40 Bags in 40 Days

Today is Ash Wednesday which marks the start of the Lenten season & will officially end in 40 days on April 17th. 

The Lenten season is seen as a time to give up something pleasurable – which could be anything from chocolate to habits like swearing or procrastinating. So for the past week I have been pondering what I might "give up" during that time. 

This past Tuesday my sister posted this on Facebook: 

As I read further into it I thought "what a clever idea"! You are abiding by the Lent rules by "giving something up" as well as decluttering your house & simplifying your life! It's a Win Win :)

With the hopes of getting our house ready to put on the market in the near future, we need to do some serious down-sizing of our "stuff" - especially my husband's "stuff". He has become a bit of a "pack-rat" ever since I have known him. As I look around our home there isn't a drawer or closet or room that couldn't use a little tidying up & decluttering.

So how does it work? This challenge is a forty day period in the spring (coinciding with the 40 days of Lent) where you focus on cleaning one area per day. It could be a room, a closet, a drawer, the basement, the garage - whatever area you want it to be. In this one area you challenge yourself to declutter, simplify, decrapify, & to get rid of things you don’t need. The goal is one bag a day but it is ok if you have more or less. 

What kind of bag do you use? It can be any kind - small or large! Lawn-sized garbage bags, boxes, grocery bags, tall kitchen bags, ziplock bags. Try not to get hung up on the "size" of the bag. Instead focus on that one spot per day & get it clean. Try not to get all crazy & take on four or five different spots because you want to prove something & please don’t get all bummed out because you missed a day - or two. Just focus on one. spot. per.day.

What do you do with all the bags? Whatever you want but the goal is to get it OUT of the house. Your stuff can just be organized, or donated, given to a family member or friend, go in a garage sale pile (but make sure to have that garage sale), make a little money by putting it on Craigslist to sell, or it could simply just go into the garbage. The goal is to get it out of your house!!

You can click here if you need some ideas of what areas to declutter! As I said earlier I know our house has TONS of areas we can clean up & simplify & I am challenging you all to do the same.

If you go to this website, it will also give you some great ideas of "non-stuff" things to organize & declutter also.

So who is with me on this? I will try & take some before/after pics as I tackle on certain areas to validate my actions.

Let the decrapifying begin!!