I'm feeling all decluttered after National Zero Waste Week.

What a week!

I must have been absolutely out of my mind to suggest that I decluttered my kitchen for National Zero Waste Week. Nothing like pressure eh!

When I first mentioned my plans to my husband, he threw me one of his looks, accompanied by hands on hips, warning me that surely I'd got the wrong idea.  That really, I shouldn't aim to chuck so much out during a week intended to slim our bin.

Having ventured nowhere near the far corners of some of the cupboards for... er... 5 years, he had a point.  I really didn't know what I would be up against!

But look!  The overhaul of the kitchen cupboards didn't impact on our rubbish at all. 

That small bin bag, pictured above, is the sum of our landfill rubbish last week, despite getting rid of a load of stuff!

If I had attempted the declutter five years ago, it would have been a different story.  Not least because I probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble of sorting it.

These bags full of unused baking equipment and storage containers would still have probably gone to charity.

But most of this junk, now destined for the reuse\recycling skips at the Household Waste Recycling Centre would have no doubt ended up in the bin! Thankfully, these days our local facilities include containers for broken hard plastics and small electricals, which helps tremendously when you're in the midst of a blimmin' good clear out!

And as for this wonder drawer of mixed tat, my impatient hand would have dumped it all in a bag and got rid of it within minutes.

Instead, I set aside an hour to sort it properly, sending some random bits of plastic off for recycling and organising the rest of the stuff so it can be easily found and used.

Even the freezer, where our leftovers historically suffer a frozen death, received a visit from the decluttering hand, which helped to salvage a sausage casserole, a packet of mince, some fish, a dozen chipolatas and some bacon rashers,  This enabled me to happily avoid the supermarket for a week, using up what we already had.  I am such a lazy defroster and rarely plan ahead, the freezer proved to come up trumps as a right little goldmine during Zero Waste Week.  My aim now is to gradually work through the rest of the contents and relieve more space so that I can use it more efficiently.

But did I really achieve my overall aims last week?

Yes! I believe I did!  Working my way through this.

And creating much needed space in the cupboards to achieve this!

What pleases me most is that I am finally in control of the contents of my kitchen.  It took five days of sorting and clearing and no area has been left untouched. What helped me along were the wise words of a friend who reminded me that unwanted stuff left at the back of cupboards was just as wasteful as if it had been dumped into landfill. I am now confident that everything that I have kept will be put to good use. All the unused clutter has been rehomed and will no longer be wasted.

Of course my key aim was to create much longed-for space, so that I can put my creative culinary skills to good use again and be far better at avoiding food waste.

I can already see the return of the 'old me' and I have been busy cooking up the random contents found lurking in the fridge\freezer. And having rediscovered a whole cupboard of flour to use up, benefiting from that space once more has really proved to be the icing on the cake!

I now wonder which room I should tackle next!

So thank you to everyone who left supportive comments as well as all the Twitter crew who cheered me along during the week. 

As well as having my head firmly in the kitchen cupboards, I have also been busy waving the flag locally in Suffolk for National Zero Waste Week.  Huge thanks to BBC Radio Suffolk's Mark Murphy and James Hazell for giving me some much appreciated airtime.  And a major round of applause to Barry Peters, the editor of the Bury Free Press, for taking up the Rubbish Diet Challenge and doing a marvellous job for his own Zero Waste Week.

Well done to MyZeroWaste for an amazing awareness campaign for 2012. I was proud to support it.  For more information about what else was going on around the country, visit www,myzerowaste.com.

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My pledge for National Zero Waste Week: decluttering my kitchen, the final frontier!

Yes, you heard it here first!

I'm going in!

Venturing deep into my kitchen, where for the first time in nine years I am going to attempt to clear out all the cupboards, banish the clutter, get organised and prepare myself for the new school term!

And that is my pledge for National Zero Waste Week, which kicks off on Monday.

The theme this year is to encourage participants to do that "one more thing" to reduce waste.

When I thought about what I could do, I knew that as we already recycle all we can, the only thing left to tackle was food waste. We still have some, not an enormous amount, but some food waste all the same.  And with the wormery still out of action, it's the main thing that gets sent to landfill, along sweet wrappers and crisp packets.

