My first post – I doubt whether anyone else will be interested but, just in case, I should introduce myself.

I’m a 49 year old woman, living in Norfolk in the UK. I am married with 5 children – 4 girls and 1 boy – 22, 21, 8 and 6 year old twins.

My husband and I run our own business supplying corrugated cardboard packaging to manufacturers and other companies in many different industries. He does the sales and I do the accounts. We also employ 3 other people.

We have 3 dogs and live in a rural semi-detached cottage with a couple of acres of land.

For some time now I have been thinking that I need to change the way I live my life. For as long as I can remember I have put the needs of others before my own. I am a chronic people-pleaser always agreeing to do what other people ask of me, even if that goes against my own wellbeing. This way of being has become so ingrained that I no longer really know what my own passions are. It has even affected
my health.

I have been reading the posts by minimalists such as Leo Babauta (zenhabits.net) and Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus (theminimalists.com) and quite a lot of what they talk about resonates with me.

I have therefore decided that I will start to get where I want to be (wherever that is) by reducing the amount of  ‘stuff’ in my life. Rather than keep thinking about what it is I want to achieve I will ‘just do it’.

So, I have started a 30 day declutter plan as suggested by The minimalists:

Day one – get rid of 1 thing, day two – get rid of 2 things, day 3 – get rid of 3 things and so on up to day thirty – get rid of 30 things. By the end of the 30 days I will have got rid of over 600 items from my home which I no longer need or want. I will try and donate, give away, sell and, as a last resort, recycle everything.

I will post here each day to try and keep me accountable and motivated.

Today  – day one – I have thrown away a chipped ramekin dish which I have no idea why I was keeping. It was so badly damaged that unfortunately it has had to go into landfill.