Amy over at The Finer Things in Life is in labor!  So excited to hear if the baby is a boy or girl!  Amazingly, she put up her August Decluttering post yesterday.

I love that Amy is doing this decluttering challenge.  It is nice to have a reason to reflect on the progress I’ve made at the end of each month.

Here’s what I decluttered in August.  (Ummm, I just realized that the person who gave me the brown striped shirt reads the blog.  Sorry, but it really doesn’t look good on me.)

I’m not going to go back and check, but I’m guessing that each and every monthly decluttering update post has started with a statement of disbelief that another month had passed.

Not this one.

It feels like Sept. 1 today.  I think this has something to do with how wrong it feels to have started school before August was over.  August is still supposed to be summertime.

Summer was wonderful, I enjoyed every minute.  However, I didn’t make much decluttering progress.  Here and there, I did a few things.  Clearing off (and then decorating) the dining room table felt like a huge accomplishment.

Then my friend Lauren over at Mama’s Laundry Talk asked if anyone wanted to share a laundry room makeover.  I had no desire to work on my laundry room (it has a door that closes, after all), but I decided that I would give it five minutes, and see what I could do.  Five minutes inspired another five, which inspired another five, and after a very short amount of time, my laundry room looked so much better.  And I have to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed not having to step over anything or lean way over a pile of “stuff” to do the laundry.  (How do I not notice the piles until they’re gone?)

Then, I pretty much didn’t do anything until school started on the 24th.  But in the last week and a half, I’ve made some real progress.  I’m quite proud of myself for finally turning my Room of Shame back into my Favorite Room.  Over the summer, I lost focus.  I was hanging on for dear life, surviving by doing the major cleaning chores and keeping the dishes under control.  But anything else was accidentally-on-purpose ignored.  My office, the room which I spent all of last fall working on, suffered the most.  It’s just too convenient to shut the door and pretend that no one sees the papers/clothes/random-trash sticking out from under it.  But I persevered, and I love having the room back to livable-if-not-perfect.

And last, but certainly not least, I want to share my Top Ten List post from yesterday.  It’s a series of 10 before and after pictures of little spots around the house that I had neglected for most of the summer.  Each spot, on its own, is small.  But if you put them all in the same house, you have a big mess.

I’ve been decluttering a major spot this morning, but I can’t include it here, since it’s now September!  Can’t wait to have a huge progress report next month!

Go check out more decluttering progress reports over at The Finer Things in Life.