Oh my gosh… that box for the Goodwill filled up almost immediately! We found 42 items immediately that were culled and sorted and added to the box. And another 23 things hit the trash. I could hardly believe it.

The girls were ready to help out, they understand as well as I do, that clutter just makes it hard to live and work in a small space.

We tackled the living room and kitchen today. Primarily the kitchen, but we did find a few offenders in the bookshelves and tucked here and there. Got rid of an old wobbly end table that was so wobbly and un-fixable (the screws had all been stripped and it was really showing it’s wear… it was an old cheapy kit table) and also a couple boxes of clutter that had somehow found their way into the living room and had parked.

Funny, well, not that funny… one of the boxes came from the storage unit and I ment to go through it. It was marked school books. Well, I had set it aside and kind of forgot about it. In the meanwhile we looked high and low for our iron, which we needed for some sewing projects. I finally went and bought one a while back. Well, I open that box of books and the dang old iron was in there!!! Honestly. So now I have two. Good reason to not leave unopened boxes from storage just laying around.

We went through all the kitchen cupboards and got rid of weird and mismatching and broken and just off things that we never use. Amazing how many coffee mugs you can acquire and none of us drink coffee. We thinned it down to 2 mugs a person. I think that’s probably still overkill, but at least it’s better than like 4 each.

Cleaned out the frig and the pantry of unwanted or old foodstuffs. And just organized it better. Found we had stuff we had forgotten about. A couple mixes and some dog cookies and can goods etc. Had like 4 nearly empty stale boxes of cereal taking up a lot of space that no one liked. The birds will be getting a little treat over the next couple days.

We also took the time to do a good cleaning while we sorted and after an hour or two, had the place looking spiffy, had a huge box of stuff for charity as well as two garbage bags of stuff. Goodness. I hated to throw some stuff away but it was really not very nice or salvagable. We sorted some stuff for recycling.

I’m really going to be reminded of that video when we bring in new items. Try to remember… something in something out… Seems to work, if you remember to do it.

I have to say, I’ve been avoiding the big box stores now for almost 3 months. I am proud to say that I have only ONCE been in a Walmart and that was even under a great amount of duress! (My daughters wanted some bras they had there, and loved… and I tried to locate them elsewhere but they are made just for Walmart… So I went in, and got nothing else but a couple sets for each girl.) Yeah, okay, being a little silly, but I was used to going there often… and would ALWAYS come home with too much crap. I’ll admit it, I just could not resist their evil ways. I could never get out of a Walmart for under $75 bucks… and more often than not, it was $100+! Since I stopped that, I’ve definitely had more spendable cash. And I have shopped local whenever I can, which is more often than I thought I could!

It’s all good… whatever you can do. Baby steps will get you weaned off the uber-consumer teat. And you might falter a bit, find yourself backsliding now and then, well, that’s okay too. If you do ANYTHING… its better than not doing anything. If you at least think about it before you over-consume… and try to consider an alternative plan or even just consume less…. it’s better than nothing.

It take 21 days to establish a new habits. 21 consistent days.

I haven’t started on my room yet and I suspect that will be another area that I have let get toooo lax in my dilligence for stuff accumulating. I have papers here and there that I need to get back to their spots, and just too much stuff.

Like hand lotions. I have dry skin, and just really have always needed lotion on hand. But like 7 of them? I gathered up just the ones in my room…. and I had 7 different bottles/tubes!

Two were the same things and one was almost empty, yet I had opened the second one. So I emptied the low one into the new one and pitched the container. One container was empty. Yeah, empty, but laying about. Another was a lotion that I did not like… so that went away. Another had just a teeny bit, so I added it to the full one. And the last, I stashed in my purse.

So now I have just ONE bottle of my favorite lotion.

I think that the bathroom will be another place of way too many lotions, potions and pills, and many of which are probably expired or nasty or something we got and didn’t like. I’ve been being pretty good lately of sticking to one brand that we like. However, I didn’t go through and ditch the old stuff! It’s all just cluttering up the bathroom drawers and cabinet!

Agh…. it’s going to be a tough week! But I think it will feel good at the end of the challenge!!!

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