I recently watched a video which showed a couple collecting bagfuls of litter from around a rocky coastline. It was sobering to see the amount of litter which had been left behind by visitors to this beautiful spot. However, the greater shock came when the couple walked to the water’s edge and calmly tipped all the carefully collected rubbish straight into the sea. The point they were making was that two litter-picking individuals could have no impact whatsoever on the many millions of tonnes of plastic waste currently polluting our oceans.

I understand their bleak message, but refuse to admit defeat. It is never time to give up hope. And thankfully I’m not alone in this conviction. Over the past four days, volunteers have gathered around our shores for the Great British Beach Clean. Organised by the Marine Conservation Society, along with other like-minded environmental groups, the Beach Clean brought people together to remove and recycle tonnes of accumulated rubbish. Though it may not have made even the slightest dent in the amount of plastic pollution in the sea, each of these local events has made a difference.

Whereas the couple who threw all the rubbish back into the sea demonstrated that people are the problem, everyone who joined the Great British Beach Clean discovered that people can also be the solution.

I couldn’t make it to the coast this weekend, so I opted for a street clean instead. Armed with my Litterati app, I recovered and recycled 30 pieces of rubbish from my neighbourhood. I was a little sad that people weren’t taking more responsibility for their local environment, but I did see one person pick up and recycle his rubbish… so I’m not giving up hope.

And I had to chuckle at the rather apt title of the book I rescued from a hedge as I walked home…

At the start of this journey we reflected on what we would take should our houses be on fire and perhaps foolishly thought the shortness of the list meant we would be able to tame clutter easily. This has not proved to be so. There are days I have to admit when the words of title of this post resonate and I’m tempted to set fire to it all so as to not have to face how painfully slow and emotionally draining tacking some of the stuff is.

Today though not focusing on how hard dealing with stuff is but sharing a favourite video which makes us smile and remember to take a bag when shopping. Lesson is to not to take it all so seriously you fail to enjoy the journey.  One, two, three it’s karaoke time …

Take your canvas bags, Take your canvas bags,

Take your canvas bags to the soooo permarket……

Behold the caddis fly, a quite unextraordinary, brown, moth-like insect. Admittedly, those antennae are pretty impressive, but this dude surely won’t be winning any beauty prizes. It’s the kind of insect of which my dear mum would say “at least his mother loves him.”

The larvae of these insects look even less lovely, but display intriguing behaviour. They create protective cases by spinning together bits of stone, sand, leaves and twig with a silk they secrete from glands around their mouth. The appearance of these cases varies enormously, dependant upon the building materials available.

A caddis fly larva with access to gravel or reeds will create a suitably camouflaged house. But provide your larvae with more precious building materials & they will create positive palaces:To see a magical video of the caddis fly larva building its intricate golden home, check out the work of French artist Hubert Duprat.

What, you may well ask, has all this got to do with Drowning in Stuff? Well, I spend a lot of time feeling negative about all the clutter that surrounds me. But not today.

Today I shall be a caddis fly larva. I will gather about me all the papers, magazines, books, clothes, toys, gadgets and random whatevers, fitting them together in a complex & beautiful way, to create the perfect safe space in which I will install myself until it’s time to emerge, refreshed and ready to fly.

Uncluttering isn’t just about the physical strength to shift stuff it’s a mental battle too. So this week to support me on my travels decided to revisit a favourite google find, from the land of fast food and want it now, the 1 minute meditation. Instant gratification even on a spiritual level. Despite my initial judgement based on stereotype and prejudice  it proved worth a try. After all you can spend a minute waiting for google to load on a slow internet day.

I then wondered could I take the 1 minute concept and translate it into a tip that would never fail for a moment to make my clutter disappear. I could and here it is.

Find a spot and a picture of a favourite uncluttered view. Look at pic for one minute then shut eyes and transport yourself there leaving those piles of stuff behind. Just for a minute stay there, for that moment be happy and contented in the land of unclutterment.

