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.

Days 9 & 10

The initial round is completed - I have gone through all the drawers, shelves, cabinets, and boxes. I lost count of the number of garbage/recycling bags we took away during the past 10 days, and I have no idea of how many clothe items I was able to get rid of other than "too many". My wardrobe, although with a lot more space, still looks full -  I continue to own a lot more clothes than what would be strictly "necessary" to get by, but I know I use frequently the items that are there.

This phase of the challenge gets more tricky: getting rid of the items I do wear. Nonetheless, I have been able to get rid of 2 to 3 items per day including wardrobe and others. My strategy was to start to eliminate things that can be seen as "duplicates" and keep the one I prefer. Following this strategy I got rid of a few more pairs of identical tights, a wool jumper, a fleece jumper, a pijama, a long winter coat, and a few makeup items.

At the moment, considering that the time I now need to go through the things is quite less, I feel the need to broaden the strategy from the decluttering to the organising as well (and here is where my threshold OCD behaviours start to show). My plan for the weekend, besides going through the storage rooms in the house, includes re-organizing all the books in my bookshelves by color. I think it will look great! Looking forward for that!

By the way, there are somethings that really make me happy and provide me a sense of calm, relaxation, and overall wellness - books are in this category and as such they are not considered "things" for this challenge (at least most of them).

Days 5, 6, 7 & 8

By now I have finished the first round to the whole house (with he exception of the travel stuff box that I will check this evening).

After this, there is only the storage rooms left - a job for the weekend.

We managed to get rid of all the bags of garbage and clothes we wanted to get rid of, we cleaned up the christmas tree and decorations during the weekend, we went shopping for groceries and the house is getting back on track with the cleaning tasks.

I have now started to get rid of some duplicates and of random things I don't actually need. I was able to get rid of 6 more clothing items (the other pair of dark jeans I owned, I summer blouse I loved but was always itchy on my neck, a vet my mother offered me and I never wear, an extra "home jumper", one of my favourite star wars t-shirt that was very very used, a lovely top with an awful color. Some other items were discarded after I used them as well (such as a white t-shirt I noticed was a bit tainted form the washing machine).

I got rid of all the old batteries in the house and I gathered the old cell phones and charges to dismiss in the weekend.

In the kitchen I got rid of some stained cloths and tea towels, as well as the extra thermos that we don't use and are just taking place in the cabinet.

I also started to separate a few items that are "gifts-to-be: mainly books and notebooks that are nice but we do not intend to read (or re-read) and use.

I already been noticing a difference in the time I need to get ready in the mornings: the clothed I own are now all visible and it is a lot easier to pick and outfit (specially because most things are starting to fit together). Also, the organisation and clean up in my jewellery box now allows me to actually find the earrings I'm looking for and to go back to wear earrings/necklaces/bracelets/rings in a daily basis since I can actually find them!

So far so good!

PS: Also, the "not buying anything" part is going quite well... I'm so focused on getting rid of stuff that I do not have time to browse the internet for shopping :)

Day 3 & 4

The initial purge continues... I think I managed to to the hard purge on the third day: the paper junk drawers in the living room. So many folders, so many documents, so many papers, and receipts, and travel tickets, old work documents, and papers that had one been important... Managed to get rid of most of it, just kept the ones that had any use or relevance (taxes purposes, work contract, rental agreement, car documents, etc.). There is still one "unpaged" drawer where I put all of Filipe's documents and folders so that he can deal with his part of it soon (hopefully).

Didn't manage to get that much extra space here anyway, and this concerns me: I know that there are a couple of stuff there that I will give a way (for instance all the cute post-it notes I decided to buy a couple of months ago, but ended up not using them because the glue is not as nice as the original post-its - this will be on its way to my friend's 4 year-old next week). But the rest... I will offer it... but until I find a suitable occasion/person, I'll have to keep them...

Did the first round on half of the kitchen as well. Decided to put away the items that came with the house since in the meantime we got our own (couple of knives, a drainer, tongs, etc.). I "hid" a few duplicates (serving spoon, fork, and spatula, bottle opener and a peeler) in the end of the drawer to check whether we actually need them - I'll wait until next week before getting rid of them.

