I love the season of Lent. Even though our current church does not do much to observe it I have always taken time to reflect and remember the sacrifice of Christ. Every year CRM puts out an awesome Lenten devotional which you can download here. This devotional always challenges me and brings my closer to the Lord.
This year instead of the traditional giving up some sort of food I have challenged myself with a couple of things for Lent. One is to have a more disciplined schedule with my day. This includes:
- Only getting on Facebook every other day unless it is work related
- When I get on I can only be on for 20 minutes once a day unless it’s my “down time”
- Working out first thing in the morning 4-5 days a week
- Intentional 1:1 time with my son for at least an hour a day
- Getting my 5 hours in a week of time for Wildtree
- No technology use after 8pm
- More intentional conversation time w/ my husband
- Once a week “business” meetings instead of dealing w/ business-y type stuff every night… I will make a list, it can wait… (I like to deal with things RIGHT away- this wil be hard for me)
Something else we have really been feeling God challenge us on has been to downsize. We are also continually on a quest to be a plastic- free home. My friend and fellow blogger Reb (check out her great blog!) posted a link to this blog the other day. I had already decided I was going to get rid of 40 items during Lent so I took the idea to write out 40 areas that I could get things from and am going to do one area a day, I’m aiming for 5 items from each area. I know it will be WAY more than 40 items. I will organize each area and purge, hoping to sell things on Craigslist as much as possible to plow away at our debt (I’m going to make a list of everything we get rid of and share it w/ all of you)!
- My underwear drawer (aka where I shove anything and everything that I don’t feel like finding a place for…)
- My closet (a girl always has “extra” stuff to get rid of)
- The craft shelf (I’m a craft hoarder… this should be easy…)
- The junk drawer (Again, a bit of a hoarder… should be able to find things…)
- My bathroom (Not sure if I can find anything in there)
- Jeremy’s bathroom/ the guest bathroom (This is mostly going to be just Craigslisting and Freecycling all the stuff that is under the sink that we’ve had in a “get rid of it” pile for months)
- J’s PJ drawer (He has a zillion jammies…)
- J’s “it doesn’t fit” drawer
- J’s onesies (we NEVER put them on him… can’t stand the buttons…)
- J’s socks (we’re still trying to fit 0-6 month socks on his feet… they hurt him and he cries, this should be an easy one)
- My socks (I have some in there I haven’t worn in years)
- My PJs (see #11)
- J’s pants (My child does NOT need the about 20 pairs of pants he has!)
- J’s toys (this will mostly be purging plastic toys and things he doesn’t play with much)
- J’s old clothes (we have 2 boxes of outgrown clothes in his closet- just need to rehome these)
- Bear bag downstairs (I used to collect teddy bears and have moved all of them with me all these years… time to get them to someone who will love them)
- Game closet (We have over 40 board games…)
- Top shelf of hall closet (this is where office supplies go to die)
- 2nd shelf of hall closet (where business supplies go to die)
- 3rd shelf of hall closet (see #18)
- 4th shelf of hall closet (scrapbooks and supplies)
- Under the kitchen sink
- Kitchen knick knack drawer
- J’s kitchen drawer (he has a drawer stuffed to the brim of toy food and cooking supplies)
- J’s kitchen cabinet (this is mostly stuff that he used to play with when he was bitty and I was working in the kitchen- he doesn’t really play w/ any of it anymore)
- Winter stuff cabinet (we have an entire nightstand in the living room full of hats/ gloves/ etc…)
- DVDs (we NEVER watch movies anymore and mostly when we do they are on Netflix… gotta get rid of some DVDs)
- J’s books (He has some that are too “baby” for him- this should be easy)
- Our books (we already have a huge pile of books to get rid of… just need to sell them)
- The pantry (I already know of several things that have just sat in there since we adapted a traditional foods diet)
- Spice drawer (see #30)
- Kitchen shelves (this will mostly be plastic purging)
- Camping stuff (this is going to be hubby’s job)
- Travel stuff (I have gobs of free sample sizes of bathroom stuff that I never use since I make my own stuff…)
- My “keepsakes” (this is going to be photographing all the stuff I’ve been moving around for all these years and putting them into a Shutterfly album)
- J’s “keepsakes” (see #35)
- Seasonal bin (These are seasonal decorations that I never put out… will probably get rid of the whole bin)
- Gift box (I have a bin that I keep good gifty stuff in when I find it on sale… some of it has been in here a very long time)
- Holiday bin (This will mostly be plastic purging and getting rid of Halloween stuff)
- Cleaning closet (I have WAY too many empty bottles in there I’ve been hoarding…)
Stay tuned… I’ll post weekly updates on what I got rid of from each area.
treehousedaily.com 
How funny! I started to do the 40 bags in 40 days thing yesterday and realized immediately that it’s not going to be possible for me. Instead I decided to focus on 40 “problem” areas in our home over the next 40 days….so pretty much exactly what you’re doing. 🙂 Good luck!
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