3 months later

Looking at the first post, it's been 3 months and two days since this experience started.

Last week I was back in Portugal for the Easter break and managed to clean up the things I had in my parents house. Half of them were there since I moved to Norway, about 2 years ago, but the rest was there since I moved out... about 5 years ago. Concluding, I threw away 95% of it, recovered 2 hats, a summer skirt and summer trousers and I brought my party pochete and echarpe (the dresses were already here). All the rest is gone. Finally!

Unfortunately I still have work to do in the Summer visit: I did not have time to clean up the things at Filipe's mother house - a lot of CDs and DVDs that we need to sell, some sentimental decorations that we kept when we moved here, and some previous work notes/documents/copies that need to disappear.

The house here still looks good and tidy, but because of the trip, there will be some maintenance work to be done this weekend, from cleaning to re-organising the extra groceries that we brought from home :)

Day 65

The 2 months period of not buying extras (meaning tis, clothes, shoes, accessories, and books) is over and I still haven't bought any of those. I seems I just got used to not buying random stuff, and there isn't actually anything I need now - which is great!

Lately this experience has just been focused on maintaining the house clean and neat and getting rid of the garbage as it gets in the house. But mostly, I think the "not buying more stuff" is being the main help.

The thing that has really failed is the involvement of Filipe in the project. His documents/random papers drawer is still there, as stuffed as in week one. The same with the electronics - I need him to take a look before tossing it away. I'll have to be more assertive during this week and pressure him into solving that soon.

I am trying to give away as gifts some of the books that I don't feel the need to keep, and I'll continue to do that for the this year.

We are now visiting house to move. This extra incentive will probably makes try to go a little bit deeper in the cleaning up strategy :)

Day 56th

Day 56th... Well, it has been a while since this adventure started!

Last week my largest efforts were in the office. Everyday I tried to go through a different folder and clean it from useless things (like conference leaflets), old documents from projects and conferences, and reorganize my scientific papers folders. There is still a few more to clean up!

I am surprise with the fact that my "paper free" office initiative is working so far. I really thought it would be harder... It was tough the first couple of days, but now is just OK. In order to keep track of what I am doing in working hours I started to fill my iCal either with the task for the day or in a "retrospective" way at the end of the day, allocating time to each project/task. It actually looks a lot more organised than my notebook with mixed notes and to do lists.

The whiteboard sticker for the desk is helping a lot with this process. I can just use to quickly note down ideas and random thoughts, and when I like the ideas I just take a picture of it (otherwise it is just wiped).

I think I am going to push my two months without buying "books-toys-clothes-shoes" until the next payday and possible even further. There are a few things I know I will need to buy, and at least one that I want to buy while it is still on sale (a pair of Dr. Martens boots for the winter, the ones I bought so I could avoid to spend that money are not really comfortable and are also too cold for the Norwegian winter...). All the tossing things out made me understand what I really need to buy, but I think I will be OK with waiting until the not so cold weather comes. I am also very very picky with what to buy... and the decision to not buy things in the shops I regularly go to means that I will need to do some research too.

Day 49

The urge to get rid of stuff as definitively calmed down. Nonetheless, I still am freeing my home and office of at least one item per day - even though at the moment it is mostly small stuff (like earrings that I found out that I don't use or need that much, random paper notes that I write, or small items that I find when opening drawers.

I keep a permanent "donation bag" in my closet where I put clothing that for some reason I don't find comfortable anymore or that I am OK without.

Last week I went on holidays and it helped me realise two things:

1. It is a lot easier to pack a bag with my new wardrobe and with the new organisation in the toiletries.

2. Being away from the things helps me getting rid of them in the return.

And confirming this last item, when I returned I placed my worn down CAT boots in the donation bag and tossed a old underwear set in the garbage (although I loved it, the white lace had lost its color in the washing machine).

I have not been very thorough with the first purge though... I still haven't checked the storage rooms properly and I know I have a suitcase and a ironing board to get rid of... I hope that I can do this this week!

I am being able to keep the "not buying extra things" challenge. This month however I bought batteries for my watches on eBay - I have 3 cute watches that just stopped working and I want to fix them so I can include them in the rotary system for accessories.

Speaking of accessories... I managed to donate a few hats as well - the most difficult item for me - but I believe that now I really wear all of the hats I own (even though there are lots of them).

For Easter I will go back to Portugal and I know that a big task awaits there: I still have clothes/shoes/accessories/PhD documents stored in my parents house and I will have to go through all of that (and toss away/donate 99% of it). I think it would be very unlikely that I actually will bring anything with me - except maybe if there are still some hats there! :)

36th day

It has been more than a month since I started the de-cluttering/organizing process. And it is great!

I am now on the second month of not buying toys-books-clothes-shoes-accessories and it has been a lot easier than I was expecting… The main difference I notice now is that I do not spend most of my at home computer time browsing online shops like amazon, book depository, think geek, alpha geek, and a few clothes brands - I spend time doing research on minimalism, simple living, and de-cluttering techniques.

