Incoming and Outgoing

I'm onto lessons 5 and 6 of Lorilee Lippincott's book Simple Living. I'm really enjoying the process and can almost feel the weight of my stuff being lifted already! Lorilee's book is available here - I highly recommend reading it for yourself! I'm only explaining my results and not her tips or ideas so it is worth checking it out for yourself!

Lesson 5 - Incoming

Lesson 5 covers incoming mail. Now I don't actually have a lot of postal mail entering my home. I have tried to go paperless wherever possible and now have my utility bills accessible online only. I like to receive my junk mail but I always flick through it straight away and put it straight in the bin when I'm done. So the mail that hits my letterbox is not actually a big issue for me. The issue I do have is the mountains of notes and letters that come home from my sons schools and email.

School Paperwork

So with this in mind I have come up with a new system for dealing with school paperwork. I have in my home a whiteboard week to view calendar on the fridge that allows me to keep track of what is coming up in the current week. I've now added a small folder that sits on top of the fridge. When notes come home from school I scan them. If they are irrelevant to me - bin! If I can action it straight away (eg signing a permission slip) and send it back to school the next day then I put it back into my son's bag. If it is a note about a future event that I will need to refer back to  then I mark the item in my diary and put the letter in the folder on top of the fridge. This way when I mark out my week on my whiteboard calender I am alerted to the fact that I need to access that school note and pull it out! I've had this running for a couple of weeks now and I'm pretty happy with the results.

The folder hanging out from the top of the fridge is the school papers folder. It doesn't normally hang out like this. It was only so you could see it! Please excuse the poor lighting and messy handwriting.... I'm not a photographer nor do I have fabulous penmanship :-(

Email 

As for email, over the last couple of weeks I have watching everything that comes into my inbox and unsubscribing from all the newsletters and home shopping advertisements. I have worked out that I am trying to reduce the amount of clutter in my life so receiving home shopping adverts or newsletters on the latest and greatest trend is probably counter productive. I can't even remember what I have unsubscribed to so I'm sure I'm not missing out on anything and in fact I'm saving time and energy (and probably money too!). If there is something I decide I really miss then I can re-subscribe later on but for the most part I'm pretty happy with the results! I've gone from about 20 emails a day to about 5! Much more manageable!

Lesson 6 - Outgoing 

Lesson 6 is the outgoing task.... This is a big one for me. The throw away and recycle area is not a problem. But I always have piles of "stuff" waiting to be taken to goodwill or waiting to be sold. It is actually letting things go that is a problem for me. This "stuff" tends to accumulate in the garage until my hubby can't stand it anymore and he forces me to get rid of it. I have no problem identifying stuff I would like to get rid of. My problem is actually making it disappear.

Sell

So I've made a big effort over the last couple of weeks. I have been collating everything that I want to sell in the garage. Then we've spent the entire weekend photographing it and posting it all to the local Facebook buy and sell page. Part of my problem with letting things go is I see all that money that I've wasted sitting there and giving it away is just too painful. However selling it feels pretty good. I know it is going to someone who wants the item and I'm recouping some of my lost cash. The sell rate seems to be pretty high on this page and it has been really easy photographing items with my phone and posting them straight to Facebook then and there. The plan is that whenever I find something I want to sell I will photograph it and post it straight away. If things don't sell then I'll donate.

Donate

For donations, this is a pretty easy process for me. I just don't do it. My son's school has a goodwill bin in the carpark. Couldn't get much easier really!!! But somehow I just don't seem to take items in. So from now on, any donate items go directly into my car then put in the bin at school that same day.

I'm shocked at how good it feels to be getting rid of stuff from my life. It is almost addictive! I'm looking around everywhere trying to find my next hit! Love it!

Looking forward to Lorilee's next lessons...