Declutter day 7/??

 I missed day 6 as I did absolutely nothing yesterday apart from nurse my cold. 

Today I am going to look at the kitchen

I have already had a wasteful but necessary purge of two of the kitchen cupboards and chucked out almost everything that isn't organic, and everything that only does your body harm. This has amounted to half a bin bag and a whole lot in the compost. Not technically decluttering as these are all consumables, but still important. 

- Half bin bag of odd socks/old knickers etc

- Dressing gown which has huge sentimental value but hasn't really fit in years

- 14 books

- Few bits of swimwear

- Ball of wool that escaped last week's cull

- 4 bottles nearly empty old perfume

- Pair of pajamas

- Hand knitted sweater vest

- Floral winter dress

- Two short sleeved blouses

- Two tunic type tops

- Winter skirt

- Big crochet jumper

- Massive knitted jumper

- 3 Big cardigans

- Knee length summer skirt

- Yellow pinafore dress

- Pink cotton jumper

- 2 Principles knee length skirts

- Lovely but totally worn out 70s maxi dress

- Box of false nails

- Empty/old bottles of creams and potions

- False eyelashes

- Two big necklaces

- Big bracelet

- Long corduroy skirt 

- 2x sweater vests

- Another tunic

- Pair of shorts

- Travel coffee cup

I read something online about minimizing/sorting out your house which said that you should always do so in the following order: 

-Declutter
-Organise
-Tidy
-Clean

There is no point doing it in any other order. You can go through this cycle again and again as many times as you like but always in this order. As I have discovered, if you have a house full of nonsense you can spend your life organizing it and cleaning it, but your house will never be tidy because there is just too much nonsense there. So for now I am living in messy, dusty chaos, but I am finally decluttering in earnest and will carry on in this way until it feels like enough. 

I have found that there is a whole category of stuff that I seem to hang onto for ego-related reasons. Artworks I've done, jumpers I've made. As though I want there to be some record of my achievements, even if they a) aren't really an achievement anyway or b) serve no fuction. I think this is something that has been drummed into me before, during and since art school, that I am a special flower and everything I touch is golden. It just isn't true, and I need to be mindful not to cling onto stuff as a memento from my glory days when I still was headed towards 'being someone'.