Category Archives: Small-House Living

My Decluttering Weak Area

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

I’ve done really well at keeping the clutter from coming back since our big downsizing, except for one area: my sewing habit.

I actually have two designated sewing spots in my house: one upstairs and one downstairs. I’m beginning to realize that amount of stuff in each area is expanding. I just don’t seem to be able to pass up great deals on fabric, buttons, zippers, etc. when I go to garage sales, estate sales, and destashing sales (where quilters sell fabric from their stash that they don’t need anymore.)

Not that any of these things take up a lot of room on their own, but collectively, well……let’s just say my plastic storage boxes are full up and I find myself thinking about buying more of them. But I won’t let myself go there. I’m going to have to do some destashing of my own and reduce the amount of stuff I’m hanging on to in hopes of using it for future projects.

The challenge for people who sew is that we love fabric and sewing supplies, and can easily think of many different ways to use these things. We just don’t have enough time. Or, as I saw recently on Pinterest: “I have so much fabric because I shop a lot faster than I can sew.”

An Overfilled Closet = Danger

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

So I let my closet get a little out of control. It’s not a very big closet, so I should know not to put too much in it. But it’s so easy to just push things to one side when you add a new purchase or two.

Do that a few times over the course of a long, cold winter, in a house that apparently doesn’t have enough insulation in the walls, and you discover this:

Mold….yuck!


Fortunately, after a little mold remediation, my closet is now clean, and I’ve learned a lesson: don’t keep more clothes than your closet should hold! Now I get to pay the dry cleaners to de-funk one of my favorite dresses, the one that was up against the wall.

Using a Windfall Wisely

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

What can you do with a windfall of cash that won’t fill your house back up with clutter? (Or more clutter, if you haven’t gone through all of your belongings in years.)

First off is the prudent choice: invest it, in the stock market, or in a CD (I just got one with a 3% interest rate). Someday you may need that cash and you’ll be glad you set it aside.

If you really want to have fun with the money now, however, you won’t want to put it away for a rainy day. But if you spend it on big-ticket items, you’ll just add to the clutter in your house. What to do? Why not spend it on experiences?

You can use it to travel, to go to concerts and shows, or to go on vacation. Make memories with it; take people you love with you (your treat) and make even more memories with it.

Perhaps you aren’t able to travel or go too many places right now. Why not share some of your windfall with a favorite child in your life, to pay for music lessons or summer camp? What about sending a larger-than-usual donation to your favorite charity?

If none of those ideas thrills you, and you really want a new fridge, or a new sofa, or some other “thing,” go for it. There’s nothing wrong with that. BUT, don’t keep the old one. I know it’s tempting to keep that old fridge in the garage in case you have a party and need extra fridge space for pop and beer. It’s only a little challenging to lug that old sofa down to the basement in case you need extra seating down there (and if you do, you’re never going to bring it back up—things get heavier when you lug them upstairs). But once you start keeping things you don’t really need, you’re back on the road to an overstuffed house.

Instead, give your still-usable “old” item to a local charity; Habitat for Humanity’s Re-stores are great places to donate appliances that are still useful, and some also take furniture. You can also put your item out in front of your house with a very reasonable price taped to it. Post it on Craig’s List on a day when you’re going to be home. Whatever you do with it, don’t let that “old” item stay in the house, or you will begin a bad habit: allowing clutter to re-establish itself in your home.

Don’t Let Your Windfall Turn into Clutter

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

As a writer, I’m not paid weekly; I’m paid monthly. Every month, it’s a different amount, depending on my book sales. Once in a while, there’s a surge of sales, and I’m paid a lot more than usual.

That’s exciting, but it’s also dangerous, because it’s very tempting to take that money and buy new clothes, new bedding, new furniture….what I want to buy usually depends on the size of the windfall.

The true danger lies in the fact that I know how easily I fall into the trap of wanting more things, which is how I got into the overcluttered life in the first place. Not only was I good at accumulating stuff, but when I got new stuff, I often kept the old stuff because “We paid a lot for this,” or “Someone might need this.” That kind of thinking is one reason that I ended up with a big house full of stuff plus two full storage units. If you tend to let cash burn a hole in your pocket, you may be prone to accumulating stuff, too.

Even if you’re paid weekly, you can still end up with a windfall in the form of an annual bonus or a much-larger-than-expected tax refund. Then there are the larger sums: your Uncle Ernie leaves you $5,000 after he dies, or you finally win the state lottery’s $25,000 prize.

I immediately put extra cash into a savings account so I don’t spend it impulsively. But that doesn’t mean my brain has stopped thinking of ways to spend it. However, my family and I worked very, very hard to get rid of all our excess possessions, and we enjoy living in our small, clean, uncluttered house now. We do not want to go back to living with too much stuff. Sometimes it occurs to me that we could buy a house that’s a little bigger than what we have now, to accommodate our growing family of grandchildren when they visit. But I fear that a bigger house would just mean more places to accumulate things.

So what to do with the windfall? How can it benefit us without overloading us with the wonderful things it might buy? I’ll share some ideas next time.