Obsolete

I am rapidly approaching the big five-oh. 

While it is obvious that I won´t get below morbid obesity by then, what I can do for myself is getting rid of those possessions of mine that no longer fit in with my lifestyle. 

Of course, I don´t have fifty years´worth of stuff around any more, as I have been decluttering with every move and several times in the last years, too. But I do have stuff I kept for almost forty of my fifty years that has strictly no relevance for my daily life today. 

So does DH.

Yesterday, we went for the vinyl rack. You know, every vinyl record ever acquired by both of us. Given that we were both voracious consumers of all things music, it was quite a sizable collection.

The kicker was that the last functioning record player in our household had broken down and was discarded.... six years ago. Well, it had actually broken more than ten years ago (ahem). 

We don´t intend to buy another record player, as we have our favourite music on CD (with few exceptions). 

So, the records were just taking up space. 

We don´t need them to remember the music we liked before the arrival of the CD. And after that, we both bought just CDs and no more vinyl records. We could both date the point when we got the first CD player from the dates of publication of our records. And, while these records had been well-loved when we first got them, there were plenty we would never buy again or even listen to today, even if we had a player available. 

So, we parted ways. 

And there´s another empty shelf in the living room.

If I were ever to replace my IKEA shelves with something else, that means three feet less of necessary shelf length to account for. 

And those feet add up. 

Removing all the things that are obsolete removes a lot of the clutter we have. 

Which reminds me that I should take a look at my tape collection, too, even if I still own a cassette deck.  The ones I would not listen to any more, and the self-recorded ones (does anyone remember sitting in front of the radio with one finger on the "rec" button to catch your favorite songs?) where I have no idea what is on them are natural candidates for eviction. Which means one or two drawers are going to be liberated soon. 

I don´t need the actual tapes and records for the memories to remain. And the space is something I can always use. 

Julia

Making room for living

As our new easy chairs have arrived today, the weekend turned into one big decluttering and furniture-shuffling exercise. Part of my IKEA shelves were scrapped, instead we put DH´s massive bookcase in that place. The closed parts of the shelves that had to go fit exactly into what were the still exposed shelves of the other ones, which means that we have now a closed cupboard instead of open shelving mixed with closed parts. 

The most important result is that there are barely any horizontal spaces left that would allow to put things upon them. Of course, a lot of what I thought was visual interest in the room has gone, too. 

But, what visual interest really meant was tchotchkes , bric-a-brac and family pictures. 

What is really amazing is how much calmer the room looks without all that stuff. A few choice pieces have gone on the still-open shelves on the third wall, and the rest is either inside the closed cupboards or in the trash can. 

In order to make room for the new arrivals, we also tossed the remaining IKEA easy chair and DH´s big dark couch, which means that we now have mostly uniformly colored wood and, after all is said and done, seating for a maximum of six people (we kept the danish design chair and my Grandfather´s easy chair). Which is quite a step forward from the ten sitting places we used to have and leaves plenty of open space between the seating arrangements, especially since we picked modern chairs that are looking a lot lighter and less massive than the old couch. 

Once again, taking things away has been the way to creating a better feeling for that room. 

In retrospect, we should have arranged things differently from the start when DH moved in with me. The big furniture pieces he brought plus the ones I already had were just too much stuff in too little space. 

And we used to make things worse by adding stuff instead of subtracting it. 

Case in point: the old VCR I still kept, plus about three feet of videotapes on a shelf. We haven´t watched any video tapes for many years- the device wasn´t even plugged in any more. The DVD player on top of it was what we used if we wanted more movie entertainment than 50 cable channels could offer at all. 

So, we decided that we didn´t need the VCR and tapes any more. If we ever wanted to own one of the movies again, they are all available on disc. Somehow, I am rather certain these discs will never enter our flat. 

And I cleared out all and sundry of my pocketbooks that I could reacquire on my e-book-reader if I wanted to. 

Having to pull out the complete stuff in the closed shelf compartments anyway, I still found plenty of things I decided not to put back, which meant freeing up several of those compartments completely. 

The chests of drawers had been the target of a decluttering session several days ago already, which included plenty of cables and chargers for gizmos I don´t even own any more. 

Lo and behold, even DH decided, when he saw the purge taking effect on the look of the room, to go through his own stuff and let go of his old "lava lamp" and a cheap imitation "petroleum" lamp whose wiring was faulty and which we had kept on top of one of the shelves for decoration. 

The astonishing part, for me, is that there was still so much stuff around even though I had been decluttering fiercely two years ago, finishing with the conviction that this was the lowest I would go with my stuff.

Looks like I was wrong.

And the side of the room where we didn´t yet change anything looks decidedly cluttered now compared to the other half. The culprits are mainly the decorations. Perhaps we´ll get around to repainting the room this summer. I know already that not all of the pictures and wallhangers will be replaced afterwards. 

There still is plenty of work to do, but right now, I just enjoy my "new" living room. 

Julia

Sometimes it pays to wait

When I acquired my tablet computer, I was also looking for the peripherals to go with it, namely, a wireless keyboard that would allow me to work on text documents without having to use that popup keyboard. Back then, I declined, as those things were out-rage-ous-ly expensive at the time. Yesterday, we went grocery shopping and they had, on sale, just such a keyboard, except not of the brand with fruit on it, at a quarter of what the other one would have cost me. The great thing being that it is small enough to fit into the sleeve I carry my tablet in, so, no extra protection needed. And, as I am typing this, I find I´m able to type as fast as with an ordinary keyboard.

As, even with a touchpen, that popup keyboard makes writing a somewhat tedious process, I have always disliked using it. Typing with my fingers was out of the question, as those are a bit too big for the minuscule "keys" on that thing, and besides, not being able to use both hands typing is a bit, er, demanding if you are used to doing so. 

So, the new keyboard removes one thing that has been nagging me for awhile, it takes up very little room, doesn´t require extra storing space, and I did not have to buy any extras to go with it, as I already owned a USB loader that I can use with this, too. 

Which means that it fits perfectly with my idea of minimalism. Useful, space-saving, low-price. 

And I am glad that I waited and did not shill out for one of the more expensive ones at once. 

What was also on the list yesterday was the acquisition of new plates for my car. 

Yes, again. After having both our license plates stolen last year, we had always parked our car in a closed, guarded parking lot, thinking that nothing would happen to it there. Well, last Friday we came to our car, and the back license plate had disappeared. 

Which meant another afternoon at the police station and, yesterday because there wasn´t time to do it earlier, another afternoon at the municipal car license office. And of course, having to spend the money  to pay for the new plates. Saying the whole thing was a major annoyance doesn´t cover it. 

Weight-wise, I have another uptick, to 82.6 kilograms. Maybe because I ate some salted nuts yesterday, maybe because I am retaining water (temperatures are going up again after a few days of cooler  weather). In any case, I will have to be watchful so things stop at that and I can continue to lose. 