I thought if I pledged to use up what we have in the fridge during National Zero Waste Week, and try not to go shopping until we'd done that, it would be easy.

Then I thought again.

That's like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

The truth of the matter is I CAN'T STAND MY KITCHEN!
 
These days, I spend as little time in there as I can get away with and yet underneath I am a bloody good cook with a sense of adventure for creating good food.

But I need space to create.

I simply don't have it.

And it's all got on top of me.

Our kitchen is tiny and as the household has become busier and busier, the space has become more and more cluttered. My previously much-loved gadgets,such as the yoghurt maker in the photo above, have become unused and gather dust, supporting bowls that can't even be squeezed into cupboards for lack of room!

All too often, when I'm at my busiest, I take one glance at the kitchen, and sigh, before scooting the family off elsewhere.  Then follows the guilt of trying to rescue perishables in the fridge before they die a certain death. And it is here that I sometimes fail.

So I've decided that this vicious circle must stop!

I need to clear out the stuff that I will never use again, rehome it or recycle it and find some space in the cupboard so that I can clear the worktop.

I must also decide how much I really need those gadgets and cookbooks.  The breadmaker, juicer and yoghurt maker all sell the idea of such a lovely lifestyle, but if they clutter up the workspace and make me feel too disorganised to use them, is there any point in keeping them?

And as for the sound effects that add to the atmosphere, my washing machine and dishwasher have both started groaning like a poor elephant with a hernia.

It really doesn't create a relaxing environment, so I'm going to see if we can get them repaired.

Then maybe, if I make it safely back from my excursion into the unexplored corners of my freezer, I will finally have the quiet, uncluttered, well-organised kitchen I dream of...

... and the creative space I need to avoid food waste!

This National Zero Waste Week pledge may be my toughest challenge yet, but I'm rolling up my sleeves and going in and hopefully I will feel better for it. Admittedly, I may need some gin first to avoid the lemons going to waste!

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To keep up with National Zero Waste Week, follow @MyZeroWaste on Twitter.  Now in its fifth year, the awareness campaign is really gathering momentum with a whole host of industry leaders, politicians and celebrities making personal pledges, and even before the week starts, over 800 people have signed up on Facebook. So it would be great if you could join in and do that "one more thing" to help tackle the world's waste. Just one more thing!  And I doubt it will be as tough as my blimmin' kitchen.

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The Rubbish Diet Challenge: Week 7, The Big Declutter

Whoopadey woo, I've finally made it out from my piles upon piles and onto the blog to give you the big declutter update.  And look at the treasure I've found, a pair of sparkly shoes, which were stashed away in a box on top of the wardrobe.  They were placed there for safe keeping, but I forgot where I put them and have spent the last two years scratching my head wondering if I'm going mad.

We only live in a three bedroom house,  so there's hardly any room for stuff to go amiss, yet in the last couple of weeks, I've also uncovered one of my favourite umberellas, three more pairs of shoes, an MP3 player and a radio alarm.  It really is like Christmas all over again.

Now that I've found my rewards from my decluttering manoeuvres, it's over to you to see what you can find in your own little treasure trove of stuff that's tucked away or piled up high behind every cupboard and door in your home.

Yes, welcome to Week 7 of the Rubbish Diet challenge, where after six weeks of tackling your everyday rubbish, it's time to uncover the things that are wasting away in your clutter hotspots.

You'll find all you need in this week's guide, which is now published online at:

http://tinyurl.com/TheRubbishDietWeek7

My goodness, can it really be Week 7 already.  That can only mean one thing... that there's just one week to go until I ask you to attempt a Zero Waste Week.

Cor blimey!  Well, I wouldn't worry about that now, you'll be far too busy working out what to do with the bits and bobs you discover in your big sort out.

And as for me, I'm going to slip on my sparkly shoes and treat myself to a nice glass of wine then read the book that I rescued from a pile of stuff that had been crammed into a cupboard in the bedroom.

You'll never guess what it's called.....here's a clue!

