Once you get serious about decluttering your home, there are tough decisions to make. Though often a while after, you realise some of those decision really were not so tough after all. As was the case of sorting through our DVD collection, both games and movies.

Many years ago I gave my sister most my old VHS video collection. Last week we gave her over eighty DVDs. Including ‘How I met your mother’ box sets, Disney and Blade Runner amongst others. An conservative estimate would value the DVDs at roughly £240 GBP.

The fact of the matter is we don’t watch many of our old DVDs. We’ve kept many movies, but why have a collection you rarely watch? So reducing it was right for us, providing us with even more shelf space. The DVDs my sister does not want she can give away. We could of sold these eighty or more dvds on ebay, but sometimes giving items to family or friends is better.

This blog post isn’t to gloat, but just a realisation of how far my better half and I have come with reducing our shopping bills.

We had a food delivery the other day and along with the list of items we brought, stapled to the back was a list of someone else’s items. I decided to be nosey and compare the two. Comparing the lists many things become apparent. Firstly their shopping was for one person, unlike ours being for two.

With that in mind here are some details:

- Our shopping was £16.93 GBP less.

- We had four more fruit or veg only items.

- We had twenty-five more items which were classed as ‘value’.

- We had six less items which had dairy in them.

- We had no non-supermarket named brands, they had thirty-one.

Our food bills used to be high, easily done especially when very busy and pressures in life. If we had doubled their bill for two people, then ours would have been £33.86 less. I think the big differences are we are vegetarian and try to avoid named brands. Plus we avoid items which are expensive if we enjoy an alternative. Sometimes we have an alternative which we don’t hate, but don’t love either, but have here and there to keep our food budget in check.

It would be fair to say we struggle to keep our food bill at the level we do. There are some ‘value’ items which I probably wouldn’t eat, but many I really like i.e. iceberg lettuce, plum tomatoes and some which I don’t mind, but won’t rave about. However we’ve been spending that money elsewhere, such as home improvement and clothes recently.

Like this week I put tortillas on the shopping list, only to take them off to keep in budget. We didn’t need to keep in budget, but seeing as eight other items looked pretty darn good, it didn’t matter. Plus I eat a lot of home-made food, such as in the last week home-made scones and a pear and plum crumble.

If I didn’t have my better half, I’m sure I would be eating incredibly badly with high bills to accompany. For a vegetarian I didn’t used to eat a lot of salad, now I do most days. I’ve not drunk alcohol in around four months, whereas in the past I drunk far too much. I used to eat a lot of chocolate bars, drink a lot of cherry coke, when not boozing or eating chips or expensive extra mature cheddar (not on offer). Things have changed so much over the years.

So I’ve been insanely busy, but more of that another time. Instead I thought I would write about how the ‘declutter’ efforts are progressing, plus food and drink changes I’ve made to my daily life. Please don’t hesitate to leave feedback and also let know me about decluttering efforts and any food & drink changes you’ve made.

Decluttering

Sometimes clearing out and organising the home doesn’t require large steps, but lots of little steps that together make huge improvements. For instance recently my better half and I have:

• Cleared up a kitchen draw and removed the knife rack from a work surface.
• Finally got rid of some old cardboard boxes.
• Using up long-life food items.
• Not renewed magazine subscriptions.

Just by reducing purchases, using up items and making decisions on current items regularly, coupled with previous declutter efforts means our home feels bigger and we are freeing up cupboard space. We have a long way to go, but getting there.

Food & Drink

For a while I was gaining weight again whilst I’ve been working insane hours and was snacking too much, plus eating more unhealthy food. However I’m now fuelling myself better:

• Salad with each dinner.
• Fruit instead of flapjacks and chocolate.
• Cereals for breakfast weekday and half the bread at lunch.
• Fruit juices, water and squash replacing half the tea I drink daily.
• No booze.

The impact of the healthier eating has been incredible. However it isn’t all healthy eating and once in a while I will indulge unhealthy meals, such as Morrisions curry sauce on chips, accompanied by bread and butter!

Curry sauce ideal for chips!

Coming up: My next blog post will be my monthly personal website statistics.

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We are ‘decluttering’ our property and yesterday was another major sort out. Here is a quick update chronicling our efforts.


More books were bagged ready for charity, including some I’ve owned for fifteen years at least. Plus I’ve decided to get rid of my electronic component supply, which I was hoarding for an electronics hobby, but I do not have the time currently and it could be years until I begin, so I decided to clear out that draw. Also we went through a box full of magazines and have chosen at least fifty to sixty to be disposed of.

We have a long way to go and there are some hard decisions to ponder, but it feels good to give more items to charity and to be creating more space at home.