This is the tenth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

Umm…I forgot to purge last month. OK, no, that’s not entirely true. I have been purging, but not anywhere near the same level that I have been.

Purging is difficult and frustrating. I really, truly, want to be happy with one pair of jeans because if I’m being honest with myself, I tend to wear the same pair of jeans over and over and over anyway, so really why do I need more? But then I look at my wardrobe and I think “oh Jeez  everyone’s already seen me in that same boring gray t-shirt a million times”. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t notice if a friend of mine wore the same thing day after day, but it’s still something that I think about. And it makes me look and feel lazy.

And the holidays are getting away from me. We haven’t been spending that much money on gifts and for the most part, I am really proud of my resourcefulness in my gift giving this year. But next year we have to set a budget. It’s really easy to say “oh this is a gift for the house” or “I need X or Y baby item for T, so we’ll count is as a his Christmas present this year”. There’s nothing wrong with that, but setting a limit is important.

What I’m starting to realize, is that as the years go on, we change. What is oh-so-important to me at the beginning of the year (or even month for that matter), doesn’t mean anything later on. That’s fine. We can’t all stay the same all the time. That would be so boring. Purging is good, but there’s no reason to go overboard. I know I’ll have to reign myself in after the holidays, but for now I’m enjoying the gifting season.

In the end, I think the conclusion I can reach on the purge project is this: balance. Finding a good balance between living in the moment and carefully planning out the things we bring into the house is key to my happiness. Even though I dislike stuff and often have a bit of buyer’s remorse in the weeks after making a purchase, I do get some pleasure from the occasional cash register purchase. And there’s no reason to deny myself something that makes me happy.

This is the tenth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

I’m starting to realize that there’s no way I could be a true minimalist. I definitely agree with the principles behind minimalism. But I don’t know that I’ll ever get there. I think the only way I could truly feel that I’ve reached that point would be if we moved into a tiny house. However, there are things Paul and I want in whatever house we live in that most tiny houses don’t include. Maybe one day we can build our own tiny home that is customized to our own preferences :)

For now, I am content to work with the space we have. One thing I’m realizing I hate, is dead space. I can’t stand looking at certain parts of our house that are just empty. It makes me want to rip the walls out and start fresh. So that’s what I’ve been working on this month. Not ripping the walls out, but I’ve started a few redecorating projects to help get rid of the wasted space in the house.

This has caused a bit of a problem when it comes to purging. I’m still attempting to get rid of unnecessary things or at least send things off to Goodwill or the consignment store before I purchase something new. And by “new”, I mean new to me. I’m trying my best to get things for the house that are second-hand. It at least makes me feel better than buying everything brand new.

And with redecorating, I’m starting with the things we have and working from there. For example, we have a lot of picture frames that are nice, but that just don’t fit with the house anymore. So instead of chucking them and getting new ones, I am going to paint them. I think this will create a new look, and will be less wasteful.

I am starting to feel, especially now that I’m trying to make the house a little more homey, that “things” aren’t all that bad. I mostly feel this way when it comes to having artwork or pictures on the walls. No, those pictures aren’t necessary and aren’t in line with a minimalist philosophy, but they help warm up an otherwise dead wall. Dead space drives me nuts. So, my plan is to find things I really love (or make them myself) and fill in those dead spaces.

I know as the weather gets colder I’ll want to continue with the purge. There’s the entire basement I haven’t even thought about that needs to be dealt with. But for now my focus has shifted a bit, since we’re not moving any time soon anyway. It seems more worth while to create a fun living space than throw out every thing that isn’t essential to our lives :)

This is the ninth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

Hmm…where to begin?

September was pretty busy. We traveled a lot and had company a lot. That was great, but didn’t really entice me to purge things. My project is kind of like a roller coaster; some months I do really well and am elated by all the purging I was able to do, but other months nothing gets done. It’s a process, but I feel as if I am getting somewhere, even if it is a slow process.

