couldn't try it on to see if it still fit.
Funny Story. I was shopping at Goodwill a few weeks ago. I noticed a couple of articles of clothing that looked familiar. I thought, "I used to have a sweater like that." Then a few aisles over I saw another thing I recognized. Turns out my husband had donated our old clothes to that goodwill, so it was my old stuff.
We have gotten rid of a lot of things this year, due to cleaning house and getting ready for the baby. I also went through my clothes when I was pregnant. It was easier to get rid of things and be less sentimental when I couldn't try it on to see if it still fit.
Funny Story. I was shopping at Goodwill a few weeks ago. I noticed a couple of articles of clothing that looked familiar. I thought, "I used to have a sweater like that." Then a few aisles over I saw another thing I recognized. Turns out my husband had donated our old clothes to that goodwill, so it was my old stuff.
I go to our local Goodwill from time to time to see if I can score some great finds. The last time I went there I spotted a pink jacquard jacket with really cute buttons; and "I thought it's so pretty. Too bad it's a small." It was my old jacket. :-(
A few different things have me thinking; how can I make my home simpler? We are really going to challenge ourselves this year to get out of debt. Almost always, the first thing you hear is to cut back. I listen to people talk about how they shop from the pantry, sell things, cut back on coffees out, etc.
So really, how long could you live off of the food that is currently in your house (or at least what is on average in your home)? How many gift cards do you have sitting around, unused? How many closets do you have stuffed with stuff?
I'm not looking for an inventory list or a contest to see who has the most waste or is living the most simply. I guess it's more a self reflection thing.
I had the same question earlier this year; when I had a freak-out mode that we are running out of space. I asked the board, and someone suggested that for each item that goes through our front door, another one should go out. I try to live by that rule.
I re-reviewed the clothing that I haven't worn in months, in phases. I am giving myself until June to absolutely keep the ones that don't fit anymore. This should be the last phase.
For food, we buy meats and consume them no more than a month each. I have dates on them. I cycle through my pantry and get creative in using the last can/packet/noodle.
If you take the debt paying approach one at a time, it should be a lot less overwhelming. We have goals to payoff debt A by date X, debt B by date Y, and so on.
Books I've collected I am donating this weekend. The only ones I'm keeping are the trade ones for reference.
Hopefully this helps. But honesly, I'm new to these approaches as well.
My fridge has leaked since we bought the house, and as a result, it gets emptied and wiped down every two weeks, so it's pretty spotless. (although Dad was able to fix it over Christmas, so we'll see what happens now!)
Did it leak in the back like it was coming from the freezer? Ours has done that for about 2 years and DH has tried everything he can think of and everything I could find online. If this is what was happening to your fridge, how did your Dad fix it
I have a slight obsession with getting rid of crap we don't need. I love to throw/ give stuff away. Clutter makes me itchy between the shoulder blades.
I'm seriously looking forward to the days I'm home over the next few weeks; I'm going to tackle one closet/ dresser per day. That said, right now our garage is a disaster that I am willfully ignoring. All the random crap has just been shoved out there.
Post by Willis Jackson on Dec 31, 2012 9:44:50 GMT -5
I worked for a woman who was obsessed with having a completely overstocked pantry at all times- like having AT LEAST 5 of everything, most of which would never get used. I was her private chef so maintaining the pantry was part of my duties. I swear, every time I would rotate things, throw out expired jars and boxes, buy new ones, I just thought "What's the worst that could happen? You have to substitute rigatoni for penne?"
It really changed my way of thinking because I used to be a stickler for having an extra roll of foil, or huge packs of paper towels when, really, I wasn't getting a great deal on any of this stuff. Certainly not enough for this stuff to use up valuable real estate in my house and mental space in my head. I'm perfectly capable of noticing that I'm running low on foil and putting it on the grocery list. It's also not the end of the world to use a gallon ziploc bag when I wanted to use a quart, or to puree a can of diced tomatoes when I'm out of crushed tomatoes.
I'm a huge purger. How often do you say to yourself, "I really wish I hadn't gotten rid of that ugly pie plate somebody gave me 5 years ago?" Never. You never say that to yourself.
Post by emilyinchile on Dec 31, 2012 9:51:53 GMT -5
We have a lot of random crap in the guest room closets - spare bike parts, cables to ancient computers, that kind of stuff. I have gone through when H has been gone on trips, but it's mostly his stuff, so he really needs to be the one to either organize or toss a lot of it.
In terms of excess clothes we're good about getting rid of things, but we do have drawers and drawers full of jerseys from him being on a national sports team. I don't mind that though, since we have the space, and some are from important tournaments, plus he gives some away.
We have no gift cards and only a normal amount of pantry food. Overall I think we're ok, although my housekeeper did ban me from buying more of a certain cleaning product - I kept seeing it on sale and stocking up, and apparently I have like a year's supply now.
I have two weeks of food on hand because of the holiday parties. I hate running out in the middle of a recipe. Now that the holidays are through, we will eat down the freezer and pantry. One of my weaknesses is extra paper goods. We have too much foils, wraps, napkins, paper towels, tissues, wrapping paper etc. I tend to buy on sale and I have bought too much. Fortunately they will keep. DH's challenge is releasing things he no longer uses (clothing, toys etc). I will be trying to clean out his closet this winter.
Our pantry and freezer are pretty paired down. We don't keep much on hand beyond stock ingredients like rice, a few pastas, and baking ingredients. We just don't have the space. I'm actually very grateful for living in a small apartment because it helps us not acquire so much.
Other stuff, we're pretty good about. We purge clothes regularly and we don't really acquire knick knacks like my parents. I guess our only trouble area is kitchen gadgets but we have space for everything and we do use most of it.
We moved from a 750 sq ft condo to almost 1500sqft plus a two car garage last year and we have definitely accumulated more stuff. It reminds me of the movie Wall E where the Earth is destroyed because everyone has too much crap. Sigh.
One thing I want to do better about is not putting out so many toys for the girls. The more toys that are out the bigger the mess. Plus I think they get overwhelmed. I want to try to rotate them and continually get rid of the ones they have outgrown. Your baby is still really young, but the toys definitely seem to multiply as they get older.
We have a decent bit of perishable and non-perishable food in the house at any given time, because cooking is one of H's hobbies.
We actual don't have that much clutter, including clothes. We do a have a decent bit of stuff for H's work (computer hardware) and some extra sets of china, scuba/surfing stuff in the garage. We have a lot of kitchen gadgets and appliances.
One of our friend's had put off laundry for a month or so and finally did 8 loads yesterday. H was commenting that together we didn't have 8 loads of clothes.
Post by changedname on Dec 31, 2012 11:31:13 GMT -5
We have a ton of giftcards in the house. Until 2 days ago we had about $2000 worth but I used some to buy a new laptop and we are using up the restaurant ones tonight for NYE. We are trying to use them all up now to save $$ for IF treatments.
I normally take a bag to Goodwill every 2-3 weeks but I tend to then go round the store and buy the same amount back so that has to stop.
My house looks like a real estate advert on the outside - no knickknacks, no clutter etc but the closets are bulging. I have decided not to buy any more clothes until get pg and get maternity stuff.
I am also addicted (!) to ribbon, wrapping paper etc and have about 25 rolls in the basement.
Thanks for this post, I just ordered that book from the library.
Post by sockerheel on Dec 31, 2012 13:09:01 GMT -5
Moving 6 times in 10 years including downsizing twice helps with purging. And my MIL is such a hoarder that all I have to do is think of her and I have no problem throwing stuff away!