Clearing that email inbox

I follow a blog called Zen Habitsand I have to tell you that it’s a total wealth of information on simple living and without a doubt is an AMAZING resource for simplifying every area in your lives!

I started tackling my email inbox thanks to a chapter in his Minimalist Guide to Simple Living book and have realized that he also has an excellent article on this on his blog that spells out exact steps on regaining your email sanity.

I’ve been processing my email, I realized my inbox was RIDICULOUS, before reading the book or even this article I started feeling like it was just too much and began unsubscribing from emails, great first step, this stopped having over 20 emails on a morning of stuff I mostly deleted anyway (why I didn’t do this before I have no idea).

So now I’m not adding to my email clutter, great! But I had over 4,200 emails in my inbox, yup you’re reading that correctly! It’s unbelievable how I mounted so much clutter in my inbox without even realizing it telling myself in case of situations determined me leaving them there. But what I didn’t consider was a neat little button in my gmail called archive. Why didn’t I know about this before?? How great would it be to look at an empty inbox? I am in the process of deleting mass amounts of email before I hit that archive button, because archiving 4200+ emails is just totally unnecessary!

So I’m in a mass wipe out session, and you’d be insanely amazed to know that I’m down to 1,855! And I will continue going and let you know my final number, but I do know I will never let it get like this again! After I’ve determined how many are actually going to be archived I will be sure to tell you and let you know how my ongoing efforts are!

I also have several folders on the side, which I’ve recently realized are just totally useless, of them the only one that’s actually important is the ‘important’ folder where I keep original login info emails from sites, I’ve started to manually input these into my household notebook. However, I will sort through this folder also so everything is easily identifiable and more efficient to use.

Other than that folder and an action folder I will delete, add to my to do list or archive right away. I’ve actually been effectively doing this for a couple weeks now and I’m very proud to say I’m regaining my sanity in my crazy email inbox!

Letting go… Part 2

So… My whole book organization thing brought me to this next part of letting go, and it’s what I’ve learned for myself.

Magazines and books are dangerous things… The inspire us to hang on to them, no matter how old, or how irrelevant they are to our lives. I’m a book packrat, and find letting go of them very difficult.

Magazines I’m a lot more forgiving on myself, but spend time ripping out articles which I think are so necessary to never ever see them again!

Why am I telling you this? To show you you’re not alone!

What I’ve discovered, at least with my magazine collection, thanks to the Internet, honestly this even applies for the book collection too but I’m not emotionally ready ok!!! Sorry back to it, thanks to the Internet, we can find almost anything (probably everything) online! In a digital format that doesn’t take up any physical space creating visual clutter and disturbing our auras!

Yup I said it… So goodbye to my magazine collection, and all those stupid pages I’ve never even read again! Man am I proud! One less thing to go through! 🙂

I promise I’ll tackle my book collection after I see if having them out of the containers has made any difference to my use of them!

My Book storage – FINALLY!

I have a good amount of books, I can’t say a ton or anything, but it takes up two plastic containers worth. They’ve sat inside of there for over 3 years now! I analy organized them in there that I could see every spine and choose any titles I wanted to easily and loved that it protected my books.

Why did it stay in the boxes? Well I had no bookshelves, so I left it in there and would, hmm can’t say frequently or even semi frequently, I’d check on my books and pull out a couple to read. Usually seeing about 5 at a time insisting that I’ll skim through them all at once. That’s another post, my lack of attention span, this has been put into my todo list for another post…

Back to where I was going! So I had my son on my bed kicking and playing and said alright let’s pull out those containers and sort NOW! If you remember my Christmas decor post, you can vaguely see my beautiful shelf.

My husband built this! I have to admit I wasn’t happy when it first set foot in this house, but several people have come to our home and admired it. I feel guilty now for being such a nightmare! I digress… I told myself ok I’m putting the books on the ‘bookshelf’ mind you this bookshelf isn’t a very traditional one, but it’s beautiful, and is housing the books very nicely!

In the bottom right, I’ve added some of my daughters books, as I was organizing she pulled out one of my books and said ‘I want read’, so immediately I thought well duh let’s make a corner for her too! I haven’t put all her books here only a few, just some she may enjoy to sit on the couch and go over.

I hope our bookshelf inspires us all to grab a book and take a read, because it’s been far too long!

