Minimalism Challenge: How to have Fun Decluttering your Home

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What is minimalism

I first heard about minimalism when I started to listen to the Optimal Living Daily podcast. The first episode is a reading of an article from the minimalists.com in which Joshua Fields Millburn talks about why he left his 6 figure salary job* to live a more meaningful life.

This article totally resonated with me.

You see, I too was living the so-called American dream:

• I am married
• I have a good career in the tech industry
• I started a side business
• I own a house
• I have 2 cars with my husband

But still, I wasn’t happy.

So I started to listen to the Minimalists podcast and began to implement their life advice. For example, I finally got the courage to stay away from toxic people who were bringing more drama than positivity into my life. And, to be honest my life is so much easier now.

What I really like is how they define minimalism.

According to Josh and Ryan, minimalism is not about living with the fewer things as possible but keeping in your life only what you need or what brings you happiness. Some people will live with more items than others and it’s okay.

Minimalism is not a competition about who is living with less but is about finding what you personally need to live a happy and intentional life.

Another reason I am interested in minimalism is that since we moved into our empty house in 2014, we accumulated a lot of useless things. Like we have 2 bedrooms that we don’t use but are full of stuff, and let’s not talk about the garage…

My problem is that I cannot focus if I see a mess … so I just hide things in closets or in the two bedrooms that we don’t use…

I think that looking into the minimalist lifestyle is going to help me focus more on the people in my life and follow my dreams.

So in February 2017, I decided to do a minimalist challenge with my friend Marika from Dirty Dog Photography and I thought that you guys would like to declutter your home with us!

What do you think?

Do you want to get rid of the clutter in your house? You can do the 30-day minimalism challenge and download the free checklist by filling out the form below:

The 30-day minimalism challenge

There are many ways to declutter your home. You can do a packing party, you can go through your house room by room or you can have fun with other people and do a minimalist challenge!

This idea started when I was talking with my friend Marika about the 30-day challenges in the Volt planner. And I told her that I wanted to do a minimalist challenge in February. She loved the idea and after joking about the fact that February was the shortest month of the year, she decided to do it with me. So I thought that maybe other people would love to join us, and to be honest, the more of us there are, the more accountable we will be.

So how does the minimalism challenge work?

The idea is simple. On the first day of the challenge, you will select one item to get rid off. The second, you will find 2 items. The third day, 3 items… all the way up to 30 items on the thirtieth day.

How to decide what to keep

Now let’s talk about how to actually do it.

In the Joy of Less, Francine Jay talks about the STREAMLINE method she uses:

• Start over
• Trash, treasure or transfer
• Reason for each item
• Everything in its place
• All surface clear
• Modules
• Limits
• If one comes in, one goes out
• Narrow down
• Everyday maintenance

I think that for the challenge we need to focus on the T and the R of the STREAMLINE method, but I highly recommend you to read the Joy of Less to help you declutter your home. It also has a guide to declutter room by room and implement minimalism in your lifestyle.

So let’s talk about what you need for the challenge:

• A large heavy-duty garbage bag
• One or several boxes for items you want to give away. For example a box for goodwill and
• a box for items you want to sell online.
• Francine Jay also recommends having an extra box for undecided items

What should you remove from your home?

Let go of anything that:

• You never use: How many shoes do you have? Do you still use all of them?
• You don’t value: Why did you get the free Walgreen stress ball or the tote bag from half price book?
• You have in duplicates: Do you really need 20 wine glasses? How many old phones or prescription glasses did you keep after replacing them?

Now that you know what you don’t want to keep, you need to decide if you are going to throw it away, give to someone who will use it like goodwill or sell it.

Download your free checklist!

To help you with the challenge I created a FREE checklist. It will let you know how many items you need to let go every day and it will help you to track the number of items you put in the trash, you give to someone else and you sell.

Further Reading

• 14 Important Life Lessons From The Minimalism Documentary
• How To Minimize Your Closet and Boost Your Confidence
• The Best Audiobooks That Will Change Your Life
• Let’s Play a Minimalism Game – The Minimalists
• Project 333 – Become More with Less

Over To You

Did you do the minimalist challenge? What was the hardest thing to let go off?