That’s cheating I hear you cry. I opened my eyes and my stuff was still there. How does this help. Because clutter is only stuff you perceive to be clutter so when you need to you can always go back to land of unclutterment again. If you want things different in the real world make the decision as to whether you want that stuff to still be there when you open your eyes.

If today has been a struggle and you want a more action based one minute uncluttering tip that would result in stuff moving. Then just click arrow and let lady luck decide what next.  Whatever you choose to do I wish you many clutter free moments today.

This week, a wander back in time to revisit some of the books and TV programmes which inspired a generation of litter-pickers and recyclers.

Underground, overground, Wombling free
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we    
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind

Surely the Wombles must be everybody’s favourite environmentalists. They’ve been clearing up Wimbledon Common since the nineteen sixties, putting other people’s rubbish to good use. I was enchanted by the books & the animated TV series narrated by Bernard Cribbens.

We will find it, we will bind it,
We will stick it with glue, glue, glue
We will stickle it
Every little bit of it
We will fix it like new, new, new.

Do you remember Bagpuss? He was a lovable, saggy old cloth cat who would restore lost & discarded items to their former glory… ably assisted by his mousey friends. This programme transfixed a generation of children who adored Bagpuss & his odd assortment of friends (and hopefully instilled an ethos of rescuing and renewing things which have been discarded by others.)

Stig of the Dump is one of my favourite childhood books, telling the tale of a caveman living in an old chalk pit filled with rubbish. He’s befriended by a boy named Barney who sets about improving Stig’s gloomy living arrangements by re-purposing some of the discarded items they find; windows are created from old glass jars and a chimney of tin cans clears smoke from the fire. Looking back, these two were my first introduction to upcycling.

 The Clangers appeared in the early nineteen seventies. Cute, pink knitted creatures who live on a strange, dustbin-lidded planet, they are experts at rescuing space debris and putting it to new purposes. They are my all-time favourite recycling experts; kind, caring, inventive & imaginative, the perfect guardians for a cluttered planet.

(Small & Tiny Clanger, hand-knitted by my mum)

These much loved recyclers, fixer-uppers, up-cyclers & environmentalists have all stood the test of time. Hopefully they’ll be joined by many more green role models for younger generations. Leave a comment if you have fond memories of a book or TV programme which taught you to care for our planet, or let us know which new characters are championing the environment today.

It is cold, it is wet, it is August. No this is not a test sentence set by my son to see if his pupils have learnt the months of the year. This is how it is. Cold and dark and wintry when we might instead have expected a little vit D top up. Such is life and the weather latest excuse for not tackling stuff. It is instead, perfect weather for spending too much time googling. Thus chanced across an article  which got me thinking about tackling stuff in a different way.

After all, Shaheryar Malik felt better for deciding to empty his apartment of books by leaving them in huge heaps in public spaces across Manhattan.  Why not me too. What a good idea, book crossing but with a twist. Taking it one step further, instead of books could just take bags full of stuff and artistically leave piles of stuff around London as works of art and random regifting. Why had I not thought of this before.

Before you respond with outrage. It’s ok I did nothing. Still (for now) appreciate when crossing a line between guerrilla declutterer and criminal. My piles of stuff would clearly constitute flytipping.  No-one not even long suffering family or friends would view it as installation Art. Freeing himself, Malik , depending on your perspective either dumped his stuff on the rest of us or gave us a present. Truly a First World problem. Whether to choose to divest or keep stuff a luxury many don’t have. Lesson learnt is that piles of stuff can rule, ruin or enhance life as we choose.

Enough philosophy, action is what achieves results so I’ll finish by directing you to a post  The Bridge by Brooke McAlary that reminds me of this and encourages me to start even when don’t want to. Hope you find your bridge and please leave it clutter free.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Frederick Douglass

…but today I’m focusing on my progress rather than the struggle.

