I participated in half a decluttering challenge last week.

Yes, that’s right.

Half of one.

There were assignments for each day and I made it through Wednesday and then never opened up the e-mail assignments we got on Thursday and Friday.

Ha.

But the half of the week was plenty.

One of the assignments was to clear off the bathroom counter and make a “get ready” drawer or basket to reduce the visual clutter on the counter itself.

And, in doing so, I figured we could get rid of some of the items.

When I posted some of the items in our “Buy Nothing” group, a woman DMed me to claim them and then followed up with a message saying she volunteers with people who are trying to make their way out of homelessness and asked if I had anything else to donate.

At which point, I felt motivated to go through all the closets and storage to pull out clothes I’ve been holding on to.

So, 8 bags later, we actually did quite a bit of decluttering and I also felt really good about giving our items to people who would, hopefully, make better use of these things than I was.

Another assignment was to clear off the fridge.

So the holiday cards were recycled and we recycled some of Ishu’s artwork. But we definitely saved some of our favorite pieces. Like this family portrait.

And this one.

I don’t feel particularly attached to the drawing itself.

But it did make me giggle.

Because Ishu drew a sun in the bottom left corner.

And then he also drew a person (the bigger circle on the right side of the page).

And I think he realized that his person – with his arms and legs – looked a bit like a sun. So he wrote “NS” next to his person.

To label it as NOT THE SUN. NS = NOT SUN.

I mean.

How can you toss this into the recycling?

It makes me laugh every time I think about it.

I just so badly want to swim around in his brain some days.

Anyway, we didn’t finish the decluttering challenge. But it doesn’t matter because we did make quite a dent and it felt nice to start the new year off that way.

Now I’m off to go kickstart the day.

Either that or get back into bed. It’s not even 5am yet, but y’know, mom-nia is all too real. Mom insomnia. The inability to fall asleep because you’re afraid that the second you do, you’ll be woken up again.

So here we are. Maybe I’ll just go directly for the coffee. Ha.

Anyway, HAVE A HAPPY TUESDAY!

Questions of the Day:

Did you/are you participating in any new year challenges?

Do you keep resolutions or make goals for the new year?