Decluttered Body; Decluttered Home

Four Weeks. That is how much time I have until school starts.  This is important because for four weeks I have a certain amount of freedom I will not have for another 10 months.  Granted, I will have some small chunks of time to devote to my choice of activities but for four weeks I will have great chunks of time.  Boy, do I have some goals.

I have been working at eliminating all animal products from my diet since April 2, 2017.  I have reduced 15 pounds off of my body so far.  It feels great to declutter my physical body.  I feel much better and am working on getting completely back on track to a WFPB diet and cutting out the processed food that I added in over the past 6 weeks.  

Another area that I have been working on for the last seven years is decluttering my house.  (Is there a body/house connection here?) Oh before children it was not very hard to keep everything neat, tidy, and more toward a minimalist style.  Oh, but children change everything.  They need stuff.  They want stuff.  They keep stuff.  I keep stuff for them.  I keep important stuff.  I keep nostalgic stuff.  I need stuff.  I want stuff.  I own more stuff then I've ever owned before.  Time to evaluate my stuff.

Now, I do constantly get rid of stuff and always have a donation bag or two in the works.  I have had a few focused efforts of purging stuff and have tackled my clothes closet on more than one occasion.  It does desperately need it again, though.  

About three months ago, I purged the linen/personal care closet.  Two months ago, I purged a couple of kitchen cabinets and my make-up drawer.  A bit more than a month ago, I purged my cookbooks.  

Still, I have too much stuff everywhere.  Pretty things, neat things, interesting things, all join necessities and useless things alike.  At this age and stage in my life, I long for calm.  Think flat spaces with little on them.  Shelves with only a few special items needing dusting.  Closets that are easy to put things away in, simply because there is space and a place.  

So I have a dual focus for the next four weeks.  Purge the junk from my dieta and purge junk from my home.  Junk that I don't want in my diet is anything that is not a fruit, vegetable, whole grain, legume, or seeds and nuts.  Junk that I don't want in my house is anything that doesn't fit, is not used, is not usable, or that does not bring joy when encountering it.  Sounds easy enough.  I know better.  If it was easy we'd all have done it already.  I found this article inspiring today: 18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess. I am ready.  Let's see what I can accomplish in four weeks.

First picture: taken right this minute: 3:05 p.m.: my desktop computer area before:

After:  3:54 p.m.

 It did not take me 49 minutes to do this.  There was a bathroom break, phone call, a trip to another level for a duster, etc.  It actually probably took about 10 minutes.  Small task and focused effort =accomplishment.  Now, time to make a focused effort to eat an apple.