I didn’t want any gifts for birthdays this year. It’s not really the gifts or gift-giving that I have a problem with, it’s the amount of gifts that’s really the problem. It’s easier to say “No” than find places for things. T really didn’t need any toys, and he ended up only getting one toy; the rest of his gifts were clothes. Unfortunately, the toy is no more. It was a really cute globe ball, but we had to toss it when we were finding chunks Australia in his mouth :(

I also took a few items to the consignment store. There are quite a few nice consignment stores in town and I recently found one that takes furniture and other household items. I think before I shop anywhere else for things around the house, I will first stop at Goodwill and this store. I would have been shopping here before, but I didn’t realize it existed. I love finding uses for other people’s unwanted items. I’m also working on taking items to Goodwill if I find something I like to replace it.

I think I irritate Paul sometimes because I make a lot of justifications for things. He said something to the effect of “if you want something, just get it, you don’t have to justify it”. Really the problem is that I tend to decide I want something and then I come up with a list of things to rationalize my wanting to get whatever it is. I think I do this because I envision that Paul will be against buying X, Y, or Z, so I want to have my arguments ready.

However, the problem with telling me to “just buy it”, is that I always have that in the back of my head whenever I’m out and about. There have been a few small things I’ve bought, mostly for my own use, simply because I wanted them. It’s really hard not to think that if I want it I should just get it. At least when I come up with arguments for purchasing an item I’m taking the time to think about why it would be useful and what I would use it for. Thankfully, I haven’t come home with any major spur of the moment purchases that I’ve regretted!

This is the eighth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

Surprisingly, stuff got done in August. I wouldn’t say that things were purged, but I’m getting things organized, and as far as my sanity goes, that’s a pretty big deal.

First, there was T’s cabinet. Part of the reason I did this was that he was getting into everything. However, he was also wondering off occasionally into the living room and taking his toys with him. This cabinet keeps him somewhat in the kitchen and at least all of his things are in one place. Well, as long as we tidy up throughout the day.

That’s the other important thing we’ve started around here: tidying up throughout the day. We’ve been getting pretty bad at using our counters to dump stuff on. That’s the first place things go when we come home and the last place we ever clean up. It was getting on my last nerve.

So, I’m making myself take the time to PSA: Put Stuff Away. Whenever we come home, before we do anything I have to put my purse, and anything else I brought home with me, away. When Paul comes home he has to put his bike helmet away, rather than leaving it on the counter. I realized that these tasks take no more than 5 minutes, but they never get done.

The biggest hurdle has been with the dishes and laundry. I’m not good at doing the dishes before we leave the house, so most days they would sit until we came home. But by then I’d be tired and wouldn’t take care of them. It’s a huge, huge relief to come home and know there isn’t a pile of dishes waiting for you.

The laundry issues we have around here are that 1) we have enough cloth diapers that we don’t need to wash T’s diapers every day, but we’ve been having a really stinky diaper issue and some leaking lately, and 2) at the end of the day the laundry is all the way in the basement and it seems like such a long way away, so I leave it for the morning, and then it sits forever. So, as part of the PSA, we now do a load of T’s diapers right after dinner and we make sure they are in the dryer before we go to bed so that they are ready to go in the morning. I am trying my best to get them all stuffed (we use FuzziBunz, which are the pocket kind) in a timely manner and not leaving a huge pile to be dealt with later. Stuffing diapers is not my favorite job, but Paul has been demoted because of his poor stuffing technique, so I do it most of the time unless I need Paul’s help. This has been helping a lot with the stink issue! I’m not so sure about the leaking, but that could be a different issue all together. I’m also trying to get the laundry put away in a more timely manner than before. Before I go to bed I always check the laundry and switch things to the dryer or bring them upstairs if they are done.

I also reorganized the desk area in the sunroom. This had to be done because T can reach everything now and pulls things off the table, but with it being more organized I (and Paul too) am more likely to put things back where they belong rather than leaving things sit wherever they landed. So far, it’s been going well! Paul even got on board and organized the garage without me asking him to!

Sorry about all the diaper/housework talk this month! It’s amazing what a little organization can do for your mood!

