Before and after: True minimalism

We used to have a dining table in our kitchen, but we sold it. The kitchen feels so big, fresh and open to new which makes me feel good. I've been sitting on the floor of the kitchen and just admiring the openness. 

But really, that is not how it's going to stay. We are not true minimalists. We are getting a table. My sister is moving together with her boyfriend and she has a very nice old table and chairs which do not fit into their apartment at the moment. So we have agreed to store the table until they do have space for it. And therefore we sold the old kitchen table which was nothing fancy and my sister's table is much nicer. The table we had sold much faster than we thought and now for a while we are going without a table. We do have a dining table in the living room, although it is bit of a hassle to transport all the food and tableware there all the time. Anyway I have found it quite nice still to have the kitchen so empty, it feels refreshing. Now we also had the opportunity clean the floor and the radiator thoroughly.

Minimalistic game - the outcome

The minimalist game I did with Christina was a huge success! I wrote about starting the game in here and then wrote about the progress here. Already in the post about the progress I mentioned how easy it was to find items from our home which to get rid of. It did get harder towards the end but it was still never difficult. At first I could brainstorm places where to look for those items and did not have to even open cabinet doors to know that I have this and that there which to discard. In the last few days I was not able to do that, but once I did open a cabinet door and started going through some items I found all sorts of things. Towards the end of the game I was not able to find as much items from my own stuff, but also had to rely on some of our common items and A's items too. All the items I got rid of can be found from my Minimalist game page and also from Google+ page where you can also see items from Christina and Maryanne.

All in all we got rid of 406 items each! That is so amazing. It is big both mentally and physically. I can see an impact from this game in our home, but in order to have a very big impact I would need to have A more involved in such a game. Mentally I feel so much better when I know that I have made some room in some cabinets and I do not have to cram everything in there anymore.

Most of the things I decided to get rid of are already out from our home. I gave most of the items to charity, to the Red Cross more specifically. There are a few items which I will sell, like one of the wrist watches. Also there were a few items I decided to replace with better ones. But there where only a few of those.

Christina is having the game open at Google+ for March too, so join the game, it's not too late (it never is). I'm having a brake from the game, but I could do it again, just bit later.

Good riddance I say!

The minimalist game - the progress

As mentioned here I started a minimalist game with Christina and two others. So each day of this month we should find things to get rid of that correspond to the day of the month. Today is the 17th day, so today I need to have 17 items to get rid of. Yesterday it was 16. All my items so far can be found from a separate blogger page here. 

You know what? This challenge so far has been so easy! I do not know if that is good or bad, because that means that I have way more stuff than I ever assumed which I do not do anything with. But I kind of saw that coming that is why I knew I could even participate in such a challenge. I know and hope that this will get more challenging, I'm pretty sure it will because before I was able to brainstorm places where to look for discardable items but now it's not coming so easily anymore.

Well, we will see what happens. Love this challenge!

The minimalist game

Christina told back in December already about the minimalist game she had been doing with her mother. The idea of the game is that in one month on the first day you need to find one item from your home which to donate, recycle or throw away. The next day you need to find two items, on the third three items, get the point? It gets trickyer and trickyer as days pass, but you start to see your stuff in a new light and it makes a huge impact on your home, or so I'm told.

Now Christina started a google+ page for the game, so everyone can join. Check Christina's post about the minimalist game and join us. You do not need to finish, even just starting this is a challenge.

Here is my first item. Too tight tights.

Soft book from scraps

As an attempt to one day use up my scrap fabric supply I made a soft book for Likka. I must emphasize the word attempt, because soft book clearly isn't one of the most efficient or a fast way to use the scraps, especially if each of the pages on the soft book contains some hand embroidered details. But the idea is what matters, right?

I have still some of the train fabric left and decided to use the locomotive image of the fabric on one of the pages. I wanted the book to have somesort of theme and because of the locomotive I chose a motor vehicle theme. Between the cover pages is felt from a wool blanket, the middle pages have this thick and hard fabric, so the pages feel a bit different. Also one of the pages has some cellophane in between them so it crinkles.

 

On the corners I sewed triangles to avoid the filling getting off from its position. The spine has some car ribbon which you can see best on the last picture. I really like the book, although on some pages I did a bit of sloppy work and some of the machine embroidery looks a bit bad, but I kind of like those self made looking details here.

