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About Me:: Retired public servant. My husband and I have just moved from the country to a small house in the suburbs to nearer medical facilities and grandchildren. I've never been a great housewife but with this little house I'm going to have to pick up my game a bit. After 40 years of keeping house I really need to get motivated. Love to read - much more enjoyable than vacuuming! I'm familiar with Flylady but I just 'so over' housework.

Do you own any eBooks or courses from the Queen of KAOS network of websites:: None

What is your biggest challenge:: I guess too much in too small a space. otherwise known as clutter and the motivation to do something definitive about it.

What has prevented you from success in thepast:: I tend to pick something up and then go through the old 'I might need it someday' or 'Mum gave me that' routine. I've got lots of other reasons for not turfing things out like it 'might be valuable one day' or 'the war memorial might want it' etc.

How can the iShine Community help you to achieve your goals:: Some step by step plans and permissions to throw things out to overcome the guilt of waste, ingratitude, etc. I come from the 'guilt generation'.

What can you contribute to the iShine Community to help others achieve their goals:: I've lots of life experience (60 years of it) and I've got a sense of humour. I'm looking for ways to live an enriching life and am happy to share some of my experiences with others. Like why you should always read all the instructions on the new capet cleaner bottle so you don't end up trying to vacuum the house using the thin nozzle of the vacuum!

Soliciting or promotion of sites or products in the iShine Community is by permission only. I understand that violation of this rule will result in cancellation of my membership.: Yes

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At 6:14am on September 25, 2008, Jan Ferrante said…: You are really 'cleaning up' on the Spring Challenge!

I am thrilled to hear from you and how well you are doing already!

I was amazed myself at how much better it was after 20 minutes, and also at the amount of stuff I had been ignoring and didn't even realize it.

Good for you, you will be really glad when summer gets here that you did it too, I know I was (and still am, that's the great thing, the benefits are permanent, even if you get more clutter to deal with, at least the old is gone)

At 8:11am on September 23, 2008, Jan Ferrante said…: Hi Colleen, I hear you!

For many years we literally were drowning in clutter because I hated to waste anything. It seems to be something I was born with!

Then I realized that the only thing I was really wasting was my life and my children's childhood, growing up in the clutter that was taking away the best of me in constantly trying to deal with it, clean it, live in it.

We lived in small mobile home when my first 2 kids where small. If I could do anything differently, I would have gotten rid of more things, or stored them to rotate them. They had lots of things (we had a lot of family that gave us a lot of stuff) but they didn't have much free space.

I was able to get rid of a lot when I realized that someone else could get a lot better use of a lot of the things I was keeping, or that it was garbage and not doing any good here.

I even felt guilt about filling the landfill, but realized that making my home a landfill wasn't helping anything.

The best way to tackle that guilt is to have less in the first place and be aware of packaging, re use bags etc.

As for things that loved ones have given us, I do have a collection of things that I need to go through again that were my grandmothers (somehow her entire house full of things ended up here, that was a good year of decluttering practice!)

I think the best thing to do is to allow yourself a reasonable amount of space, one that isn't going to infringe on your living area and keep what will fit, be it a box or a shelf - what ever you decide. This will force you to keep only the very most important things. Some people take pictures of the things to keep.

I found that the Spring Into Spring Cleaning course really helped me to get rid of a ton of stuff that I didn't even realize was cluttering up the house.

How are you doing with it?

btw, I just had a look and noticed that you aren't in the Spring Cleaning group, so I am sending you an invite. You'll find more resources and anytime you need some help or want to let us know how you're doing, pop in there.

I am going to be working on a fall session as soon as I can, so maybe you will have some decluttering company soon :0)