Update On Getting Rid of 365 Things

 

You may recall that this year I challenged myself (and anyone who wanted to join me) to get rid of 365 things.  I’ve kept working on that goal even though I’ve failed at posting any further updates till now. :-) 

For some reason, I started at 365 and have been counting down.  I think it would have been easier to count up, but - Oh well.  I started this week at 141 things left to get rid of.  Since there are 162 days left this year I’m ahead of schedule, which is very gratifying.  Plus it gives me a buffer for weeks when I might not be able to make much progress.  If I’d counted every item individually I’m sure I would have been past my goal by now.  But, I was intentionally under counting some things in order to make it harder on myself and more effective.

The worst weeks were two different weeks when I only managed to get rid of one item.  I think I was sick part of one of those weeks and the other one was the week we tried to go on vacation.  (I say “tried” because we ended up coming home early.  Long story.)  The best week so far was a few weeks ago when I got rid of 27 things!  That was satisfying indeed.  I also had two different weeks in which I discarded 24 items. That really helped me catch up.

Just for interest I’ll list some items here that I’ve either thrown away or donated (or will be donating).  These are not necessarily the total amounts of these items I’ve gotten rid of.  I haven’t added up totals for categories (as yet) and maybe won’t.  These are just numbers taken from random weeks – in other words, I got rid of this number of whatever it is in one week – not all total.  I hope that makes sense.

1 sun catcher
1 spice carousel (in the way and seldom used)
1 bag of orange peels (from the fridge. They were being saved for making candied orange peels, but I realized it wasn’t going to happen and gave myself permission to throw them away, and to count them. ;-)
1 bed skirt
1 bed coverlet
2 packages of trim (sewing type trim)
1 jug fancy fabric scraps
1 tea kettle
1 old garden hose segment with sprinkler attached (Yeah. That was sitting out in one of the gardens. What? Don’t ask.)
1 bag candy :-)
1 catalogue (Well, it was a quilting catalogue that I especially liked – Hancock’s of Paducah – and I wanted to keep it!)
3 shirts
1 string (It was a string of considerable substance and color and it hadn’t been used in all the time it was stored and it was cut in an unlikely segment.  Huh.  Sorry, some of you just won’t understand that.  I think it’s a genetic thing. :-)
1 container of old feta cheese (Because it was given to me and I kept thinking I’d use it, but it was getting strong and a little weird and finally I just decided to pitch it.)
1 computer chair
4 garments
1 corn syrup (Found on its side in the back of the pantry. It had leaked. Ugh.)
1 dead plant (don’t ask – Not donated, don’t worry.)
1 package stale pancake mix (It was given to us, but my husband makes them from scratch.  What can I say?)
1 frying pan
"1 useless gadget" (That’s actually what I wrote in my record. I don’t even know what it was. LOL)
12+ various food items (things I wasn’t going to use)
1 item décor
6 jars old food (These were mostly things my family has been carrying around for years that ended up in my store room.  They were old.  Yes, they should have been used, but that’s how it goes sometimes when you home can food and can’t stand to use it up too quickly, but don’t use it quickly enough.  Blah.  I want to try to break that trend for my own part. :-)
1 plastic container
2 batches of bows (See photo below.  Confession time – I have a weakness for gift bows.  I use them on both wrapped packages and on gift bags.  Well, I didn’t really know how many I had until I decided to sort and reduce the gift wrap collection which involved more than one box.  Ahem!  I realized I have a problem that has to stop!  Yeeps. :-o)

These photos in this post were taken on my cell phone, hence the poor quality.

So, this is my mid-year update on this challenge.  There may not be another one till the end of the year.  We’ll see.  If you want to tell us about your efforts please leave a message.  If you’ve blogged about it yourself leave a link too, please.