Sort your life out!

Hi everyone. I’ve started a decluttering challenge and I’m loving it. I found this on a site called Orjenise on Instagram. 100 items have to leave your home in January.

I started on Saturday, a little late to the party, but I’m already up to 36 out of the required 100 items for the month. Feeling liberated by this. There are daily prompts to help you, and today’s was plastic bags. Initially I thought I only have a few of these in my kitchen and they are well organised already, but then I remembered the messy drawer in my bedroom full of small plastic bags I used to take my make up in on trips abroad, to stop leakage in my wash bag. I used to use them and then put them in my drawer to use again. I’d accumulated masses of them, what a mess. They have now left the building.

I already have 3 boxes full of items ready for the charity shop since the kitchen clear out. These have been sitting in the garage… it seems I was just moving the stuff around the home rather than out… so on Saturday these are definitely leaving the premises and going to the charity shop.

My 36 items have included so far.. amongst other things… pyjama bottoms with no elastic left in the waist, some body lotion I never liked but thought I should use up, very out of date sun cream, a few books, leaflets, packaging, tins I thought might be useful but just accumulate more stuff like buttons within them, an old letter rack, leaflets and packaging, a magazine, Christmas tree, Christmas cards, a box from a necklace I usually keep in my jewellery box, some library books I returned today… the list goes on..

I have become such an enthusiastic declutterer that we have now also started this challenge for January at work and managed about 4 items in the office already today…. an old diary, air freshener we didn’t like, packaging from Christmas chocolates, the 2021 wallplanner, super satisfying but still a long way to go. We hope to clear out the loft when my boss is away to up our numbers. This clearing out by numbers really works for me. If you clear out by time eg a 15 minute tidy, you can end up mainly moving things around into different piles. The capsule wardrobe concept along these lines works well for me too, which is all about counting the items and restricting the numbers of any one thing. Marvellous! 😊

I’ve donated my advent calendar boxes to my entrepreneur niece Hazel so that she can reuse them. (sorry to my sister as I’m now cluttering up her house with this, oops!). It took me ages to fit them back in the box.. like some kind of Rubik’s cube.

I grew up in a house full of clutter where you often couldn’t sit on the sofa or eat at the table due to the piles of accumulated random things. I hate the oppressive feeling it gives you when your house becomes a storage space rather than a living space. I do not wish my whole house.. or office.. to become a cupboard with me squeezed into a corner gasping for air!

So I’m off to have a shower now before cinema.. to use up some shower gel and tick that off the list! This challenge is seriously addictive.

How’s your house looking. Time for a clear out?! Xx