Coffee cups - gone

The decluttering I desided start and wrote about in the yapping about stuff - post is going slow, S-L-O-W.

Without the post from Christina over at Little Victorian and specially her post about simplifying their kitchen, I would not have decluttered even as little as I have now. Christina, you are an inspiration for me!

I was able to get rid off eight coffee cups with saucers and one creamer. I love the empty space on the second shelf. (I was trying to get rid off the two black coffee cups too, but I was not given permission to do that.)

Rhubarb pie and some minor decluttering

Everything in Finland seems to happen on summer. We have not spent much any time at home. Every evening we've had something and weekends too have been full. Except yesterday on Sunday afternoon. We had such a good Sunday feel, we had an afternoon nap, read books and magazines, listened to some radio. But we did also spend a little time decluttering. I was able to remove some items from my clothes cabinet and A also. A did trash a pair of shoes and desided to sell motorbike trousers and jacket. I removed some random items from my bookshelf and toilet cabinet.

As a reward of the decluttering I made a rhubarb pie. We didn't declutter much yet, but it was a such a good start.

General yapping about stuff

I feel like we are drowning in stuff. Having a kid is not helping in this, on the contrary it has brought up the horrible feel that we cannot fit the kid's stuff anywhere or yet alone fit the kid anywhere.

There are certain items children need, actually there aren't that many things, but some of them are big, like for instance the crib and the strollers. The maternity package also contained huge amount of stuff that I know will be useful, but it also seems quite excessive to suddenly have huge box of stuff that no one has thought where it will be stored. Also I have been making lots of things for the kid, mostly I've made all of the things from materials we used to already have. So in theory we have not got more stuff from what I've made, but previously all my material was not lying on the office floor so it just seemed that it was more in control.

It's still almost three months before the kid is supposed to be born. It seems really difficult to store the kid's stuff for that time. Usually when I get something I'd like to put it in place immediately, but now it seems so useless to put everything in place, because that means that some of our own stuff will need to move and there really is no point staging our home like it already has a kid. But also there is no point postponing of getting all the stuff. I like to be prepared and not have to buy all things in a hurry in last minute. So I have tried to find temporary storage places for the kid's stuff.

What makes this most ridiculous is that for people of two or even three our apartment is supposed to be BIG. I mean we have almost 100 square meters (1070 square feet), many people live in a lot smaller apartments. A lot. Only explanation is that we have too much stuff, since nothing fits anywhere and everything is so darn difficult to put in place. That also means that it is difficult to find places for the kids stuff, temporary or permanent place.

On last Monday Christina posted about radical decluttering of her clothes. She got rid of about 75 % of her clothes. I feel like we should do something equally radical, but to all our stuff. I know that is not very realistic, but something needs to be done. The kid we are having is not going to be with us just temporarily, s/he will need more and more space when s/he grows up. This is quite obvious but I think I only just realized this. I'm not sure if A has realized this yet.

I hope to have some serious purging, decluttering and simplifying done on the summer.

Organizing sewing patterns

I got a bunch of sewing patterns from my grandmother. Most of the patterns and magazines are from the 80's and 90's when she used to sew a lot of clothes for me and my sister. I think she would still enjoy sewing but her eye sight is not very good anymore so unfortunately she just cannot do it anymore.

The patterns and magazines were in a paper bag, my grandmother had organized some of the patterns into envelopes but lots of the patterns were just loose and shoved into the bag. So I took everything out of the bag and started sorting the patterns. It wasn't a very easy job, I had trouble reading my grandmother's handwriting and some of the patterns had no indication what it was for. From some patterns I was not able to find all the pieces for the garment. I piled these in a separate pile and when I found another one with no pair I tried to look it from the pile.

There were lots of basic patterns for shirts and trousers for different sizes. Some pattern did not have any size written on them. Because my grandmother had used various types of pattern paper I was sometimes able to match the paper type and that way find the sets. 

I was left over with a small pile of mismatched patterns, those I threw out. I do hope none of the pattern sets I was able to collect are missing any parts. I organized the rest of the patterns into envelopes too and wrote on top of the envelope what it contains. I also draw a quick picture of the contents. Once I had done that I punched holes on the envelopes and put them in a binder.

