Extreme Decluttering

 A few months back, I did the 30 day Declutter Challenge, where you let go of 1 thing on Day 1, 2 things on Day 2, 3 things on Day 3, etc, etc... and 31 things on Day 31. It adds up to a grand total of 465 things, which is pretty good for a month. At least I think so. I know, from experience, that the first 15 days were easy-peasy... the last 15 days... not so much.

But there are even more extreme declutterers out there. Did you hear about the Danish mom who decluttered 1000 things? Yep, her family now has one plate, one mug and one set of cutlery per person. If guests come over, they have to eat off of paper plates. The eco-warrior in me shudders at the thought of all of those paper plates being tossed away. But maybe she doesn't entertain that often?? We can only hope.

A dreamy minimalist office (where do they keep all their papers???)

Then there's the Canadian mom who got rid of 3500 things, including her children's toys!! They too only have 1 plate, mug, etc per person. More paper plates I guess. Or maybe a BYOPC (Bring Your Own Plate & Cutlery) for guests? Wondering too if maybe these news stories are paid for by the PPP (paper plate people)

Bedroom? Office? Is this our reality? Or just a teenager's reality?

 I thought the 30 day challenge was pretty extreme, but apparently not. Have you heard of the envelope decluttering system? You put 90 slips of paper in an envelope. Written on the slips are the numbers 1 to 30 and 1 to 20 (one number on each slip). The 1 to 20 slips are repeated 3 times. This gives you a grand total of 1095 items. Then you take a slip of paper out of the envelope and declutter that many items. So some days, it could be 1 or 2 or 4 and others could be 25 or 30. It's kind of like the 30 day minimalism challenge... just sort of repeated a few times and spread over a year.

And then there's just the plain version of decluttering 1000 items in year. Do it however you want... 2-3 items a day or 83-84 per month or 250 per quarter.

Now you'd think getting rid of 1000 items in a year would make a big difference. At least it seemed to make a difference for the Danish mom. But then... the Europeans tend to have less total possessions than us North Americans. Remember the Belgian photographer who took a pic of every single item in her home? Just shy of 13,000 items. Declutter 1000 of those items and you've gotten rid of almost 8% of your possessions. Explains why the Europeans are getting rid of extra plates; their possessions are pretty tight as it is!

But for a North American... with an average of 300,000 items... well... 1000 items is 0.3% of the total. A drop in the bucket. To match the Europeans, we'd have to declutter something like 24,000 items to even get close to 8% of our total! We're in no danger of decluttering our extra plates...

Soooo... 1000 items in a year should be easy peasy, right? Do I hear a challenge brewing? I can also imagine my partner's eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Another challenge!!??" Maybe... Starting October 1? Hmmm... maybe...