Sunday, 19 January 2014

Clutter busting and cleansing

I've had a busy week or so back on the decluttering wagon and I even created a facebook page called The White Space Project to document my activities and encourage fellow declutterers (is that a word?) to post pictures of their clutter busting activities.  I took all of my decluttered items to my local animal sanctuary to sell in their shop:



I'm reading a lovely book at the moment called Soul Space which is about creating a home that is free of clutter, full of beauty and inspired by you. The author writes " by using your belongings as a concrete way to investigate and understand your feelings and attachments, you will expose and then begin to break down old patterns, literally "making room" for your new, more evolved self."

I had a clutter hot spot in my sitting room, built in shelves which stored some of our cd's and dvd's.  I have been storing cd's  in this unit for approx 14 years, many of the cd's I don't listen to anymore as I can listen to musically digitally through our Sonos System.  Was this space representing my more evolved self? No. It was time to pack the cd's away and put them into storage.

Here is how the space looked as a storage unit:

Post declutter:






And breathe............

I really enjoy walking into my sitting room and seeing this decluttered space, it feels very light and spacious and represents me, my move evolved self!

On the subject of evolving, I wondered if I could evolve some of my food habits, my diet isn't too bad but it does have alot of sugar and carbohydrates in it.  I participated in a 3 day sugar cleanse at the start of this week which was a freebie offered by Persephone Brown called Kicking Sugar's Sweet Ass. For the first 2 days we stayed away from :



Nothing white:: no potatoes, no grains, no flours (sweet potatoes ok) 
No beans (high starch)
No Alcohol













Persephone advised to stay off caffeine during the cleanse and to up our fluid intake (minimum of 3.2 pints water). This also included many more "bathroom stops!"

This was much harder than I anticipated, by the end of day 1 I was craving a cup of tea and a glass of white wine! I had a splitting headache, I was grumpy, tired  and I felt deprived. 
Day 2 - see day 1
Day 3 - see day 1 & 2 but without the grumpiness but extreme tiredness

Day 4 - an opportunity to "get back to normal" only I didn't! There had been a shift in my thinking, it no longer felt like something I "had to do" it now felt like something I could choose to do.

Day 5 - still sticking with it but brought caffeine back in with the odd cup of  Earl Grey tea.

Day 6 & 7 - week-end and I've had carbs and sugar and white wine (which just didn't taste the same). I tried a piece of fruit cake and that didn't taste the same either.

Day 8 - that's tomorrow and I will be back on the cleanse as I felt much better for it.

1 comment:

  1. Glad your decluttering is powering ahead, it does make a difference to one's life. Having moved to a smaller flat we had to divest ourselves of so many things - it was hard at the time but it's strange that after four years I can't remember why those things were so important. To keep as decluttered as possible (except in the studio where it would be a valuable exercise!) I operate a one-in one-out policy. Having acquired a dozen or so new DVDs over Christmas I now have to decide which older ones can go to make room for the new ones.
    Your storage unit now looks so serene and soothing, so it's well worth doing.

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