Today marks the end of two challenges we set for ourselves for the month of April; The Minimalist Game and Supermarket Free Month. Along with continuing to focus on reducing our waste and renovating a dollshouse for Little Fearse’s birthday, it’s been a big month.
The Minimalist Game became quite challenging towards the end and we still need to get rid of 28 things for Monday and another 13 for Tuesday. I have grand hopes that these things will be removed from Big Poppa’s office because I’m out. I have hunted everywhere! Here are some of the places we further decluttered to get to our total of 465 outgoing items:
- DVD cabinet (this must be the fourth time we’ve been through these and still found more to get rid of)
- Big Poppa’s office (a so-far untapped resource for stuff)
- My jewellery box (again!)
- CDs (for about the third time)
- Clothes (unbelievably we are still getting rid of clothes from our adult wardrobes)
- Books (yes, even books were ruthlessly discarded)
- Furniture
- Toys (although we did have some incoming for Little Fearse’s birthday – not as many as anticipated, our family and friends know us too well!)
- Shoes (even Big Poppa!)
- The shed
- The cupboards in the spare bedroom (wowsers, they just keep filling up)
- The garden (old pots, mostly)
- Old electronics (yay for e-waste!)
- The kitchen (again)
- The linen press
The fabulous thing about this month of purging is that we really started to see our space with re-newed eyes. After finally moving on our beloved but large couch (yes, the one I mentioned here, right at the beginning of our journey) we were able to see that our back room had far more potential than we previously realised. We swapped my beautiful 1920s writing desk with the booksheves and created a whole new reading nook to house an antique coal shoot my Mum’s cousin passed on to us and one of my Mum’s antique library chairs. This also meant that Big Poppa finally got around to staining the coal shoot and it’s ready to go.
Our newly arranged, calm, functional, enjoyable dining room. And you know what else? I went in and took this photo without rearranging a thing. I love that there is so little purposeless clutter these days.
We also rearranged our kitchen to create a more cohesive preparation space and learned that we have an issue with our electrical plugs. This is something we need to get sorted, but with less stuff it just seems so much easier to do these things.
I also mounted a shadow box in Little Fearse’s play area that BP painted two years ago. We started a wall of family photos, something we’d been intending to do since we moved in three years ago.
Removing the stuff has really given us an opportunity to enjoy our home again. Even after a year of purging we still have such a long way to go but it’s beginning to get to the stage where we can see our progress and enjoy the empty space we’re making.
The actual act of physically removing stuff from our home has had an impact on so many areas of our lives – it is easier to invite people over, it is more enjoyable to be in every part of our home and spaces function as they’re intended.
If you haven’t started decluttering – I highly recommend it. Do the minimalist game this month. You won’t regret it!
[Coming up next: Our Supermarket Free month and a series on the dolls house renovation.]
Mama xo
Mama
The Fearse Family 
We have a garage sale coming up in a few weeks so we are in a frenzy of turfing things. I’ve even convinced my 4yo to get rid of toys and books, although I have told him he can use the money to buy more Lego. Lucky the pieces are small 🙂
The thing with Lego is that it lasts forever. We’ve just upgraded from Megablocks to Duplo and everyone in the house is happy with the change. There’s no comparison. Good luck with your garage sale!
Love it!! I’m about to do a similar thing, my May 500 challenge. I’m hoping it will help me keep the house more organised. So a question for you, where is the best place to get rid of soft toys?
Good luck Barbara! I look forward to hearing how you go. When possible I rehome good condition soft toys to charities that actually want them. I also take some of them in to school – so you could check your local school or kinder and see if they are interested?
Congrats on your hard work! It feels so good, doesn’t it? 🙂
Oh yeah! I love seeing what you’ve don at your place – it was very inspiring over the month to have your kitchen pics to go by. There is nothing like the sense of calm when white space starts to open up.
Congratulations! We’re gradually decluttering and are also hitting the point where the differences are obvious. It feels wonderful when you get rid of enough little stuff that some of the big stuff (furniture) that was holding the little stuff can go.
Yes!! Moving the couch on to a new home was the most satisfying thing we’ve done in our whole journey, I think. And that was something we’d been meaning to do since before we started our first BNN year. Procrastination is really the root of all clutter…
I try to stay on top of things so there is no way I could come up with enough items to play the minimalist game but I love how your place looks. Is that an empty shelf I see?
It is!! That’s from my initial book cull. To be honest, though, I have A LOT of books out on loan, so I’ll probably find that fills up quite quickly once they start being returned. I hope I’ll get to the stage where I no longer have enough to get rid of. We’ve been doing this for long enough now that I would have through that would be a much harder challenge than it was. We have managed to heavily slow the in coming stuff, so it should get harder to find useless clutter soon. Thanks for your comment, Lois.
Loved the picture of your dining room – looks cosy but uncluttered! Congrats! : )
Thanks – we are really loving spending time there.