My Name is Brooke and I am on a Decluttering Bender.

Sorry for the radio silence, friends. Every spare moment lately has been spent clutter-busting our home. I'm only a fraction of the way there, but damn it feels good. I feel lighter somehow.

I've been reading lots about minimalist living and the slow home movement, and buzzwords aside I think they're both really interesting, desirable, accessible ways to live. They both apply to what this whole journey is about.

So far:

Sparky and I have cleared our wardrobes, with the hope of sharing one wardrobe and getting rid of the other, as it clutters up our bedroom far too much. This 30 minute exercise netted us 5 big garbage bags of clothes to donate and two big garbage bags of pure crap, which was recycled or tossed as a last resort.

Yesterday I cleared out both of our bedside tables (netted another huge bag of recyclables/rubbish) as well as our bathroom cabinet. Another big bag full'o'junk there.

Went through my multiple piles of costume jewellery and tossed 95% of it. It was mostly tarnished, broken, mismatched or really really ugly. I actually don't wear much jewellery, so I need very little in the way of this stuff.

I cleaned out my craft cupboard and threw away two more bags worth of random scraps that I'd been keeping for "just in case". Nope, no more.

I sorted through our cookbooks and bookshelves, put aside all those books I've borrowed over the years and never returned (sorry, Dad!) and now have a big basket that I will try to sell to the local second-hand bookshop or otherwise donate to Vinnies.

You know those magazines that you buy/subscribe to and keep for no real reason? Yeah, me too. But as of yesterday: gone. I tore out anything I really wanted to keep and the rest was recycled. (I did keep my Organic Gardeners though - I use them a lot).

This morning I'm tackling the laundry and may just be crazy enough to try and tame the beast that is our "store room". Maybe.