Bagging

I may be behind on my bags.  I haven't cleared 40 bags of junk out of my house yet--of course it's not Easter yet either--it's been just over one month. (Good thing I've actually got 46 days.)

I've completed about half my goal.  I made a sheet to mark off my bags to track progress and motivate myself.  I arbitrarily marked half of the bags recycling bins and half as garbage bins.  I've actually been surprised to see how little I've just thrown away of the 20 bags I've purged and how much of it I have donated, or sold, or given away, or recycled.

I have purged baby stuff--extra crib mattress, car seat base, and car seat that will expire before our next baby.  Toys and stuffed animals (There's always too many.)  Movies--since we have Netflix there's no reason to hold on to ones we might watch once every few years, so I purged half our VHS collection.  Yes, VHS, those things take up a lot of space too.  Clothes--Jeremy got rid of some, I got rid of some more, we passed on some baby clothes, and got rid of some scarves and winter accessories we never used this last season.  Other things were a book and a game I swapped on swap.com, and I mailed out a bunch of leftover product to friends and family from a home-based sales company I joined in college. 

I spent a good week on one of my paper piles.  I had a bag for recycling, and a big bag of shredded paper by the end, but I need to do more work.  The thing about a goal like this is working through the stops and starts.  At first it's easy--there's 10 bags to get rid of off the top of your head.  Then you work slowly through the next 10-20, thinking harder and coming up with more ideas.  Jeremy and I have talked about how the point of this goal is to make it all the way to 40, and that those last 10 bags will be the hardest--they start to get to the painful point.  But if we really want to make a difference in our home we have to get to that painful point. 

I'm the type that when a pile accumulates I stack it up in a box to clear off my desk and I put the box away to "go through later," or when there's too many toys I'll "organize them better" packing them ever tighter into the shelves.  But it's not just about making it fit or looking uncluttered on the surface--believe me--my boxes of hidden junk cry out to my from their hiding places disturbing the peace I want to feel in my own home.  So here we are--pushing through the lulls in our work and motivation .  I will make it to 40 bags.

I will.

40 Bags in 40 Days

My house is interfering with the things I want to do with my life.  It's holding me back.  It's just in the way.   

Clutter is like that.  Even when I push it out of the way--I still know it's there (hiding) and it holds me back. I think "I can't pull out the fabric to work on Owen's quilt because I really should clean off the craft desk."  "I can't make Valentine's sugar cookies with the boys because I should clear the clutter out of the kitchen."  "I should spend some floor time playing with the baby--but there's so much junk in the toy room."  "I'd like to read a book--but there's laundry overflowing the hampers in the bathroom." 

When we moved into this house (almost exactly four years ago) I thought that "finally" I was in a house big enough for our needs.  I recognized that it was actually even bigger than our needs--thankfully so, since we've added two more family members since that day--and that if all our "stuff" couldn't fit comfortably into this house that would mean we had too much stuff.

Even two kids later I stand by what I said.  Our house is just over 1,000 square feet.  3 bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, dining area/center of the house room, and a laundry room.  We even have a basement which is good for a little bit of storage, moldy as it is.  But that is a decent amount of space for a starter home--much larger than the New York City apartments that those hip and stylish bloggers live in all cute-ly with their kids--so yeah--it's enough to work with. 

We don't "do Lent" but last year I was really intrigued by the 40 bags in 40 days challenge that I saw go around last year during lent.  Clutter and excess junk being the vice women tried to give up for Lent.  I talked over doing it with my sister, and each of us did get rid of some bags--but it's always easy to get rid of a few bags of junk.  It get's intense trying to get rid of a bit more.  I need it though.  I need something intense, and I need it to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attractive, Realistic, and Time-framed.  This goal fills each category.  Having a time frame, and in this case a pretty short one, is good so that I get started right away and don't waste time.  And then when it's over it's over no matter what the outcome.

Lent begins tomorrow (Wednesday) and technically lasts for 46 days this year.  I really hope they'll be productive for me and my house.  I have a few things that I'd already started working on here recently, but since the bags aren't gone yet I'm still counting them--the whole point is to get rid of the bags so they no longer take up space. 

And hopefully when I am all done my whole house will look like this staged picture I took to show my mom and my sister my new wall photo collage.

Aaah, clean!


Come back tomorrow and I will be discussing my plan to clear out the toy room--but don't worry I don't plan on blogging about the cleaning for 40 straight days, I'm pretty sure that would interfere with the whole point of the goal.