The Stuff Cure Unstuff-athon is a personal improvement program targeted at improving your skills in unstuffing. Focus on 10 minutes of activity every day for two weeks with an objective to reduce the amount of stuff you own in a way that enables you to achieve fun, profit, virtue, and contribute to a better world. You may invite a friend or household member to join you to share the process, but you can only unstuff your own stuff. Each day, remember to have fun and to stop when you stop having fun or you have given 10 minutes to the effort.
Day by day activities:
1. Spot a stage, or two or three
Find spot(s) to be unstuffing staging areas. This can be an area in your closet or a box or bag where you will put items that you do not find to be currently functional, really valuable or outrageously sentimental. You may create multiple spots, for example, one place to put papers that need to be recycled and another for donations for your local thrift shop. If you have a rod in your closet, designate the left side of the rod for clothes that you are thinking of moving along. Find a spot in your garage for useable items that you do not want to bring into the house.
2. Perfect the paper flow
Identify newspapers, magazines, and other unwanted mail to be recycled. Create a spot to place paper to be recycled that is convenient to access, but out of sight, to encourage you to place excess paper there. Get your re-cycling out for pickup each week.
3. Downsize decorations
When taking down holiday decorations, return to storage those decorations which you really enjoy and are very special. Remind yourself that you can keep some things without keeping everything. Only save as much paper and ribbons as you will use within the next year, then throw away the excess. Organize the Christmas decorations for storage in a way that makes you look forward to getting them out next year.
4. Shovel a pick. Target a box or drawer
As you see items that could be moved along, put them in you unstuffing staging area. Make this kind of fun as you are not making a decision that can’t be undone. Try to consolidate like things together so you can move along any excess quantity. Open some boxes that you have in storage and start using the items or move them to your unstuffing staging area.
5. Free the fridge
Clean out your refrigerator and freezer. Discard any food items that are over 5 days old or are dated 2016. For condiments, discard anything that was opened over 6 months ago. Resolve to eat fresh food in the New Year. Cleaning out your refrigerator should go fast because you can’t get too sentimental over food. Then head to the grocery to replenish your supplies of fresh food.
