New Year's Resolutions

(1) Reach out more to friends and family in Blighty

For a long while I have resented that the burden of responsibility for keeping up these relationships falls on me. I visit the UK numerous times a year, yet none of my friends and even some of my family have not yet visited me in the four years I have been here. Before I had the space to put them up, this was understandable, but now we have a spare room and I would love to have them here. I'm slowly moving towards accepting that relationships are rarely equal and if I don't want to let these friends grow away from me, I have to find other ways to keep that contact. More letters and emails, utilising my time in the UK with friends as well as family, inviting people over for specific events and activities rather than issuing general invites.

(2) Declutter

I still have far, FAR too many things. Particularly: books, clothes, and crafting things. The one-a-day rule has lapsed rather but I am still considering things carefully and putting them aside when I can. I've hit a bit of a stumbling block in that I have not yet been able to find a second hand dealer who will buy DVDs or computer games in English. Taking them back to the UK would be bulky, so really my options are probably ebay or Amazon marketplace, but I'm procrastinating over the anticipated work involved. I need to bite that bullet and move these things out of my basement.

An addendum to this is that I want to learn how to use space better. Our kitchen cupboards are desperately disorganised, and we don't know what's at the back of them. I'd like to start building a stockpile but that definitely needs a better set-up than we have at the moment.

(3) Acquire useful tools and basic ingredients

This may sound contradictory to my decluttering aim, but there are several areas where I have almost everything I need for some make or skill, with one exception, so I am losing space without benefiting from the craft. If I am going to start growing my own food, I need to invest in the pots and compost. If I am not, the trowel and tin of seeds is a waste of space and should go. One or the other, I need to do or discard rather than holding on to half-finished things.