My February De-cluttering Challenge

Hello Friends,
I've been out in the sunshine digging over a border this morning, so I thought I'd illustrate today's post with some signs of Spring, rather than pictures of what I'm actually going to write about.....which is clutter!  So here's a lovely early iris to enjoy before I start talking tat.

During February, I challenged myself to a month of MinsGame  The idea is to start on the 1st of the month by de-cluttering 1 item. On the 2nd, it's 2 items, on the 3rd, 3 items, & so on, until the final day of Feb when, after 28 items have been chucked, the challenge is complete. I adapted the rules a little. The rules state that the de-cluttered items must be out of the house by midnight of each day, but this wasn't always practical for me, so I set up a 'De-cluttered Items Zone' on the spare bed & anything that had been officially placed in it, could not be reclaimed. I can report that during February, I shed a total of 406 items. 16 items were listed on ebay, 182 items went in the household recycling, 23 winged their way to the charity shop, 44 were given away, 55 were shredded up for the worm composter (nom nom) & 86 went to landfill. I'd have liked the landfill quota to have been a lot less, but there are materials which cannot be recycled & the only way to get around this is really to think twice about buying such items in the first place. Here's another tiny glimpse of Spring, while loins are being girded to talk rubbish:

Now, I totally understand that other people's clutter is not exactly up there on many reading lists, so if you've about reached your limit, do sign out & go & make a cup of tea or something, because I'm nowhere near done with rubbish yet! What I really hope to convey is just how much I enjoyed doing this challenge. As each day's growing batch of tat was sorted into charity bags, bin, etc, I felt a growing sense of achievement. Just halfway through the month, I noticed how much easier it had become to find things in my desk drawers, without having to move half a dozen inconsequential items each time. I kept a list of everything I de-cluttered. As the list grew, I was amazed at how much real TAT I was finding. I'm not a hoarder. You won't turn on your TV one day & see me on one of those programmes featuring homes so stuffed with horrible crud that the owner has had to resort to living in a square metre of space between the freezer & the half century of yellow newspapers. I like a clean house & I'm quite tidy.....which is why I was surprised to see just how many of my de-cluttered items were not even remotely fit for purpose. I'll just show you our first cheery clump of daffodils, then I'll tell you about the 406 items which were ejected from 'Hagstones' during February:

And here they are: 1 top, 1 money box, 21 magazines, 5 out of date catalogues, 1 make-up bag, 1 manky make-up brush, 1 pair rubbish tweezers (couldn't remove an eyebrow if their survival depended on it....which ultimately, it did), 1 prehistoric herb tea, 1 fridge magnet which wouldn't stick, 2 pairs of slutty tights, 1 hair band which wouldn't go round my head, 1 bra, 1 shrug (neither of them up t'job in the boob department, unfortunately), 1 useless hair styling spray (like spritzing hair with superglue), 1 dried out felt-tip, 3 ornaments, 1 tin, 7 frowsty lavender hearts, 1 (too titchy) washbag, 3 pendants, 1 bookmark, 1 shoddily altered (by me) velvet bag, 2 rusty pencil sharpeners, 1 unidentified piece of wooden dowling, 19 leaflets, 15 broken earrings, 1 badge, 1 scarf, 1 craft knife which didn't cut, 1 ribbon-curling gizmo which didn't curl ribbon, 2 gunky freezer boxes, 1 light-pull, 12 plastic bottles, 1 dry-cleaning bag, 91 photos, 4 news cuttings, 4 books, 1 pair of gloves, 4 old cheque books, 2 broken bird feeders, 1 blue bottle (glass, not dead fly!), 2 items of plastic cutlery, 1 candle with no wick, 7 postcards, 24 packets of seed, 7 empty film cannisters, 1 utterly irrelevant CDrom, 1 ancient concert programme, 54 unnecessary documents, 1 skankrous stained glass window sticker, 1 defunct loyalty card, 1 dried-out Tippex, 6 plastic wallets, 1 box, 1 broken choker, 26 old birthday cards, 1 brooch (never worn), 1 packet reindeer sequins, 1 disgusting foil baking tray, 1 grotty cash bag, 1 strange small plastic duck, 1 glue brush with no bristles, 1 unidentified metal gizmo, 1 business card, a pair of scissors which didn't cut properly, 1 Pritt stick (dessicated), 2 defunct vouchers, 1 craft instruction for something I will quite literally never make, 3 pictures, 4 old gift-tags, 1 motivational quotation, 1 horrid plastic book jacket, 1 pair of gardening gloves (with ONLY ONE THUMB, for heaven's sake!!), 1 joss stick holder which doesn't accommodate any size of joss stick I have ever purchased, 4 coasters, 1 frog game, 3 bottle stoppers, 1 odd length of chain, 1 salad dressing bottle, 1 lid-less mustard pot, 1 lah-di-dah fancypants hairbrush (for which I paid a shocking £18 only to find surprise, surprise, it was no better than my bog standard ordinary one), 1 ancient tea cosy, 4 equally ancient cloths, 1 pill box with a hole in the bottom so all the pills fall out, 1 remote control, 1 cracked spice jar, 1 aerobic step (not a friend to thighs), 1 manky bracelet, 1 non-working watch, 1 colour wheel & 3 letters.

And that, friends, is 406 items of tat de-cluttered by me from the People & Cats Republic during February!! The reason I've itemised everything is to demonstrate how, even as a non-hoarder & organised person, I still had all this stuff cluttering up drawers, cupboards, not to mention my head. So many of these items were broken, out of date or just plain unfit for purpose. I mean, gardening gloves with only one thumb, gizmos that didn't work, odd earrings....so much of this stuff was just rubbish. For those of you who remember The Rise & Fall of Reginald Perrin, I have to say that some of these items put me in mind of the Grot Shop! I found doing this challenge enjoyable & empowering. In fact, now that it's finished, I quite miss it. I'm now turning my attentions to clearing the remaining beds in the garden so that's helping my continuing urge to straighten & simplify. 

I should add that I have been very honourable during the course of this challenge. I have only de-cluttered items belonging to myself or the general household. I have not de-cluttered any of these.......

....and tempting though it was, neither have I binned this..........

........a favourite mouse which some very good friends of ours bought for Albert Whiskers. Needless to say, it's been well & truly ripped open & the stuffing is hanging out, but he really enjoys fetching it out for a game, so I hadn't got the heart to make it Item 407!

So, if you too are getting tired of seeing the same weary old clutter, I can truly recommend doing a month of this challenge. You've seen the tragic list of stuff to which I had inexplicably given house room, what will you find?

Till next time,
C x