Monthly Archives: December 2019

The Best Week of the Year to Declutter Your Home

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,

Today begins the best week of the year to declutter your home.

Why? First, because we’re just recovering from Christmas. The decorations take up space and make the house look more cluttered than ever. The Christmas tree is looking a bit disheveled and will soon need to be taken down. And most of us received more gifts than we really need. As a result, we’re starting to crave some open space and less clutter.

Then there’s the fact that a new year is just around the corner. New Year’s Day always promises new beginnings, and leads us to make new personal goals. The mood everywhere is one of renewal. What a perfect time to get a handle on the extra stuff that has parked itself in all the nooks and crannies of your home.

Take that energy and use it this week to:

  • Find duplicates of things you own that really don’t need to be duplicated (gifts, calendars, hair brushes, throws, pillows, tableware, you name it) and donate them, or pitch them if they’re not nice enough to donate.
  • Go through your closet, find anything you haven’t worn in the past year and move it along.
  • Clean out the interior and trunk of your car; those fast-food wrappers are evidence of this past year’s failed attempts at healthier living, and the empty water bottles are just begging to be recycled.
  • Look in each room of your house to see if there’s a piece of furniture or a decorative item (or two) that no longer serves a purpose or makes you happy. If so, remove it and donate it.

By doing this, you’ll start the New Year with a clean slate, and a feeling of being somewhat lighter (even if you ate way too many cookies last week.)

Happy New Year!

Joyful Decluttering

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , , ,

Ever since I was a preteen who watched the afternoon movie on television most weekdays after school, I’ve been a fan of old movies. My husband shares this interest. As a result, we collected dozens of old movies on videocassette over the years.

When our VCR died a while back, we sadly realized that our collection had just become obsolete, because it’s very hard to find a new VCR. We began collecting old movies on DVD, but kept the videos for sentimental reasons, I suppose.

Then I read that the county nursing home is looking for donations for their “canteen,” where residents can select items for personal use, like sample bottles of shampoo, or nail polish, and also entertainment items like videotapes and DVDs. This was the incentive we needed to let go of all those tapes.

So I made a list of all of them, so we’ll know what to buy in DVD format, packed up the tapes (three bags’ worth) and dropped them off for the nursing home residents. Most of the movies we donated are of similar vintage to the residents (1930s-1950s). I also included several more recent DVDs of which we had doubles; we bought the first season of a series, then later bought the whole series, so we didn’t need to keep that first season.

It felt good to give those movies to people who will hopefully get some enjoyment out of them, and now we have more room on the shelves. Win, win!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

The Furniture Hunt Begins

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

I know I said I wouldn’t start looking for smaller scale furniture right away, but apparently, I lied. Today, I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a peek into one furniture store that I have to drive past to get groceries.

Oh my gosh. Last time, I noted that there are tons of small sofas for sale online. Well, there were none in this store. Only ginormous sofas. Even the loveseats were big. And I saw a sectional sofa that was so long in both directions that it would not fit in our living room unless we let it completely block the front door.

I can see this is going to be harder than I thought. Many of the small sofas I saw online were not of the highest quality. They often call them apartment sofas, I suppose because people use them to fit into apartments, which tend to be on the small side. But such people often move frequently so they aren’t looking for quality, long-lasting furniture. However, I am.

With the Christmas tree up, we’re more cramped in the living room than usual. This has only increased my motivation to find good-quality, small-scale furniture for our living room. However, I suspect this might take a while.

Small-Scale Furniture

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Small-House Living Tagged , , , ,

In Secrets of Small-House Living, I share information about how to furnish a small house. Among other ideas, you should have furniture that is scaled for small rooms.

Since we lived in very large houses for many years, all of our furniture was appropriately sized (i.e. large) for those houses. When we got here, we had to give up a lot of furniture, but kept our very favorite pieces, which were still too large for our new, small home.

Being sentimental, and not being made of money, we chose to keep what we had instead of buying new, smaller furniture. For eight years, we’ve been living with our old furniture. But I’m getting tired of feeling cramped, and we need more seating for visitors, like our rapidly growing grandchildren. So I’m starting to look at new furniture.

We still love what we have. I’m thinking maybe we could make a rec room area in our basement and use it there. My husband isn’t so sure. I’m not even sure. The only thing I’ve learned so far is that modern furniture is more streamlined than what we have, and it’s become a lot easier to find sofas that are less than 75” wide, which is good for a small living room.

With the holidays looming, I probably won’t do any more furniture shopping until January. Stay tuned!