You might snigger but it's never too late.  I might have made great progress already but Clare Baker from ClutterClearing writes on her website that as I've kept hold of  my clutter for a  year, it could take me 3 months to completely clear and organise it.   It's worth popping over to see how long yours will take too...assuming you've got some of course.

Oh well, it looks like I'll be busy for another month yet.  See you next week then, when I'll be sure to pop up for air!

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Decluttering: Poultry efforts in the garden

A scattering of snow doesn't quite cover the mud patch.

Have I ever told you about my guilty pleasure? If I haven't perhaps now is the time to divulge and see if I can get you on board too.

It involves Tom, Barbara, Margot and Jerry and I have to say I love them all. Now before you start thinking it involves anything dodgy like swapping car keys at parties, let me reassure you that it's all clean good fun. Well apart from the odd bit of dirt that is.

I'm referring of course to the comedy series The Good Life, which I started watching thirty five years when I was just six or seven years old. I absolutely adored that series. I loved Margot in her long posh maxi dresses and how she was regularly shocked over Tom and Barbara's latest escapades in growing their own and raising animals in their suburban back garden. I always felt really cosy whenever I watched it.

Fast forward to a 21st century Sunday morning when sat on the sofa in my pyjamas with the laptop to hand, I discovered the series had been uploaded onto YouTube. Well there are some things that are just too hard to resist when everyone else is tucked up in bed, so I immersed myself in the original episodes over a cup of tea. I was quickly joined by my youngest son who's an early bird too, both up us tucked under a blanket, watching the episode of Tom and Barbara raising chickens for the very first time.

For a moment I was distracted by a movement outside and I could see our own hens beating the boundaries for their early morning forage. I then looked over towards our lawn, which now resembles a mud patch and it crossed my mind whether our neighbours could consider us to be the new Tom and Barbara of modern day suburbia. We don't quite have a big veg patch in our garden, but having given the chickens free rein all winter, since they worked out a way to escape the run, it is now looking very much like a farmyard, especially as all our grass has been pecked at and covered in stones and dirt from their scratching habits.

Memories of grass

So what has this episode got to do with cluttering, you might ask yourself.

Well, given that decluttering is about better organisation and tidying up as well as getting rid of surplus things, this weekend I decided to take the bull by the horns and sort out the garden and our crazy chickens. We brushed the scattered stones back into position, raked the mud patch and tidied away leaves and twigs that covered the ground. I even gathered all the kids' broken plastic toys that were used for outdoor play and took them to the recycling centre.

And if by chance you are wondering about the fortune of the chickens, don't worry, although we've decluttered them, we haven't rehomed them or anything like that. They're too adorable and obviously far too useful in the egg laying department. They just needed putting in their place that's all. So we've improved the small matter of security in the chicken run, raising the height of the fence that surrounds it and finding an alternative way of securing the gate. You can just see the new fence at the back of the photo shown below. Hopefully it will now keep the chooks at bay.



So, as we work our way through February with a much neater backdrop, my attention now turns to the dilemma of the mud patch lawn. We had initially considered restoring it, but since watching The Good Life, I am now really inspired to ditch the idea of turf and use the space to grow more vegetables instead.

But the soil in that area is not great, very poor in fact, so I'm going to give serious consideraton to installing a raised bed. It seems a very appealing idea. After all, I'd best be careful. If I take too many tips from The Good Life, I've a feeling my neighbours might complain. To see what I mean, check out the YouTube clip below:

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On an entirely different subject, if you're listening into BBC Radio Suffolk's James Hazell show later, you'll find me joining in the conversation at around 10:10am about whether we have too many bags for life. I know I have lots, but they all come in handy at different times. What about you? Are you a keen collector of bags for life? If so, listen in later, or catch it on Listen Again.

*UPDATE* The radio debate has been postponed until Thursday 18th feb. Same time, same place, but with a difference face. It'll be with the lovely Georgina Wroe, who's stepping in for James.

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Decluttering: A space to eat

You won't believe it but what you're witnessing at this very point in time is a rare occurrence.

No, I don't mean the messy table! Oh No! The rare occurrence is that for once I am indeed speechless!

