“We must stop simply having stuff and putting it away somewhere. We need to think more actively about our relationship with things”
Nagisa Tatsumi, The Art of Discarding
Whilst working on my challenge this year, I’ve become more and more aware of the value in securing more space around the house. I sat in the spare room today whilst my husband was watching the football downstairs and thought about how I could discard more rather than keep moving it about and tidying it up.
I looked through my library of audio books to see what could help me and I came across one I remember being good… The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi. As I started listening to the introduction and chapter one, her words gave me hope that I will be able to develop the skills that I need to enable me to discard stuff.
In one of the stories in her book, she explains how she gets a sense of joy when seeing a place cleared and that’s exacting how I feel; however, I find it difficult to part with things that still have a use, so I end up with all sorts of barriers to discarding.
I decided to practise by sorting through the ‘bags’ category in the spare room. These are all bags that have come from the girls’ rooms that they apparently don’t want. I believe that there’s still some use in some of the bags but tried to be realistic when going through them. Here’s what I was faced with…
…so I created one pile (below left) of bags that I think we can still use, and another pile (below right) that I hope to donate once the charity shops are open again.
With the ones that I’m keeping, I will need to find somewhere to store them, which at the moment is going to be the spare room cupboard. That is until I sort out that cupboard and then you’ll probably see them pop up on another blog post.
Another family games night
As it was Father’s Day today, we played another couple of games as a family this evening. ‘Mousie Mousie’ and ‘Articulate!’. We had a laugh and it made me think about how we only tend to play games on special occasion days. My youngest is very good at getting us all organised to play, so maybe I’ll let her come up with a plan to get us playing games together more often.
Hope you’ve all had a good weekend.
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
Sandra Madeira 
Unfortunately, trying to de-clutter and organize when you are unable to donate things, makes it hard because you are looking at items differently. I don’t like to throw things out that still have use in them, but I find that if there is something I want to donate then I bag it up immediately and put it in my basement for when donations are again accepted. If your daughters got rid of the bags then they will never use them again. You might think they can still be used but they don’t. I also came to the uncomfortable conclusion about how much money I was wasting. Since I have done my BIG house declutter I give alot more thought about purchases and ultimately decide that I can do without, make something else work, find it second-hand or if it is a big ticket item really research before buying.
You are absolutely right, that’s all very helpful advice thank you. They are never going to ask me where the bags are that they took out of their rooms. I’m going to put all donation bags in my garage I think as that will free up space in the rooms I’m trying to declutter.