Two steps forward, one step back. This plateau is, to date, the hardest to break. But break it I will. 

T minus 35 weeks for my dream goal. Thirteen kilograms to go. There still is a chance to make it in time. 

BMI 25. Being normal-weighted. I haven´t been there since I was twenty. I want to get back there by the time I´m fifty. Thirty years of overweight and obesity are enough. 

Julia

Almost normal

Except for cable TV, all amenities of life have by now been restored to us. The experience of having been a whole week off the grid is beginning to recede in the background among the usual business of the day. 

Still, there are things that have changed. 

Just this morning, DH and I both stated that we are glad to be rid of the junk in the cellar. 

Mind you, with almost every piece that went down there, there had been an argument, either between the item's owner and the other person in the household, or between the owner and himself or herself. 

The argument went like- we don't use this any more-but it's still good for using- it clutters up our flat-but in another flat we might use it again- it's not worth keeping. - but if we ever wanted to use one again we'd have to pay for a new one - I ought to toss this in the trash -but if you did you might regret it-   and so on. 

Deliberations, in all of those cases, regularly resulted in a hung jury and the defendant in question being confined to the cellar. Which meant that decluttering our flat turned into cluttering up our cellar.

When the flood hit us, that cellar was actually so full of stuff that most of it was, for all practical purposes, inaccessible unless one were to climb over other things and dig down to the crate in question, if one knew at all which one it was. 

Apart that, it always had high moisture, and very poor lighting, which perhaps made it even easier to bury our junk there, sometimes half hoping for humidity to make it tossable, as in "this is too far damaged to save it, now we may throw it away". 

The Greek have that tale of Hercules being required to unmuck the stables of King Augias that had not been cleaned in ages. He did it by making the waters of a river flow through there. Our personal Augias stable also has had a river run through it, and now that the clutter has gone for good I am still stuck wondering why the heck I did keep most of it. As I mentioned, a lot of the things we tossed might have been cleaned and dried, but when thinking of the work that would have meant, and the fact that we would have to find a home for every single piece we rescued from the debris upstairs in our flat, there was suddenly no discussion at all about tossing things which we had almost quarreled about when it came to taking them out of our flat. Not even the fact that some of those things cannot be replaced did stop us from throwing them out. Actually, it was the realization that we might go to the pain of cleaning those things, only to box them up again and put them into the cellar, never to be thought of again until the next inundation. 

If I neither love nor use it, it is clutter. 

The very fact that I did not want these things around any more and banished them to the cellar amply proved that I neither loved nor used them, in spite of what I made myself believe about how valuable they were. The things I really value have never been inside that cellar. 

The knowledge that it is no longer feasible to stash stuff that is too much for our flat in the cellar actually helps declutter in even another way. I know now that bringing any new item into our flat means having to make room for it, and that any item that was in the way would have to be tossed at once, so, even before bringing in the new item I must realize that it will probably cost me, not only what the price tag says, but perhaps also another piece of my possessions that would have to be thrown away to make room for it. 

Considering that, it suddenly becomes easy to leave things at the store. 

There may even be a second round of decluttering coming on at our flat, because there are still plenty of candidates for inspection which, in the past, escaped being banished to the cellar only because there was still closet or cupboard space they could be put away in. 

Even if I have a space to keep it in, it may be clutter. 

And I do not forcibly have to hang on to every piece of crockery or flatware I ever bought. 

It has taken me many years to arrive at that conclusion. 

But the feeling of peace and accomplishment after getting rid of all that stuff in the cellar tells me it might be very much worth my while to put it in practice. 

Julia

The fruits of uncluttering

This weekend was, once more, wardrobe rollover time, meaning that my summer clothes went into storage until next spring, and the warm sweaters and fake fur hats and the other cold-season stuff went to take their places in the readily accessible part of my wardrobe.
In years past, before my weight loss, that used to mean wrestling with at least four of those zippered things I use to store my out-of-season clothes in, digging through them, and spending at least two hours doing so.
Not so this year. Having gotten rid of every piece that had become too big for me when I packed the winter stuff away last spring, I just took out the remaining stash, replaced the summer t-shirts and such where the sweaters had been, and put the (one) zippered box needed for that back on top of my closet. Total time spent- ten minutes. Then I took my warm jackets out and the thin ones back in (five minutes) and I was done. There wasn´t any garment I needed to toss, and the fact that my formerly overcrowded closet rods hold, by now, only the clothes that right now fit me also means that the things I store on hangers don´t have to go into storage any more- I just push the out-of-season stuff to the less accessible side of the closet.
What used to be an endeavour taking up the better part of an afternoon has thus become a fifteen-minute project.
What´s more, having gotten through one winter already on what I have in my wardrobe right now, I know that I won´t have to buy anything new this winter. Which suits me just fine.
There must be some "up" side to that weight plateau and slight regain, mustn´t there?


Julia

Diminishing surfaces

The decluttering of our apartment has, by now, progressed to a point where all of our existing possessions do have a place to put them away. Which, in turn, means that we are now officially progressing to the next stage of minimalization: finding out which items are, even if they have a home, superfluous, or even attracting clutter accumulations.
The fastest way to pick out those is doing a complete tidy-up and then just wait and see which places are the first to become untidy again.
As it is, anything that has a horizontal surface is a possible clutter magnet. It is too easy sometimes to just drop something off, and leave it there.
One of the usual suspects for that was right in our entrance area. We have had two big chests there, with flat lids that seem to attract bags, newpapers, and such like magic.   The problem being that the bags were supposed to go inside the bigger one, while the smaller of the two serves as a tool chest and is only opened when there´s something to do that requires using a tool, which isn´t that often as a hammer and a screwdriver for everyday jobs are kept outside, and the power drill doesn´t see much use outside of a move in progress.
So, after emptying some bookshelves of their literary payload, I took a measuring tape to that tool chest, and voila- it now fits nicely under one of those bookshelves that I rearranged a bit for the purpose ( thumbs up to those incredibly versatile IKEA shelves).
The other chest now has a big basket on top that serves as a receptacle for bags and such, keeping them contained instead of flying all over the place.
Removing the tool chest also opened up the entrance optically, making it look a lot less cluttered.
Again, having a thing less makes for a better look. The tool chest fits under that bookshelf completely, and as it´s from the same wood as the shelf, blends in to appear almost a part of the shelf.
One other thing I have done is make an agreement with DH to make the living room a paper free zone. That means that no letters, advertising flyers, newspapers and such may be put on the horizontal surfaces of the living room, with the exception of one leather-bound file folder I keep next to the computer that holds bills and such pending their being taken care of. Anything else has to be removed. As DH is such a keeper when it comes to paper stuff, what we agreed on is that the new place for his paper stuff will be the former guest room which now has become his home office and den. Perhaps having to pick it up and take it there might even make him throw some of it out at once....
In any case, I am right now enjoying my paperless living room. And eyeing the tchotchkes on the shelves for potential evacuation candidates.
The less I have to take care of, the better I feel. And it´s rubbing off on DH, too.


