I decided to take Spring Cleaning more literally this year and actually clean out, vs clean up.  A friend had read Marie Kondo’s book and was aiming to put her ideas into practice.  I don’t know that much about her method, but from what little I do know I didn’t think it would work for me, right now, with many small kids.  Too much gathering and looking at large collections of items over many months; not enough quick decisions and hiding formerly treasured items!

So, I’m going for cleaning out the number of items of the date, for each day in April.  Since April has 30 days, I decided to break this up into 5 posts, each with 6 days.  The goal here is to move 465 (the sum of the days in April) out of our house before the end of the month by any means: trash, recycling, donating, selling, gifting, etc.

So far, I’m off to a good start.  Admittedly, the beginning is the easy part – low numbers and probably low hanging fruit to grab and move along.  You’ll see a bunch of fabric recycling.  There are bins and each of the schools which get money from the organization for each pound that goes in.

Since I decided to start this when I wrote my goals for the month on Tuesday, April 3, I actually started with 6 (1+2+3) items.

Days 1-3:

Trash: The little “laser” guns no longer work.  The artillery piece is broken.  I finally (two years later) broke the new insurance card out of its plastic card and put it with the other insurance cards; the rest of the plastic card is trash.

Recycle: The birthday card is months old.

Donate: The shirt is in excellent condition.  It just never fit me properly.

Day 4:

Trash: The power cord is very frayed, though technically still working.

Fabric Recycling:  The sheet (upper left) has a giant hole in the middle.  The buckle on the overalls came apart.  If you look closely you can see a small metal piece.  I think that could be glued back in, but these are baby overalls and I would not want a baby to chew on the buckle and have this piece come off again.  The yellow shirt has a hole in it.

Day 5:

Trash: Two pieces of a stand for a toy we no longer have.  A broken watch.  A cord for a toy that no longer works.

Recycle: The box the Christmas cards came in was only holding stamps and address labels.  Those can go elsewhere so the box gets recycled.

Sold: I sold the Pack ‘N’ Play Sport.  It’s great for summer so this was the right time of year to find a buyer.

Day 6:

Trash/Recycle: I found six abandoned Valentine’s / Birthday party gift bags.  I sorted the contents into trash (white bag in the picture below) vs recycling and admit to keeping a few things.  We’ll use the pencils and stickers. The stuffed animals are NWT so I’m not sure where they’ll go yet (so they’re not being counted here) as we don’t need them.