Letting go…

Sometimes we attach such importance to stuff, it takes up space and without realizing it, time and energy as well. Oh that’s crazy you must be thinking but it’s true, it’s a box of things we know we just ‘can’t’ get rid of. We go through it and most of it stays! I have one underbed storage container that it’s never easy for me to empty.

Truthfully I’m very merciless, I don’t hang on to sentimental stuff too much and I’m usually able to objectively get rid of a lot of stuff. But what do you do with all those old pictures and what about that year book? I’ve allowed myself to keep these things because honestly, it doesn’t take up THAT much space that it’s affecting me mentally to the point of a break down. But I do try to revisit that container ever so often to objectively remove one or two more items. Maybe, one day I’ll reach empty! 🙂

What about those ‘what if’ items, oh yes! You know what I’m talking about! The pack of chalk pastelles that costed so much money and you hate chalk pastelles but refuse to get rid of! (This example so won’t apply to most of you lol!) But we do this with so many items, luckily for me I gave it to a friend who loves them and would have use for it! Don’t mind I’m sure he hasn’t touched them yet and it’s been 3 years.

If you haven’t used it in a year… Get rid of it… Sometimes we have to admit that our lives just don’t allow for these items. Or, if you feel as though it is something that you would like to start back and want to make the time for this is where time management comes in (we’ll tackle this another time) but you’d have to actually schedule time for this to occur!

I have to admit like I said before… Sewing isn’t going to happen and I’m going to sell that machine soon, I have to admit I just don’t have time for art in my life anymore and decide to pass on all those great paints and left over pencils etc to my daughter so we can spend some quality art time together instead! 🙂

What have you been holding on to? Is it time to let go?

30 Days – Day 30: Complete!

And we’re done! It’s been an amazing 30 days covering everything in the house and getting things under control! A special thank you to Tracey Roberts over at Moms in a Blog for creating this guide to get us through the organization challenge that is our homes!

It’s been a great run! See you soon guys! 🙂

Turn to page 33, the final page! Doesn’t it feel great?

If you’d like to join me on my 30 Day Challenge, pick up a copy of 30 Days to an Organized Home.

P.S. This ebook contains loads of extras such as cleaning checklists and pages for your family binder, which we create on Day 10!

30 Days – Day 29: Home Insurance

I’d personally add this into my same home management binder for ease of access as it’ll be one contained file of everything you need to know!

Turn to page 32 so we can complete the home management binder!

If you’d like to join me on my 30 Day Challenge, pick up a copy of 30 Days to an Organized Home.

P.S. This ebook contains loads of extras such as cleaning checklists and pages for your family binder, which we create on Day 10!

What’s going on?

This blog has been a huge mix of things, and I want you my readers to tell me if I’m heading in the right direction.

It’s become a lot of organizing/clutterfree/minimalism type stuff, does this bother you? If it does let me know!

I will start to throw in some more real life living type posts so stay tuned! But will continue to do a mix of everything that is parenting since it seems to be what everyone enjoys!

30 Days – Day 28: Home Contents

For insurance purposes it is advised to have photographs and a video walk through of your home to show the contents, I think this is a very great thing to have on hand as a back up. So take out those cameras/video cameras and let us begin!

Turn to page 31!

If you’d like to join me on my 30 Day Challenge, pick up a copy of 30 Days to an Organized Home.

P.S. This ebook contains loads of extras such as cleaning checklists and pages for your family binder, which we create on Day 10!

30 Days – Day 27: Disaster Kit

Now this may be a bit extreme for us, but it is a useful suggestion that can be tailored to suit our needs and definitely is worth the effort! Especially as you never know what can happen and it never hurts to be prepared!

Turn to page 30!

If you’d like to join me on my 30 Day Challenge, pick up a copy of 30 Days to an Organized Home.

P.S. This ebook contains loads of extras such as cleaning checklists and pages for your family binder, which we create on Day 10!

30 Days – Day 26: Garage Part 2

Enjoying a day off since this doesn’t apply to me! Hope you all are getting plenty done in the garage and are excited to move on to the next day!

Turn to page 29. Home stretch! We’re basically finished!

If you’d like to join me on my 30 Day Challenge, pick up a copy of 30 Days to an Organized Home.

P.S. This ebook contains loads of extras such as cleaning checklists and pages for your family binder, which we create on Day 10!