You are What You Keep: Challenge!

My friend Tabitha started a new blog that has me inspired, so I'm joining her challenge. It's called 'You are What You Keep' and...um...it's true.

Here's the link to her blog, You are What You Keep.

We've been slowly working on purging the excess from our lives anyhow, as two kids will clutter up every corner of every room before you realize it's even happened. So while I cannot go back and track every little thing I've tossed, sold, or passed on in the past 6 months, I'm going to use the rules below to backtrack a bit.

In addition to purging, I am working on trying to get more order in our lives so 'simple' tasks like meal planning and grocery shopping, laundry, and putting away dishes don't end up complex and frustrating. I'll document some of that here too.

So, the rules (some taken directly from Tabi, som altered a bit):

1. I won't count individual pieces of garbage (gum wrappers, bottle caps, etc) but I will count stacks of junk mail, anything that requires an empty hand to grab that has been sitting around not being used and just taking up space.


2. Anything put into the "Sale" category might be moved into the "garage sale" or "consignment" piles.

3. This is going "Clean Sweep" style. So if it doesn't sale at the yard sale or consignment store, it goes off to friends, family, or charity.

4. The items that stay must be in clean usable shape. I will keep items that require some minor work and/or will be fixed up to help us with the 'organize and decorate' part of being homeowners. I won't keep things that require major work to fix.

5. If any item is moved to Sell and a sale doesn't happen within a reasonable time frame, they are moved to donate. Donate stuff is offered to friends and family first, then to charity.

6. I won't keep things 'just in case X Y Z happens in the future'. This means the maternity clothes, baby clothes and toys, etc. are gone. Should we ever have another baby, we can always borrow or buy new things anyhow.

7. I will count back as far as the garage sale we had last month, but anything I purged before then is not being included in the goal.

With those rules in mind, here's where I stand:

Sold: Bumbo chair, baby bath, snuggle nest, books (sold 5), clothes (sold several uncounted, so counting it as 15 items), 5' x 8' area rug, 4 barstools, umbrella stroller
Total: 29 items

Given Away: Bag of maternity clothes (didn't count items, but counting as 15), bag of baby clothes (didn't count, so counting as 5), baby shoes, computer monitor, wine glass holder and 4 glasses, rotating picture frame
Total: 24 items

Threw Away: broken toys (didn't count, but guessing low at 10 items), torn books (didn't count, but guessing at 5 items), torn/stained/very worn clothes (didn't count, but guessing at 10 items), several piles of trash (counting as 2 items)
Total: 27 items

My total for the past month, then, is 80/2010 items.

If you're interested in joining and purging your life of the stuff you don't need/want/use head on over to Tabi's blog for more details!