The July Clutter Challenge…

I am a third of the way through the July De-Cluttering project and I have to say, it’s felt great!  over 40 items are now boxed and donated to our local free store!  I sure hope someone enjoys these little treasures.  It was not too hard to come up with these first round of goodies, but I think it shall get a little harder for the last 20 days of the challenge.

I have made my first and fairly complete pass through the house…  mostly my office, bedroom, studio, dining room and bathroom.  The kitchen is still slightly untouched…  just started today with a few water bottles and mugs.  I hope to spend a good week of items in there, because I know we have lots of dusty clutter things in the cupboards and such.  Just things that I thought we would use and are not.  Pet things, farm things, cooking and baking items, you name it.  I hope that I can find a good 40 to 50 items in there to help with the cause.

I am finding that I have a weakness for little baskets and boxes!   Tins and such, storage things for little stuff, that in reality, are all empty!   I don’t really have that many little things to store!  So I will be watching myself in the future, to avoid picking up more little storage things that I don’t need!

Since I had recently gone through my clothing fairly well, I don’t have a lot of clothes to donate.  I did find four shirts that were nice but I really didn’t want to cut up for rag rugs.  I hope someone can get a little use from them.  And my  books are very narrowed down…  I only found a few.  I do know I have some cookbooks that will get the boot…  I really just don’t use them and if I want a new recipe, I usually go to the internet!  But I do want to have a couple good, multipurpose cook books here in case of zombie apocalypse or some horrible internet accident.  (haha)  Sometimes you just like the feeling of a real book.  I’ll probably keep a pair of really good ones I love…  but all the rest can go and help someone else!

My overall goal is to have a place for everything and everything in it’s place.  I don’t know if it’s getting older or what, but I just don’t want to have just piles and boxes and stuff everywhere.  It’s hard for me to work in that environment, anymore.  I used to think that as a creative person, that I needed a constant bombardment of eye candy, stuff, materials, colors to aid in my creativity.  Now I find that it only distracts me.  I want my inspiration to be contained, and in it’s proper space… not all over the spectrum of my life.  I love a nice clean working environment.  It is calm and soothing and allows me to concentrate on my work in progress.

So, if anyone else is working on their July Declutter, I hope it’s going well!   I’ve heard from friends and readers on the Facebook that are trying the challenge as well.  I sure will feel good when it’s all done.  I have been VERY careful not to bring in new things.   In fact, the only two things we are acquired is a new toaster oven because our big stove died and we are saving up for another…  and an antique spinning wheel that a friend was selling and I would like to get running.  (She sold it to me for a song!  I hope we can refurbish it!)    Other than that, nothing new has come in to the house this month.  I want to make sure that the new things we bring in to the house are things that we love and bring us joy and have a good use for.  We debated about the toaster oven until Maggie said she would like it, eventually, for her tiny house and that made good sense.

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Seems like it’s been years since we have been working on clutter and just too much stuff.  And it has been.   But as I find it harder and harder to find my four daily things, I know that we are finally getting closer to a nice level of stuff.  I know there are folks that have made a big to do about narrowing their processions down to 500 or 200 or whatever number works for them.  I have seriously thought about that, but in the end, I just don’t want to have to count everything or keep track of that number for contentment.  I know it when I feel it.  And I know we are very close.

We have a junk storage room that is really going to be the crowning glory of this declutter.  The rest of the place is starting to really shape up and feel good.  But that room…  ugh…   it’s bad.  My last frontier is that room.   I would like to empty it and use it as a TV/game room and a guest hangout.  It’s would goal.    We have a guest coming in August, so it’s a great incentive to get that room empty and set up nicer.  And I would really feel good once that room is done.   We don’t have an attic or a basement, really, so that is our long term storage area.  I want to have just the closet in there for our holiday and longer term storage, that is it.  I think we can make it.

Hope you are enjoying your Independence from clutter challenge too!

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About Mobymom

the banjo player for Deepwater Bluegrass, and the editor of BuckeyeBluegrass.com as well as the main graphic designer of the Westvon Publishing empire. She is a renaissance woman of many talents and has two lovely daughters and a rehab mobile home homestead to raise.

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