Julia

Library declutter: done

I took advantage of the fact that DH´s out of town over the weekend today and pulled out all of my pocket books that were slumbering in the closed parts of my living room shelves, spreading them out on the floor and then sorting them by author.
And then... I grabbed one of those reusable shopping totes I have that can carry a whole week´s groceries... and proceeded to fill it.
First thing I noticed- I still had "double" editions around. Books I liked and which I had bought both in their original language and in translation. As I don´t really need two of the same book, I ditched the ones that were in worse shape, keeping the better ones..
Next to go: those books that are nowadays available for free via Kindle or Project Gutenberg. I am reading quite a lot of classics, but those well-thumbed Penguin editions of everything from Dickens to Bronte really don´t have to clog up my shelves any more.
Next on the list: the unfinished projects department. Some books look better in the store than when you try to read them. In the past, I used to keep these and add them to my (mental) reading list, as if they´d be less uninteresting at some nebulous point in the future. Meantimes, they, too, took up plenty of space.
Lastly, some books that had turned out to be trash, or that had disintegrated so badly that keeping them simply wasn´t worth it. 
Several hours later (I admit to browsing through the books and getting caught up in some of them) I had not one, but two of those totes full of paper to take to recycling, and enough space liberated in my bookcase that I could put two shelves´ worth of pocket books that used to be out on display into the closed compartments.

The shelves that used to house those will, for the time being, be left empty.
And my living room is one step closer to the minimalist look I want to achieve.



Julia

The measure of enough

For the longest time, whenever I was bored, I took my boredom shopping. The glitter and sounds of the mall distracted me from feeling lonely. A chat with the salespeople or the person at the cash register made up for the human contacts I did not have otherwise. In a period of my life that preceded a rather nasty separation, hanging out at the mall saved me from having to go home and face the situation there.
Being there, of course, meant acquiring something. Sometimes it meant acquiring anything at all, just for the small surge of feeling good that came with each purchase. And most of the time, it meant acquiring something that I actually did not need.
I liked to drink flavoured teas of different kinds, so I was fair game for each and any offer of tea drinking paraphernalia. Cups, teapots, tea sieves, lacquered containers to put the tea in.
Or clothes- in the search for something that would make me look slim, or at least less fat, no week passed without my dragging home a new garment.
Or books. If I didn´t find anything else to buy, I could always drop by the bookstore.
Slowly but inexorably my flat filled with stuff. Soon, there was more stuff than I could put away. So, I bought shelves, boxes, and others of those products that promise order out of chaos.
But these, too, filled up, and still there was stuff streaming in at a steady rate.
What with stashing stuff in those boxes, just finding any particular item was beginning to be a chore. Having to triple-stack my books in overflowing shelves meant looking for a particular tome became a veritable treasure hunt.
I had reached the point where it was all too often more convenient to purchase another edition of the same item than to hunt up the one I knew I had somewhere.
I had also reached the point where the mere thought of my stuff was sufficient to freak me out. 

And then I separated from my partner of ten years for reasons of terminal incompatibility. That also meant that I had to (gasp) move to a smaller flat.
I spent several weeks culling the contents of, at least, my bookshelves. As for the household goods, it was supposed to be an amicable separation, so I let the ex have a rather generous pick of the contents of the kitchen cupboards. It was, actually, not even making a sizable dent into what I had.
To tell the truth, neither any of the books I tossed, nor any of the plates and cutlery, or kitchen electronics, nor any of the furniture I also let him take away, has ever been missed by me.
The same thing goes for the at least twenty flower pots, the trampoline, or the second set of stereo equipment.
For weeks in advance of the move, the trashcans at our place were overflowing. I also made several runs to the dump, every time dropping off a full carload of stuff.

When I moved the rest of my possessions to my new, smaller flat, I had for the first time in ages whittled them down to a point where I could, if I set up shelves in every room, really put everything *away*, meaning that there wasn´t anything left that did not have a home of its own.
The purging of several boxes full of tchotchkes that had been bought during the former relationship also made the place look tidier and more roomy.

I wish I could say it stayed that way. Alas, my shopping habits had not changed. Slowly, new pieces crept in, again filling the place up. And then there was DH, who moved into my flat with all the trappings of a second household in his wake.
So, I had to make room for these, too. Which meant that all of a sudden, the place was more stuffed than it had ever been, with half of it (or almost) not even mine to decide about whether it should remain....
The feeling of overwhelm that came with that was all too familiar.

Only now, I had that memory of better days when I could and did keep the place tidy.
And I remembered what I had to do to get to that place: toss the excess.
What kept me from starting at once was the belief that I had already let go of everything tossable.

I started out slowly, with the double sets of kitchen stuff. I had to take DH into the boat, of course, and together we picked out the things we had two of and tossed the lesser quality ones. Some gadgets I wasn´t ready to altogether part with, plus some sets of china that held too many memories of the ex, were boxed up in the cellar. (I know that´s only prolonging the inevitable, but at least they were out of my kitchen).

Strangely, or rather, to-be-expectedly, the mess did still not grow smaller. Until the day I reinforced my decluttering with a shopping embargo.
Because what I had done was make some room, and then proceed to fill it up again with new stuff. Only when I stopped shopping for new stuff, did I really start to generate free space in our flat.
I also started to question my conviction that I had nothing more to toss.
Life changes. So do the things we need for our present lifestyle.
I used to serve food on large-diameter plates. I found out that was one of the reasons I got fat. The large-diameter plates went out of use, and on to the trashcan.
I used to own at least ten different sets of trekking poles because I needed them to walk. I can walk without crutches again, so I kept just two sets of poles for DH and myself, should we ever want to go trekking.
I used to wear plenty of make-up to bolster my then-fragile self esteem. I ceased doing so when I started to lose that excess weight. Today, I keep one set of makeup for the case of there being some event to attend, the rest has been tossed.
My teapot collection, while it´s still rather sizeable, has been freed from all the specimens that would drip, or be too difficult to handle when full.. And it´s been quite a while since I last bought a new one. 
Of the china we use now, there are no more than two sets of each- not six because there might be visitors.

The best thing about all this is that there is finally free space in our flat, and it´s growing along with our decluttering.
By now, whenever I consider a purchase, I decide up front where the thing will go. If there´s no space left, something else would have to go- which quite often leads to the discovery that I am not ready to give up the old piece for the new, which means the new thing stays unbought.
I found out that works best with shoes and handbags...:).

