In my November goals blog post I mentioned that I’d be doing a 30 day minimalist challenge – in reverse. It has begun. When you have a large, blended family it can be difficult to keep up with all the “stuff” that accumulates in your home. It’s time to purge again. This time I was inspired by this post to do a 30 day minimalist challenge.

Getting rid of clutter is freeing. For this reason, I’m in love with the idea of doing the 30 day minimalist challenge backwards to get rid of more stuff, faster. Over the course of a month it’s the same amount of things but I’d much rather start with getting rid of 30 things right off the bat than to get rid of just one.

30 Day Minimalist Challenge in Reverse

30 Day Minimalist Challenge in Reverse - via LiftingMakesMeHappy.com

So the normal challenge would be like this:

Day 1: Get rid of 1 thing

Day 2: Get rid of 2 things

Day 3: Get rid of 3 things

Which means….

If you were to do it backwards, it would go like this:

Day 1: Get rid of 30 things

Day 2: Get rid of 29 things

Day 3: Get rid of 28 things

At the end of 30 days you will have cleared out 465 things!

I’ve talked about it before and I’ve done several “purges” of things before and it always feels amazing. With two adults and four children in our home we accumulate things very rapidly. Also, blended families tend to accumulate a lot just because of all of the different families in the mix.

For example, just on my husband’s and my side of the family, our four children receive birthday and Christmas gifts from five sets of grandparents and great-grandparents. Even if they each receive one gift per set of grandparents, that’s still 10 items per year, per kid. That doesn’t include grandparents from the other side of their families! Or any other relatives! Plus with kids they outgrow everything. This includes clothes, toys, books, shoes, coats, accessories and winter gear.

There’s always a reason for another round of minimizing items in our home!

My 30 Day Minimizing Plan

I plan to use the Konmari Method as a guide for getting rid of things which means I’m beginning with clothing! Clothes are the easiest to get rid of.

Here’s my personal order of “attack”:

Clothing
Books
Movies/Video Games

I’m pretty sure that’s enough categories to work on for getting rid of our next 465 items!

I will dispose of items in one of three ways:

Donate (clothing, books)
Sell (name brand clothing, hardcover books)
Toss (anything that shouldn’t be donated or sold)

I plan to only focus on the upper level of our home which consists of three bedrooms and a bathroom. I’m confident there is no shortage of things to get rid of!

My daughter really wants to rearrange her room and I told her she needed to get rid of some of the clutter first. I’m going to surprise her and do it for her. For the last time! Haha….

I plan to post a recap on this challenge at the end of the month to see what I was able to accomplish.

Lets see how this goes..

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This week’s workout schedule: