Cleaning out some clothing that B has outgrown was all I needed to tip the scale over 2011 items I have gotten rid of this year. As it stands right now (end of week 35) the total is 2037 items. Here is the total breakdown of where everything went.
Recycled - 721
Garbage - 176
Hazardous Waste - 93
Donate - 413
Sell - 457
Giveaway - 84
Return - 20
Compost - 61
? - 12
Total - 2037 items
It feels good to get rid of so many items but it feels even better to know that I diverted as much as I could from the landfill. So what did I learn from all of this? Well I learned that I hold on to random things for no particular reason...boxes of things that I had never unpacked when we moved here 4 years ago. I also now know how easy it can be to have 'stuff' build up. We don't tend to have a lot of junk laying around so it did surprise me at how quickly our total started to add up. What we did have was a lot of items that we didn't use anymore that still had life left in them that someone else could use. And of course baby items fall into this category. I like the 1 in 1 out rule but am not sure we could apply it to everything in the house. I do however think we could easily apply it to B's toys. As he gets new one's for Christmas and his birthday we will donate or sell the same number of toys that he has outgrown. This year we will pick them for him but next year we plan on including him in the process so he can understand the value in what it means to donate things.
Have you done a challenge like this? What results did you find?
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