On the blog over the last year or two I’ve mentioned my wonderful girlfriend and I’s de-cluttering efforts, where we have gradually been clearing out items. During March we continued to sort through items, make some tough decisions and freeing up yet more space in our home. I won’t lie money is tight, but we enjoy giving items to charity, and didn’t want to sell these items, which were DVDs, clothes, vases, dishes and other items.
Some of you who follow the blog, might think ‘hang on, didn’t you already give DVDs and clothes away recently?’ – the answer is yes, but we have since revisited what remained and decided to go further. There are always tough decisions if clearing out more than a few items, such as my ten year old long winter’s coat, which is in great condition and cost us near to £200. However just because we paid a lot of money for an item, if we don’t use it and don’t plan to, what is the point keeping it?
With regard to clearing out DVDs, we just don’t have the time to watch them, coupled with the fact that there is always new content on Freeview or Netflix to watch, we are focusing on only keeping a small collection of favourites. In my humble opinion the DVD market is going to die, as the tape market died and the vinyl market shrunk.
For example we rent movies online from BlinkBox, not the library now. We have a Netflix subscription for movies and TV shows. Plus we’ve brought a few TV series on iTunes. We basically have too much choice, so why bother keeping a huge collection of DVDs, if there is no time or inclination to watch most of them within a year or two?
In our small kitchen we sorted through a large cupboard at the weekend and gave away dishes and vases. Plus we had an ornamental plate on a kitchen wall, which we gave away. Couple these clear out efforts with a new blind we put up in the kitchen on Saturday and our kitchen is slowly transforming.
So the end result of our March efforts was more available space, but without comprising on quality of life and indeed improving our home environment. I know this blog post isn’t exactly a ‘wow’ article, but our consistent ‘decluttering’ actions have influenced many areas. We’ve saved money, created more floor and cupboard space, made cleaning easier and other benefits all directly or in-directly resulting from decluttering.
My wonderful girlfriend and I, still have a lot of clearing out to do, and there never is enough time, but we make time for it, and the benefits are worth it.
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