Last week I talked about the
52 Week De-Clutter Challenge from the
Organised Housewife and to keep me on track I am sharing my progress on the blog.
Task 1 - Noticeboard, cork board, inspiration board or the fridge. This was a quick and simple challenge as I did the fridge, it’s amazing how many expired vouchers, old school notices and more ends up gathering on the fridge if not checked regularly. Now my fridge has only a calendar and a couple of current school reminders. What a difference it makes.
Although I am also creating a little inspiration board to hang on the wall to remind me how I want my home to look. I created this digital version this week, but am going to print it and set it on a canvas to hang on the wall over the weekend so it's there all the time to keep me on track.
The images represent the feeling I want, a home that is clean, clutter free but still lived in. I don't want clinical, but want a home I can walk into, feel proud of the way it looks, but know that it's a home, not a showcase where people are afraid to get comfy.
Task 2 - Kid’s Artwork, Drawings & Creations. this would have to be the best idea for de-cluttering. My daughter is a prolific creator and our house abounds with drawings, paintings, sketches and handmade creations that have no purpose and we have drawers spilling with her work.
I am still working on this one but I suspect it will be an ongoing task as every time I open a drawer somewhere in the house I find more drawings, colourings, sketches and art that have been forgotten. But now I have a digital frame in the lounge which rotates through all the images created from the scans and it’s quite lovely to see her creativity on show and not jammed in a drawer somewhere forgotten and she can see how her style and creativity has progressed from infancy to now.
In fact I was so impressed by the amount of space we managed to retrieve by clearing out all that clutter that I am expanding the brief and using this same concept in my office and studio. I have shelves full of paperwork, class work and instruction sheets from the vocational course, financial paperwork for the family and the business, plans, documents, paper, paper, paper!!!!
So my goal over the next month is to gather together all the documents and papers in my office, scan them, sort them into labelled archive folders on a hard drive. It’s amazing how much space you reveal and how much more organised your space is when not cluttered by reams of paper. After all, in this age of technology, keeping electronic records makes far more sense.
I am pretty excited about the changes I have been making, in addition to the challenge I started following the example of another blogger who is recording ‘365 things I can live without’ so I have been slowly and ruthlessly throwing away items, at least one every day. It’s quite a cathartic feeling to be removing unused and unwanted clutter from your home.
It always seems a little wrong to give away or throw away items that are perfectly good, just unused, or even worse, items that were a gift from someone. But unfortunately it is that struggle that allowed my home to become so cluttered and disorganised.
Do you have any stories you can share following the De-Clutter challenge or other similar projects, or de-cluttering ideas, share them in comments to help on my road to a cleaner, brighter home.
Images by of Michal Marcol and Gualberto107 on freedigitalphotos.net
2. Chocolate and Coffee. I know, it's two things, but really they are both food so I thought it would be OK to put them together and what women would
EVER give up chocolate by choice. As for coffee, I need caffeine to be
human, especially in the mornings. And in winter, there is nothing that
warms and comforts the body like a hot coffee. 
book or wrote a letter. I am quite a
solitary person too, after 15 years of being on the move with a
military husband it's hard to make connections when you know you will be
moving one in a very short period of time so my biggest and most
enduring connections are sometimes online.
5. My Car.
I know, very ungreen of me, but I hate public transport and the idea of
me on a bike has me and my whole family in whoops, I am about the
biggest klutz in the world and a bike would be the end of me for sure. 
From around 2 years children begin to recognise their own
photograph and reflection as belonging to them, and if your 2 year old is
anything like mine, they very quickly learn their way around our wonderful new
devices. There is no 'Queen of the Selfie' that can out-do a 2 year old with a
smart phone! I wanted to create a craft for littlies that encourages slightly
more permanent things; I love photos, and I wanted to foster an enjoyment of
the old fashioned photograph, among other things. 
The title of my blog says quite a bit about me as a person.
