100 Thing Challenge, or: how to pare it all down

If anyone has been around me enough, they'll know that I'm constantly in a state of "decluttering" my life. Example: when it was time to put away the fall decorations and pull out the Christmas decorations last year, I took the opportunity to purge our tiny hall closet of the crap we were just hanging on to. It resulted in our being able to donate one full plastic bin and one full paper box. (It also inspired me to purge my closet, so there was another two full plastic bins with that. All pre-holidays.) How did I do this? I used the same rule I apply everywhere else: has this been used in the last year when there is opportunity to use it? There are three answers to this: 1) Yes. 2) No. 3) There has been no opportunity. The third usually applies to formal wear or extreme weather wear. In Dallas you rarely have the opportunity to pull out the vintage fur. This meant that half of the tchochkie decorations haven't been used in years - they went. I also opted for a tree that was minimally decorated rather than hang generic multi-colored balls up to fill space. This is ok with a lot of people, but it's not the tree I want in my living room.

You get the point.

Anyway, I'm reading this week's Time Magazine and they talk about a gentleman named David Bruno who's set the challenge for himself to pare his personal belongings down to the 100 things by November of this year. I'm not fan of setting goals like that - I like my method better, but his blog is interesting and the very idea of de-cluttering and re-organizing speaks to the root of my design philosophy.

If you need help in that category, I'm your girl. Your closet, your pantry, laundry room, kitchen, office. You name it and I'll help you clean it out and make it a healthier space. (I'm all about removing toxins from every day life.) I can be pretty harsh, too. Just because that over-sized moth-eaten flannel shirt was good to you when Ten was getting heavy rotation, doesn't mean that you need to have it in your every-day wardrobe arsenal now.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share. I promise I'll post pretty pictures soon.