Welcome to {Freedom From Clutter in 40 Days} challenge! I’m joining forces with some great bloggers during this Lenten season to gain a little Freedom from the Clutter in my home “One Drawer At A Time” and we want you to join us!
To everything there is a season….A time to keep and a time to cast away . Ecclesiastes 3:6
After reading this Bible verse I knew that there wasn’t a more perfect time to start this challenge than during lent! God is giving me a little nudge I think!
I live in a multigenerational home along with my Mom, son and daughter. Not long ago it also included my Dad and my grandmother but we have suffered a few tragedies recently. Grammy passed away about a year and a half ago and we just lost Dad unexpectedly this past October. Their loss makes this challenge even more difficult. As you can imagine living with so many people under one roof we’ve collected a lot of stuff! Sometimes it’s difficult to let go but it’s definitely time to cast some things away…
My goal for the next 40 days is to tackle “One Drawer At A Time”. I will set a time limit each day to work on it. Some days I may have more time to devote than others but for the most part it will be between 10-30 minutes. It will be interesting to see how much clutter I can reduce with this method. It is such an overwhelming thought when I look around at how much crap we have accumulated. By just pecking away little by little each day it should produce some big results at the end of this challenge!
Get Organized
The first thing we need to do is get organized! Lucky for me and you Christina over at Juggling Real Food And Real Life has already started this for us. Christina is the ring leader behind {Freedom From Clutter in 40 Days}. If you are just joining in you’ll want to visit her Room by Room Guide to Decluttering Your Home and The First Layer of Clutter and…….What to do with it. Both of these posts will help you get started!
Figure out what you think will work for you. I’m planning on tackling each room “One Drawer At A Time”. I’m going to find some empty boxes…which we have plenty of because that’s why I’m doing this challenge…and I’m going to label each one- Items to be donated – Items for recycling and Trash. Each day I will pick a drawer and go to work. At the end of the week I will donate, recycle or throw it out! Easy! Now it’s time to take action! I’ll be posting my tips and results of my efforts each Friday during Lent.
This is an interactive challenge and we want you to join in with us. Christina has set up a Private Facebook Group that we hope you’ll join. We want you to share your ideas and challenges with us. Decluttering doesn’t really sound like a super fun thing to do so let’s make it fun! Join us! Post your before and after pictures or maybe some pictures of the most ridiculous items you’ve been holding on to! I know I have quite a few you’ll probably get a kick out of. I can’t wait to hear from you and see what you have to share. I’m certainly not an organization specialist so if we all join forces I bet we can come up with some great tips and ideas.
I will be sharing this at: Wow Us Wednesdays Wine’d Down Wednesdays Create It Thursday
Once your Decluttering is well underway make sure you stop back for some yummy recipes! You’re going to work up an appetite doing all that Decluttering!
Here are some of my recent posts: Just click on the picture for the recipe.
So sorry for your losses! Decluttering is hard enough, but when you have mementos and memories mixed in it’s so hard to make decisions. I pray you can get through this season with the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Thank you so much for your prayers Dawn. I’m hoping that this can be a bit of a healing process for us. I thought this was the perfect time of year you take the task on. We already went through most of Dad’s clothes. Fortunately he has a lot of brothers so we ended up giving all his really nice clothes to them. That made it a little bit easier to let go.
This must be very hard, I’m sorry for both your losses. Letting go of their things is hard but as long as you keep their memories alive they will always be with you. I hope your reducing method of one drawer a day helps keep your mind busy by focusing on your goal of living a simpler life. Thank you for sharing!
Thank your so much Carmen. It definitely has been difficult the past few months but you are correct all those happy memories help us to cope so much.