Decluttering Day!

I've got a group of female friends who are into simplifying their lives, but many complain that they can't get their husbands to go along. Not me! We've been on a kick the last week or two, to focus on "quality of life" projects. We've been so busy with boat systems, these little jobs have been back burnered, that don't make the boat safer or sail faster, but just improve the little stuff. Stuff that you don't notice how annoying it was, until you do it and then wonder, why did I wait so long? First, we bought some plastic baskets at TrueValue to organize the fridge. We took everything out and played with alternate arrangements of baskets and what to put in them, spending an hour or two on something that's been bugging us for over a year. (In the process we also got rid of too many half-used bottles of condiments, but that's another story.) Now we can actually find and access ingredients for dinner - what a thought! Well, that apparently was all the momentum we needed. My amazing wonderful spouse got the decluttering bug this morning. He had decided we needed to do laundry because he had nothing to wear ...but then he noticed that his clothing locker still had plenty of clothes in it. So he took every single item out, and sorted, and pretty soon a large grocery bag of clothing left the boat. (for scale, each of us has space in our lockers for enough clothing to fill 2-3 airline carry-on suitcases, so this was about 25% of his total clothing). Then he decided that the bathroom drawer was too stuffed so he started on that, finding new homes for some of our meds and rearranging what was left. Now he's outside, rearranging the way things are stowed. We must have too many heavy things on the starboard side, because we sit slightly tilted in the water - he's working on leveling that. Not bad when you figure it's only noon! He inspired me to work on clothing too, though I generated only about 1/2 a large grocery bag of surplus. To be fair, though, part of what he removed was a number of polo shirts with "Navy Sailing Instructor" logos - he doesn't need them any more since his last trip was in early June. I expect in late August to be able to put away all my office clothing. Clothing and "what ifs" seem to be my biggest battle. I wish there was a list of how many of each item we'd need for 8 months of cruising. I remember on our Grand Canyon trip, there was such a list. They listed everything you needed, exactly how many T-shirts, shorts, 1 pair rain gear, 1 hat, 2 swimsuits, water sandals, etc etc, right down to "1 clean dress, for camp." Odd as it seemed, it worked out perfectly, and everything on the list exactly fit in the one rubber bag we were each alloted for the trip. Hmm, if I can't find one on the Web, maybe I'll have to make my own!