Before we bring in our Christmas decorations, I want to clean up our living room. I know from experience that nothing looks worse than Christmas decorations in a messy or cluttered room.

To help declutter, I’ve decided to end the year with a little personal challenge. Between now and Dec. 31, I want to get rid of (sell or give away) 200 items from our house. I will have to think of some sort of prize for myself if I manage to do that. (Prize might be in the form of new diapers.) (I might be addicted.) And if I manage to make it to 300 items, then I get a bigger prize! (More diapers!) (Hehe.)

I’ll have Paul help me with a good prize later, and I’ll announce it here. It might be good to come up with something that doesn’t ADD any more clutter to my house. (What? Diapers aren’t clutter!)

Here are my rules:
* If one unit contains multiple items, it still only counts as one. (Example, a pair of shoes is one item.)
* Things that are normally tossed (i.e. junk mail) don’t count. Actually, I’d like to say everything has to be either sold or given away, but I can think of a few bigger things that have been sitting around, taking up space that need to be thrown out.
* I will keep a running list of things that make this list, here on my blog. I hope to take some pictures of “piles”, but no promises.
* A little while ago, a friend gave me several boxes to sell at my garage sale, which never happened. None of these things count towards my list, though I do need to make sure they are donated with everything else.
* I might add to or change these rules as I come across “exceptions”. I was just thinking about how to handle my crafts. Will have to see how many I end up parting with – I don’t want half of my list to be small objects. I really want to challenge myself!

Do you want to join me? Take a look around your house and set a number for yourself. Don’t lowball it – challenge yourself to ask “do I really need this?”.