De clutter and organizing part II

 I read somewhere that one should buy items that bring "joy" Example, I often find myself taking the same clothes out of the wardrobe to wear, similar story for my one year old daughter. I also find that there are only certain things we need more often than others. So why is every drawer and every wardrobe filled - I ask myself. 

I simply started tackling my wardrobe one shelf at a time. Anything more than that I couldn't handle due to time constraints and a toddler who needs my attention. 

A) Here's what I did with clothes(dresses/saree blouses/jeans etc)

1. Looked at shelves of clothes and sorted them to 'will wear', won't wear/doesn't fit 

2. Sorted them into piles, that I knew whom to give away to. Some were to my domestic help and I also made a separate pile for giving to Hijras/transgender/transvestites who usually beg around traffic signals. 

3) some dresses with too much embellishments especially since I don't want to hurt the baby as I carry her and won't be wearing some of this stuff for a while. Why store it ?

4) My night dresses were donated to a convalescence home where they need soft nightdresses.

B) Made a collection of cosmetics like foundation, eye makeup, etc that were within their expiry dates but I just knew were a bad or impulse purchase in the first place and put them in the pile to gift to the Hijras/transgenders near our home 

C) Beauty items like extra hair blowdryers/straighteners were given to a small local beautyparlour. 

D) My husband and I sorted our footwear to be given away to people who can still use them. I have stopped wearing heels(as carry my toddler) and haven't worn heels ever since I got pregnant. So there's that. 

E) extra watches and sunglasses were gifted as I cannot use sunglasses unless they are prescription ones. Accessories that were kept just for sentimental value for so many years, some of which could have been used by some trendy teen sooner than later as vintage chic :)

F) I get my baby's clothes sorted and give them to two sets of people who have babies a few months younger than mine, I also try to minimize the number of toys she has. I regift them to people who can use it. 

G) We bought two new pillows and gave away 6 old ones. Again sorted among my domestic help who were more than happy to take it home. 

That's when I realized how much stuff was just lying around, right from reasons like "in case we have guests" " in case we need it sometime in the future " " I case this and in case that" seriously a bad habit. 

I have a new love and that is to have at least one empty shelf in every wardrobe. Or one empty drawer out of two. And I still have a long way to go to live minimalistically . First step is to stop buying things I don't need. Sigh, getting there...

Spring Cleaning, declutter and organise

Evet so often does one get inspired by online blogs and comments and images on how to de clutter,  organise and clean up areas and so on.  One of the things i read recently was that you cannot organise clutter.  Clutter has to be sorted and done away with.  Ruthlessly.  

I have a15 month old baby and she is highly likely to explore and open drawers and reach out to shelves and take stuff at her hand level.  We had to deliberately clear out a few shelves of books and curios etc that she can reach. 

A flip side to her exploration is that she is fascinated by spectacles.  We have quite a few broken by her even when we wete wearing it.  So what we had were a few empty spectacles cases.  These came handy when  packing baby's medicine  drops,  ointments,  even hairclips especially when traveling. 

And now the drawers under the entertainment unit.  We had so many cd cases  dvd,  vcds even and a whole lot of music that the husband and I had collected over the years.  So it was a Sunday well spent.  As  we finally took a call that we'll keep our Blu-ray collection minimal. 

The rest were sorted into cd pouches so that minimised the clutter.  We did away with some cds,   dvds  etc and the plastic cases that they come in. 

There is then the case  of mobile phone cardboard boxes.  Most are sturdy and can be reused.  Like we used my Gionee  mobile box for storing playing cards.  And we can find them when we look for it.  All in one place.  Rummy nights are here.  

A special thanks to my husband and my niece for helping me in this task where we also sorted my little ones nursery rhyme videos.  Yay.