Goal: 2,024 Items leaving our home in 2024
If you've been around a while, you know we did a massive overhaul of our home in 2020. Two big things started this change: 1. We were planning to build a new house and wanted to only move things we truly loved/used. 2. I read The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning which completely revolutionized the way I held onto objects. Even though we abandoned our plans to build, you know...frugal living goals and all...we kept parting ways with stuff.
Since then, we've done a decently good job of cleaning out several times a year thanks to the fun of having garage sales with family/friends and also the spring and fall HWGA Kids' Sales. As always though, we can do better.
My friend Justina at the The Well Planned Mama shared with me that she challenged herself to get rid of 2,023 in 2023 and even created a great printable tracker to see her progress. I fell in LOVE with this idea and so even though it's not yet 2024 we have started at our house! So far, since November 16, we have parted ways with 150+ items from our home. Want to join the movement? Check out Justina's 2024 Decluttering post with FREE printable to track your own goals.
I was so excited about the idea that I presented it to the kids right away. It was the week they did their Pre-Christmas deep clean of their rooms so we counted many items that left the house then. We told Mark about it and he jumped right in with some sorting in the kitchen. Having the printable to color has made it even more fun!
If you've been around a while, you also know that I LOVE rules. I had to add some of my own to the challenge:
1. What constitutes an item? Some items like a book, pair of pants, etc felt obvious. But what about every little broken crayon from the school room? We're calling a pile of those just one item. Same with paper scraps or trash from projects. One big pile is one item on the coloring sheet. Maybe you're just beginning your own decluttering journey or want to count every little item - sounds good for you!
2. Although I desperately wanted to, I did not make any parameters for how many items needed to leave each week or month to stay on track. I wanted the others to be intuitive as to when they felt like it was time to part with something vs forced into it.
3. Be wise in donating. I wanted to be careful and intentional about making sure items were leaving in a timely fashion, not just sitting in a box in the back of the car, and trying to get them to free pantries or the right non-profits to be most beneficial to others.
But...WHY? Our why is based on previous success by decluttering so much in 2020.
For one, We do a quick 20 Minute Tidy each day and often don't even need the full 20 minutes because everything in our house has a place and typically gets put in place. We do struggle with kitchen counter clutter, the kids' rooms, and our school room. Once a quarter we do big overhauls of those three rooms and it really helps keep down paper/junk clutter and every time we get faster at getting the big one done.
And two, by having less stuff we actually want less stuff! It's true. As we have parted ways with so many unnecessary items, it's been very evident to Mark and myself that we've wasted a lot of money buying those things in the first place. Instead of buying things, we want to put aside money for experiences, travel, and opportunities. I plan to track everything we're able to sell as we declutter so we can see how much money we put back into our budget by getting rid of items.
Several times I've done a monthly challenge, for example the By the Numbers Challenge - 1 item on the 1st, 15 on the 15th, etc but the idea of a whole year was thrilling to me! I'll keep you posted on how it goes!
Do you have any goals in 2024? Wishing you a happy and healthy new year!
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