The Friday Declutter Challenge - 26 Sept 08

The Declutter Tip for the week ...

Many of you have too many emails in your inbox so this week's tip is to make a game of deleting emails.

Anything is more fun when it's a game, so ...

1. set a daily target and decide how many emails you want to delete every day (25, 50, 60, whatever you like)
2. go scavenging and see where you can find those emails - Inbox, Sent Items, folders, sub-folders, etc.

Where does all my decluttered stuff go?

I had a question in the comments a week or so ago - what do I do with all the stuff I declutter?

Well, this is the beauty of living in South Africa where unemployment is high and people are poor. You literally leave things outside your gate and they are GONE in 10 minutes' time. Sometimes sooner :)

I don't mean to make light of it, but the fact is that for every person who lives in a nice house, there are loads of people who have hardly anything and are very grateful for any clothes, shoes, kitchen stuff, etc.

When I have a cleaning lady (I fired the latest one on Tuesday), I let her have first dibs at anything I'm throwing out. She leaves what she doesn't want and I leave a box/ bag outside with the rest and, as I say, it's gone before you can say "the Friday Declutter Challenge" :)

I take my books to a secondhand bookstore (Bookdealers) where I can choose whether I want cash or credit for the books. I always take credit since they give you more money that way.

And we have a recycling company called Mondi who collects paper goods once a week. So all my magazines and paper go in a big orange bag which is collected outside our house every Tuesday.


What I decluttered this week ...

A net total of 15 blogs from my Google Reader

and these two unused bags - backpack and an over-the shoulder bag, both promotional gifts from my husband's work (I gave these to my tenants - students - living in the cottage on our property)


What have you decluttered this week?