My house is full of STUFF.
Even though I always have a box behind the laundry room door to toss random “Goodwill” items into as I come across them, a couple of months ago I decided that I needed to step up the “Stuff Exodus” just a little bit.
I had read an article near the beginning of Lent that talked about purging your house of unnecessary things. It was called The 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge (from whitehouseblackshutters.com) and the whole idea really appealed to me. I generally don’t give things up for Lent, but this year, I decided to give up a lot of the junk in our house. Not because having it is sinful (though it probably is), but because I felt like I wanted a new start for spring. A less-cluttered start.
I started with the kitchen cabinets. For a long time (during thousands of dishwasher loadings/unloadings) I have dreamed of scaling down and making everyone have their own plate, cup, spoon, and fork. AND NOTHING ELSE. Hey, that’s how it was for Laura Ingalls. Heck, she and her sister even had to SHARE a cup and they turned out just fine. And if it was good enough for them, it should be good enough for me, right? Plus, I was really sick and tired of getting knocked unconscious from over-stacked ceramic mug avalanches. (I did keep my Elvis ones from Graceland, though.)
In the end, I didn’t go completely overboard – we still have enough plates to host people for dinner – but my kitchen cabinets are SO much easier to deal with now. Not to mention the dreaded “Tupperware Cabinet.” Since I had a quota to meet, I gave up on saving mismatched lids and threw them all out!
And it felt good.
The kids got in on it too – they helped me clean out the toy room. With the help of some $1 plastic shoeboxes, we sorted everything out and cleared 6 bags out of there. It’s nice for them to have a place to play where they can actually move around and not be completely surrounded by toys. They even admitted that it’s nicer to have fewer ponies and Barbie dolls. That was surprising.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much unnecessary stuff we had in our house (well, we still have a lot, but not nearly as much). I took it one room at a time and I purged. I sold it. I threw it out. I passed it along. I recycled it. I donated it. I gave it away. I sat it on the curb.
Doing this challenge has given me a little bit of a new perspective. Since I included my own closet in the clean-out, now I’m really picky about what I want to put back in. I hauled out 5 garbage bags full of clothes, shoes and purses – and now I’m not about to waste money and that beautiful empty space on anything I don’t absolutely love. I’m really hoping my attitude will become contagious because I’d like for the idea of “love it or lose it” it to spill over into the rest of the house too.
Perhaps my next challenge will be The 40 Pounds in 40 Days Challenge. Kidding! Just kidding.
But seriously – we are so blessed to live in a country of abundance… most of us have “enough.”
And I’m learning that sometimes, less really is more.
Are these really necessary?
whatevermomsays 