Well, it has been one week since the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge started, and I’m loving it! If you missed my earlier post and have no idea what I am talking about, the basic idea of the challenge is “to donate, sell or toss one unused item from your home every day for a year.” For more details, you can check out the intro post and the first day post.
Focus Challenge Update
Each month, there will be a focus challenge to help us stay motivated – or to restart us if we lose momentum. For the first month, the challenge was to identify specify areas in our homes that bother us and then to focus our decluttering efforts on those areas for the first week of the month.
I have so many trouble spots that it’s hard to narrow them down. The various flat surfaces like the side table and hutch seem to attract the most papers and other items that don’t belong on them, however, and since they are what people see first when they come into my house, that’s mainly where I looked this week for items that could go.
Here are a few of the items I’ve decluttered:
- Old books from Michael’s bookshelf
- The envelopes from the Christmas cards we received – after I updated any new address info in my files.
- Magazines from November and December (the two subscriptions we have should be ending soon, thus ending that clutter permanently)
- A package of emery boards that was in my Christmas stocking (anyone who has seen the state of my fingernails knows I will never use them!)
- The remnants of my last two stamping projects (I also organized this area and was actually able to sit down and make some cards again!)
- Two sweatshirts that were way past the point of being comfortable
So, How Are You Doing?
If you left a comment before joining in, have you been able to part with some things over the last week? Do you feel good about getting rid of something every day, or does it still seem like too little?
For anyone who hasn’t been doing this and wants to, you can start at any time. There’s nothing more special about any one day, so just jump in whenever you want!
I’d love to be able to celebrate with and encourage each other in this. If you’re participating and have posted about the challenge (or post about it sometime in the next week), please link your post to the inlinkz list below. Whether you’ve posted or not, leave a comment and let me know how it’s going!
This challenge was inspired by Suzanne Sergis at 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge and Taking Care of You. The concept and the monthly focus challenges are being used with her permission. If you use the badge, please link it to her intro post.
So I voted this morning and, as usual, took my son with me. In past years, my main concerns have been that he didn’t run off or that he would press the “VOTE” button before I was ready. This year I had another issue entirely – the fact that we did not agree on who to vote for!
Now it’s not that he has developed political savvy beyond his years or that he is more informed on the topics than I am, but rather that he has been completely swayed by a campaign commercial he saw last week. Since then, he has been pleading with us to vote for this candidate and was announcing it loudly as we entered the polling place, despite my instructions that who you vote for is your own business and that you do not have to share it with anyone unless you want to.
So we made it through and I voted for the candidate of my choice without him trying to push different buttons, but he was crying as we left the booth. I consoled him by telling him that his candidate might still win and that we could watch the election returns tonight and in the morning to find out.
Do you take your kids with you when you vote?
Photo courtesy of mkebbe.
I have heard this phrase used in response to the question, “Why me?”, when I would want to ask why we have to deal with the challenges autism brings to our lives, why our son has had to work so hard to get where he is today.
Then last week, I heard this phrase in a completely different context, at a women’s ministry class at church on the topic of Identity. So many people play down their talents and abilities instead of celebrating the gifts they have been given, but this poem by Marianne Williamson casts a new light on the topic:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is out light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous.
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us – it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
So, why not me? Why not you?
Well, no memes this weekend; sorry Sam and Jen. I only got to turn the computer on for about 15 minutes yesterday and today is pretty busy as well, with soccer and a birthday party (for which we still need to buy a present!). In fact, I think I may take a break from memes for a while; I have too many deadlines in other areas of my life to have them here too.
This has actually been a pretty good week, but since I’m feeling a bit stressed out today, I can’t really put my thoughts together to write about it. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