And as I write, I am experiencing nervous bouts of laughter and moments of shame as I introduce the state of my dining room to a whole bunch of strangers on the Internet, including online friends, recycling officers and academics from all across the world. Revealing this photo feels worse than showing how much rubbish we used to throw away. The only thing I find reassuring is that I might show at least one person that there is a glimmer of hope.

I took the photograph shown above last weekend before we started to declutter, but I have to be honest and say the dining room hasn't always looked like this.

Before Christmas, it looked like this:




Haha, I bet you didn't expect to see that did you?! Talk about an immovable force, but I promise I did at least tidy up before my sister and her family arrived for Christmas.

But my nervous laughter is now reaching decibels of immense proportions, especially as not even my best friend gets to see the house in such a condition. I make sure I shut the dining room door before I open the front door to her and all other visitors. So if she's reading this blog she'll soon get the shock of her life. And she'll now know why I haven't invited her and her husband - or indeed anyone else - to dinner for a long-long time.

People may think I'm being anti-social, but the truth is I've been too embarrassed to admit that since writing this blog I've been far too busy to keep on top of all domestic functions. However, I reckon there are hundreds and thousands of houses just like this across the country, also suffering from too much stuff, too much to do and insufficient space and time to do it all in.

And the problem I've had with our dining room is that is is actually not just a dining room. It's also a hobby room, Little T's craftroom, a homework room, a filing room and a "temporary" storage room. It's also where we permanently store odds and ends like cables and replacement bulbs in various cupboards and drawers.


So it really is a room that has multiple functions and is constantly in use by a very busy multi-tasking but time-poor family, trying to juggle too many balls at once.

If this all sounds similar, you'll recognise the signs of the clutter magnet that takes effect.

For example you'll be going great guns in keeping a clear space. Then momentarily, you'll take your eye off the ball and put something down on a table. And that's your first mistake, because what follows is the law of attraction. Out of nowhere, everybody else adds "their thing" next to "your thing" and before you know it, you're all taking it in turns like a game of buckaroo by stealth as the free space gets taken over by a multitude of clutterbug sins.

And have you noticed that things appear that you've never even seen before, making you wonder whether your neighbours have heard the rumour and have sneaked in with their bits of crap too? Then if you're clearing out another room, like the kitchen for instance and have nowhere else to dump the stuff that you're collecting for a car boot sale, the dining room table is often the easiest place to put it all.

No wonder Mr A despairs and threatens to throw all sorts of stuff in the rubbish bin. A sight like this can easily drive someone to chuck it all away, which used to happen frequently before I started the Zero Waste challenge. But I can assure you that there is no-one who stresses about this more than me and I know I have to become more efficient and organised on the home front to regain more control and therefore greater mental freedom.

So, on my latest decluttering mission, the first thing I did was grab a HUGE box to create a designated spot for all the items that we are going to sell at the car boot sale in the spring. Immediately, this cleared half the amount of stuff off the dining table.



The next job was to simply tidy all the other things away into their proper homes, including the Christmas fabric that I'd bought to replace paper for wrapping family Christmas presents.



That was the easy bit!

However I think the dining room is probably going to need a lot more work than we've had time to dedicate so far, especially when sorting out the drawers full of cables and leads. We just need to work out which items are still needed and take the remainder to the Household Waste Recycling Centre for recycling with all the other Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).

But in the meantime, our box of car booty is growing all the time and has expanded to include a plastic ugly bug, a redundant kitchen towel holder, a fabric bun holder, an over sized vodka bottle and several little ornaments. I've got a feeling that by the time I've finished, there will be a small number of old DVDs too as well as boxes of old beads that I've discovered in a cabinet drawer.

When I showed the photo of my dining room to Clare Baker of the ClutterClearing consultancy, she reassured me that I am nowhere near a clutterholic and that it would be easy to restore order. That was a real relief and it was simply a case of time and following the tips on her website to create categories for the items that we were decluttering.

With this in mind I also took the opportunity to sort the drawers of the Welsh dresser, separating things into stationery and craft items in one drawer, tableware linen in another and I've left the last drawer for personal mementos such as photos. Having done this will also be of benefit when I work on other rooms, as we now have a central storage point for transferring stuff.

