What you don’t need: The Grand Decluttering Challenge

Josh GilmanGrand Decluttering Challenge, Information Overload

So….Strength To Fight as a website fell off the decluttering wagon this last week. But that was because of trips to hospitals and family emergencies. Don’t worry, everyone is more or less ok, and you can read about how one near emergency was rather insightful when all was said and done.

But hopefully YOU haven’t fallen off your challenges. We missed planned blog posts about several challenges,

  1. I will not bring my phone into the bathroom with me. (Nothing has changed our societal addiction to never being bored than tweeting from the toilet)
  2. I will not click on any link about Taylor Swift dissing or being dissed by anyone. (Say no to ridiculous media driven “controversy” designed to get your eyes on their ads)
  3. At least once this month I will call someone instead of texting or talk face to face instead of calling. (Upgrading our communication ONLY has benefits)
  4. I will start that hobby I have always wanted to do. (We’ll have to write this one soon because nobody has ever been in the middle of building a boat and suddenly stopped and said “Hey, let’s watch porn instead!”)

We’ll catch up on some of those and if you want the full list of challenges you can find that here in a printable format.

So here is today’s challenge, and it’s one you will hear from again because it’s the idea that gave us the idea for this entire challenge.

My folks were cleaning up the other week and sent me some pictures of things to ask if they were mine. Some were, some were belonged to other siblings, but they were all things we hadn’t touched in years. In fact some were items I hadn’t used in over 5 years and had clearly no use for, because I didn’t realize I didn’t have them with me.

How many things do we have our homes that we always think “well I could get rid of it, but I might use that again one day” or “I’ll definitely fix that one day and then use it again”. But we don’t. It’s just clutter. That’s why we try to spring clean. But do we really get rid of everything we don’t need? Or just the stuff that is top of mind? So it made us talk about how we do that in our lives.

There are habits and little things we do that aren’t big disastrous habits maybe. Often they are things that everyone else has lying around their hearts and minds as well. But is it really a little unhealthy habit that you can fix soon? Or is it something that will linger forever until you finally just get rid of it completely?

So this is the part of the challenge that is more symbolic than the rest and leads into supporting Strength To Fight. Find something in your house that you don’t need. And sell it on Kijiji/ebay/a garage sale. Then donate the proceeds from that thing to Strength To Fight.

That’s our deal with you. You get rid of something cluttering up your home. We will take those funds to help set free a cluttered up society overwhelmed with digital noise, & overwhelmed with porn and pornified habits.

So your goal for both your life and this specific challenge is.

Identify something that is clutter (object or habit)
Find it
Get rid of it forever
Help change our society