Spring de-cluttering

I've been working quite hard on de-cluttering our house, over the last few days.  Although the house generally looks reasonably tidy to me, apart from the study, which tends to be full of pieces of paper, I've realised how much junk we have accumulated over the last few years.  This is I think one of the disadvantages of having a reasonable amount of space, and not having moved house for seven years.  I've also realised that as we've bought replacement kitchen equipment, bedding and so on, we have often not got rid of the items we were replacing, hence our increasingly full home.

Now, I am trying to imagine that we are about to start packing for a move, and to try and picture what we would want to take with us, and what we would want to give, or throw, away.  This has been quite effective so far.  I've managed to de-clutter several kitchen cupboards, including the baking tin cupboard, the worst, which has now been thoroughly cleaned, pruned, and organised.  We've also identified a pile of clothes, books, saucepans, bedding, and other miscellaneous items which need to go.  At the moment, I've put everything we no longer want into one room; the next stage of the project is to determine what is worth giving away or selling, and what is just rubbish.

As part of this project, we've also decided to buy a few new things, where we were using things that were unsatisfactory or didn't work properly; a new cake tin, as I was using one with a lid which didn't close properly; a new duvet cover; and a new filing cabinet.

The filing cabinet is needed for the next phase in our project, which is to sort out our office; at the moment our filing system is so complicated, having grown from one concertina file to several plus two lever arch files and several box files, that I only catch up with filing very occasionally, and with gritted teeth.  What I am aiming for is one central system so that things can be easily filed as soon as the post arrives.   (I would be interested in comments on how others manage their filing, by the way....)  I've added the Unclutter blog to my reading list, as well.

A heating oil collective

We got a flyer through the door yesterday, inviting us to join a local - heating, not olive - oil collective. Not to sound too Cold Comfort Farm, but 'there's no gas in the village', so for the last few years we have had a direct debit with an oil provider who tops up the oil tank regularly. I'd been planning to check out oil prices and suppliers again, as part of reveiwing all our direct debits, so was interested to hear about the local scheme.

The collective is run by someone in a nearby village, who takes advantage of representing a large group of individual buyers, now around 150, to shop around and get a discount on the standard price. He's also keen to reduce the impact of having oil tankers making frequent trips to individual buyers; I completely agree with him on that, and is exploring a collective boiler servicing scheme, another excellent idea.

I will be filling in the membership forms shortly; it looks as though there are discounts to be had, and it is the sort of initiative I would like to join in on.

It made me wonder what other collectives might exist, or be worth setting up, for joint buying?

'The Millionaire Mind' and the economically productive household

Following on from last week's post about 'The Millionaire Mind' and vocation, this week I am looking at what this book has to say about household spending. In one chapter, Thomas Stanley analyses the spending patterns of the wealthy, and notes that the members of wealthy households are more likely than others to be in the habit of doing the following things:

-Changing telephone providers to benefit from cheaper deals
-Having shoes repaired
-Having furniture re-upholstered instead of buying new
-Using discount coupons when shopping
-Buying household supplies in bulk

He points out that although doing each of these things may result in a fairly small weekly or monthly saving, over many years, the amounts saved will be significant.

I found one of Dr Stanley's examples interesting: that of a wealthy woman who, together with her husband, lived in a very nice house in an expensive neighbourhood. She bought high-quality clothes, but from second-hand shops rather than bought new; she ate good-quality, healthy food, but used coupons, planning her meals in advance, and cooking from scratch, and did not drive an expensive car. She was happy to spend a lot of money on antique furniture, partly because good quality furniture would last for a long time and be worth repairing or re-upholstering, but also because antiques would generally hold their value over time, if not increase, and could be passed on to future generations.

The lessons I took from this chapter were that it is worthwhile taking a long term view as small habits can lead to significant savings of time; it is worth prioritising what you want to spend money on, and allocating resources accordingly; and that it makes sense to spend money on things which will hold their value, or increase, like property or antique furniture, rather than consumer goods, expensive cars, or cheap furniture, which will not.

Mending

Today, I have spent a satisfying hour or two mending clothes. I am not a talented seamstress, but have been sewing on buttons and mending tears in a few shirts. It is a good feeling to make these repairs, and to put some garments back into circulation which have been on a mending pile for some time. I have a small sewing kit which includes a twist of threads of all sorts of different colours, which I have had for years. When I come to mend an item, I can generally find a piece of thread of approximately the right colour for the garment involved; I don't need to buy or store reels of cotton of many different colours.