Paper shredding

After each New Year I go through my papers from the two years before, which this time meant papers from 2011. I usually keep all bills, tax papers, bank statements, insurance things and so on when I get them, but yearly I go through them and throw out papers that are no longer needed. I don't have a shredder so I rip the papers into smallish slices. It really does not take long and I get such a pleasure from the ripping. It's so pleasing to get rid of paper. When all are ripped I mix them up a bit before I take them to the paper recycling bin. I doubt anyone is intrested in the papers, but incase they would be I'm making it just bit more difficult for them to check out my personal papers. 

Decluttering containers

I was going to tell you how to bottle wine, but since I'm going to see a musical today on Thursday (when I'm writing this) I don't have the time to write that post. I want to make sure I don't forget any essential step from the bottling.

So instead I will show you the decluttering of containers I did few days back. I have a bad habit of keeping every single container and box. And the result of it was looking like this.

I'm able to throw away containers and boxes but I need to see them all before I can decide on which to keep and which to throw away. So I took all of the containers down on the floor and started categorizing. Cardboard boxes there, round containers there, really small one here and so on. I threw out lot of tiny containers and especially round ones. I prefer square ones, the round ones tend to waste more space than the square ones do.

Then I put everything back. I should have maybe decluttered more since there is really no room for anything new and things can be a bit difficult to put back. It's bit of a tight fit. But nonetheless it's progress and the laundry basket fits into it's right place on top of the cabinet.

Decluttering hand bags

I am proud to say I have very few hand bags. Okey I know I have a few and I know some of you will think that "oh, so many, I have only one", well yes I have more than one, but according to the stereotypical image of women I should have gazillion handbags. But I have... no... I had 10 hand bags.

One of the bags is missing from the photo, because I use that one ALL the time. There was no need to declutter that, I know I love it. But in a closet between the bedroom and the office I had a box where I kept these hand bags. I lifted all the hand bags out and placed on the office floor to assess them.

There were two bags which I cannot even remember the last time I've used them. One black and brown evening bag. They were both a bit old fashioned and not really my style. Also there was one that I would call a shoulder bad that smelled funny and it was really difficult to open or close. It was made of fake leather and it had smelled funny even when I bought it.

I kept only those hand bags above plus the one I use all the time of course. The dark shoulder bag is not my favourite in style but it serves it purpose and I have used it quite a lot in situations where my regular favourite shoulder bag looks too fancy. The stripy bag has seen it's better days but it's very handy in size.

Oh and the Pupu Tupuna bag. It's a bag I got when I was a kid. Pupu Tupuna is series of Finnish children's books. I'm quite sure I got the bag with the books, it's very cheaply made and it's broken from some parts but I can't make myself part with it. So I'm keeping it. Even though I never use it.

I placed all the bags inside a cardboard box and placed that inside my clothes closet in the bedroom. It is not that I decluttered much here but I still love the feeling that I was able to find something not usefull to me anymore and get rid of those.

Organizing ribbon

I'm taking a break from all the painting. I was getting tired and when something starts to feel weary and mandatory I like to take distance from the project. I know that I will get my groove back if I just wait for a while.

So like you saw on Wednesday I've taken a new project. It is organizing the crafts closet of mine. I took the toolbox out from the closet that holds all the buttons, ribbon and other accessories for sewing. At first I was going to organize my buttons, which are stored in minigrip bags. But I couldn't figure a way to organize those better and then noticed a pile of ribbon all jumbled up in the toolbox. I'm a bad blogger and forgot to take a before photo but you all know what a pile of ribbon looks like.

I had some of my ribbon allready stored around cardboard, those are all in the above picture. I thought that was very good way to keep the ribbons organized, so I copied the system. I cut the form from old cards. I like how the old cards bring some colour and are indiviual.

I did throw out some scraps and ribbon I didn't like. Then I popped all to a container inside the toolbox. Now I can fllip through all the ribbon easily when ever I like.

I'm still thingking about button storage, I'm not too keen on the minigrip bag style.

The inconvenient entry cleaning

I remember having this same problem in last spring clean. The problem being that I have an issue with A's stuff. We have separate boxes for mittens and such in the entry for me and for A. I have very few items of clothing in the entry atleast compared to A. He has about triple or quadruple the amount of clothing stored in the entry than I do. When I've done the cleaning and washing of my things I feel that I've just scratched the surface, but I cannot go through his things. Firstly I don't want to, those are his things and secondly I have no idea which items he has used that need washing and also I'd like him to go through them and donate the things he does not use, but that seems impossible for him. You should have seen him last year when I almost forced him to go through the boxes. It was so slow and he found use (in his mind) for all of them and explained to me where he has got it and how important the thing might be in the future. It was so hilarious but also frustrating to me.