I intend to continue on my decluttering mission, to the point where the things I do not need which are inside my household will be outside my household.
Sometimes, that requires brutal honesty with oneself . It requires exposing the fantasy selves whose equipment is stashed away under the bed or inside the wardrobe. It requires admitting to myself which hobbies, or activities, that I once thought would be great to do, have either never become a part of my life, or I stopped doing them many years ago. It requires admitting to myself that I have grown older. It requires admitting to myself which clothes, or accessories, are just a bit too... youthful for someone approaching middle age (I refuse to admit I might be there already).
And it requires facing all of those insecurities that I tried to hide behind all this stuff.

Because stuff may cover up insecurity on the outside. But it never cures it.

So, I keep on decluttering.And finding room to live the life I want, without being dragged down by the stuff of the past.


Julia

That´s...bananas!

Just when I thought I´d seen it all....
but what I saw in a shop yesterday about topped it all...
The common banana, in its usual state, is in my experience a soft, easily edible food item. It comes with its own biodegradable wrapper.You can bite into it, cut it, or squash it with a fork. No special tools are required to enjoy one.
Or so I believed. Until I set eyes on...the Banana Cutter.
Yup, you heard me right. The thing looks like a pair of scissors with seven sets of blades, and it promises to deliver six perfectly spaced slices of banana with one cut. The price for this special tool? Twice what they demanded for a set of four kitchen knives that sat right next to it on the shelf.
So they expected patrons to buy something that
-had absolutely no practical value,
-could do only one job, and that probably not even well,
-would need a complicated cleanup after use,
-and was, as a unitasker, ridiculously overpriced when compared to the simple-to-clean, more versatile, and absolutely-sufficient-for-the-job-of-turning-bananas-into-slices humble knife next to it.

What struck me was that there were already some empty spaces on that shelf.

There really were people who were ready to spend their money on something like that. Enough money to pay for a full meal in a restaurant, and more than the average worker hereabouts earns in a full hour of work. Which means that whoever buys one of these is ready and willing to sacrifice more than a full hour of their life for the sake of acquiring such a useless piece of clutter.

I just doubt that they make that realization.
Calculating how long you need to work for the price of something you want to buy, a la "Your money or your life", is something that doesn´t come naturally. But when you look at it this way, it sometimes gets easier to avoid things that are destined to be clutter form the start.


Julia

Sunny prospects

It´s getting warm this weekend, and the forecast says it will be up to 30 degrees centigrade on Sunday. Quite a temperature jump again- it seems that weather changes are becoming ever more dramatic in the last years.
So, that means wearing my summer clothes again.
I had, some weeks ago, taken out  a blazer-and-vest set I had which had become a bit wide plus two blouses. I thought they weren´t that much too big for me yet. Alas, DH must have misunderstood something there, because he took them (without my noticing it) and dropped them off at the Red Cross.
I was a bit miffed at first when I found out, but that didn´t bring them back. And, to be honest, they were too wide, as were those jackets in the same size I decluttered on Sunday. The thing being, not that they were oversized, but that they were cut so that the wide part was up front, i.e. the big belly and chest area, and that´s exactly where I have lost most of my extra pounds. Back fat never was a problem. So, when trying the ones I still had here, I found out that the front part, after condensing those parts of me, was lying flat, and the extra fabric was sticking out in the rear like a duck´s tail most unbecomingly. As I do no longer have the big butt that used to need that much room in a garment, either, and the hemline of those jackets, too, was drooping down from back to front, accentuating that invisible duck tail, I actually wasn´t very likely to wear them any more.
Which meant they would have been wardrobe clutter.
When I thought about why I had wanted to keep them at all, what I found out was that the only reason was that I wanted the illusion of having a wider choice of jackets to wear than what I really have and can wear today.
Today, after decluttering them, that part of my wardrobe has become quite empty-looking, as has the trouser compartment. Mind you, I still have enough clothes to get by on. I bought, in addition to the four dark jackets I take turns wearing professionally, that pink blazer I mentioned, which goes with all my pants and many of my blouses, and I have found that I can get by nicely on a maximum of four pairs of trousers. Buying more than that would be a waste because I am, after all, still recondensing. As for blouses, there are still plenty. As the fabric of blouses drapes better than that of jackets, and I can wear the hem of a too-wide blouse tucked inside my jeans, I am still keeping the ones that are just one or two sizes bigger than what I´d need today.
My present wardrobe, thus, has become quite minimalist.
Which has made me realize how much I have been overbuying in clothes when I was fat.
I was always hoping to find clothes that would make me look slim again.  So, I kept buying. To no avail, of course. At a BMI 42 the hope for looking slimmer would have meant acquiring a cloaking device, not a cloak or jacket.
Today, I don´t need that any more. And I don´t have to resort to fashion (or fatshion) any more to feel myself to be presentable.
And that too, is relieving.
So, I know what my new style will be- basic pants and jackets over blouses, with a coat on top, and of course my beloved trademark leather vests.
And that is enough.
As for having gotten rid of the too-big clothes, maybe someone else will get some use out of them. I am determined this time never to need those sizes again.

Which brings me to the biggest fear I have when it comes to quitting smoking again- that I might, then, not be able to stop myself from overeating.
This weekend, we´ll be visiting MIL, and that means no smoking during the day because I don´t want to upset her over my relapse. That just might be a chance to stop for good, except I don´t want to be climbing the walls with withdrawal symptoms, either. Or eat up everything in her fridge to stop the cravings...

OTOH, if it´s true what I read about the worst withdrawal symptoms being gone after 72 hours, I could be out of them by Monday. If I were to quit today.
Last time, I had been using nicotine patches, but I don´t want to do that this time because if I quit, I want to be out of the withdrawal time as fast as possible. It ought to be easier, this time, too, because I did, back then, smoke some 50 cigarettes a day, and had been for over twenty years, and today, I´m keeping below 20 and have changed to reduced-nicotine ones a week ago.

Sitting on the fence not daring to jump. All the time knowing that the money that goes to cigarettes now would buy me some addition to my shrunk wardrobe every month.

I feel like a coward.


