Monday, September 1, 2014

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!

4 comments:

  1. I love this idea, Amy. I'm not sure I have enough stuff to do it though! I'm constantly going through our house purging things because our space is so small. Most of the stuff I need to get rid of is wedding stuff that I keep saying I'll sell on Ebay. My husband and I found out I was pregnant early in August and now we have even more of a reason to get rid of all the wedding stuff that is sitting around in our bedroom (which, like you said is not very romantic). We have to make room for a crib! I'm hoping that we'll also start looking for a new living situation in Spring 2015 (since the baby is due April 2nd)!

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    1. OH Tiffany that is such wonderful news! Congratulations! I am so happy for you. I hope you will document some of your pregnancy on your blog:)

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    2. Thanks, Amy! I am really hoping to. Even though I quit my job before I got married, I ended up working most of the summer because they had several projects they asked me back for. I really intended on getting into blogging, but because I was working so much (and then pregnant), I was exhausted! The projects finally ended and now I'm back at home, so maybe soon!

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  2. You're right, decluttering is a never-ending battle! I'm a minimalist and would not be able to get rid of 5 things daily, because we'd have nothing left in two to three month, but we still have to do a purge every season or so, because things just seem to pile up, even when you buy nearly nothing at all!

    I wish you luck with your decluttering challenge - if it goes at least as well as your fitness 'challenge' you're sure to succeed.

    That said, I wish we had Freecycle, or even Craiglist where I'm from :/ And I wish we could get Norwex, too. Oh, well!

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