Why a Daily Decluttering Challenge Might be Right for You
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a few days into the daily decluttering challenge and the bin is starting to fill up
Are you struggling on how to start decluttering and organizing your home? Taking part in a daily decluttering challenge might be just the kick starter you need to begin your journey.
What’s a daily decluttering challenge? It’s when you choose an area of your home each day for a specific time period (I like to do one month) and find one item that you no longer need, use, is passed its expiration date, is worn out or was a gift that you have no intention of using and you make the decision to declutter it from your home.
Make sure you have a bin for donations, a bag for trash and a bag for paper recycling handy. As you find an item you want to discard, put it in the appropriate container so that at the end of the month you know exactly what to do with all of the items.
Participating in a daily decluttering challenge for one month is a gentle way to begin your decluttering journey. Once you build up experience decluttering you can change up the system. For example, on the first day of the month, you can declutter one item, on the second day of the month you declutter two items, and so forth until the end of the month when you are decluttering upwards of 30 items in one day! You can also choose to focus the entire month on one room or closet in your home so that at the end of the month, you will see significant progress in one particular area.
If you need some inspiration, follow this schedule:
Day 1: T-shirt
Day 2: Socks
Day 3: Hangers
Day 4: Outerwear
Day 5: Cords
Day 6: Junk Mail
Day 7: Tools
Day 8: CDs and DVDs
Day 9: Cookbooks
Day 10: Night Stand
Day 11: Workout Gear
Day 12: Shoes
Day 13: Purses
Day 14: Holiday Cards
Day 15: Kitchen Gadgets
Day 16: Collectibles
Day 17: Books
Day 18: Towels
Day 19: Pillows
Day 20: Kitchen Utensils
Day 21: Cosmetics
Day 22: Craft Supplies
Day 23: Jewelry
Day 24: Expired Food
Day 25: Bed Sheets
Day 26: Magazines
Day 27: Expired Medications
Day 28: Hair Stylers
Day 29: Toys
Day 30: Toiletries
Day 31: Outdated Technology
As you go through the list, you only need to find one item to get rid of but if you find more, than congratulations, add multiple items to your donate/trash/recycle bins! And if you can’t find any items in a particular category, then find something adjacent. For example, if you don’t have any bedsheets to declutter, take a look at your sleepwear and see if you can declutter one item that you no longer need.
And why are we doing this process of decluttering? When we want to organize our home, we don’t want to have to organize items we don’t actually want to keep. That just takes up our time and space that can both be used for other endeavors.
More Organizing Ideas
Need even more ideas on how to organize your home? Living. Simplified. is ready to help. Take a look at these blog posts or send us an email at lauren@livingsimplified.net and we can work together to reach your organizing and decluttering goals:
How to Organize Your Kitchen in 4 Easy Steps