The Declutter Challenge

I follow quite a few blogs, although admittedly I only follow a handful of them closely. The other day I was up in the middle of the night feeding Victoria, and skimming my blog feed. I found THIS

The blog Keeper of the Home has a schedule for decluttering her home a little each day. It sounded like a great challenge, as her goal is to get rid of 10 things every day for 40 days from specific areas of her home.

The only thing is, I don't have THAT much to give away. Last year I went on a binge of getting rid of excess, which I documented in THIS POST and THIS POST. So things are pretty sleek around here.

I say that, but then I walk around my apartment and see this

This is next to my bed no less.... very romantic

How did my closet get so cluttered AGAIN?!

Hmm I might have too much nailpolish and makeup

Soooo maybe this whole "purge your house from excess" thing needs to happen annually. Our apartment is not super tiny, but it only contains 3 closets, and that has to store EVERYTHING! Including baby stuff, Christmas stuff, etc. So I am ending up with piles of stuff that have nowhere to go (see bin of maternity clothes and body pillow from pregnancy in the first photo).

So while I might not be able to pull off at least 10 things to give away every day from specific areas of the home like the Keeper of the Home schedule, I definitely have room for improvement.

I am going to instead start my own challenge for myself (and anyone else who would like to join me!). I am going to get rid of at least 5 things every day for the month of September. That will add up to at least 150 items leaving my apartment by the end of the month, and that sounds pretty great to me! My husband and I decided this past week that we will be looking for a new living situation come Spring 2015, so I might as well start the purging now.

I started already today with this

I no longer need any of these items because I now use Norwex to clean my home. These have been collecting dust on a shelf while I scratched my head wondering what to do with them. 

Then a moment of genius struck. Have you ever heard of Freecycle? It is a website where people offer up items for free and others take them off their hands. There are also a number of freecycle-type groups on facebook. I am a member of one for my local area, and I posted this picture on there. Within literally 2 minutes I had a woman ask to come by and pick up all of these. I am so happy to have them gone! So that is 6 items down today already

By the way, if you aren't already, take a moment to become members of your local freecycle and Buy/Sell/Trade groups on facebook. There are tons of them and I find them to be much better and more secure than using Craigslist to buy and sell used items. 

Do you find yourself fighting clutter? I find that the smaller the place I live, the more clutter drives me nuts. I am afraid that living in a larger place will just mean I accumulate more things. 

Will you join my declutter challenge? Or hop on over and do the Keeper of the Home Challenge? Either way, let's get decluttering!