Clutter Free Challenge – Update 1

Last week I posted about how I was going to do this 31 Day Clutter Free Challenge from Living Well, Spending Less, and I promised to do an update once I caught up… I’m am not caught up… however, I have managed to tackle a few more tasks, so I thought I’d post about them.

Day 4: Living Room

I wasn’t about to go through my entire living room… though I guess there isn’t too much in there except couches… but I decided to tackle only the shelf in the living room.  The before and after aren’t super exciting… but it’s the work that went in to it, and the lack of clutter inside that is the real exciting part… So perhaps I should explain a bit more…

From the top of the shelf, I removed a bunch of old greeting cards and invites.  I put some in to our mementos boxes to keep (for now…) and recycled some… I donated a vase (with some fake flowers in it), and moved the stuffy (probably left there by my nieces) to the chest of stuffies (to be gone through another time).  I moved some of the books down to the book shelf in the basement (see Day 5 below) and also moved some boxes of craft supplies (why were they in the living room?) to where the rest of my craft stuff is (again, a larger task for another day…), then decided to donate a couple random games that were on the shelf that we never play with.  The big task was going through all the papers that were stored in the drawers, the cupboard and the document holders…

I ended up with a couple paper bags filled with shredded paper and recycling.  The document holders or magazine holders (or whatever you call them…) are now mostly empty… one still has some of my fiance’s papers in it, but I’m not about to declutter his personal paperwork and mementos, so I have let him know that it is there… and he can deal with it as he sees fit.  I had a stack of papers that I wanted to file away, and rather than just add them to the pile that I sort of considered cheating from Day 3, I took both piles and actually filed them all… No procrastination!

Little Cat was supervising my decluttering:

Little Cat supervising my decluttering efforts.

Day 5: Books & Magazines

We don’t really have a place to store books on the main floor of our house right now, but down in the basement we have a built in shelf that we put some of our books on to when we moved in.  The fact that it is in the basement means that I rarely remember that they are there, and I definitely haven’t been reading them… but that being said, I don’t want to just get rid of all the books that I would like to read.  I just need to make time to do some reading… (I haven’t really done much reading lately…)  But I decided I would make an effort to get rid of a few books, preferably ones that I had read and won’t read again, or if I do, I can probably just get them from the library.  It’s not huge, but I managed to get rid of 16 books.  I would go for more, but I would need to consult the fiance about most of the others, so I decided to just go with the easy ones this time, and tackle the rest later… And then I found an old German textbook from my university days, which I definitely do not need anymore, along with the workbook and CDs that go with it… Good bye!

Day 6: DVDs & Video Games

I don’t really play video games, so I wasn’t about to touch those… but I did decide to tackle the shelf in the basement that holds all the DVDs and the VHS tapes (yes, we still had some old school VHS tapes…).  I know that we can watch most everything on Netflix these days, but there are those times when you are on a girls’ weekend in a mountain cabin, and there is a TV without cable, but a DVD player, and no internet or cell service (or really sketchy/slow internet), and you want to snuggle in with a bottle of wine, some popcorn and a girly movie… So with that in mind, I wanted to keep a few… but there is no need to keep the VHS tapes.  I don’t even know where our VHS player is… (when I find it, it will go too!)  So, out the door went a collection of about 22 or so VHS tapes and DVDs.  It’s not much, but it is progress… and that’s what this is all about.

So, there you have it… Day 4, 5 & 6 of the 31 day challenge.  Obviously, I’m still behind, but progress has been made… small progress, and hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to get a few more of the tasks completed.

Have you joined the 31 day clutter free challenge yet?  What decluttering projects have you tackled recently?