Julia

Analogue tweets

...what I heard this noon when taking a stroll along a park around here. A flock of sparrows had been settling on the tips of one of the big- presently leafless- trees there, twittering their little hearts out at the hint of spring in the air. It was that kind of live, unfiltered experience you´ll never get from any computer program.
Being on a spending fast makes me a lot more conscious of such things than I used to be.
It´s all too easy to reduce one´s life to the hunt for more and more stuff, just paying attention to the next sale or the next item you want to have, or even to the work you have to do in order get the money to purchase the next whatever-it-is.
I have been so guilty of that one. There was a time in my life when whole seasons could pass without my paying attention to nature, apart from changing my wardrobe to match the changing temperatures, and I would have to look at a calendar to tell which season it was.
I spent my time at the office, and when I wasn´t there, I was shopping. When I decided what to do with a day off, it was always just the decision where I would go to shop on that day, or if I should stay home inside instead.. I have been, in that time, living near some spectacular sightseeing places I have never visited. What I knew instead was where to find the best bookstores, or where to shop for shoes or handbags.
Actually, I dreaded those days off  because I didn´t know what to do with myself if I neither worked nor shopped. Where I work, I can, if I chose, take thirty days in a year off from work. They call that a holiday. Guess what, for at least ten years I forfeited those days off, preferring to keep working. To me, taking time off work was a sign of weakness. I thought only people who weren´t good and satisfied at their job took time off it, while I should be able to just keep on working at it indefinitely.
You can guess where that mindset took me. One day, my body simply gave out, and instead of taking my days off, I found myself on sick leave for several months in a row. What with medical copays and doctor´s orders to rest, going shopping was suddenly out of the question. Instead, I was more or less confined to a flat chock full of stuff I had dragged home, to the point of being completely cluttered. The only escapes were the regular visits to the doctor´s office, or short forays to the mall for the barest necessities like food and TP.
It was during one of those trips that I did, for the first time since I had moved into that city, hear a bird singing. I stood there, looking up and realizing that I was standing next to an enclosed park with trees, bushes, and flowers, and that the sky was blue, and it was summer. That day marked the point where I started to get better. I wasn´t allowed back to work for awhile yet, but I did make use of the free time I had by starting to tidy up and declutter my flat. As that was a first for me and I was living in a flat twice the size of what I have now, it wasn´t that much stuff that got weeded out at first, but it was a beginning. And it helped me when I finally decided to downsize to the flat I live in today.
The what-to-do-with-a-day-off problem has been hanging on a bit longer. Part of it was that mindset of my Granny´s, who was all her life extremely frugal and a firm believer that it was frivolous to leave the house if one didn´t have something serious to do outside of it, with sightseeing, museum visits, or vacations in general being classified as frivolous pursuits. Shopping, on the other hand, was a legitimate reason to leave the house. So, whenever I felt I had to go out of the house, I went shopping. I never even considered going out in my free time for any other reasons.
When I first fell in love with my now DH, that was actually a sore point between us. He would ask me what I wanted to do on the weekend, and I would say "go to .... and shop for...". DH, now, hates shopping. Even if it´s him who needs something, like a new pair of trousers, or shoes, getting him to shop is a bit like getting him to have a tooth pulled (just kidding, when I am shopping for clothes he´s a paragon of patience :)). Thus, the limited range of my suggestions wasn´t satisfying him at all. He wanted to go sightseeing, visit new places, see historical buildings, in short, to do things that definitely did not involve shopping and did not have, by the standards I had been brought up to, any redeeming value at all. There were some weekends where we almost ended up having a tiff when we were driving to a city and instead of hitting the shopping center of it he´d steer me to the next monument, or church, or castle, while I was all the time seething at being kept from taking at least a teensy look at the shops. Still, slowly, I found myself enjoying those excursions. I found out that I loved to discover new places, that being able to see a  gothic cathedral in real life was better than seeing its photograph in a book.
And, after a while, I discovered that those experiences were making me a lot more happy than if I had spent the day shopping.
That discovery, for me, was the start of my personal road to minimalism.
Collecting memories instead of collecting stuff. Doing instead of buying something.
It´s quite sad that I had to learn that first.
But now that I have learnt it, I won´t allow myself to forget it again.


Julia

Customs clutter

At the house I grew up in, every day had a fixed rhythm that revolved around eating. Breakfst, lunch, as the day´s main meal, with some kind of dessert as a follow-up, afternoon coffee with some cake or cookies, dinner which meant bread, cheese, sausages, and the occasional salad. Like clockwork, these were eaten daily, always at the same time, and, of course, with the prerequisite utensils.
Breakfast meant egg cups and a salt shaker, plus, for the coffee, a sugar-bowl and creamer set to match the china being used. Dessert meant a set of glass bowls to serve the desserts in. Coffee time meant another sugar-bowl-and-creamer set, plus a cake plate, and dinner time meant yet another set of dishes, plus- you guessed it- another sugar bowl.
Can you tell there was more than one perfectionist roaming that house?
When I started buying my own china and glassware, it felt quite natural to me that the sets had to be complete, meaning they had to contain those sugar bowls and creamers, too.
For those china sets that did not come with their own ones, I bought some stainless steel sets.
In the end, I had about ten sets in total, plus another that DH brought into the household.
I was, thus, well-equipped for any coffee table or dinner table to be set in a visitor-worthy fashion.
But-
we never have visitors. At all.
And while I use milk in my coffee, neither of us ever uses real sugar. And for the milk, I prefer using one of the neutral containers that closes tightly and saves having to fill, refill and clean up several different creamers a day.
Which leaves those pretty creamers that match my china, largely unused, and the sugar bowls completely so.
Most of them, by now, live in the cellar, to the exception of some that are doing duty as little vases.
Now I don´t think that our coffee table, should I choose to set one, is any less civilized than what I grew up with. It´s just that we don´t need to keep things on hand because custom says  we should have them. If we never use them, they are clutter.
Have you ever gone on ebay to look for replacement pieces for a china set? I did recently, and what surprised me most about what was offered there was the sheer number of...egg cups and sugar bowls. Ordinary plates or cups were a lot more rarely offered, which has led me to conclude that I am, obviously, not the only one who owns an unused stash of egg cups and sugar bowls.
And I am certain that there is plenty  of that kind of clutter in other households, too, the kind that is created by wanting to have all of the paraphernalia to recreate the customs of our childhoods, even though our lifestyles, today, are radically different.
Another place I can see that is the linen closet. My grandmother owned plenty of real linen sheets and pillowcases, which were ironed, folded up, and lined up nicely in her immaculate linen closet (she stopped short of tying ribbons around them, however). Using them meant having to re-iron and re-fold them, which meant having to employ a laundry service because you had to use an ironing machine, because a hand-held iron simply wouldn´t straighten the fiber enough.
Some of those linens have ended up in my household. The only thing I ever used one of them for was to cover up furniture when painting the ceiling. Otherwise, they are simply too impractical to use. I very much prefer my jersey fitted sheets, thank you, that I can, after laudering them, roll up and put into a zippered container, which will of course never look as great as my grandma´s linen closet in all its glory, but it works for me and my lifestyle.
So, the most important thing to declutter in that context is expectations and outdated customs. Our lives are, and will continue to be, radically different from those of, say, our grandparents. Keeping the paraphernalia for long-outdated customs around even though we will never use them is just cluttering up our living space- and our vision of what we want our lives to be like.



