Life is full of seasons. There's the season of youth, the season of being newly married, the season of having young children, the season of homeschooling, and so on. Things never stay the same forever.
My life is entering a new season - in a very short space of time, my eldest has married a beautiful lady and moved 6 hours away, my second has moved out of home, my third has moved to the South Island, my fourth has finished homeschooling, and my youngest has enrolled in a program at a highschool to finish off the end of her schooling. For 25 years I've been a homeschooling mother. Suddenly, I am not. And it is way harder than I thought it would be!
This week I've been thinking about the change of seasons, and preparing for God to do a new thing in my life, whatever that might be. A part of that change is a process of letting go - letting go of the things we don't need any more, the resources for all those "good ideas" we never got around to, the things I meant to do and wished to do, but didn't, and the general clutter that accumulates in a household of 7 busy people.
It's time, once again, to pare down, streamline, simplify. And for me, it always helps to have a focus or a goal to motivate me. Long time readers will remember that 2 years ago I decided to get rid of 1000 things - a seemingly huge goal, but it ended up being more than that.This week, someone posted a link on Facebook to a decluttering game, posted as The Minimalism Game.
In this "game" the idea is to locate and get rid of one item on the 1st of the month, 2 items on the 2nd, 3 on the 3rd and so on right up to 30 items on the 30th of the month. At the end of 30 days, one would therefore have eliminated 465 items. The items can be given away, sold, thrown out - whatever. But they must leave your home and life forever.
Just what I need to focus my general desire to start decluttering! So, this is what I'm going for the month of July. Who knows, I may repeat it every month for a while. I like the slow build up at first, as it gives me time to get in the grove, plus allows time to do other things.
So, on the 1st of July (the day before I read about this game), I had allowed my daughter to select a book to give away to a friend.
My life is entering a new season - in a very short space of time, my eldest has married a beautiful lady and moved 6 hours away, my second has moved out of home, my third has moved to the South Island, my fourth has finished homeschooling, and my youngest has enrolled in a program at a highschool to finish off the end of her schooling. For 25 years I've been a homeschooling mother. Suddenly, I am not. And it is way harder than I thought it would be!
This week I've been thinking about the change of seasons, and preparing for God to do a new thing in my life, whatever that might be. A part of that change is a process of letting go - letting go of the things we don't need any more, the resources for all those "good ideas" we never got around to, the things I meant to do and wished to do, but didn't, and the general clutter that accumulates in a household of 7 busy people.
It's time, once again, to pare down, streamline, simplify. And for me, it always helps to have a focus or a goal to motivate me. Long time readers will remember that 2 years ago I decided to get rid of 1000 things - a seemingly huge goal, but it ended up being more than that.This week, someone posted a link on Facebook to a decluttering game, posted as The Minimalism Game.
In this "game" the idea is to locate and get rid of one item on the 1st of the month, 2 items on the 2nd, 3 on the 3rd and so on right up to 30 items on the 30th of the month. At the end of 30 days, one would therefore have eliminated 465 items. The items can be given away, sold, thrown out - whatever. But they must leave your home and life forever.
Just what I need to focus my general desire to start decluttering! So, this is what I'm going for the month of July. Who knows, I may repeat it every month for a while. I like the slow build up at first, as it gives me time to get in the grove, plus allows time to do other things.
So, on the 1st of July (the day before I read about this game), I had allowed my daughter to select a book to give away to a friend.
| On the 2nd of July, I listed 2 books to give away on a local Helping Hands page where items are freely given to help others. One has now been given away, and the other is in the box I will drop at the local thrift store once it fills up. |  |
On the 3rd of July, a Sunday, I took a break, but listed those 3 items to give away first on the 4th - a stick blender multi-set, a greeting card notebook, and another book.
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Today is the 4th - so far I have thrown out a pile of damaged or odd socks (11 of them, but I'm just going to count them as one item), two plastic shopping bags which will go to the thrift store (counted as 1), a pair of cut off shorts, and am about to list a book for sale on Trade Me.
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In the process, I've sorted out the sock pile, cleaned out one bookcase, and tossed out quite a bit of trash (not counted, though it could be).
I'm going to post updates each day.
How about you? Do you want to join me in playing this decluttering game? You could either throw out 10 things today and be all caught up, or just jump in where you are, and get rid of 4 items today, and then 5 tomorrow, and so on.
I'm going to post updates each day.
How about you? Do you want to join me in playing this decluttering game? You could either throw out 10 things today and be all caught up, or just jump in where you are, and get rid of 4 items today, and then 5 tomorrow, and so on.
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