My Decluttering Journal

 I took a long break in getting back my motivation to declutter my house and ultimately my life. I decided to start small to get the mood back on track. In the past, I jotted down each and every item I threw out on a notebook and surprisingly I threw more than 365 items in a year. It is quite easy for beginners, an item a day.  This year, I decided to up my quota and tried to threw out 5 items per day, without jotting down the things on the notebook. I started on one section in the house so that I do not get lethargic after 15 mins. Some of the stuffs were there and if they get into your bad impression for more than 3 times, you have to remove them from your sight once and for all. Trust me, it will benefit your eyes and mind for good. Try it!  

Shopped too much? I knew of a friend who keeps a lot of shopping bags in her house and took up so much space. In face, she shared that she threw almost 3 cartons of bags during her shift to new place. That was a lot to me. She would have cleared them long ago and free up the space to put other things or simply left the space empty. I tried as much not to get any shopping bags from shops as I brought my own foldable recycling bag in my backpack. I used to have a lot of recycling bags and paper bags. I donated 90% to the nearby library. For some paper bags, I folded them up to a tray or organiser to keep my small items in the drawers. I also used them in my closet to put small towels or undergarments. Not only I saved money to buy trays, I can also reuse the paper bags. In my next post, I will list down what decluttering projects I have done in 2020.

Do you have a lot of pens? Bought a lot but never used? Bought but not much ink left? Do not like the "feel" of writing? Want to save the environment? One day, I came across this organisation in Facebook. I checked out their website - Save That Pen and immediately, I gathered all my pens in the house for this great cause. (Visit their website to find find out more.) Gee! The pens are small, but I never knew I had so many pens hiding in every corner of my house. I went to two of their bin collection locations so far. ( Locations ) 1. Nee Soon South Community Club (nearest MRT station - Khatib) You need to walk a short distance to locate this place. The bin is located outside their general office. 2. Tampines Regional Library (nearest MRT station - Tampines) You need to walk a short distance to locate this place. The bin is located outside PIXEL labs inside the library on Level 4. Their collection bins are in the shape of a pen. It is quite eas...

Decluttering is a long and labourious journey. At least that is what I feel and I believe some of my friends and readers feel the same way too. We are too attached to our things. Agree? I have tried many ways to document my decluttering journey. They do not seem to work so far. I tried to write down how many bags I threw everyday, but did not worked very well. I began to lost touch on how much I decluttered and how much more I need to work on. I came across this book in Instagram and luckily there is a Japanese translated to Chinese copy available in Kinokuniya. This is my first to go book to read on why Ofumi has transformed her house to minimalist one. Very interesting. She has written a lot of books but so far, I only saw 3 translated books. The one below talked about how writing a journal helps to achieve her dreams. One of her dreams is to be a minimalist. I decided to follow her method and start to document my decluttering journey proper. I bought this book from Popula...

It has been a super long while since I blogged about my decluttering journey. I have too many tasks on hand and have been thinking a lot on how I can document all these in a proper way. I will be sharing them in my next post. I have packed up at least 10 garbage bags out of my house during spring cleaning. The most obvious furniture was my 5 tier cabinet. I felt great and will not want to replace another cabinet in its place again. I chanced upon a Japanese drama on decluttering or minimalism called <<我的家裡空無一物>>. わたしのウチにはなんにもない on YouTube. It is in Japanese with Chinese subtitles. I love it so much and kinda watched more than once. I read the manga version written by 缓莉舞（Yururi Mai) too but unfortunately most of her manga series are not translated to Chinese. Book from the library This is my goal! There are total of 6 episodes. Highly recommended!

It is the fourth day of the New Year. Life seems to be busier than before after school started a few days. The amount of clutter looked the same. I did not managed to clean as much as I intended to. Let me share with you some dangerous table top spots in the house that can grow the mess. 1. Shoe cabinet 2. Dining table 3. Study table 4. Dressing table 5. Coffee table 6. Bathroom Sink table Familiar?? Last week, I threw away a square IKEA table - we have a lot of tables and chairs. I really wondered why we needed so many in the first place? Hmm.. let me see, we have 9 tables, 11 chairs and 1 sofa. Table top is a very dangerous place because subconsciously, all of us will fill up the space with our newspapers, letters, money, keys, bags, toys, groceries, books, "you name it, we have it". Once you put a single thing there, the mess will multiple quickly. We tend to think that since we placed 1 thing, subconsciously we allowed anyone to place other things there. I...

I think writing a decluttering journal might help. So, after discussing with my family and friends, I decided to create a blog to document all my decluttering journey. I think it will boost my motivation a lot to declutter and pack my house. I like to update my social media status with my decluttering status. Till a point where my friends asked me "why are you still packing after all these years?" Yes, I failed miserably! This will be my 2019 resolution for sure! I am a stay-at-home-mum (SAHM) since 2011 and I have a lot of hobbies that take up a lot of space at home to store them, i.e. sewing, beading, scrap booking, reading, crocheting, etc. You can imagine the amount of space I need to store the materials of each hobby. Of course, my children have their own set of items that require a lot of space too, i.e. books and toys. I threw, sold and donated a lot of these over the years but I refilled up the space with other items. There are always things to buy in the sh...