I managed to clear the top of my upper cabinets in the kitchen just by reorganising the cabinets (and getting rid of a few lost items like unused jars) and it looks a lot cleaner. Also, I decided that the bets solution for the plant I wanted for my office was to re-locate one of my house plants - perfect solution, specially because the Norwegian winter is being hard on this plant and it gets more light in my office than it did in my kitchen.

I started to do something interesting without much effort - I always try to get rid of one item every time I leave a room... so far it's working. There is really a lot of small things laying around that we somehow manage not to see anymore (for instance, the bathroom empty air freshener on top of the cabinet).

Today I was also able to return two folders, one notebook and a corrector pen to the storage room: all new and standing in my office just in case... (and the storage room is just two floors down...)

First 2 days

I must say that the "overall" approach in this first stage has resulted in a LOT of garbage and "give away" bags... I decided to start working on the wardrobe and different cabinets one by one. For now I am just getting rid of the obvious: things that are broken/not working/old and things I don't use for a long long time and/or are beyond the expiration date.

And taking a look at my bathroom cabinets, the expired items were too many: a full bag of cosmetics, make up, an sun screen that had passed the expiration date...

In the shoe storage I managed to get rid of 6 pairs of unwanted things.

In the gym clothes drawer I was able to reduce it to half and now I can actually see all the clothes I have.

I also managed to re-organize the "normal clothes" by separating the summer-only items from the rest: they are not that many, but now I don't need to go through them everyday while trying to find the warmer clothes.

Considering the amount of "warm socks" my relatives decided to offer me this christmas I almost completely replaced my sock drawer contents, and kept only the summer/gym socks and thighs, all the rest went away.

The result of all of this is 4 full bags of things to give away and 2/3 bags of garbage. We do seem to nurture the garbage we own...

A "new" strategy I am also using is to get rid of things as I use them, especially regarding clothe items: some I am not sure whether I do like them or not, so if they are OK I just keep them in the closet until the next time i use them (if I don't use them within 3 months, they will be gone).

I think that after I finish doing this first round to the whole house, the next step will actually be the "true decluttering" - I will then start to reduce the duplicates and start asking whether I do need the items I own (even if I do use them regularly). It is probably better/easier to go slow. I have no problem with getting rid of the old/not used/broken items (I was just too lazy to do it in a regular basis), but I believe that getting rid of the "perfectly fine" items is going to be more challenging.

Minimalist or OCD

Between the realisation that around 100 christmas presents for 6 adults are definitively ridiculous and the experience of moving to another country (and then moving twice after being there, with a third moving event coming soon), I decided to start to intentionally reduce the amount of stuff I/we own and have in our house. Also, this resolution will probably help me to reduce my "almost OCD"  (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) crisis where I have to (very quickly and grumpy) organize, tidy and clean everything in my way (mostly hiding everything in drawers that we never open again).
I'll hope this blog will help me to keep track (and motivated) for the whole experience.

I am starting by getting rid of a few items per day as I notice them. Simultaneously, I am testing my wardrobe and tossing or giving away the items I feel uncomfortable with - underwear is the most representative group, but the t-shirts/old leggings converted into pyjamas are also an important group.

I will try not to buy any new clothes/shoes for at least one month, but I'll try to extend it afterwards. If I do buy a new item in the second month I decided I will have to get rid of two more items in my wardrobe. Also, the difficult part will be not to buy any books and/or toys in the next two months (or until I finish reading the unread book in my shelf).

Since the last weekend I have already gotten rid of a few items, tossing them away before returning to Norway from my Holiday break in Portugal (an old t-shirt that I used as pyjama and around 6 items of underwear). The big task was to clean up my email inboxes (both work and personal) which took a couple of hours. I manage to delete or archive emails that went back to 2006/2007, unsubscribed to all the sales, marketing, and useless newsletters that were cluttering my inbox.

The main goal for me with this decluttering spree is essentially to simplify and to be able to focus on the things I want to do. I need a sense of stability and organisation in the environment around me, maybe more than the average person, considering how stress and anxious I get when the things around me go beyond my threshold of neatness.