Know What You Have

How many times have you gone to the store and bought something only to discover when you got back home that you already have one (or more) of the same thing? Not that you can’t use it later, but why keep buying things that you really don’t need?  In recent weeks, I have been working on a total cleaning and organizing of my entire house. I started small with my large bathroom closet. I had several pairs of shoes on the floor in the bottom of this closet that were just sitting there collecting dust. And I mean a lot of dust! I pulled each and every one of those shoes out of there, cleaned them up, then put several pairs (that I haven’t worn, much less even looked at or even knew I had!) for sale on eBay. I sold two pairs of them and made $25. That was a good thing. I also took the two-shelf stand I had in there holding shoes and put it in my bedroom atop of an old sewing machine cabinet, which added to the shelf space I now can use in my bedroom. I keep a lot of books and notebooks in there next to my bed to be used for journaling, reading, reference, taking notes, etc. It has made all those items within easy reach for me whenever I need them and has helped me keep it all organized. I wish I had thought of that sooner!

I have also been working on cleaning and sorting all the boxes of items in my basement. Here’s the deal – we live in a BIG house and have LOTS of stuff! When we came to look at this house 17 years ago as a possible house to buy, the first thing I noticed was that there were 13 closets!! Wow!! The house we were living in at that time had maybe five (if even that), closets. It was an old, three-story house that was built in the early 1900s. Back then, the builders evidently didn’t see a need for many closets in a house, and therefore, a couple of the bedrooms didn’t even have closets! One of them didn’t even have any outlets!! At any rate, the number of closets here was very appealing to me. Unfortunately, I have all of them filled to the brink and it has only aided in allowing me to buy more stuff (that I don’t need). For instance, it is nice to have a large pantry type closet in the hall near my kitchen for extra canned goods and such. But it also allows for me to have way too much stuff that most of the time sits there unused.

Last week, I cleaned out and cleared out enough stuff to take eight boxes and two large garbage bags full of stuff to the Goodwill! That was a huge relief as we dropped them off. I have also cleaned out several more boxes this week and plan on keeping on doing this until all the “stuff” we have in the basement is either donated, stored, or thrown out.

The only thing I keep thinking about this project is, “What am I going to do with all my time when I finish going through all the stuff I have?” I know, I will start working diligently on my new business and have many, many more hours in the day!

My overall point of this post is this – know what you have. Keep things in order and that way, you will always know what you have and won’t buy things you don’t need. Check to see what you have before you go to the store. Use up what you have. Keep a current list of items in each closet (posted on the inside of the door) so you don’t have to sort through it all the time. Check things off as you use them. Keep a running list of items that you really do need and it will save you both time and money.

So far today, I have cleaned off my entire deck for the winter. All the planter boxes are now empty of flowers and stored in the shed for winter. The rugs are rolled and put in the basement for winter storage. Nothing is left to sit and gather snow over the winter. That is a big accomplishment and a good feeling that now I am ready for the snow to fly. Now, if I can just keep up this momentum…

Until next time,

Life is good. Live it well.

Take that First Step!

10-29-10

This has been a very productive week. There is one room in my house that is sort of a “catch-all” and it was in dire need of cleaning. Well, I finally got up the ambition to start cleaning, sorting, and organizing all of the boxes sitting in the room. Wow. What a big task it was to even get started, but I can say without hesitation, that once I started working on it, it was almost addicting for me to go through all the junk that was there. I ended up throwing out things that have just been sitting there for years and also have close to 10 boxes of household items and a couple big garbage bags of clothing to take to the Goodwill. That will be a huge accomplishment in and of itself. It will also be a great tax deduction come tax time.

Sometimes getting a start on a huge project is very daunting and takes some digging deep to get up the ambition to take the first step. That is a common theme in our lives at times, that certain things either look too big or too scary to even venture into. Once a person takes that first step, however, towards doing something, it can make a huge difference in what they accomplish. That first step is sometimes all it takes to get the ball rolling. And just starting small makes a big difference also. If you bite off too much at first, you might give up thinking the project is just too big to handle. But, if you start with that first small step, you might find that each step thereafter is easier and easier.

Taking this mindset in many areas of life is a good thing. Think about how a baby learns to walk – they do it with the first step, then take another, and another, and another. They fall down sometimes, but then get back up and start over. It is never easy to fall down, but it also takes determination and determination to keep going.

I would like to encourage you today to keep on going! Don’t stop if you fall down. Get back up and look ahead to what lies in the future. It can be an exciting journey if you just take the first step!

Until next time,

Life is good. Live it well.

Old Pictures Make Me Realize How Precious Life Is

10-25-10

Well, I am finally back after about a month’s time. Sorry it took me so long to do a follow up. Life has been happening and I have kept pretty busy in spite of the fact that I lost my job as of October 1, 2010. It has given me time to really get going on my sorting and cleaning of all my collections and stuff I have hanging around my house.

Today has been an especially productive day for me and I am so happy about that! I have been sorting out closets and boxes of things that I didn’t even remember I had. I had an assortment of old shoes in the bottom of a big linen closet in my bathroom and sorted those out recently. I found that many of them were almost brand new, so have several of them listed for sale on eBay and am hoping to sell them. It is looking promising so far. I have also sorted through some drawers in an old wash stand/commode that I have in our guest room. I found a few old pictures of a couple of my nephews when they were three months old (born close together) and who are now in their early 20s. One of them is getting married in January, in fact! Pretty funny seeing him as a baby and realizing that the years have flown by so quickly! I also found a picture of my husband’s softball team from his workplace from 1992. Wow – do those guys ever look young!! Fun stuff.

