This week I declutter my “sentimentals” and my “collectibles”

What did we all do before we “decluttered”? We tidied. We picked up our crap, dusted under it, then put it back down again. We also used our crap. In my house we collected toothbrushes, icecream buckets and old singlets, which were used for cleaning our BMXs (the hub ballbearings would soak in kero in the buckets, the toothbrushes and rags were for extracting crud from the chain). And Dad used the old inner-tyre tubes for just about everything – fixing fences, espaliering the tomatoes and occy-strapping things to the ute.

Nowadays we buy more new stuff, and we don’t have time to get creative with re-using the old stuff. So we have more crap. And less room. But more importantly we’ve developed a raging intolerance for this clutter and a need to clear our lives of everything that could be bogging us down, physically, emotionally or spiritually. Decluttering has become a euphemism for the enema we’d like to take to our relationships, our schedules, the floors of our cars. In the US “storage solution” stores are experiencing exponential growth, while hoarding memoirs are emerging as the new “mis lit”. I tell you, decluttering is a dirty big business.

In this column I’ve subjected myself to many declutterings, consulting some of the world’s experts on the subject. I’ve overhauled my book collection, my email inbox; heck, I even did a colonic. But this week I went the next level.  I decluttered my “sentimentals” – photos, heirloomy knick-knacks, my grandmothers’ Jesus statues and the box of school certificates I’ve kept since kindergarten (for “good book work” and “trying hard during health hustle”).

Which is how Peter Walsh ended up in my loungeroom on Tuesday morning.

This week I give away stuff… randomly.

Have you been ROAK’d yet? I know four people who have in the past fortnight. My friend Kerrie was walking to the servo to buy toilet paper and a woman she didn’t know handed her a bunch of jonquils. Just like that. A reader on my blog wrote to tell me some guy in front of her in the cafe queue paid for her coffee last week. Another two had their parking meter topped up by a stranger. In all but one case, they were handed a little note or card that informed them they were recipients of a Random Act of Kindness and that encouraged them to do the same to someone else. To pay it forward.

Americans are all over this odd little practice of guerilla dumping niceness on random strangers. Oprah has her Kindness Chain project. Her fans are invited to do a kind deed and write it down in a little journal that has their name and address on it and a request for the journal to be returned when full. They then invite the receiver of their RAOK to pass on the love – and the journal – to others.

In Line Behind Me is a Washington-based blog dedicated to people who’ve been shouted coffees by strangers. They’re slipped a card inviting them to post a heart-warming story about the RAOK on said blog. The “shouter” can then log on and read about their amazing altruism the next day. Which, I suppose, means it’s really a blog dedicated to people who want to read about themselves on blogs.

I know this seems like a really daggy post. But stick with me, at least until the jump. It gets really interesting. See this quinoa recipe below, from 101 Cookbooks, an amazing resource for super healthy food ideas…I challenged myself to make it entirely from stuff pulled from my freezer. There are tricks and things to know…read on…

A full freezer is a green freezer

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman is a mad freezer nut. He wrote recently in Oprah magazine that storing food in the freezer is actually economical because freezers work more efficiently when they’re full…something to do with solids stay cold longer than gases, so keep the whole lot at a more consistent temperature. Rad. Mark pretty much stores everything in his – flour, lemons, fruit, bacon. I’m not far off.

Some stuff is better frozen

Frozen tofu, for instance, stirfries better.