We are at it again. On my parental quest to declutter and bring space into our home, I decided to talk to the kids about the idea of doing the 30-Day Minimalism Game. I explained to them that it is a challenge where we each give away or discard of 1 item on the first day, 2 items on the second day, 3 items on the third and so on for 30 days. So on the last day we will each be giving away 30 items. We discussed the math of it and they eagerly added it up to discover that by the end of 30 days we each would be giving away 465 items. I told them that it sounds like a big number but the average household has more than 300,000 items in it and all together we would be giving away less than 2 thousand things.
My kids are already well versed on the benefits of getting rid of items in our home that we no longer use and that don’t bring value into our lives. Last year we did our first clutterless kids experiment which was to pack up all of the belongings from the kids bedrooms and playroom and live without them for 30 days. They loved the space and freedom from clutter and tidying and found amazing creativity in their playtime. When it was time to bring these things back into the house they carefully thought about each item and they were OK with giving away many many things. Over the year, they have voluntarily dumped more items several times realizing that they feel so much better with less stuff.
So given this challenge they both eagerly said yes (and being famous on a blog helped a little too). In fact, they got so eager that Blake suggested they do it in backwards order because he wanted to give away 30 things on the first day. I thought that was an excellent idea and I never say no when the kids want to clean, so off he ran to get the first items.
Having said that, I thought maybe we should adjust it so that we can give away 1 – 30 items / day in any order. There are a few days during the school week that are quite busy with activities, so we each made a chart with the numbers 1 – 30 on it. We can cross off whatever number we discarded on that day. The end result will be the same.
After our first day’s worth of items to give away were found, we talked about the fact that we do not know what the outcome of this experiment will be. Maybe we will not succeed and not have that many items to give away, or maybe we will find that we want to give even more stuff away or maybe this experiment will not really change our lives at all. As with any experiment, we needed to come up with a hypothesis.
Question: Do you think you will be able to complete this experiment and how do you think it will affect your life?
Blake: Blake thinks it is going to be tough because he had trouble finding 30 things on the first day. He says that he is sort of excited to do this but he sort of wants to keep his things even though he recognizes that he doesn’t use some things very often.
Jaida: Jaida feels that she has so many things that she doesn’t use and they just clutter up her room. She wants to get rid of them but she worries she will want them in the future. For example, she has a friendship bracelet making kit that she used a lot in the past but hasn’t used in over a year. She wants to give it away but she is worried she will want it later.
Jaida feels that this experiment will be easier for her than Blake because she has WAY more stuff than him. She thinks she will definitely be able to accomplish this challenge.
Michele: I have mixed feelings as to whether I can accomplish this 30-Day Minimalism Game. I don’t keep many items around that are extra and just the day before starting this challenge I gave away 5 boxes and 2 full garbage bags of stuff from my closet, kitchen, bathroom, bedside table and living room storage. I regularly make donations like this at least 4 times a year. I don’t know where the stuff comes from! I strive to keep 3 empty drawers and 1 empty closet in my house. And still, I find more things that I don’t use. It is incredible. So I believe I will be able to find enough items to complete this challenge but I’m really not sure where they are at this point!
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| this is the pile of stuff I donated yesterday – how am I going to find 465 more things! |
Wish us luck!