Declutter day 15/??

Had a dream that I got rid of a whole load of cds - premonition?

OUT:

- Grey Koi Footwear platforms. One of two pairs I bought from a charity shop about a year ago, neither of which I have worn. Keeping one pair for now, for just in case. If I haven't worn them by the summer I'll probably ditch them too. The problem is that I am a tall girl who doesn't like to stand out, so although I like the idea of tall shoes, I never wear them for that reason.

- Small wooden pot with lid

- Two bin bags absolutely full of DVDs - maybe 200? 

We have a lot of DVDs, I've always enjoyed watching films and over the years we have just collected them and not been very ruthless about getting rid of them so I have had a big cull today. We still have what I consider to be too many - on counting, about 110 - and I have already said that I'll have another look through them another day and try to cut it down even more. We have a very slim DVD unit behind our lounge door - if they can all fit onto that comfortably then I think that is fine. At the moment we are about 20 over the limit. 

Before I decided to cull the DVDs though Will and I had a bit of a talk about it, and whether or not there really is a place in our life for watching films and telly at all. Will grew up without a TV at all. I had a telly and my mother was a working single parent so wasn't around a lot, so on the other end of the spectrum I watched a fair bit of telly growing up, and I got quite into films when I was a teenager. It's hard to decide how I feel about either of our upbringings when deciding what we want things to be like for the girls. On the one hand I think Will growing up without a telly maybe set him apart from his peers more, and as I already feel we are doing so much differently I am concerned about doing that any more with the girls. On the other hand, I can't really look back on any of the time I have spent watching T.V, either as a child or an adult, with any sense of satisfaction. For the past few years, probably mainly since lockdown, in the evenings more often than not we have watched a film, or gone through phases of watching different telly shows (at the moment it is Bergerac). I enjoy this at the time, and I enjoy the opportunity to relax, however in hindsight, even just looking to yesterday, it just feels like a massive waste of time. 

In reality maybe we don't really need to make any decisions anyway - the girls rarely watch telly, when we do it is usually as a family, sometimes a film on a rainy day, sometimes a nature documentary on Sunday afternoons when everyone is tired. Because the girls haven't seen much telly and because we have been careful about what we have shown them, they aren't completely desensitised to it so find quite a lot of films quite terrifying anyway, and don't deal well with mild peril. Something I did feel sure of though while I was doing this, is that I want us to be more careful, in the things we say and especially in the things we do, that we are living and showing a good example to the girls of our strong and confident values. When so much community has been lost and when so many people nowadays seem to live by such a vague set of morals, I think it is more important than ever to be the best example you can be to children. Anything we are watching or reading therefore that conflicts with the way we want to be living and raising the girls, in my opinion has to go. That was one of the criteria for decluttering our DVDs, and will be as I go through them again in a few days to get rid of the last few. 
In terms of Will and I, I think we both want to make the effort to do something in the evening besides watch telly - for me this could include working out our budget, making meals plans, catching up on my admin jobs, writing to do lists, having a tidy up before bed, reading a book, doing some exercise, playing a board game with Will, or working on a craft and listening to the radio.

Anyway, bit of a ramble today, to sum up:

OUT:

-Small wooden box

-1 Pair of shoes

-2 bin bags of DVDs

-4x books on sewing/quilting

-13x art books

-Pink beaded necklace

-Plastic document file

I might also tack on a bit of mental decluttering here - I have finally deleted, not just deactivated but fully deleted, my Instagram account. I began to feel like maybe I should try and 'get back into it' and post again. I'm looking for love and validation. Big red alarm bells there, you will not find these things on social media, so I thought, why am I hanging onto this at all? So there, it's gone.