40 Bags In 40 Days

Recently, Jim left for a five day business trip to Las Vegas. For some reason, while he was gone, I decided that it was time to start the post Christmas/year of pregnancy and new baby accumulation decluttering. Enter 40 bags in 40 days!

I’ve been following Ann Marie for years now, so she was the first place I went to when I wanted a bit more organization and inspiration for going through the house and getting this huge job done!

Enter 40 bags in 40 days:

You can read more on her blog about the entire 40 bags in 40 days program(which is going right now! You still have time to do it WITH everyone- there is a 40 bags in 40 days FB group for support and ideas you can join too!) but basically, you choose one area to work on a day.

Thankfully, I keep our house relatively pared down and clutter free anyway, so I did lots of spaces in one day- but this helped me keep track of where I had already worked and what I still had left to go!

I have since checked off almost all of the things on my original list- making it through every room, cabinet, and closet in our house. I was able to get together unused and extra baby gear to sell at a local consignment sale and I’ve made countless trips to Goodwill and given our friendly trash man a few extra loads to remove over the last few weeks!

I’m not overly sentimental, so it is pretty easy for me to get rid of things but it is always SO incredibly shocking to me how much useless stuff(absolute TRASH even!) fills up drawers, cabinets, and spaces in your home that just simply don’t need to be there.

I purged clothes, shoes, books, and movies. Extra toys, bathroom products, candles, blankets, sheets, and more.

I threw away papers and papers and papers, old art supplies, old crafts, expired foods and medicines, broken things(why was I keeping those??) and more.

I was able to finally take the time to organize things a little better- the girls toys, my closet, my dresser.

We scraped and painted the inside of our kitchen cabinets(something we have needed to do for two years!) and cleared out extra cups, plates, and dishes that we NEVER use and simply didn’t need. It looks so neat and organized in there now!

I bought a new book shelf for the sun room to store the girls markers, coloring books, and the extra books that were taking over the single bookshelf we had and it looks SO much better and is SO much easier to find what you are looking for.

We still have a basement to finish going through and organizing(though we have made some pretty good progress down there!) and I have some “non” item things to clear and organize, like my phone, computer, photos, etc. AND I still have goals of creating, implementing and finally starting a daily cleaning schedule(but we’ll see if that happens, ha!)

All in all, I’m SO glad that I used Ann Marie’s helpful plan. So, if you’re wanting to do something like this in your own home, be sure to head to her blog and get started!