Getting Tough on Stuff 2015 - September

Well, following the Give and Take on Saturday, I thought I'd report back on this month's decluttering efforts. Most of the huge pile of items I'd already decluttered, probably over the past 3-4 months, were taken to the Give and Take.

Here's the sewing room before,

And here it is now, relieved of most of the 'stuff'.  

The things that are left here are clothes and collectables that I need to take to the CS.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to have a little tidy round and reorganised some more fabrics into one of the baskets to the rear, which makes for a less cluttered look. I'm having to spend a lot more time in this room for my small business at the moment, so the timing was perfect for me.

This month I have managed to declutter a few more things, approximately 57 in total, which, added to the measly 18 that I decluttered last month and the previous total of 1010 from January to July of this year, means I have  now donated approximately 1085 items from the house during this challenge. I can't even remember what half of it was, which is the frightening aspect of all of this effort, but hopefully much of it will have found a new home and been put to good use.

I do still keep deciding to part with occasional extra items of clothing from my wardrobe and drawers as I go along. I get items out of my wardrobe, wear them and I often feel totally uninspired by wearing them and decide that the time has come to let go.  This week it was a pair of jeans, which aren't really a very flattering leg cut on me.  I have had them a good few years though and worn them quite a bit, so I don't feel too bad about donating them.

As always, it's an ongoing process, but I haven't bought a new item of clothing in at least a couple of months now, nor wanted to, which is encouraging and that is despite a change of season and the obvious temptation to buy some of what's new in the shops.  I also still need to get my autumn/winter clothes out too, but am holding off as long as possible and making do for now, especially as we are still getting the occasional warm and sunny day.

In actual fact, there's still a few things in my new 'capsule' wardrobe, that I don't think I've actually worn yet, so perhaps it would be a good idea to give them an airing before buying or unpacking anything more.

I do have a wedding coming up in October, but as I purchased some clothes earlier in the year that will probably be suitable to wear for it, I don't think I will need to buy anything. Sometimes, I think that buying clothes for one off events is a sure way of ending up with items that never get worn again. Over the years, this has almost always been the case with me anyway.

Finally, I've come to the conclusion that reducing the amount of clothes I have at any one time, can only help to reduce the size of my ironing pile too.  When you've got too many clothes, you don't have to iron as regularly and can let the ironing pile build up to a ridiculous height, whereas the fewer you have, the sooner you need them ironed and ready to wear again. I'm very slowly working towards this ideal, but I think it might be quite a long way off yet.