Also I'm afraid this spring clean came too early this year, I think that was the case last year too. I washed some of my scarves and such (more about that later) and then realized that I cannot do the grand switheroo from winter stuff to lighter stuff, because it's actually still very cold at times. Now I cannot put the washed items to the storage and I must use them and maybe wash them again before I move them to storage later. That is a bit dull.

Well anyway my plan for the cleaning is following

Vacuum the entry and the vestibule
Take the carpets outdoors and give them a beat
Polish shoes
Wash the down jacket and put it in the deep storage CHECK
Declutter and wash items from the mitten/hat boxes CHECK
Declutter and wipe the umbrellas and the umbrella stand
Wipe shoe racks
Declutter and organize the drawer unit CHECK
Organize incoming papers
Empty outbox

And again some before pictures. There are four doors plus two openings to other rooms, so it's quite a tricky space. Here is a tour.  Clockwise, starting from the entry closet.

Here under is the vestibule. It's located right behind that door with a window you saw in the pictures before. 

I have one box where I have all extra mittens, scarves, hats mixed up all together. Then I have two baskets on the top shelf of the entry closet. On the last ones I keep things I use on the season-to-date, on the other one are more neater pieces of clothing and on the other one are outdoors gear and pieces I use in the garden or when doing dirty work. I went through the boxes and decided to wash most of the pieces, which was a bit dumb decision like I stated earlier. I washed the darks and the lights separately with wool cycle in the washing machine. I almost threw in with the dark ones the red scarves I have. I thought that since those have been washed before that the reds wont dye the darks. I'm glad I didn't though and washed them by hand.

It looks like I had killed someone and I'm trying to wash away the evidence or that I'm bathing beetroots. The redness is just overwhelming.

I also washed my down jacket, I used the wool cycle on that too. The wool cycle on our washing machine is very fast only 30+ minutes so I was able to wash three loads in one evening. After the down jacket had dried I folded it in a box and placed it on the top shelf of the clothes cabinet in the bedroom.

The last thing I've done so far is to go through the stuff in the drawers, well I used most time on the top one and just quickly decluttered the other ones. In the top one we keep some keys and locks, extra reflectors, foreign money and also A keeps his sun glasses there.

I found atleast five reflectors to throw away, but most stuff is actually needed. Except that I found there seven sun glasses, but A claimed he uses them all. I picked a box for them and put them all on the same place. Otherwise it was just rearranging things.

I need to continue the cleaning over the weekend. I haven't really done much yet.

To-Do list for A

Ups, I forgot to finish this post yesterday. And now this post is late, according to my own schedule, I usually post at 7:30 UTC. I have been really sick, that is why I forgot. I have influenza, I diagnozed myself using wikipedia :). I've had very high fever and sore throat. Now on the morning I feel better but evenings have been difficult. Some of my colleagues have had this too, so I quess I got it from them. But it also didn't help that I spent last sunday morning freezing my ass off on the terrace while removing paint from the stools.

Anyway back to the actual post.

~ ~ ~

A had a knee operation on tuesday, according to the surgeon the operation went well and A should be recovering nicely. But for a week or two he is not allowed to put any weight on the knee, which means that he is going to be house bound for a while. And that to my understanding will mean constant Xbox playing in quantities that will make me mental.  I think it would be healthy if he had something constructive to do. So I compiled a To-Do list for him. I know I'm evil, he is recovering after all.

• Check from my ancient computer what is the spec of the hard drive (the computer will be sold, for some very very low price)
• Go through and organize papers in several folders and boxes. 

He has organized some of his papers earlier and now I listed the categories he already has so when he goes through the papers and finds something that is worthwhile keeping he can check if he already has a category for it, or if he needs to invent a new one.

My evil plan is to bring one folder a day near the sofa in the living room and then while he sits there and rests his leg he can look through the folder and categorize the papers. After he has categorized the papers and hopefully decided to throw away lots of them I can then leave one category pile of papers in the living room and bring the appropriate folder there, where he can then file the papers.

To me one folder a day sounds like a piece of cake but A is different. It takes him forever to go through paper. So I'm pretty sure my schedule is way too tight for him, but it's a plan, and it can be adjusted.