This time around, I was innocently perusing Facebook on Ash Wednesday when I happened to see someone post a link to a "40 Day Declutter Challenge." And I (of course) instantly thought, "I love to declutter!* I love a challenge! What a perfect combination, I'll do it!" Insert ominous background music here.
[*for clarification purposes, decluttering is NOT the same as cleaning. I like to get rid of unused stuff, but I hate cleaning. My house may be (really) messy, but everything in it is getting used on a regular basis, I promise!!]
So I downloaded the spreadsheet from the website and set myself a few rules. 1: I will not spend more than 15 minutes decluttering any one area. 2: I will count completing one of the many, many half finished projects around my house as my decluttering for the day. And 3: I will not get upset with myself if I miss a day. No really, I won't. (At times like this, I seriously wonder if I have even ever MET myself).
Without further ado, here's how it went:
Day 1- I am supremely confident in the fact that I couldn't possibly have 40 days worth of stuff to declutter, as I am certainly not a hoarder. I boldly type "Kitchen" into the spreadsheet and commence. I finish one cupboard and sheepishly change "Kitchen" to "Baby / Sippy Cups". Done.
Day 3 - I break my first rule as I stay up late after work and clean out all the cupboards in the master bathroom. Total time on task: 1 hour 23 minutes.
Day 5.5 - I didn't realize that the 40 days of Lent didn't include Sundays and I clean off some shelves only to realize that there is no space to record my accomplishment on the spreadsheet. Lent fail.
Day 9 - I have a, ahem, rather large collection of purses that I have amassed throughout the years and it's time to pare them down a bit and organize. I end up using some wall hooks in our closet that were already there...how convenient for me!! (And how inconvenient for Patrick, as his belts and ties were residing on those hooks.)
Day 11 - I feel like death and sleep most of the day away...but in one of my more lucid moments, I drag my drawer of costume jewelry into my bed and sort my necklaces out from a supine position.
Day 14 - I miss a day. And, guess what?? Try not to be shocked, but despite Rule #3 I feel so guilty about it I make it up by decluttering something extra over the weekend. If anyone has a good "40 Day De-perfectionism Challenge", go ahead and send over the spreadsheet.
Day 16 - I am decluttering the kitchen utensils and dividing them into a pile that we use and one we don't. The chicken potpie crimper (a Pampered Chef device, natch) goes into the "don't use" pile. Patrick wanders by and asks, "What's this?" I say, "It's a chicken potpie crimper. I have never used it, so it's getting donated." He studies it a bit and says, "I have another way to fix that where you don't have to donate it..." I glare at him and add chicken potpie to the upcoming week's menu.
Day 19 - I have literally been working on oversized Scrabble tiles with the little mister's initials on them for weeks. Today is the day of reckoning....today I will flippin' finish this project and declare victory, no matter what.it.takes. I bribe the little man with the promise of seeing a forklift and head to Menards. I then spend the next 1.5 hours trying to install floating shelves in the little person's room with a 2 year old assistant (so helpful, I assure you). That hour and a half breaks down into 45 minutes actually installing the shelves and 45 minutes ripping apart the entire room to find the screw that my assistant "misplaced."
Day 21 - Confession: I get stressed out by my magazine subscription (I can't be the only one, right?!?!?) I don't have time to read it when it arrives each month, and eventually the stack of Real Simple mags gets 3 or 4 deep and I start to have anxiety about making it through the pile. I started reading a little each night when the challenge started and today I finish them all: January, February, March, and April. Done. It helped a lot that I made a point to not obsess about reading and remembering every detail. Seriously, WHY AM I ANALYZING THE INGREDIENTS OF A RECIPE I WILL NEVER MAKE?!?!?!? #TypeAProblems.
Day 23 - Deep breath. Today, I will clean out my car. Afterwards, Patrick asks if I'd like to go vacuum it out at a gas station. Woah, woah, woah...one step at a time, please.
Day 25 - Frankenshorties (n): wool longies cut and hemmed into wool shorties.
Day 30 - We had a pipe burst this winter and to assess the damage we (specifically my brother) had to cut a hole in the drywall in back of our cabinets in the family room. This meant that while this cutting was happening and during the drying and bleach treatment stage, every.single.item from that cabinet was on top of the bar in our family room (which I hate anyway). Today, I finally sorted through it and put it all back. It was more of a personal victory as it was the end of dealing with the water problem, but I'll count it.
Day 34 - Our house is an old farmhouse, so the woods behind our house is filled with decades of trash from when "taking out the trash" meant "I'm going to go dump it on the back 40." List of things that Patrick and I cleaned up: an old time lawn chair, a beautiful piece of broken ceramic pottery, countless cans and glass bottles, a bocce ball, a 2x4 with lots of rusty nails sticking out of it, a mesh bag at the bottom of the creek filled with...something (*shutter*), a garden hose, and an old sweater. Anyone who attempts to preach that the older generations "never threw anything away" is going to get a stern look from me.
Day 35 - My monthly goal every April is to do a "deep clean" of my kitchen. I call and ask my mom to borrow some Clorox wipes to complete this job. She proceeds to tell me that my call is so ironic because she just bought a 6 pack of Clorox wipes at Costco this morning, and that they are very handy for cleaning so I should just get some and keep them around. I say I don't really like all the chemicals in them, but I do think they do a nice job wiping schmutz from the cabinets. Here's the unspoken version of the conversation -
Me: "That would be ironic Mom, if you didn't have an addiction to Clorox wipes and have no fewer than 137 containers of them stashed around your house at any one time. Remember you putting them on the shopping list at the cottage when we already had 7 open containers of them?? Yeah."
Mom: "You wouldn't have schmutz on your cabinets if you actually used a Clorox wipe more than once a year. How did I raise such a slob?? Sheesh."
Day 38 - I get alllllllmost all the way through the challenge before I discover my first decluttering mess up. I vaguely remember seeing a little clear plastic cylinder a few weeks back when I was decluttering and throwing it away. Turns out it was the rubber head for my snap pilers. ERRRRGH!!!!
Day 40 - I think and think about some really climatic project to complete or area to declutter for the last day, but come up short on ideas. Meanwhile, my (wait for it) Caboodle holding my makeup is overflowing. Done and done.
Forty days later, my house looks significantly better...and best of all, I feel significantly better knowing that I pared down my stuff and got rid of a lot of junk I didn't need (and in the case of my snap pilers, some I did). Yes, I broke my rules. Yes, I still have unreached places in my house. And yes, I deeply regret cancelling our trash pick-up the week before starting a declutter challenge (yay for thinking things through!! Oh wait.) But overall I think the result is good enough to be called a success, and I'm pleased enough that I am tempted to make decluttering a yearly tradition. Because if there's one thing that's true about the Esbers, it's that we can't pass up an opportunity to make using a spreadsheet a yearly tradition...
