Becoming Uncluttered

You may have seen my shout outs over the last two years for the blog I read, Becoming Minimalist by Joshua Becker. He wrote a new book this year, The More of Less, and as an incentive to pre-order I got to participate in his new online course called Uncluttered. We are at the half way marker now, 8 weeks in, 8 more to go. We've tackled assignments by specific rooms each week and are now moving into the mindfulness habits of how to keep things that way. This isn't an organization course, it is a minimizing, purging course. The social support has been pretty great, 7k new friends across the world in a private Facebook group to post our questions, challenges and successes together. But this blog post isn't an advertisement for that.

The thought shared this week is about the power of sharing our story and having both support and accountability for holding ourselves to this new way of life. Whether you are changing a habit like eating healthier or curbing your purchases, naming that for yourself and letting others hear it can create a powerful ring of support. So I thought I'd share one of the latest pictures that I posted with the Uncluttered group:

Here is a look at the garage getting attacked today! Since we are having beautiful weather (70s) with low humidity it felt like a great day to approach this task since I wouldn't be rushing to beat the heat. So the top photo is a before look at what the side of our garage has been (minus a few bikes the kids had already wheeled out). The middle photo is what the space looked like after I cleared it all out and swept the bench and floor! I'd love to leave it just like that it looks so pretty! But the task ahead of me is sorting through the 3rd photo- all the items on the lawn to decide what is trash, what can be shared with others, and what still serves its purpose and is a need for our family. 

I am surprised so far how much trash I've just thrown away like broken bubble wands, old receipts, broken plastic toys. When we lived in our 1k square foot home in Virginia it was really easy to avoid indoor toys because of limited space, but it opened the floodgates to collecting a gang of outdoor things for the kids to play with since we had the under house storage. We sure do appreciate having a garage now and the ability to park both of our cars in it. So the goal for today is to keep that the priority and be able to find the things we want to play with and move along the things we do not!

I sent the pics to Jonathan so he knows what we are undertaking today, but I'm looking forward to the look on his face when he drives home tonight and pulls in to this uncluttered space!