In So Many Words

Well, it has been one week since the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge started, and I’m loving it! If you missed my earlier post and have no idea what I am talking about, the basic idea of the challenge is “to donate, sell or toss one unused item from your home every day for a year.” For more details, you can check out the intro post and the first day post.

Focus Challenge Update

Each month, there will be a focus challenge to help us stay motivated – or to restart us if we lose momentum. For the first month, the challenge was to identify specify areas in our homes that bother us and then to focus our decluttering efforts on those areas for the first week of the month.

I have so many trouble spots that it’s hard to narrow them down. The various flat surfaces like the side table and hutch seem to attract the most papers and other items that don’t belong on them, however, and since they are what people see first when they come into my house, that’s mainly where I looked this week for items that could go.

Here are a few of the items I’ve decluttered:

• Old books from Michael’s bookshelf
• The envelopes from the Christmas cards we received – after I updated any new address info in my files.
• Magazines from November and December (the two subscriptions we have should be ending soon, thus ending that clutter permanently)
• A package of emery boards that was in my Christmas stocking (anyone who has seen the state of my fingernails knows I will never use them!)
• The remnants of my last two stamping projects (I also organized this area and was actually able to sit down and make some cards again!)
• Two sweatshirts that were way past the point of being comfortable

So, How Are You Doing?

If you left a comment before joining in, have you been able to part with some things over the last week? Do you feel good about getting rid of something every day, or does it still seem like too little?

For anyone who hasn’t been doing this and wants to, you can start at any time. There’s nothing more special about any one day, so just jump in whenever you want!

I’d love to be able to celebrate with and encourage each other in this. If you’re participating and have posted about the challenge (or post about it sometime in the next week), please link your post to the inlinkz list below. Whether you’ve posted or not, leave a comment and let me know how it’s going!

This challenge was inspired by Suzanne Sergis at 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge and Taking Care of You. The concept and the monthly focus challenges are being used with her permission. If you use the badge, please link it to her intro post.

Related Posts:

• 365 Days of Decluttering – One Month Down, Eleven to Go!
• Why Declutter?
• Getting Off to a Good Start