Clear Out the Clutter Challenge

Two nights ago Money Saving Mom announced that she was going to do a “Clear Out the Clutter Challenge.”

Perfect, right? I mean, that’s what I’m all about here at my blog. I have no lack of clutter, and I’m all about clearing it out.

But then, the assigned area and linky went up last night. Last night after my daughter’s birthday dinner. Last night after the day when all of my exhaustion from the past two crazy weeks finally hit me full force.

So, I made one of those difficult decisions to not let blogging take over my life, and I waited. Even though it would mean I wouldn’t link up until her linky was way down on the page, I just couldn’t force myself to work on it last night. I mean, hubby and I had an episode of Lost to watch. I do have priorities, people!

Her assignment was to declutter the living room and coat closet. I was a little discouraged, because in my entire house, the living room is generally the least cluttered area (other than the random pair of undies left on the floor by my kids). And the coat closet was one of my early projects on this blog, and I’m happy to say that when I checked it, it still looks good!

But I did it anyway. I’m getting ready for my garage sale at the end of this month. And although I have mountains of clutter to go through in some areas, I need to also go back over the non for-family-members-eyes-only areas.

I went through our videos and games. Both were in specific places; they had a real home (my resolution for this year). They were hidden in drawers and behind little doors, so in my slob-mind, that was good enough.

But the reality is, even “normal” people need to declutter. They declutter before things start to spill out onto the floor and force them to.

I got rid of 14 VHS videos and four games.

The “What if . . . ?” part of my brain really kicked in. No, we haven’t watched this video in the 4 years that we’ve owned it, but what if we wanted to? No, we wouldn’t choose to play this game if we had a game night, but what if . . . ?

I decided that if it wasn’t a video that we would choose to watch instead of going out to rent one from redbox, it needed to go. And as for the games, one was really “fun” back in high school and college, but invariably made someone cry, so as I head toward my 40s, I think I should let it go.

It feels good to have done this. As a slob, I tend to only want to declutter when it’s going to make a huge impact, when people are going to enter the room and stop dead in their tracks and heap praise upon me. But the reality is, as I make real changes to how I manage my home/life, this is how it’s actually supposed to be done.

Tomorrow, come back to read the first post in my series called: How to Have a Good Garage Sale: Advice from the Girl Who Knows Too Much!

I know that’s a reeeeaaaaaaaaalllllly long title, but it’s too true. It’s one of the ways I got into this mess.

Check out more decluttering posts at Money Saving Mom’s Clear out the Clutter Challenge.