Both myself and my husband decided to take on this challenge. Over 30 days we removed 960 unneeded items from our home. Wow. And it feels great!
We are really noticing a difference in our house. Especially certain - mostly often used - spaces. We found it easy to identify items to remove from those common places. There is still more work, organizing and letting go to do but much has also been accomplished. We plan to take a little break while we are working on a studio space for me. But we will revisit the idea of maybe returning to the declutter challenge or something that might work for a more daily/weekly routine.
A few things that worked for us during our 30 day overhaul:
Leaving out a container for donations
Having a "catch all" bag or box in a central location was very helpful to aide in quick decisions. If I noticed something during daily life it made it so simple to quickly say goodbye and place it in the box. {We kept a running list to tally up our number to make sure we were on top of the challenge amount each day. We kept that in an obvious space as well.}
Virtual yard sale
My husband belongs to a local virtual yard sale group which allowed us to make a few bucks on some items that I had a hard time letting go. Nice, working items that we just didn't need. {I wanted to know that it was going to be used. Since I had hopes of using those things.} It wasn't a ton of money but it was a nice perk to grow our savings while slimming down our clutter.
Quick drop offs to Good Will
We did a quick trip to our local Good Will Donation Center twice or so a week in order to not have any second thoughts and to keep our pile of goods to a manageable amount.
Setting a time to bulk declutter
Two times during our month we got behind {typically during the work week} on our tally. When this happened we decided to dedicate some time on the weekend to get rid of many, many items {one day we completed the goal of finding 100 items to leave our home}.
Short bursts of declutter
Of course, there is the flip side - such as doing a quick walk through the house - finding ten items and then moving on for the day.
Asking the hard questions
+Would I buy this again? (As inspired by this Pure Green Magazine Podcast)
+Can I find a replacement for this?
+Do I have time to fix this right now?
+Do I love and use this regularly?
+How many copies of this do I need?
It was amazing how as the month grew I would find myself picking up things thinking 'this is not worth the clutter it makes in our home' or 'I would rather be one item closer to my goal than keep this'. It was invigorating!
So, how about you? Any tips for declutter and managing the madness that we may unnecessarily keep in our homes?
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