This is the seventh post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

I’ll keep this short and sweet: nothing was purged during July. We traveled far too much to think about organization and purging, so I let it slip. And that’s fine. I’ve got the whole year to work on this and a few colder months ahead that will keep me indoors and staring at all of my hated stuff :)

This is the sixth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

Whelp, this is probably going to be another short “it’s too nice out to purge” post, so I won’t bore you with too many details. Frankly, there aren’t any. As we get closer to gift-giving season (September is our big birthday month and it starts off a string of birthdays/holidays), I have begun requesting that we receive no gifts this year.

It’s not that I am ungrateful, because I am very grateful of the gifts I have received from friends and family in the past. It’s more a matter of wanting to fill our lives with experiences rather than stuff. I would much rather spend time enjoying the company of those I love than to have tchotchkes to find places for.

And this goes back to me as well. I want to be a better gift giver. I don’t like the idea of having a list and checking off the things people have requested as I make yet another trip to Target. I want to put time into the gifts give. Some of the best gifts I’ve given (and received) are the ones that took careful planning. I used to get so excited to give a gift to someone that I couldn’t wait for their birthday or Christmas to give it. I haven’t felt that way in a long time. Lately, it’s been more about obligations and apologies when the gift isn’t that great.

So, that’s where I’m at right now. I haven’t gotten rid of much since the garage sale in May, but it’s a work in progress. It’s all about baby steps anyway :)

This is the fifth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

I don’t have a lot to say about May. I was out-of-town for 10 days or so. When I got back I had to quickly get ready for a garage sale. Everything that I had been saving up since we moved in had to go. Overall, we did well. How much money we made doesn’t really matter. We made enough to cover the new stroller and as far as I was concerned that was all that mattered (as far as how much money we made). A lot of the stuff sold though, and that’s was the most important thing to me.

After the garage sale, I packed up whatever didn’t sell and sent it off to Goodwill. Besides that, there wasn’t a whole lot of purging going on last month. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s summer time, and we’re spending most of our days outside. I am slowly working on getting rid of more things as I come across them, but I’m not spending my summer stuck inside sorting through boxes. And that’s totally fine with me :)

This is the fourth post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

I feel as if I am at a standstill with the purge. I think it has to do with the changing seasons. In the winter, I was stuck in the house, staring at all the stuff I no longer felt I had a use for. Now, with the nicer weather, I’m trying to get out of the house as much as possible, which means that house work gets ignored. It also means that it’s easier to start falling back on old habits out of convenience rather than moving forward with progress.

The changing seasons is also creating a problem for my wardrobe. I don’t think I’m losing a lot of weight (I’m not trying to anyway), but my clothes don’t fit the way they used to. It probably doesn’t help that a few items are either maternity clothes that I thought I could still wear post-baby or they’re items that I stretched out while being pregnant. Either, way it is frustrating. I have no desire to buy new clothes, but I feel as if I am wearing the same jeans and t-shirts because nothing else fits correctly. I assume this will be a problem that will follow me the rest of my life.

I have been working on organizing our pictures and T.’s books. I took the time to scan a bunch of our old photos and have organized them on our hard drive. It sounds pretty mundane, but it needed to be done and was quite a pain.

T. has a lot of books, but I didn’t want to buy a bookshelf for them. Most of them were sitting in a pile under his nightstand. That was fine when he was really little, because I didn’t read to him. But now that he’s older, I try to read to him every morning. Essentially, the books always ended up on the floor. So, I found a quick and easy tutorial online, and created a book sling. Now his books are organized much better and they are no longer in a pile on the floor.

Really, though, that’s all that I’ve been able to accomplish in April. The weather is too nice to worry about organizing closets and such. It would make a difference if we were moving soon. But we’re not for now. I am planning on having a garage sale in a few weeks, so we will be getting rid of a few more things then.

Anyway, that’s the update for April. It’s not much, but I still feel it’s important to stick with the updates. It encourages me to continue to purge as I come across things we don’t use or need anymore. Until next time!

This is the third post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

Last month I took care of a few things.

