Housekeeping 1

It started with the book Almost Amish (Nancy Sleeth).  I remember specifically the author discussing junk mail.  I don’t get a lot of junk mail, actually most days I don’t get mail of any kind.  While I don’t get actual junk mail via the mailbox, there are other things that apply.

Facebook! 

I unliked the majority of pages and groups I belonged to or followed.  Taste of Home, 12 Tomatoes were my food page hold outs, but I eventually I unliked them.  I have a ton of great cookbooks, plus more available to me for free at the library or from my mother (who owns every Gooseberry Patch cookbook ever made, plus several other cookbooks) and a ton of pinned recipes on Pinterest.  I do not need to be tempted with ooey, gooey recipes and I think I'll live without tips like these;

 

Antique pages, unliked.  Tourist pages, unliked.  I like Manhattan KS, but I hadn’t really needed to follow Aggieville’s page.  I’ve kept Southern Plate, which is a recipe blog/page, but is much more than that too.   I’ve kept certain Christian pages; Allister Begg, Ligonier, the page for the church I’m sort of attending…  The farming pages; all unliked.  

I’m hoping more of the content I really care to see will now appear and I won’t have to scroll through so much that I hadn’t really needed, wanted to see and that took up so much of my time.  Maybe I’ll even get to the point where I’m not checking FB but once or twice a week and not several times a day!  I know for some FB is a stress reliever, but I’d much rather cross stitch, watch a movie, read a good book or go for a walk than to wonder what I’m missing on FB. 

Email.  Some time ago a friend posted a screen shot of his emails not read number.  It was over 2000. It drove his wife nuts.  She had fewer than 30.  Whats your number?  Mine is;

 

 

 

I’m working to lower that.  When I find myself with a few minutes, I work to delete or move to a folder those unread emails.  This also applies to the hundreds, if not thousands of emails I’ve read or glanced at, but never deleted.  I know there are emails that go back to 2014 that I’ve read, but never deleted.

Email subscriptions.  Betty Crocker, The Attic (a cross stitch store), newsletters, store promotions.  I’m unsubscribing to them as they appear in my email box.  This one appeared in my inbox lately and I unsubscribed.

 

 

Cross stitch newsletter. I have so many great patterns in my stash that I do not need to be tempted to purchase more.  I won’t die if I don’t get that one pattern that everyone else loves.  All I have to do is go upstairs, open my file cabinet and see all the great patterns I have, most for many years, that I’ve never gotten around to stitching.  I do no need more stuff! 

Books.  This one is harder.  Guilt.  I bought these books.  Some at Goodwill, others at garage sales, estate sales, the libraries book sale.  Others were given to me.  Most I’ve not read and while I thought I might, I know I won’t.  So, I’m going through them and most will be donated to the library for their big annual book sale in September and others will be given away to someone who will read them.  

Eventually I hope to carry this “housekeeping” over to my cookbooks and cross stitch stash, but I haven’t had time to yet.  I’m open to other suggestions on decluttering.  Have you taken similar steps to declutter?