Getting Ahead on the Declutter Challenge

Sometimes I get frustrated and overwhelmed.  Sometimes there is no real reason for it; I just expect more from myself than is reasonable.  At times like that, it can be useful to me to refer to an external goal to put things back into perspective.  In this case, that external force is The Single Saver's Declutter Challenge.  The goal of this challenge is to get rid of 366 items over the course of the year.  So what if I didn't go through my husband's stuff in our bedroom or get around to cleaning out anything outside of our bedroom yet (although I did clean out the car and get the Christmas stuff out of the house and back to the garage, but neither of those count toward the challenge since the car just involved throwing things away and the Christmas stuff wasn't getting rid of anything; just moving it around for storage)?  I actually got rid of stuff!  The box I marked as pending last week made it to St. Vincent de Paul's, along with another additional 20 items of clothing from my closet and dresser.  I also took a fitted toddler bed sheet to St. Vinny's, since we no longer have a toddler bed in the house and I finally got around to giving my extreme couponing neighbor a bag of coupons I'd set aside for her., thereby bringing my year-to-date total for getting rid of things to:

It may not seem like much, especially in contrast to the astounding 120 that the host of the challenge has purged, but I am pretty sure I started with much less.  That doesn't mean I didn't still have ill-fitting or inappropriate clothes for my lifestyle (do I really need more than one or two dresses when the only time I ever wear them is when someone gets married or dies, and sometimes not even then?).  Those are gone now though.  Doesn't my closet look nice now?

My dresser drawers shut much better now too, now that I got rid of extraneous things in there as well.  So I may not have purged as many items as I would have liked, but since my official total is 23 and it is only 13th, I'm well on track to hit the average of one item per day for the entire year.

I currently also have the following items currently available on Listia, a free online auction site where you bid on other people's stuff using credits instead of real money, so everything is free!  All my current auction giveaways end Sunday, January 15  (the items listed are hyperlinked, so you can click on them to bid on items you may be interested in):

1. Horizon Cologne (NIB)
2. A Grimoire of Shadows: Witchcraft, Paganism & Magick
3. Hey Arnold: The Movie on DVD
4. Girl's tap shoes, children's size 10
5. The Witch Book: The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism
6. an unpadded ring sling