Minimalism
We selected over 300 items to get rid of in one month.
By embracing the 30 days minimalism game, we selected stuff we don’t need or use to declutter our home.
After seeing the “Less Is Now” Documentary on the 1st of January, my girlfriend and I embraced the 30 days minimalism game presented at the end of the movie.
As we are pursuing a more sustainable and simple life, we thought that would be a great way to start the year by decluttering our house from things we don’t use or don’t need.
As you can check on the video, the rules of the minimalism game were pretty clear and simple.
Each day we had to get rid of some items. On the first day, we needed to get rid of one thing. Two things on the second day. Three things on the third day and so on.
At the end of each day, every item should be out of our home. We just needed to donate, sell or recycle it. By the end of the month, we were expecting to get rid of 496 items.
But we found out that the game was more difficult than expected.
Three challenges we faced with the game.
We came across some challenges and defined new rules to achieve the intended results.
1 . Selecting the items each day after the first week
The first week of the game is easy. Picking one item to seven items each day was instant and fast. But when we started selecting more than ten things, we used more brainpower and time to think about which items we need and which ones are non-essential.
We had to evaluate deeply the necessity, frequency of usage and certain moments we live at our place.
Moreover, selecting items every single day started to create conflicts with our routine. So, we changed this rule after the first week.
2. Getting rid of the stuff at the end of the day
Even though this was a rule of the game, it was impracticable to accomplish it. We had to be conscious about what we would do with each thing and what value could bring to us or others before deciding to recycle or dispose of it.
Apart from it, we needed time to take it to the right destination.
Therefore, we stopped to follow this rule after the second day.
3. Finding things to declutter
With modified rules, we had selected enough items to accomplish three weeks of the game. But in the fourth week, we found out that there was no place in our home to look for more items to minimize our possessions.
Even if we wanted to accomplish the game, we didn’t want to get rid of anything else. Anyway, we selected enough items to fulfil 24,3 days of the challenge.
Three rules we defined to continue the game.
To surpass the presented challenges and continue the game, we created the following rules to help us select the items and accomplish as much as possible:
1. Decluttering by categories
As it became more difficult to select all the items each day, we started analysing items by categories. From clothes to electronics and from kitchenware to decorations, we picked things to fulfil the amount of stuff needed in the first week.
2. Cleaning rooms during weekends
As doing it every day was time-consuming, we decided to clean two rooms of our house each weekend. We created more time to declutter and organize the specific room. We simplified our game process to define the items we wanted out of our home.
3. Getting rid of stuff consciously at the end of the month
As we weren’t getting rid of the items at the end of the day, we arranged a corner to keep the selected things organized by end goal: donate, sell, gift and recycle. At the end of the month, it was easier to head over to two institutions and the right place to dispose of or recycle.
Our minimalism game results.
Even knowing we didn’t achieve the 496 items to minimize possessions, this game led us to select 308 items to declutter from our place organized by the following categories:
- Donated: 121 items — from clothes to jewellery and kitchenware.
- Gifted or will be gifted: 56 things — from jars for tomato sauce to pieces for art decoration and books;
- Gave to an electronic recycling program for donations: 29 items — from broken phones to broken cables. This program is accepting broken electronics to fix or refurbish and donates new ones to institutions afterwards.
- Recycled: 89 itens;
- Things to trash: 12 because there was no place for it in the recycling bins neither in other institutions, unfortunately.
- To be sold: 4 items.
We didn’t accomplish the full game, but we were happy with the results. It makes you rethink what you need and use and puts in perspective your shopping behaviours.
We found this game an enlightening exercise to:
- minimize our possessions;
- declutter rooms and spaces;
- find items we didn’t remind we had it;
- clean and organize certain parts of our place;
- donate some items to people who would need them and value them the most.
If you are on lockdowns or want to declutter your home, this might be a great challenge to embrace next month.
You can find the 30 Days minimalism game calendar on The Minimalists website.
👇💬 Embrace the challenge and share below your achievements. 💪