Julia

The sum of little things

Buying just one thing at a dime-and-dollar store. Eating just one piece of candy. Bringing home just one item.
For most of us, these would be filed under "small indulgences". The things we do "because we deserve it". The things that "cost just a little bit".
But these are also the things that get us into trouble, if repeated more than rarely. For my money, it makes no difference if I spend one dollar ten times, or spend ten dollars at once. For my weight, there´s in the long run no difference between a once-a-day-one-piece chocolate habit or eating a whole bar once a week. For the fight against clutter, there´s no difference between bringing home one small item at a time daily or bringing home seven once a week.
Still, the threshold to cross before doing something that is against our better interests is a lot lower when we perceive the transgression as a small one. And it gets even lower when it´s coupled with a feeling of entitlement.
Which is exactly what a lot of stores prey on. One of the most dangerous shopping traps for me, in the past, was a chain of stores that, originally, sold just freshly-roasted coffee. And then the owners had the idea of including other merchandise, namely, household stuff. They started selling coffee drinking paraphernalia first, as in coffee machines and cups, and graduated to garments, tools, kitchen stuff  and decorative items. The kicker being that they have a different set of merchandise every week, so, there is the added pressure on the customer because the item may be out of stock the next time they come by.
I used to drop by there every week, not for coffee, but for those pretty things they had besides coffee. Most of the time, I came back with something that, the day before, I didn´t even know existed. so, definitely not something off any long-time wish list. And those somethings added up, financially as well as clutter-wise.
Had I wished so, I might have gotten myself a complete set of table decorations every year for Easter or Christmas, or a new set of garden tools every spring, never mind that last year´s ones were still good and stored away somewhere.
The realization that there was a regular return of themes in their merchandise helped me to see the most recent set of merchandise as just another variation on a theme they had had already, and, if I had bought the items the first time they came around, I didn´t need another edition just because this time they were yellow and the first time they had been red.
What also helped me was adding up the total cost of those small indulgences and measuring it against the cost of those items on my all-time wish list that I had always put on the back burner because they were so expensive. Turned out that, if I had restrained myself from grabbing the small stuff, there might have been enough money saved to go for some of the big-ticket items.
Which is why I have stopped indulging myself with little things. They usually end up cluttering my flat anyway, the pleasure to be had from them is mostly short-lived, and buying them keeps me from achieving the bigger goals I have for my flat and my lifestyle. I can appreciate that something looks pretty, but I don´t have to buy it to enjoy it, especially not if I already own something to do that item´s job.
The number of those items that see regular use is rather small, anyway. So, I still look at their merchandise when passing that particular shop, but I rarely even enter to see what they have inside, and even more rarely do I buy something. Actually, I only buy something there if it is something I have had on my wish list for a while. The last thing I bought from there was a pair of chef´s pincers for turning around bacon when frying it. That was something I had seen in a cookware shop and refrained from buying at the time because they were pretty expensive, so, when I saw a similar item at a highly reduced price at the coffee sellers´, I took it home and am using it daily when preparing our bacon-and-eggs breakfast.
Then again, in my book, something that sees daily use is not exactly an indulgence, even if I could get around using a different instrument for the job ( I used to turn the bacon with a fork).
But the number of things I would use daily is small when compared to that of things I used to bring home just because they were pretty.
Knowing the difference keeps a lot of clutter out of my home and a lot of cash in my pocket.


Julia

Floral decorations, minimalist model

The big family celebration I attended this week was, of course, the occasion for giving plenty of flowers to the person being celebrated, so, at the day´s end, there were more than a dozen big floral arrangements standing in my relatives´ living room, made from beautiful flowers and some of them so full that it was difficult to find a vase big enough to hold them.
Apart from the fact that the recipient rightly pointed out that she´d rather have had one bouquet at a time for a longer period of time, instead of having the room full of flowers for a week or so and then nothing, what struck me when looking at this abundance was that the sheer amount of flowers did actually make less of an impact than a single bouquet, and that the most visually interesting arrangements, to me, were those that showcased just a few exquisite blooms, while the ones that were made from many flowers were, in comparison, looking a lot less interesting.
It´s a mistake I used to make with the floral arrangements at home, too. I used to have several silk flower bouquets that were filling their respective containers to the limit. When I started to minimalize my decor, these went out and weren´t replaced.
What I did wrong when making them was thinking that I had to have a lot of flowers for a bouquet, when really the sheer mass of blooms would be looking so cluttered that the beauty of the individual flower had no chance at all to be seen and appreciated.
Once again, it´s the question of enough versus too much.
So, when I had the chance of visiting a shop close to where my relatives live that has the most stunningly lifelike  silk flowers, I decided to try a different approach this time. No more than three of the same kind, and some greenery or branches for a background. It´s not Ikebana minimalist, but the resulting arrangements look a lot better than what I used to have. And they sure brighten up our apartment in this dreary weather.
The best thing about those flowers is that they will, being made of silk, last a long time, so the investment I made when buying them is also sustainable. Real flowers are beautiful, too, but for decorating my home I prefer silk flowers- they don´t spoil, need no care except dusting from time to time, and, considering the high prices of real flowers, give you a lot more mileage for your bucks than the real ones.
And I don´t think I´ll tire of the new arrangements the way I had been visually tired by the old ones.


Julia

Gifted necessities

One of the reasons why I hated having to make up a Christmas wish list every year as a child was that not only did my parents insist on me making up one, they were also fundamentally opposed to giving anything as a gift for Christmas that was even remotely useful or practical. To be fair, the things I needed, I got, but not for Christmas. As if wishing for a warm coat, or even some college textbooks, were an obscenity, while wishing for some utterly useless stuff  like another plush teddy wasn´t.
But, for many people besides my parents, Christmas gifts are not supposed to be sensible or practical, just pretty, or cute, or surprising. Picking out something that the recipient really needs and will use seems so- un-romantic by comparison.
What that means is that most of these pretty, cute and surprising things are clutter as soon as they enter the house.
Even worse is the "but there must be presents or it ain´t Christmas"-mindset that leads the giver to spend hard-earned money on -or even go into debt for- things that the recipient neither needs nor wants.
Economically, in that case you give away something of no value to the recipient and get back something of no value to you, meaning that you just sold the family finances short by the price of two pieces of clutter.

In my own family, I don´t ever want such things to happen.
The premise is simple: I do not ever want to give or receive a present just so that a present is given, which means that yes, Christmas with no presents at all would be perfectly fine with me.
On the other hand, to me, it is perfectly acceptable to pick out something you need and can use and chose that to be your Christmas wish.
So, for our grown-up Christmas, we will perhaps get some items we can use and put them benath the tree,or rather, in front of it  but we won´t take home any additional clutter.

Looking at those wish-inducing catalogues that make letterboxes overflow in December, what I have realized this year is that they are marketing a lot of things as "special Christmas sets" that are packaged to look most impressive under a tree (think ten colored-enamel matching pots of which, at most, four will see regular use, or that twenty-knife block for someone whose most-used cooking utensil is a can opener). Such things give the impression of being practical and useful, but they are also a form of clutter if the recipient doesn´t  need or use them. 
The positive thing about this is that by applying the rule of necessity to any offer in those catalogues, I have, once more, reminded myself that our household is, by now, so well-equipped that we really need, at this point in time, nothing new in the way of kitchen utensils or such, and very little in the way of anything else, and that, if I disengage the purchases from the holidays, I may even profit from some hefty after-holiday discounts on the things my family really needs. And that is better than having to wrap or unwrap them in time for Christmas.