I could go on, but I bet you can't wait to see the results of our efforts. I say "our" because it was indeed a team effort by me and Mr A, who is naturally more organised in this area than me. So without further ado, here it is:

Our dining room in all its glory......



And now it's all clear, I can now enjoy some of my favourite things, such as this funky plastic flower that I made at the Aldeburgh Food Festival, accompanied by one of the gorgeous felt flowers from Henry & Jayne.





But my favourite decluttered view of all is of the vintage tea-set that I picked up last summer for just £15.




I have found it's worth taking time out to appreciate these objects while I've got a good view and recognise this moment as one of the key incentives for keeping space clutter-free in future. It's almost impossible to enjoy lovely things when they're surrounded by other distractions such as a multi-pack of chopped tomatoes and a set of ice-lolly moulds that have lost their lids.

So if you want to come around for dinner, we've now got somewhere to eat, drink and be merry.

Now talking of incentives, another useful tip I picked up from Clare Baker this week was to make sure I reward myself for the efforts I've made to free up my space. So seeing as it's a Friday evening, I think it's going to have to be a nice glass of wine.

Yep, it's time to dig out the Chablis. Well, it is a special occasion of course. Not only was it my second blogaversary yesterday, but at last I can now get to the other end of the table to reach the wine glasses to celebrate and properly thank you for all the lovely comments that you sent.

And if you're a blogger sorting out your own clutter and are showing off the results on your own blog, I've added a Mr Linky to this blogpost so you can link up your efforts too.

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SPACE: the final frontier

I apologise for the photo. Messy eh!

Yep. I'd agree and it's got my heart rate up even looking at it. So, just imagine what it's been like living with it. Indeed the scene that you witness here is what used to be my plastic film storage area, which until quite recently resided in a haphazard manner behind our kitchen door.

Since I discovered I could take plastic film packaging, such as rice bags and pasta bags, for recycling at our local HWRC I've simply kept stuffing them into bags upon bags until I was next passing. But because I don't pass very often, my storage space got rather unwieldy.

So when a company called simplehuman invited me to road-test their recycling bins, I most definitely bit off their hand. Although I would have loved to have got my hands on a set of these lovely bins, I had to admit that I was already sorted in that area, so instead I opted for this little baby to help me with the clutter shown in the photo above.

The aim was to attach it to the inside of our kitchen cabinet, so it could stay out of sight but due to the design of the panelled doors, it wouldn't fit, so I had to wait until I conjured up the enthusiasm to tackle the area behind the kitchen door, so we could attach it to the wall.

And look, here are the results. It's like a sight for sore eyes. Simple, but very effective. All I need to do now is bundle each full bag into my car boot, ready to take to the HWRC, in an attempt to keep this area clear.



But it's not just my recycling area that's been given the decluttering treatment this month. In fact, the rest of the kitchen has been the target of heavy action too. And it is the first step to tackling the whole house, as well as my car and the kids' garden shed.

It almost brings me to tears when I say I've hit crisis point, but that's the truth of the matter. I have been so busy during the last couple of years, that I've not had chance to attend to the stuff that's hanging about and it's got so bad I've even managed to lose my new reading glasses, not to mention a book that I bought a few years ago about the benefits of decluttering. Oh the irony!

However, since recognising the problem I have worked hard to stop new things coming into the house, by reducing the amount of presents we get and by buying less, but we've still got piles of unsorted crap everywhere due to my lack of time and inclination to deal with it. Throw in a "waste-not want-not" approach for good measure and the result you get are feelings of stress and disorganisation, with a good dose of lethargy, inadequacy and numbness to boot!

Clare Baker from the ClutterClearing consultancy describes the process of managing clutter as a conveyor belt and highlights the problem of things coming onto the Clutter Conveyor Belt faster than they are coming off.

I can relate to this issue, especially with the problem zones that exist in our home. For example, with the number of toys that the children get from friends and family, the kids find it even harder to release older toys that they still love to make room for new ones they get. That's why we now encourage people to choose smaller things such as books or lego that can easily fit into their small bedrooms. Vouchers for the cinema or local attractions also work well.

