Winter De-cluttering

The whole family here at the stone house is involved in it. I began this little effort sometime during January after Amy got engaged. Began because it suddenly struck me that if I am going to be the only home cleaner and keeper around here, the only laundress, cook, and bottle washer, something is going to have to change. That is, a lot of things are going to have to change. Actually a lot of things are going to have to go away.  

We have too much clutter. Decor is fun and cozy and all that, but too much decor and cozy is suddenly not fun. It's work.

   Please don't worry. When we are done giving things away and hauling other things out, there will still be plenty of cozy and decor left to ensure that we do, in fact, still live in a cabin. You can hardly throw way the cozy of books and wood walls and lamps. I am already wondering what all it was we have been throwing into the dumpster. All except that huge, broken, awfully dusty, stuffed chair. It fitted into the dumpster, after a fashion, on top, making the lids of the dumpster stand almost straight up, it was so full. I do wonder what our friends driving by noticed and thought. No, I don't.
   We are not done. Elv offered his ideas to further our minimalism cause when we talked it over again yesterday. "Do it one room at a time... start with the porch.Throw away all those coats we aren't wearing that are hanging on my hooks in the porch." and "Those old shoes belong at the firehall." and "Yes, I'll take away the boxes of work related things." Wonderful words to my ears.
   Furthermore, (wonders never cease) we are going to stop heating our house with wood heat by next fall. The LP furnace that has been quietly waiting to be mended and fired up is going to get mended and fired up so that I can stop having so many daily messes of wood chips and dust and ashes around two wood stoves. This should help tremendously. We still want to have a fire for ambience and extra warmth on a cold winter's night now and then. But dusty shelves and blue smoked windows should soon be a thing of the past.
   And one more rant. What with the education, propaganda/articles, and blog posts about minimalism, I'm guessing Wal-mart is about to go out of business, especially if the zero waste folks get us talked over to their paperless, sans plastic camp, as well. I have been reading up on both of these radical ideas. Some of it makes sense, even though complicated. (It was supposed to be about simple living, right?) I'll say though that most of the super radical ideas they're trying to put over are not sustainable. In the end, I believe that we can help our situation of having too much house work by getting rid of too many things and replacing them with just a few quality things.
   So I did relegate about 15 dresses I'll never wear again to the comforter patch bin. I want ten perfect outfits that I love. Don't laugh, its a happy thought. Hardly sustainable for the likes of me, though. I'm known for being picky and ridiculously annoyed with supposedly perfectly passable outfits. What I envision as stunningly beautiful always ends up being on someone else. Don't worry. I haven't any other major hang-ups.
   Hopefully I have better luck with organizing and simplifying the rest of life at the stone house for when it's just me being the homemaker around here. Dreaming of a dishwasher and one of those newfangled instant pots.