All this sorting has been making me realize all the money that I have spent over the years. A lot of it was pretty unnecessary, but for some reason, I felt it was necessary at the time I purchased most of it. I am still trying to figure out why I bought a lot of the things I did. Hmmm….it is a mystery to me, but it is also helping me realize that I don’t need all that stuff like I used to think I did. Part of it may have been from my childhood when I didn’t have much and once I grew up and had a home of my own (and money of my own) that I could buy pretty much anything I wanted. That seems to be the main reason I have been able to figure out.

At any rate, I am no longer in that mindset that if I see something I want, I need to buy it. I am so much more thoughtful now whenever I go into a store. I really give it a lot of thought whether I really want to spend money on something and if I am going to really use it or if I actually really need it. That has gone a long way to curbing my spending, so that is a good thing for me. It also helps that I did lose my job and we are now living on just my husband’s salary. It seems to put a lot of things into perspective for me.

Well, I will close for today. I hope you are having as great an adventure as I am having in sorting through and cleaning out your house!

Until next time…
Life is good. Live it well.

Life is Good. Live it Well.

09-17-10

Welcome to the first episode of “Living on the Edge with Less” blog! Today is a new chapter in my life and I intend to make my life a lot less cluttered and a lot more enjoyable by writing this blog.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a bona fide collector of stuff. By that, I mean, any kind of stuff. I have many collections that I have accumulated over my nearly 54 years of life on this planet. It all started as I grew up in a large family that did not possess a lot of this world’s goods. I had seven siblings and anything that I could totally call my own, usually had to be purchased with my own money. I did a lot of odd jobs to gain whatever income I could, which didn’t amount to much back in those days. Oh, I did some babysitting for neighbors or family friends, always had the annual $2 I got from my paternal grandmother for a birthday gift, had a job washing dishes at a restaurant down the road from our house in the country, worked as a clerk at a Foto Foto Fun Fun booth (I’ll tell you about that later, maybe…) and various and sundry other insignificant jobs to gain wealth. None of them, mind you, gained me much in the financial department. Lots of experiences, but not much money. I had a lot of responsibility as the oldest daughter in our family of eight kids and with that, came not much in the realm of possessions. Oh sure, I had the mandatory bedroom (that I shared with two sisters) and a bed (which was a mattress on the floor – by choice of one of my sisters and myself). When my parents decided to leave the big city and move to the country to a five-acre plot with a dilapidated old farmhouse on it, they allowed us kids to choose whatever colors we wanted for our bedrooms. I really think that was their way of tricking us into helping redecorate/remodel the old place! Our bedroom was one where old Ferdie (one of the previous homeowners) had supposedly died right in his bed in that very room. That is a story for another time…Anyway, my sister Beth and I chose to paint our room in bright orange and yellow. One door was orange and yellow striped. We also found some awesome wallpaper with big orange and yellow flowers on it. Mind you, this was the 70s and we fit right in with all the groovy things in style back then.

So, you say, what does all of this have to do with living on the edge with less? Well, I tell you all this because I am trying to explain (rationalize maybe?) why I have this strong need to collect stuff. I know it is deeply rooted in how I grew up and how I had to fend for myself, so to speak, when it came to having any worldly possessions to call my own. I remember one summer our family was going to take one of our rare family vacations, which usually was to go see other relatives, and I had saved up $1.75. Yep, a big whopping $1.75 for my very own spending money. I was tickled pink to be so flush with the big bucks. Life was good. I was ready to go. I had visions of spending my money on some wonderful little nugget I found in a chintzy little tourist stop I was sure we were going to be stopping at along the way. I probably bought a little trinket of some sort, but it was sure to be going to find a place in one of my collections. I already had some of those back then, you know. I was the big collector of stuff, even back then.

So, now fast forward to 2010. What collections do I have? Small white pitchers of all shapes and sizes, meat cleavers, antique rug beaters, rolling pins, antique thunder buckets (or slop jars or honey pots, as some people refer to them), antique blue insulators that used to be on top of electric poles. There are so many “collections” that I can hardly begin to remember them all. I also have a huge collection of boxes in my garage and basement that I could not even begin to tell you what they contain. That is pretty sad to say, isn’t it? With all the moves we have made in our 33 years of marriage, this is the biggest house we have ever lived in, so therefore, of course, I have to keep everything. Right? No, I don’t. I need to start getting rid of all my stuff. It has seemingly taken over too much space in my mind and my life. Now that all four kids are grown and living out of the house, it is definitely time to start the process of weeding out and decluttering all the stuff I have accumulated over a good, long life. I swore almost 10 years ago after the very sudden death of my own mother (with my father having died only 10 short months prior to her untimely death), that I would NEVER burden my kids with all my stuff when I died. My siblings and I weeded through all the 50 years of stuff my mom had accumulated and let me tell you, it was NOT a fun task! And it was also very time consuming. So, therefore, let me make this pledge to anyone and everyone who is reading this blog. I am going to start tomorrow decluttering my life and home. It may take me a while, but it is going to happen. I am telling everyone and anyone who cares to listen that my life is going to change drastically. I am determined to have a simpler life and less clutter will be a huge beginning to that end. I really think it will help to declutter my mind also as I embark on this venture.

So, who is going to go on this adventure with me? Please write and let me know if you read this blog and tell me your story. I hope to be an encouragement and also to entertain others as I wade through all the stuff in my life. I’ll keep you all posted as to how it all progresses. I intend to devote (at minimum) one hour a day to start this endeavor. It should be an exciting trip down memory lane for me and, hopefully, a good read for everyone else.
Until next time…
Life is good. Live it well.