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Welcome to the fourth of our 52 Get Organized Missions.
You can find the previous organizing missions here.
This week’s task involves a mindset shift.
Our aim is to raise the barrier for accepting into your life a source of mental and physical clutter for many people – the ‘freebie’.
Your challenge this week is to spend your 30 minutes.
- Learning how to distinguish the freebies that add to your life in net terms
- Deciding to say NO to all the others.
Ready?
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Done!
Our group responses are as follows: The only freebies we would be interested in is food items i.e. cereal; meat; yogurt; milk.
Use your local library for books of interest to you.
Do search – and pay, if necessary – for highly relevant, good quality information when you’re ready to use it. It will be worth it in terms of saved mental energy.
Collectables sell on E-Bay: Lladro; Boyd Bears; Baseball Cards; Hummel’s; etc.
I recently visited Bondi Beach and they have a free book exchange post box on the side of the road. It’s an honor system, you simply exchange one book for another. A wonderful initiative and used by the many tourists that visit this iconic Sydney hotspot. The concept of ‘pay it forward’ is alive and well. 🙂
Thanks to the group.
Kylie, Community Manager
I have just cleared my inbox of all newsletters and subscriptions that I don’t read or find useful. I can’t believe how liberating that felt to unsubscribe to all that “free” information! Just the good ones are left. 🙂
Thank you for this one! I have this issue with Vitamin Shoppe that I frequently shop at. Since I’m a good customer they always want to “help out” by giving me free samples. In my husbands words “Free is my favorite color” I always said “Sure!” but I see now it’s not completely free. I plan on saying no to the freebies going forward because right now, they are taking up an entire shelf and I really have no plan on using them! Shedding the guilt of turning down something “free”. Time to go through all this stuff. I think I’ll bring them to work and share 🙂
I am pleased to say that my terrible habit with hotel toiletries has passed – I think! I haven’t had to travel for work so much in the last year, so maybe it’s just dormant for the moment and will come back to bite me in the butt at some point. The homeless shelter or local food bank is a great idea and makes you feel like you are doing something useful too! I don’t think I fall for the whole freebie thing, although that doesn’t mean I haven’t a house full of stuff that needs to get sorted!
I have/had the same concern that Amanda had….I recently traveled and left the soap, shampoos etc in the hotel room. I had cleaned out so many items and gave them to some young relatives, who enjoyed getting lotions and shampoos….maybe their moms didn’t …..
Managed to limit myself to a free introductory quilting magazine, NOT the “pay now and get” option which would have committed me to a year subscription AND included 12 “free” quilting pamphlets to download. More stuff to look at and file, more paper to print out, etc. : )
I am terrible for those mini bottles of hotel lotions and potions. I travel a bit for work so it is handy for me to have them and use them especially when flying, but I always say I have enough for now no more, then get to the next hotel and find the products are particularly lovely and find before I know it I have three drawers of them!! I find it difficult to reason between that useful need/use and when to stop. i will endeavour to sort those drawers out and only keep a small quantity of the really nice, not ancient ones I will use.
I learned this one with my child and birthday parties. The party favors filled up bins and bins of little things she never played with!
Gotcha! I have done this in the past. I will no longer do this.