Julia

Wants vs. needs

I just dropped off my car at the repair shop for the biannual checkup that is mandatory hereabouts. There are also some minor repairs that must be done before I get that sticker on the license plate, and the repair guy told me I´d get the car back tomorrow at the earliest because they will have to procure some replacement parts first- "we don´t keep all of the parts for the older models in stock any more".
What that tells you is that I don´t drive the most recent model. But, I have wheels. And they are paid for.

Which is more than a lot of people can claim.

It never ceases to amaze me when I see those big, latest-model, expensive new cars, and behind the steering wheel, there´s some waif of a twenty-year-old girl, or a male of the same age with heavy tattoos on his arms, dressed, invariably, in clothes with visible brand names on them, and holding the latest model smart phone. Now I know one shouldn´t judge a book by its cover, but most of those young people don´t look as if they were earning as much in a year as those cars cost. So, they are most likely paying through the nose for a car loan on an asset that has, just by being driven off the dealer´s lot, lost some ten to twenty percent of its monetary value on the day they bought it. Those same young people are patronising electronics stores, clothes stores, and they don´t hesitate for a moment to spend twenty bucks at a fast-food restaurant instead of cooking two or three home-cooked meals off the same amount. There´s a reason why someone dubbed the sixteen-to-forty-year olds the "advertising relevant target group".
In our consumerist society, a lot of people have forgotten- or worse, never learned- the difference between something you want and something you need. Even kindergarteners clamor for the most recent brand name dolls or clothes, and brand name logos on jeans or sneakers appear sometimes to be more important to the teenaged wearers than the garments themselves.
What these things create for the owners is an external semblance of wealth.
The story behind the scenes, most of the time, is a different one.
Consumer debt has been steadily on the rise for several decades, and the number of people who reach the point of having to file for bankruptcy before they reach the age of thirty along with it.
And then, when it´s too late, they are forced to learn and apply the difference between a want and a need.

Because most of those consumerist goodies are just wants.
Someone defined "needs" as "food, clothes, transportation, and shelter". While I agree with that definition in general, it doesn´t cut it when trying to determine what to cut out of a too-tight budget.

Food is a need. Eating out in a restaurant is a want.
Clothes are a need. Brand name tagged jeans are a want.
Transportation is a need. A brand-new Porsche is a want.
Shelter is a need. A five-bedroom-condo for two people is a want.
Being reachable by phone may be a need. The most recent I-Phone (TM)  is a want.

Come to think of it, most of the things we acquire are, strictly speaking, wants. If we could live without it, it is expendable.
Now if you can afford the price for a want, there´s nothing wrong with indulging. But by that I mean, can you pay for it in cash? Or do you have to put it on your credit card? Because then you really can´t afford it. You are instead betting on your future self to be able to afford it, whatever it is, plus cumulative interest, which can make those credit card purchases a lot more expensive than the price tag on the item.
That alone should be reason enough to revive that strange ancient tradition of saving up to buy something, because that will keep your future self from cussing you for being fool enough to pick up such a load of debt. Besides, you might even find you don´t want the item any more after a while. Guess what, it´s cheaper to find out the interest in a thing was short-lived before you have dragged it home to clutter up your habitation and mess up your credit card balance.

And the needs? If you remove the wants from the budget, you might just find you have enough to get on by. At the very least, you´ll have a bit more breathing space.

And always remember that the very best things in life mostly come without a price tag.



Julia

Rounding up the strays

One of the things I find when decluttering is that some categories of things have been distributed all through the flat. Take stationery- I had writing utensils and paper stashed away in four different locations, which led to several unnecessary double purchases because I couldn´t find the ballpoint pens or envelopes or whatever when I needed them, so I just went and bought another pack.
Only now have I managed to put all of my stationery in one place, and I think I won´t have to buy any for quite a while.
Another culprit, it turned out, was candles. After yesterday´s candle closet cleanup, I had that nagging feeling of having missed something. As indeed I had. Hidden away in the corridor cupboard was one decorative (read: too-pretty-to-burn) Easter candle, plus a plastic bag full of even more votive candles. Putting them into the candle closet made, for one, sure that I will have that Easter candle out next year instead of letting it languish in that closet, and the votives (which I had plain forgotten about) have a chance of getting lit, too.
And the corridor closet now holds only the two handmade pottery table sets I own which, by now, only come out for special occasions, plus some thermos coffee pots of DH´s, and two extra packs of paper napkins courtesy of IKEA. As for the latter, a napkin roundup is already planned. As far as I remember there are three places where I have some of those.I´ll see how much space I need for them.

Not having a designated space for things is obviously another big cause of clutter. Some of those hidden stashes came about when I had to do a quick tidying up, and did not have a designated place to put things. To get them out of the way, I just put them into the closest available space, which made the outward room look tidy and turned the inside of the closets into a mess.
If I want to avoid a repetition of that situation, every thing I own must have a place to keep it in.
Things for which I have no place where they can live are automatically clutter. So are things stashed away in unlikely places, because it´s not likely their existence will be remembered when such an item is needed.
Just the act of keeping track of things distributed all over the place creates stress.
Reducing the amount of items to keep track of, aka decluttering, plus finding permanent homes for the items I keep, reduces my general stress level considerably.
Rounding up the strays from different categories has allowed me to become conscious of things I tend to overbuy, and even get rid of some unnecessary extras, thus creating even more space to give a permanent home to the things I keep.
And then all I have to do is lead the strays back to their homes whenever I find them out of their places, and enjoy my uncluttered flat.


