I De-cluttered 1,000 items in 3 months…Here’s what I discovered.

Do you ever feel totally overwhelmed with stuff?

Do you find yourself picking up the same things, day after day, after day?

Are you tired of tripping over toys that your kids got out, but didn’t play with?

Me too…It used to be a lot worse though.

1,000+ items later, de-cluttering has become one of my allies and greatest skill sets as a mother.

I’m confident that de-cluttering can help you too!

You may discover that you have…

• Less to Manage

• Less Stress for you and your family

• It’s easier to clean

• Getting ready for guests is way easier

• You don’t miss any of it

• You have more time to spend on more important things

• You have more usable space

• Your husband might notice the positive change 😉

In January of 2023, we moved our 5 kids from a 3,000 square foot home into a 1,500 square foot home including the basement, which we were planning on using for storage and living space. Check out my post, “How to sell a house with kids: A mom’s 6 quick tips to sell a home with children“

We had some great help from family members, as we moved over the course of two days.

When we finished moving stuff over and slept in our new home the first night, there were only pathways through the kitchen, living room and dining room, with not a single bit of surface available to put anything…We couldn’t even walk in the basement!

I wondered how I would even organize and put anything away, with this mess to work around.

There was no doubt about it…we desperately needed to declutter.

I had seen the possible benefits when I successfully kept our previous house ready for showing, by packing away a large percentage of our stuff and I had heard a number of times from the Minimal Mom and several other decluttering experts, about the 30 day challenge.

The 30 day challenge outline, guides you to give one item away the first day, two items the second day, three the next day and so on for 30 days.

I did the math and figured out how many items that would end up being in 30 days (it was 465 items) and decided that we were going to aim for that number no matter how fast or slow it took us to reach it.

We could work quickly and reach the goal before the 30 days were up, or spread it out over the 30 days, as long as we reached the goal by the time 30 days were over.

I taped up a sheet of paper on the wall where the kids could reach it and we began.

For every item either thrown away or donated, we marked a tally mark on the sheet.

The kids got right into it and even my husband went through some of his things as well. The tally marks literally flew onto the paper.

I remember passing the 465 item mark and racing rapidly towards the new goal of 600, and realizing that we still had plenty to clean out.

Writing this makes me feel like it sounded like we had so much junk! But there are those of us who feel or felt like everything we had was something we thought we needed at some point in our life, and I still get that, and I understand how hard it is to let things go sometimes and that it is a process and not always easy…

We go through chapters and seasons in our life and different items play a role and purpose in different seasons of our life.

When it’s role is over, it’s time to let someone one else enjoy and give the item the proper use it can have in their own seasons of life.

As long as it is sitting unused in your home, it is not serving it’s purpose in it’s current location.

I look at it this way…send it out, since it has already served it’s purpose (that would be trash) or donate it, so that it can serve somewhere else.

Okay, back to the story!

Pretty soon we had set ourselves a new goal of 1,000 items. Having quickly passed the first and second numbers, we headed on to our new goal.

It took us just short of three months to reach 1,000 items.

Some of the items were tiny, like a mostly empty chap stick tube, or an old piece of paper, a random little used kitchen utensil, but I gave a way a lot of kid’s clothes that I had been storing and even moved on some big furniture items.

The beauty of this experiment, was that the more we gave away, the more we found to give away. It seemed as if the decision making was getting easier, the more we did it. Practice makes close to perfect, right?

The house began to be more livable and we have been able to turn half of the basement into living space, with couches, bookshelves and the school desks.

I am on a roll now to re organize and further purge the remaining items in the basement and get our living space up to ¾ of the basement.

And now I really think we can actually do it!!!

Through this process, we were also able to empty out a lot of the garage, which also had only a small path beyond the door and that was it.

To get to anything in there, we had had to climb over things. Now, my husband can park his car in there! And find his tools!

I am so glad we did this…and the motivation to keep at it has continued!

I think that we are much more aware of what we bring into the house, whether we say yes or no to items offered to us and after letting go of all that stuff, it seems easier than ever to let go of more.

Also…giving away all those things, made me realize that even with all that gone, we still have soooo much! And I am so ready to continue decluttering and regaining the space that we deserve to have and enjoy.

And the time that got freed up because I have less to pick up all the time, has been huge!

I have often thought as well, that as long as something is just sitting in my house, not being used, it is not serving it’s purpose and might as well either be in the trash or donated so that someone else can use it.

I have also discovered, that it doesn’t take as long to get the house tidy before we have company. That is a HUGE bonus.

I used to spend days getting the house ready for company and I stressed over everything up to the very minute of arrival, but not so much any more…

I can do a little every day leading up to the visit, and the day of, is a breeze.

The last time we had a get together, my husband even remarked, that it was so easy to get ready and there was barely anything that needed to be done the day we had company. Win, Win!!!

Now that’s something worth aiming for! Who doesn’t love to hear their husband say that he’s noticed a huge positive change in the house!!

Have you ever tried decluttering? Please let me know how it worked for you and what positive changes you experienced from taking the plunge!