A great day-to-day thing that I still notice every day is how clean and relaxing my mailbox is.. both personal and at work. Archiving or deleting email weekly has done wonders for my peace of mind concerning emails.

The house is definitively more organized, looks 100% tidy 95% of the time, and is also cleaner - somehow, having less things and having them organized and "not on top of other things" as helped a lot with our willingness to clean, and we have been able to maintain our cleaning tasks pretty much up-to-date.

I still have a few big items that I need to get rid of, but have not done it so far because I actually do no know how to do it in Norway - I will have to ask a local. We have an old iron board and also a broken suitcase that do not fit in the regular garbage, so we need to find out where to leave them.

For my things the purge process has been quite easy (apparently I am not very attached to things in general), but the common items and Filipe's things have been more difficult to handle. The drawers with Filipe's stuff are completely fill up with the lost items I found in other places and throughout the house de-cluttering. There are also a bunch of cables and electronics for which I need his opinion on what to do (most are not mine so I really do no know whether they are needed/working or not).

I did not register all the items I got rid of during this month and a few days, but my wardrobe looks quite spacious now, so I would guess I have reduced it by half (probably the same with the shoes as well). I tried to make a list of the things I remembered giving away but I really can not recall them… I am glad they are gone, whatever they were…

I still need to work a it on my office though… I have a lot of things to do at the moment, so I stopped taking the 10 minutes de-clutter break that I was doing in the first 2 weeks. I hope I can do that again soon.

15th to 21st

The last 7 days have had a lot of organising tasks: now that I finally notice a lot more empty space I decided to start to tide up the things around the house. We finally managed to get the medicines box in the bathroom (as a result of me eliminating my jewellery box).

In the kitchen, all my clothes, towels and tea towels are now presentable, having thrown away the all the ones with stains. Today I need to throw away the extra kitchen utensils I packed in the back of the drawer - we only uses one of them: the bottle opener and that will stay.

My wardrobe is now almost done. I believe in the next couple of days I will be able to get rid of the final items I really don't appreciate that much (related to color/style). In the end of this winter I will also throw away my beloved CAT boots that really don't look good anymore.

I have been getting rid of some accessories, and I must say that the hats (my passion) have been the hardest thing to let go off... But the truth is that I was not wearing the ones I put away. I'm still keeping around 30 hats anyway... But I love them, and I'm also using them as decoration in the room :)

I have been getting rid of electronics boxes as well. I took photos of the imei's and/or other important info and simply got rid of the boxes. Filipe still has some in the house, but hopefully this week he will be able to get them back to his workplace, where the belong.

As I mentioned in the last post, this whole process has been resulting in more free time somehow, which allowed us to have a very organised household. We have now for two consecutive weeks managed to effortlessly take our packed lunches to work and try new recipes weekly due to our meal planning.

I think that in the next few days I will try to focus more on our living room again, going through our drawers once more and making the second purge there. Another plan for the weekend is probably covering the "extra" things in our kitchen. We are renting our house and when we moved in we kept all the kitchen stuff that was there from before since we had none of our own. At the moment, I believe only the plates and glasses have not been replaced, so I will try to pack the house's mugs and cups and see if we can leave without them.

I might also try to digitalise some of the documents we have so I don't need to keep a hard copy - this will surely save a lot of space, but will imply organising our cloud storage.

11th to 14th

The purging spree is slowing down: I am steadily getting rid of at least 2 items everyday, but choosing them from any room in the house.

There are a few items I have already identified as "dispensable", but I am slowly getting rid of them in a daily basis… We have been producing huge amounts of garbage (even though we are donating most of the things, clothes mainly) and it is nice not to have to put dow three bags of garbage everyday :)

I have now reached another phase, after getting rid of almost everything that we didn't/couldn't use: I started to ask the question: "do I like this item?". A few items are leaving the house based on that criteria already.

The digital decluttering is probably the thing that is relaxing me the most. I cleaned up my personal and work mail boxes, then I just archived all items except the ones that still required an answer. I am archiving all mail at the beginning of each week. This means that my inbox is always clean and with just a few emails - very quiet. I have also removed all social network sound notifications of my phone. Even though I do this often, I had them on during the christmas holiday. I removed all of the "one-time" or "non-useful" apps of the phone as well, and this included Facebook (I only kept the messages app because the local friends group uses it a lot to schedule events and make invitations).

I have found that I do have a lot more free time now already. The housekeeping tasks are all up-to-date, and every things looks tidy and organized, which relaxes me a lot. The same happens at work: tidy desk (also related with my attempt of not using paper as much as possible), my little "tea and cookies" corner always ready, and two plants decorating it.

Now I need to start planning on what to do with the extra time. It is more challenging than it might seem.