First, I took on the bathroom. I have a TON of hair products that I don’t use anymore. I tend to buy things thinking, “This will solve all of my hair issues.” But, of course, when it doesn’t it sits in a cabinet and nothing comes of it. So, I either tossed or gave away anything that I wasn’t using. Although I am growing it out, having less hair at the moment means I need less stuff, and for that I can’t complain. I think we’re going to try a “no poo” method once whatever shampoo we’re using is gone. Baking soda is basically free, where as the shampoo I was buying costs upwards of $20 and I find that ridiculous. (Side note: we used to have a separate hair budget just so that I could justify buying $20 shampoo and that is gone as well.)

I also sorted through our medicine cabinet. What is it about medicine that we insist on holding on to stuff for years and years? There we a few items that dated back to 2009 and a few that I think Paul bought before we were even dating. It also doesn’t help that we are addicted to shopping in bulk. It’s really hard to use an entire bottle of ibuprofen before the expiration date when you buy like 1000 pills. I’m not super big on taking medicine anyway. I moved everything (medicine, make up (which I hardly ever wear anyway), hair products, etc.) down to one cabinet and we are currently getting along fine without all the Tylenol.

I sent a ton of stuff to the consignment store. I went through my clothes and a bunch of T’s stuff in January. I also went through all of our books and sent them off to the book store. We’ve sold over $100 worth of stuff so far. The books were the biggest sellers (I had a ton of classics). Anything that didn’t sell is down in the garage sale closet patiently waiting for me to get organized and put on a garage sale. I’d like to do that in May.

The kitchen is an area that I’m struggling in. On the one hand, we got along just fine in February without all of the extra kitchen gadgets. But, one the other hand, those kitchen gadgets can sometimes be useful and we’re not moving anytime soon, so we’ve started using them. The plan is to use them for now, but to keep in mind what we really use and don’t use when we move again. I still have most of the cabinets blocked off, but if we need inside them it’s not the end of the world.

The cabinets are becoming a major issue for me. I’d really be happy with about half as much space. All of the extra storage space just breads the need to fill it with stuff. I hate that, but I don’t know how to get around it without blocking everything off completely.

T’s needs are also becoming an issue in relation to the purge. He has started eating solid foods, which means we now use more  dishes, silverware, and glasses than we did before. In order to avoid sharing the glass dishes and such we went ahead and bought him his own plastic plates, cups, and bowls. These things don’t take up much space, but I am finding it irritable that they needed to be purchased (however, they did only cost a few dollars, so really it wasn’t that bad).

Also, I am pureeing and freezing all of his food. I bought a bunch of little jars to store his food in. These jars are great; just the right size for the max amount of food he can eat. I typically puree a bunch of food and freeze most of it in the jars. However, they were more expensive than I was expecting (a fact I did not discover until just now) and they take up space when not in use.

Anyway, that was March. The purge is still on, but I’m finding myself frustrated with a few changes. It’s a work in progress.

This is the second post in my monthly purge project update. To find out more about the purge project and to follow along from the beginning click here.

February was the month to tackle the kitchen. The kitchen was tough. I love to cook, and I really love kitchen gadgets. But I thought it was a major area of our house that needed a good purging.

I started by clearing out all of the items we don’t use on a regular basis. Toaster oven? To the basement. Extra large plates that are only good for Thanksgiving? Hidden away in a cabinet. Old spices and anything past it’s expiration date? Trash.

Realistically it seemed silly to take everything down to our garage sale closet. We have plenty of storage space in our kitchen. Actually way more than we need. Instead I moved things to out of way cabinets and put signs that read “Do Not Open” on them. It took a little getting used to, but eventually we stopped opening the forbidden cabinets.

Since everything was down to the bare minimum dish wear we need, I also put a “Do Not Open” sign on the dishwasher. I’m not opposed to having a dishwasher (although, I do prefer to wash them by hand), it just didn’t seem useful since we had so few dishes. I didn’t want to be constantly running the dishwasher.

As we went along, we kept a list of items that we found ourselves wanting but were blocked off. I tried very hard to find inventive ways to get around pulling out certain items. However, there were a few things we couldn’t get away without using. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I had packed away all the pitchers. I don’t know how you can make lemonade without a pitcher.

The whole month was an experiment to see how things went without all the extra gadgets. Overall, I thought it went well and now that we’re into March I’ve done a bit of tweaking, but we seem to be getting along happily with less in the kitchen.