Approximately 169 days to go.

If you're one of those people that loves to notice tiny little differences, then this is the blog post for you!
Now that I'm four months into the before and after shots, even I'm struggling to remember the differences between shots. But progress is progress, and although some before/after shots show very little progress, they actually took a long time to work through.

The Before and Afters

As promised, all the unnecessary garden stuff next to the house is cleared! I do believe this may be my first finished area!
The fadge and worm farm are gone, and Yoda is quite grateful because logically a worm farm = worms, and there were no worms in that little worm farm for him to eat. It was a daily mental battle.

It terms of tidiness, I have a hosepipe hanger, but it's been taken off the wall temporarily while the house paint gets sanded off. I also may or may not plant more grass/shrub things before we leave, but since this house is going to be rented out, it's definitely not a priority.

Poor Kyle.
I used the photo frame on the wall as part of a birthday present for my dad during lockdown.
One less Simone to look at every morning.

The boxes left are for several electronics that we will be taking with us to Melbourne. If Kyle deems them necessary for the journey, then this may be the last photo of this area too! Stay tuned for to 2019 vs 2020 photos closer to October for this room.

Introducing, arrows!
The arrows are more to save face in pictures that look like things have gotten worse.
I recall saying last month that the top area of this cupboard should be easy. I was very, very wrong.
Kyle's side (the right side) was easy. We threw away a ton of boxes and has put aside a lot of things to sell (that's on my to-do list still...).
My side, however, had a lot more sentimental stuff in it than I was prepared for. And since I tackled that box only a week after tackling the last sentimental box, I very quickly took out the easy stuff and put the box back for another day. That can be future-Simone's problem. Mwahaha

Note the addition of masks for keeping COVID-19 away. Haha.
There are 9 items missing in the later image. Can you spot them all?
This exercise is a small demonstration on how it can take time to get rid of things and not produce much of a visual reward. But if I say, "9 things are gone", you'll go "Woah, really? That's, like, 3 things a week!" There is even a stack of photographs I threw away that can't be spotted because of the camera angle. But for me, progress is still progress.
I don't know why I feel like I need to justify the lack of difference this month. Haha. No one even reads these updates.

Please draw your eye to this square here, where most of my work has been. This area suffered from lockdown fatigue. What is lockdown fatigue? It's where you tackle an area, only to realise that to do a thorough job, you need to go into town and buy a thing or a service. This happened when I came across some of our old spectacles. SpecSavers recycles glasses, but of course, they were closed. So those glasses will just have to sit there patiently until lockdown is over. That's all fine and dandy, except that since I'm blocked by forces beyond my control from doing a good declutter, I lose courage.
But the work I did do still made for an ok before/after photo, so it's being included.

This month, I handed Kyle a pile of big-boxed games and asked him to sort. Fantastically, he got rid of 90% of them! The bad news was that I wasn't legally allowed to sell them because they're from South Africa. And surprisingly, no one wants free physical games anymore... Luckily, we're blessed with a friend who won't ever say no to free stuff and we palmed them off to him. Win win! I think...

If I'm onto it this month, we'll be looking at those beefy figurines and deciding which ones to take with to Melbourne. They're all Kyle's, but the goal is to evaluate how much the franchise actually means to him. And I'm in no way being the big bad witch here. This is more an exercise in evaluating what's important to us. He likes his Aiden Pearce figure, but only because it "looks cool". I've promised him that if we sell him, he can buy a figurine that means a lot more to him than Aiden does.

See that bit at the bottom there? I emptied an entire box of notepads. The only thing left there is a bright pink diary I kept from age 8-12. I'm re-writing all my entries into a Word document to read back on if I'm bored one day, but I also wanted to capture my handwriting and formatting. So, once the office opens back up again, I'll be bringing this little diary along and scanning each page. But for now, it will sit there on it's lonesome.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the image I am most proud of this month.
Naturally, a pantry has its ups and downs in terms of clutteredness and the level of which depends on how recently we went grocery shopping. I'm aware of this and it's fine. I have learned to let it go.
But obey the arrows!
These bottom two shelves do not contain foodstuffs. They contain blenders, chocolate fountains, crepe-makers, platter sets and spare lightbulbs. The lighting makes it difficult to see, but I have done a huge clean-out in this area and have sold nearly everything I've listed above. There is still work to be done on that top shelf, but at least the bottom is almost completely free of debris! Expect another before/after photo once we've set off those insect bombs post-lockdown.

In the future, I'd like to redecorate this pantry cupboard. It's dark and dingy, and while I used to find the old newspaper wallpaper delightful, it's now drab and adds to the feeling of clutteredness.

Ah, the cleverness of me!
I have saved the best for last, everyone!
Last month, Kyle said he'd go through his t-shirts and weed out the ones he doesn't like. After getting him to strip down to nothing so I can take the most accurate Before photo possible, the t-shirts stayed in a messy stack as he circulated through about 10 t-shirts. So I devised a plan.
As shirts came through the wash, I started to hide them, which forced him to wear shirts he literally hasn't worn in years. Naturally, he started coming to me to exclaim (while in a parachute of a shirt), "we can get rid of this one". Delighted, I placed the 'throw away' shirts in a pile to donate to SaveMart when they open again. The (almost) end result is what you see now. It's freaking fantastic! While it may not be terribly noticeable, he’s gotten rid of 7 t-shirts and is throwing away even more in May..

The Personal

Writing these blog posts has become a little bit of a chore and tends to take up quite a bit of my weekend, when I could be more productive. However, I know I will look back on them with pride in the future, which is why I'll keep them up. All going well, I only have about 5 more to do, and then I'll start to post the really big before/after photos.
This is where I could say "please like and subscribe" but this stuff is more for my interest sake than yours.

I'm very proud of what I got done this month, despite feeling like I could definitely have done more (that's a constant). And I'm extremely excited about May. One of the post offices in Napier has re-opened, which means I can go back to selling items. The progress on that front has been so stunted in April that I had to find creative ways to continue decluttering. Even the Salvation Army was closed to donations in April. The possibilities of May feel endless!

At the end of March, I was feeling a bit indifferent about moving to Melbourne. Mostly because with the lockdown, the possibility of moving seemed impossible so I stopped being excited. However, sometime in the middle of April it picked up again. Lockdown fatigue was setting in and I was feeling the itch to explore again, and my mind was solely set on Melbourne, to the point where I'd have dreams about living there a couple times a week.

I'm feeling very optimistic about reaching our target of Melbourne in October!