But there are other areas too. For example when I cleared the kitchen cupboards the other week, I discovered so many glass jars I could have screamed. The irony is that when I started my zero waste challenge, I promised I would NEVER EVER EVER start collecting jam jars. For starters we just don't have the space (point proven). Secondly I am hardly a domestic goddess who makes chutney or jam, and finally I get frustrated that there are very few flat-bottomed jars that can balance a bloody tea-light in position. But having hooked onto the idea of "reuse" being better than "recycling", I gave into my natural inclination as a horder. In fairness, some have come in useful for food storage, loose coins and home-made Christmas presents, but the message here is to KNOW YOUR LIMITS! And once you've got enough of what you need, it's OKAY to let go of the surplus.

So the kitchen has been my starting point on my mission to declutter the house. I needed to start somewhere and this felt the most important place in the house. When my kitchen is cluttered, I feel less inclined to cook and I certainly don't want to spend any more time there than I have to. As a result, I snack more and pick up bad habits such as skipping lunch and letting chores pile up.

Of course, my aim is to get through this process without throwing things into landfill, which is a really good job, not just because of my zero waste philosophy but Clare Baker, who founded the decluttering consultancy, also used to work for WRAP, so she's the kind of person who would also discourage things being skipped just for the sake of extra space.

No doubt there will be items that I will give away on Freecycle, or drop into a charity shop, but my ultimate aim is to collect unwanted things in a box and commit to selling them off at a carboot sale in March, to celebrate Suffolk's Waste Reduction Fortnight.

Just from doing the kitchen alone I've already uncovered the following items:

1 Hand-levered heavy-weight citrus press, replaced by a juicing machine
1 Small glass juice press
Several mugs
2 Plastic egg trays, that came with the fridge.
4 espresso cups, which haven't been used in the 6 years we've lived here.
1 toddler's wash&wipe dining mat
1 party nibbles dish
1 water filter jug, which we can no longer be bothered to use
1 small wooded cutting board
1 vegetable julienne peeler, which is too fiddly.

The challenge now is to store it all away somewhere, before I have the urge to just take it to the charity shop.

So do you want to see some before-and-after-shots of how I got on during my first attempt at decluttering? If you're a nosey-parker like me, I bet you'll want to.

The Kitchen Worktop: Before

Easy-peasy! This lot just needed tidying away into the cupboard!

After

The cupboard

It won't look much to you, but it's really is a big difference to me. I cleared out quite a few things that were no longer used, including rusty old baking trays, which I took to the HWRC metals recycling. The empty jars went to the bottle bank and some of the containers have now been released for Mr A's packed lunches.

Before / After

The Kitchen Table

Having cleared out the cupboard, I created extra storage space to finally shift some clutter off this table. The broom and mop, you see to the right now fit behind the kitchen door. The kids' drawings that are balancing on top of the shelf have been recycled or inserted into their artwork folders. And the teddy-bear which had taken up residence on the kitchen table, has finally been sent to his room. So at last there is somewhere to eat our breakfast!


Before / After

It will come as no surprise that the day I did this, I felt I had more energy. And it is no coincidence that as a result, Mr A now also gets regular packed lunches to take to work, which means he's no longer nipping off to the shops to buy pre-packaged stuff. It was hard work though. It took most of the day to sort out, but was worth it.

During the next week, I'll be focusing on the dining room, which is a constant source of frustration thanks to the number of uses it has. It really is a clutter magnet in more ways than one and I'm already getting stressed at the thought of it.

If you want to join me in this crusade, you'll find some excellent tips over at ClutterClearing.net. The site has got lots of free information, including videos to motivate you along. That's the strategy I'm following for the moment, because I can't afford a consultation, but if I get stuck, I might just need one!

And if you've got any decluttering experiences of your own, please share your wisdom as I'd love to know how you got on. In fact, I need all the help I can get.

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2010: Looking Backwards & Forwards and Onwards & Upwards

It's been two years since I made a tiny new year's resolution to smarten up my domestic landscape and stated unassumingly that I intended to reduce the amount of waste we sent to landfill.

With a memory like a fish, I needed a system to remember my reusable bags, I wanted to cook more and find a way to stop my husband from throwing so much crap in the bin including holey socks and unused presents. In short, I think I needed a miracle.

