Seven Things Spring Starts Saturday

TTWC 2007.92 with camellia in bud

Seven Things Spring starts Saturday 1 September. It will be the same as June and July, except this time I'll be doing it from September to November and for September I will have company - TSS is joining in. It has a good spring cleaning vibe happening.

Earthchick started the Seven Things Project in July 2006. Her goal was to try and live more simply - to have less and more importantly to want less; to rid herself of the clutter that overwhelms and paralyses. Amen to that, sister.

In the spirit of the Seven Things Project, items will be thoughtfully dealt with. Just throwing stuff out isn't part of the deal. Mindful consumption and thoughtful disposal are tenets of this particular faith.

We will report each Sunday (most likely with photos and rationales) in three categories :"In", "Out" and"Shake-it-All-About". The aim is that "Out" minus "In" will be greater than or equal to 7.

In
The stuff we bring in to our homes. This includes:

• stash items of ANY kind
  
• other forms of entertainment such as books, magazines, cds etc.
  
• Items received by subscription, for example, magazines are to be counted.
  
• Clothes and accessories are to be counted.
  
• Homewares are to be counted.
  
• Gifts received are to be counted.

Exempt are consumables such as food and other groceries and items borrowed from the library (but not items borrowed from the library and copied for keeping because that is (a) illegal and (b) not in the spirit of the challenge).

Out
Items deliberately weeded from the house. Consumables do not count. Completely worn out and non-fixable/transformable clothing, household items etc do.

Shake-it-All-About
This category is about transformation. Having taken on this challenge before, I thought it important to acknowledge the creative transformation of items already in the home. This might be as simple as the use of stash buttons on an old blouse to revamp it instead of buying a new blouse or other transformation of clothes. It might be the creation of something new for ourselves or others from stash. Some items from this category will become "outs" which is perfectly fine.

So, like dieters everywhere, today we binge. The Shopping Sherpa, the Happy Spider and I are off on an op-shop crawl.