This week, I’ve:

1. Posted five items I sold on eBay.
2. Left a bundle of books and magazines on the free book shelf in a train station.
3. Sent used postage stamps to Bransby Horses Rescue & Welfare.
4. Dropped off some ratty old towels at a recycling bin.
5. Picked up all the windfall apples & added them to the compost heap.
6. Recycled bags (apples, carrots, bread etc) in the carrier bag recycling bin.
7. Took an accumulation of plastic packaging & tetra packs to the supermarket for recycling.
8. Went to the local authority recycling centre with a heap of hard plastics, metal lids & light bulbs.

OK, I’m kidding myself if I claim all of these are “progress,” when most are already regular recycling tasks. Decluttering is more about tackling the stuff which is gathering dust; the mess of things which I struggle to ever sort out. But today I will not beat myself up over losing my battle against the muddle. In the last seven days, the number of books in my house has gone down rather than up (result!) Who knows, this really could be the start of reclaiming my living space.

Hope you won’t be disappointed to learn today has nothing to do with food waste.  No, today, not going to try to focus on what stuff needs to be done or how to do it. Today going to muse on the impact of weariness on the ability to function wisely or at all. Macbeth was the text studied at school, the words repeated so often and made such an impression that decades later they still come to mind even when too tired to think. Macbeth is they say one of the great tragedies relating to the idea of unchecked power and the consequences of blind ambition. The weakness of Macbeth set against the ‘strength’ of Macduff. Be that as it may, Macbeth does murder sleep – the innocent sleep , sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care…. I often felt his punishment to be deprived of sleep far worse than being hung,  drawn and quartered. Lack of sleep may surely drive us mad.

Where is this going . Well a blog post may be the start or end of a google wander. So, here an article on sleep as the new status symbol. Make of it what you will. But I will also share with you what I have discovered on this journey so far. A good night’s rest however achieved will make tackling stuff easier and of course stuff tackled will make it easier to get a good night’s sleep. It is for you dear reader to decide where to start. Chicken or egg. Egg or chicken.  Enough philosophy,  no blog is complete without a cute cat appearing at some point so here it is.

Sweet dreams or happy uncluttering or both.

Some days, it gets too much. It’s been nearly half a year since we declared war on clutter, yet we’re still up to our ears in it. The blogging & tweeting have been fun. We’ve learned a bit along the way… which plastics can’t be recycled, how to avoid food waste, why helium balloons should be banned… but we seem to have lost track of our initial plan. We are still… possibly more than ever, now we throw nothing away… Drowning in Stuff.

Back from my summer holiday in an achingly beautiful and hauntingly empty corner of England, today I was feeling totally discouraged. What on earth could I blog about, aside from my failure to progress?

I decided simply to post a video from years back, one that always makes me smile; a guy who dances like nobody is watching (and as if he doesn’t care about the state of his house.) Could I find it? Nope. I dug out an old hard drive where I thought I’d stored a list of fave music videos. Instead, in a file marked “Lists” I found “To Do, 2014” and thought I’d share it with you:

My first thought: Who knew I was a Stuffoholic three years ago? My second: Some of those things have been completed! My third: Most haven’t.

And there’s the rub. It’ll always be a work in progress. Some of it will get done. Hey, I’ll even be optimistic and say all of it will get done. Eventually.

But for now I will sit and admire my framed hare artwork and rejoice that the kitchen ceiling was replaced before landing on our heads.

Enjoy the video…

Today just enjoy the view as we pause on our journey. Time to take a staycation leaving our stuff behind and other cares. The millstones though a reminder of how flour and water have been sustenance over the ages all over the world. We couldn’t then leave without a thought on wasted food, bread sadly the biggest source of food waste in the UK.  A staggering equivalent of 24 million slices of bread just thrown away every day. There are many tips out there – store it properly, freeze it , buy smaller loaves, to name just three but here six uses for stale bread and a blog you can browse through while we enjoy that view.