Random Decluttering

After the difficulty with keeping up with the mins game (and keeping records and tracking everything that I decluttered for that challenge) I sort of stopped keeping track of things that were leaving our house… But… That doesn’t mean things haven’t been leaving…

With all the kitchen and dining room stuff moving in to the basement, we had to finally pull a bunch of things out of the cupboards, and I have taken the opportunity to get rid of things that have just been taking up space.  Here’s an incomplete, but best estimate based on my memory, list of what has left our house in the last few weeks:

My Mins Game Conclusion

Today is June 8th, so it is well past the scheduled last day of my January MinsGame challenge.  As I mentioned in my personal goals post, I am picking a monthly challenge to complete each month this year (though I have definitely missed a few months – okay, I’ve missed more months than I’ve done… whatever…).  January’s challenge was to complete the Mins Game as defined by the Minimalists.  However, I didn’t actually complete the full 31 days of the challenge before the end of January.

I posted updates along the way… First was days 1 to 10, which saw 55+ items leave the house.  The second update was days 11 to 18, which brought the total up to 170+ items.  My third update was days 19 to 22 which brought my total up to 250+ items… And then there was blog silence…  I mentioned briefly that I was behind on the MinsGame, but all was not lost.  I slowly worked on the last 9 “days” of the challenge and can now say that I have completed it!  So, let’s quickly go over the end of my challenge…

Another Mins Game Update…

You are probably getting sick of these updates now… But I need them to keep me accountable.  I commented on my last update that I was getting behind because of a busy weekend, and so I need this push to catch up and keep going…

For those just tuning in, I am doing the Mins Game as my monthly challenge for January.  I have done 2 updates so far (here and here).  We resume the reporting on day 19…

My Mins Game Continued…

On Tuesday, I posted the first 10 days of my “Mins Game” challenge, which saw over 55 items leave my house, and I promised I would continue with it, so let’s just keep trucking along… Today I bring you days 11 to 18…

My Mins Game So Far…

Today is January 17th, so it is day 17 of my “Mins Game” that I set as my January monthly challenge when I discussed my personal goals for 2017 last week.  If you haven’t heard of the challenge, check out this page on the Minimalists website.  I guess technically I’m not playing the game right because I’m doing it alone… but whatever.  I’m  going to do it.  Feel free to join in and make it so that I’m not alone…

So, 17 days in, my grand total is supposed to be 153.  Let’s go over what I’ve gotten rid of so far…

21 Day Paper Declutter Challenge

Anne Lene over at Minimalist Sometimes hosted a 21 day paper decluttering challenge that was scheduled to officially end tomorrow…

The idea was that she wanted to tackle her paper clutter and she was asking others to join her.  Although things didn’t quite go as planned for her, the goal was 60 minutes a day working on sorting, scanning, filing and shredding her paper clutter.  There were a bunch of other bloggers that joined in.  I don’t really have that sort of time to commit to the task these days, so I said I would try for 60 minutes a week… (I was thinking that I would work on it for an hour each weekend that occurred during the 3 week period.)

Of course, I have done some paper decluttering before… but unless you get a good system to keep the paper clutter at bay, it just piles up again… And so it has accumulated in our house once again… all over the place…

Follow-Up On My Email Decluttering

As a part of my 2015 decluttering goals, I scheduled week #3 to be decluttering my email inboxes.  I posted my results after my first round of decluttering, but I didn’t make huge progress, so I left is as a sort of “to be completed and maintained” type of task.  I have just recently totally changed up my email process, so I thought it was about time to do a quick follow up post.

My original total of emails was: 9300 + 1000 + 100 + 100 + 30 = 10530

After my first round of decluttering my total was: 6170 + 850 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 7060

And then Alicia from Financial Diffraction (who is no longer blogging it appears) introduced me to the Email Game.  It changed my email decluttering task from boring and monotonous, to a game to get points.  I like points.  🙂

It worked for a while, and I was slowly bringing down my total… but then I got lazy… and well… I stopped playing the game and stopped deleting emails and just started letting them add up again… Every so often I’d take some time to delete emails, but most of the time, I’d just let them accumulate…

But that has all changed now!  Last week, while I was finally attempting to finish reading the “Getting Things Done” book by David Allen, I decided to check the totals again to see where I stand, and start implementing the GTD process with my emails.  (Side note, I once again did not finish reading the book before I had to return it to the library…)