"It's decluttering" he'd say.

Witnessing unworn slippers being chucked away, my defence was limited to gurning and with an imaginary kick up the backside and a slap around his head with a wet fish, I would just slope off and leave him to it. Who was I to argue? After all it was me who topped up the rest of the rubbish with food waste and my lazy ways. And that was our life!

Then in January 2008 up popped St Emundsbury Borough Council with its Zero Waste project, offering a helping hand. It's almost as though they'd heard my plea for sanity. And I can't thank them enough, because two years later I've now thrown away in one year what I would have done in just one month...one wheelie bin's worth of rubbish.

And by shopping more carefully, using up leftovers and switching to reusable products, we've also saved around £2500, a £1000 of which has been by reducing food waste. I was never really frugal, but when I look at these figures, I can't help rubbing my hands and shouting "LOADSAMONEY" despite it bringing a shudder down my spine with memories of that obnoxious Harry Enfield character from the eighties!

It really has been an amazing couple of years and back then I had no idea how important this thing would become. And having succeeded in reducing my own rubbish, I've enjoyed challenging others along the way too.

Take last year. I had a great time with my friends over at British Mummy Bloggers, helping to inspire them to take part in WRAP's Recycle Week, which was a fabulous success thanks to all the bloggers involved who helped spread the word. Even James Hazell and Sal from BBC Radio Suffolk were up for a laugh with their rubbish too, with lots of on-air fun and frolics. Although James didn't quite give it his full oomph, Sally managed to get to zero waste.

And do you remember Ruby, Jo and Mrs Green, the original "Recyclettes" from 2008? In each case, all I did was get them to do a bin audit and offered some initial suggestions, then left them to their own devices.

While Ruby and Jo successfully managed to slim their bins by 50%, Mrs Green went onto achieve rubbish reducing levels of immense proportions. With environmental concerns at the heart of her ambitions, she even set up her own website at MyZeroWaste and worked hard to move from a full bin load and several side-bags each week to just one small bin in the last year! And for 2010, Mrs Green aka Rachelle Strauss is aiming for total Zero Waste.

Now that will be amazing to follow. I on the other hand, have long since found my comfortable weight and I daren't even try to slim our own rubbish beyond our monthly carrier bag's worth. With my husband's very settled habits it could make me a prime candidate for divorce. And I am not sure who would file for it first.

But for 2010 I will be supporting that hubby of mine in his urge to declutter. After stopping him in his tracks for two whole years, I the Queen of Clutter have finally signed up to some top tips from ClutterClearing.net and will be going head-to-head with he who rules: the King of Declutter himself. If you've ever watched Kramer vs Kramer, you'll get a sense of what life will be like in the Almost Average household, only this will be about rubbish, or the intended lack of it. We've already had cross words over what should be binned or recycled, so for the next three months you can expect war.

So what else can you expect from The Rubbish Diet this season?

On a calmer note, I will be getting away from the blog a lot more, still talking rubbish of course. With more speaking engagements on the horizon and a few collaborations in the pipeline, I'll be hoping to get people revealing their rubbish in the most unlikeliest of places, including having a nosey behind the scenes at one of London's most prestigious hotels to show that a luxurious lifestyle doesn't have to create waste.

And of course the exciting Seven Suffolk Streets waste reduction project is going to be a huge focus for this spring, with Suffolk County Council encouraging my whole street - and six others around the county - to reduce our rubbish by half in March.

But my priority over the next few months is to do what I love doing most and that's to help even more people slim their blimmin' bins AND have a giggle while they're doing so. Whether it's to save money, make life more convenient, learn more skills or become greener, I'll be lending a hand to help folk kickstart this year with a lighter load and enjoy cost benefits too.

So if this sounds like a challenge that appeals to you or your friends, then make sure you pop by each week for a whole load of tips that could help you slim your bin in just eight weeks. Yep, eight weeks! That's how long it took me and you'll be amazed how easy it can be to knock things off your Rubbish list. But what's needed are small, gradual steps, not to attempt everything at once. This is a gentle diet, not a full-blown crash diet!

