My Journey of Hope: Day 1 of 28

I know that I'm kind of setting myself up here; whenever I have committed to a series of blog posts, I have started strong, but inevitably dropped the ball and not posted on a set day. But this isn't like that. No really, it's not. I will likely NOT post daily. But I will be keeping track of the days, and will label my posts appropriately. I may even fill you in on the intervening days!

I am taking 28 days to gently and persistently work on decreasing the garbage and clutter in my home, and increasing peace and calm. I'm not setting out to do any big jobs. In fact, I am setting aside the big jobs that I had planned in favour of simply reducing clutter. That's it. I want to see what difference can be made simply by letting go of the things that are depriving us of our peace.

My hope is to post at least photos of the before and after for the day. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll make a video or three throughout the 28 days. But whatever I get accomplished, I will be posting here on my blog, and I encourage you to not only play along, but post your progress here in the comments, so that we can encourage one another to restore peace and calm in what should always be our refuge from the world - our homes.



Day One, also known as April 5, 2016, begins with me actually remembering to eat something for breakfast (yogurt) and have a cup of refreshing, energizing tea (Tazo Awake). I'm filling my water bottle, then heading downstairs to begin this journey in the worst space we have - our home office. This room has served its purpose (I was a home-based businesswoman for four years, stopping this November past), and is going to be re-purposed, transforming into our computer and craft room. But that simply can't happen until it stops being The Repository of Random Crap™.

I'm learning as I go here. I'll have a garbage bag and two boxes - that's all I'll need. The garbage bag is pretty self-explanatory, and the first box is for things that will go to the thrift store. I used to hang onto things, thinking I would put them on the bidding sites to make back some money. But by and large, I don't do that, or it would yield such a low price that it's not worth keeping in my house. Therefore, most of it can just leave our house today. The second box is for those items that we really *can* expect to make back some money by selling. The deal I've made with myself is, when the box is full, I immediately put ALL of those items up on the bidding site. I've got a spreadsheet ready to go to fill in with items, date, winner, winning bid, and if they've paid. If they don't sell, they go into the thrift store box for the next delivery day. Simple.

So, here we go! Wish me success!