Julia

Fairly different eyes

For several days, the way home from work has been leading me through the booths of the local Christmas fair. Smells of food, mulled wine and incense cones wafting across the streets, and the glitter of Christmas decorations, plus plenty of christmas-y decorations for sale.
Before I started condensing myself and my possessions, it would have been an occasion to shop for candles, figurines, and other tchotchkes, and for stuffing my face with fat-dripping deep-fried donuts and sugary stuff.
After over a year of becoming more mindful, I find myself not even wanting to go at all those goodies any more.
Knowing that I have plenty of decorations at home, and remembering how many I did already declutter because they simply weren´t used any more, helps, of course.
So does the realization that most of the things sold at fairs are coming at decidedly un-fair prices.
If, for example, I wanted to eat a baguette with garlic butter on top, at the fair, that would set me back by about four bucks, and I would have to eat it standing up, in the cold. The same kind of baguette bought frozen from the grocery store and prepared and eaten sitting down  in the warmth of my home would cost me one buck, ok, plus electricity for the oven, but I could, at least, be certain everything is hygienic.
The prices for decorations, too, are sky-high when buying them at those pretty-looking booths. So, if I should want another polystone reindeer, I could get one at any chain store for half of what I´d pay at the fair, too.
And candles? I have, at home, an extensive collection of brass candle holders, and also several boxes full of candles I bought and didn´t use up in the past years. So, this year, I am determined to use up the candles I already have before shelling out my hard-earned moolah for yet another one. Doing so saves me money and also space, because once the candles will be gone, I do not intend to hoard as many again, especially not those big, tall ones that take ages to burn down, so, even if I burn a candle every night until Christmas, I will not even be able to use them up. I still have several partly burned down ones that are on the list of things to go, and by actually lighting them I´ll get more joy out of them than by having them take up a whole cupboard.
Provided, that is, that I won´t overstock on them again, but right now, seeing how long I have had them, that´s not likely.
In the meantime, I am enjoying the new-found spaces in my living room, and the realization that not keeping too many things in stock allows me to liberate space that can be used better.
Not indulging in those small things will allow me to go at bigger remodeling projects. After all, if I added up what I have already decluttered in terms of excess decorations, the money I spent on those would probably buy a new couch or flatscreen TV had I but kept it.
So, this year, I´ll keep my purse shut when walking through the fair, and my mind on those things that somehow keep getting postponed because the money that could have been used for them was frittered away on clutter.
Perhaps I´ll even set up a piggy bank. Not pigging out on deep-fried anythings any more and putting the savings to feeding it instead might fill it up rather fast. And then I can go at my next habitation improvement projects.


Julia

It takes just two- or one

As we were spending the weekend at home (no black Friday or first-of-advent shopping madness for us), I had plenty of time to continue with the living room.
Guess what- the red cushions are still there, and they will probably stay, too. How that?
I mentioned that I had taken one of my red-cushioned easy chairs out of our living room. I had, at first, intended that to be just a test, to see what the effect would be. So, I was looking for a way to store it where the cushions wouldn´t get spoiled by moisture or such (we have a rather humid basement). And I had a sudden inspiration after DH told me he´d be sorry to see the red cushions go, because they look so friendly. I put that surplus cushion into Grandpa´s chair. It fits exactly, makes the sitting even more comfortable, and it brings that chair together with the others, optically. And I could put away the blanket I used to throw over the black chair, too. DH´s couch seat is now covered with a blanket in the same red, plus several throw pillows of the same color. What I put away were several blankets and pillows in yellow, blue and orange, which were actually left over from previous decorating schemes. The now cushionless chair frame I took apart ( thumbs up to collapsible IKEA furniture) and put it into the cellar. 
The end result was a seating space that is pulled together by the same color being used on every chair and couch in it, and with enough room to move in. It looks a lot more airy, too, even though there´s just one piece of furniture less.
On the other side of the living room, besides my computer desk, there was the perennial hotspot in the shape of a side table that once was intended to serve as an extension to my desk, but which ended up being buried in paper clutter that hadn´t made it into my filing cabinet. Besides, it made the space next to the desk look and feel crowded. So, I put away everything that was on that table, and then discovered that it could easily be slipped under my kitchen table where it´s out of the way, but still accessible if I should need it (I sometimes put my sewing machine on there, too).
Again, that area looked a lot more spacious than before.
Just by removing two pieces of furniture and some cushions and blankets, I turned a room that felt stuffed and suffocating back into one that looks open and inviting.  What surprises me, actually, is how few things I had to remove for that effect.
And, as the red blanket and pillows were already there, the whole remodel was practically free. Maybe I´ll pick up two or three more red pillowcases to replace the yellow ones, but that´s all.
Next stop, pictures. I have, for several years, been collecting the title pages of a wall calendar that has images of medieval book art, and each year´s title page is elaborately printed including the metallic effects that make old illuminated manuscripts so stunning. I also had bought several frames and matching frame mats  for them, but somehow had gotten around to framing only three while the rest of frames and what was intended to go in there was languishing on top of our living room shelf. Yesterday, I finally went at framing the last ones and hanging them. The wall they hang on is now looking complete, and the stack of stuff on top our shelves is gone, leaving me wondering why the dickens I kept procrastinating about a job that took, all in all, less than an hour to do.
That out of the way, I did take out my minimalist Advent decorations and, after placing them, settled down with a good book, a lit candle, and a nice hot cup of tea.
Advent time just as I like it.



Julia

Optical duh!

So, I did remove one of the two easy chairs in my living room. The second one with a matching stool is still there, as it turned out it was mostly the other one that kept getting in the way.
Space-wise, thus, the situation has been getting better. But optically, it still isn´t quite right.
You see, that easy chair has bright red cushions. DH´s couch is dark brown leather, and Grandpa´s easy chair is black. The cocktail chairs have dark green leather seats and backs.  When I bought the red cushions, I thought they´d brighten up the room a bit. But now, with a more minimalist decorator´s eye, they clash with about everything else in the room, apart from having gotten a bit dingy.
As I was intending to replace the cushions anyway, I went to the IKEA website to look for new ones, and found out that they have these now in dark brown leather, matching DH´s couch exactly.
I had thought of buying white leather cushions before, but that was when the only alternative color they had in leather cushions for those chairs was black. As I don´t really like black as a color for furniture, that precluded getting another color than white, even though I knew these would be staining easily.
Seeing they have them in dark brown now, I know what I´ll put on my wish list. Having the same color upholstery for couch and easy chair will make the whole room look more styled-through and put-together.
Besides, while I really like red as a color in general, those red cushions are so dominating the room that I have to keep everything matching them color-wise, or rather, that the other chairs keep clashing with them optically.
Dark brown, dark green and black are close enough together to match, but these red cushions will have to go. Just imagining the brown ones on that chair means thinking of a room that has more optical calm than it has today.
The other problem with our living room furniture is that there are also several different kinds of wood. My furniture was mostly pine and birchwood, so, light-colored kinds of wood, while DH, being a guy, brought darker-colored kinds, like teak or walnut.  Having  these in the same room means even more optical noise than just the upholstery would create.
Now if I could do as I wish I´d toss all of the dark stuff and replace it with birchwood or maple shelving and matching chairs and tables. Unfortunately, DH is very attached to the walnut and teak stuff because it came from his parent´s house as a gift to him. But maybe we´ll be able to put most or even all of it into what is now our old bedroom, which will become his office and den as soon as we can exchange rooms.
It´s amazing how decluttering has made me aware of the visual clutter that our furniture is creating. While there was plenty of stuff lying around on those chairs and tables, I blamed it just on that if the place looked cluttered. Now that most things have either gone or  found their permanent homes out of sight inside some cupboard, I suddenly see that the furniture mix in our living room looks cluttered enough on its own to keep the room from getting that feeling of calm that is what I wish for in interior decor. And I have discovered that it isn´t adding something new that will bring that feeling. Rather, it is removing things.
So, this weekend I´ll be once more going through our stuff, deciding what to get rid of, and enjoying the fact that we are getting ever closer to the goal of having a peaceful and calm flat.



Julia