15 Minutes a Day to Declutter and Clean Your Home – Part 1

A little over a year ago my husband came home with a new idea. We (the whole family) would spend 15 minutes each night decluttering and cleaning up our home.

Now our home was/is neat…on the surface. But like any family we have stuff that we don’t need. Things we’ve outgrown. Items taking up space in various areas of the house and things that we should have disposed of a long time ago. Everyone in the family is at fault here.

My husband just wanted to dive in but I persuaded him to follow a little bit more of a plan.

I suggested that we set up some boxes, all work in the same room at the same time, and be sure and dispose of things the next day (we worked in the evenings).

Preparations

We started by creating a set of bags/boxes.

1. Giveaway

2. Put Away

3. Throw away

 Our Steps

We all work together in each room because a few us who shall remain nameless have a habit of tossing everything but our own clutter.

We work after dinner. Kind of like a family meeting.

I set the timer so we didn’t go over 15 minutes.

Every nook and cranny of the home was worked on.

We started in the Master Bedroom

Questions?

Made Headway? Yes! By golly we did! This all happened before we needed to move so that fiasco interrupted our momentum. We all had jobs to do. Mostly I pulled things out into the hallway or the center of the room. Well kind of when through the stuff.  Sweet Peanut manned the timer, organized the bags/boxes, and placed the items in the correct bags/boxes. Hubby takes the items to the donation spot on his way to work.

Finish goal?  My husband said 30 days but I knew better.

What happens if you miss a day? Don’t look back. Only look forward. Sure there will be days when  just don’t get to it. The idea is not to stop. Just keeping going. There is a light at the end of that tunnel.

I thought you were moving! We did! Halfway through this experiment we packed and moved. We’re a year into our home now and the editing continues…