But as with all diets, you'll need to do a weigh-in first, so click below for my online guide to conducting your very own waste audit. There are some words on Rethinking Rubbish too, which may just keep you motivated should you happen to get the wobbles.

Here it is. You'll find everything you need at

http://tinyurl.com/TheRubbishDietChallenge

Please feel free to share extra tips in the comments below and once you've sorted out your rubbish, pop by next Monday for the beginning of Week 1, where I will be sure to ease you in gently.

And the great news is we've got one volunteer already, Pippa from A Mother's Ramblings, who's challenged herself to take up a Zero Waste Week in March. So if you have a mo, do pop over to her blog to offer your support.

You know, I have a feeling this will be a very exciting new year.
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Birthday Musings: Part 2. The Declutter

Stop...Stop!

Please don't phone the police!

It's not burglars!

Honestly...it's not!

It's simply the work of a three year old boy and his 39 year old accomplice, who really should know better!

You'd think I'd learn by now wouldn't you...

Never to do...the annual pre-birthday declutter...........on my own!

...especially when the King of Decuttler and strategist extraordinaire is out-of-reach and far far away on a three day residential course in Buckinghamshire.

Let's face it...he is the expert in messy bedrooms. I, on the other hand, am crap!

I really don't have the head for it!

Never have!

But I was a desperate woman, preparing for another exciting birthday in the life of the Junior Waste Saboteur and embarking on Mission Impossible, which was to create space for some new presents to land. So it was time to sort out the toys and rearrange the furniture. The only other time this happens with such conviction is Christmas!

However, the flaw in this plan is that whenever I move around the furniture, I reveal the beastie that lurks in the bedroom. I know it's there, but if I don't look it will go unnoticed...and therefore it will cause me no distress.

But when I go hunting, I need to have my wits about me and make sure I am sufficiently armed to tackle the real nightmare that hides under the bed and in the shadows of the bedroom. If you're a parent who also struggles against chaos, you'll understand what I mean.

It looks like this.

ARGHH!

To the uninitiated it appears pretty harmless.

But the truth is that it's an unexploded bomb awaiting disposal, a casualty bay of things missing in action and a collection of wasted opportunities.

With a background in library management, you'd think I'd be good at sorting and putting things in their place.

Well if it's got a Dewey number on it and is part of an age-old classification system then I am. However, the problem is that the broad categories of broken limbs, random jigsaw pieces and unidentified plastic objects are enough to send me running to the hills with my finger in my ears singing la, la, la, avoiding the truth of the matter and the inevitability of landfill.

But at least I can deal with things that look like this...


Yes, I know I chose carefully, but aside from the fact that it's a much loved bin lorry, the other thing I like is that it comes in just four easy bits, which once put together can be handled as a specific toy with a real purpose.

It's not that I dislike things like jigsaws. They're great and give the brain muscles a good flexing, but you can get too much flex when the odd piece goes astray.

Then there's Playmobil! Why did I buy that farm set off eBay, with all those fiddly bits, when my eldest boy was just three? Talk about peaking too soon!

Life would be easy if it was just Books, Lego, Cars, Trains and Kid K'Nex.

I'd know where to put them.

But I suppose it would be boring for a boy who soaks up learning through play, like a sponge with water. However, to his credit, his imagination knows no bounds and he can do all sorts with a cardboard box and a sweeping brush!

The great news is my mission to declutter was successful and that I've collected a few odds and ends to pass on to good homes, like little T's nursery and the fair-trade cafe in Bury St Edmunds.



But we've also said a sad goodbye to a bag-load of cuddlies, who have gone to a really good abode through Freecycle.




Anyway the surprise for everyone, including Mr A who gets home today, is that this woman on a mission finally pulled through and within a couple of hours of blood, sweat and tears, managed this miracle...



Oh, how I wish there was a course in the Management of Stuff. Having had kids, it'd be of much more use than a masters degree in Library and Information Management.

But at least, with the room now in a state of managed control, I can breathe easy, which is great news because the party is tomorrow.

Yey, time to celebrate.... in more ways than one... before I move onto the next area of the house...the kitchen!

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