Have you ever felt overwhelmed during the month of December with all the stuff that enters your home? The trick I've found helps me is to declutter throughout the month. Will you join me in the Net Zero Decluttering Challenge?
Each day this month I'll share some decluttering tips and ideas so you can end the month with the same number of items in your home (or maybe even less!) than what you started the month with.
Today I'm sharing tips on decluttering your magazines and newspapers.
Today's Suggested Decluttering Task
Do you have lots of old magazines and newspapers cluttering up your family room, living room, or bedroom? These can accumulate quickly and add to the overall cluttered feeling in your home.
The first thing to do is to gather them all in one place. That way you can see what you actually have. Then, declutter using these tips:
For magazines
- If you keep old magazines because you want a certain recipe, craft, or decorating idea, pull those pages out and recycle the rest of the magazine (you can keep those pages in files or binders so you can find them back when you need to, which takes up much less space than keeping stacks of magazines
- If you're just behind on your regular magazine reading, decide what is realistic to read this month and give away or recycle the rest. Consider this me giving you permission to let them go, so you can also let go of the guilt associated with not keeping up :)
- If you frequently find you can't keep up with reading your magazines, consider unsubscribing from several of them (or not renewing your subscriptions). Many ideas can be found online now and don't add to the clutter of your home
For newspapers
- Recycle anything older than 1-2 weeks (depending on how often you get the paper... if it's daily then only keep a few days). If you haven't made time to read them yet, you probably won't... especially during a busy month like December :)
- Set aside time today to read the ones you kept (or have other family members who like to read them do that) and then recycle them.
- Don't allow more than 1-2 papers to ever accumulate.
- Have one designated basket to keep newspapers that are waiting to be read so you always know what you have and they don't clutter up the rest of your home.
For more tips on decluttering magazines and newspapers, check out this post
Decluttering My Magazines and Newspapers
Well... this one's pretty easy for me! We don't subscribe to any magazines (we just get a free Lego magazine every once in awhile but my kids hang onto those and re-read them like books).
And we only get a local newspaper once a week and we always recycle the previous one when the new one arrives (if not sooner!). So no magazines or newspapers for me to declutter today :)
My Progress in the #NetZeroClutter challenge
This past weekend we decorated our Christmas tree, and while we were decorating we decluttered quite a few ornaments and decorations. We always get several new ornaments every year... we give one to each of our kids, we buy a family ornament if we go on a special vacation during the year, and we are often given ornaments by family members.
Even though I've decluttered our ornaments every year for the last few years to try to stay on top of the accumulation, we still have way too many to put on our tree every year.
Rather than holding onto decorations we don't use, I'm doubling down on my ornament decluttering efforts this year.
For starters, I'm donating a strand of lights and a Christmas tree power cord.
We got a new set of Yoda in a Santa hat Christmas tree lights last year so we don't need this strand. And we have another power cord that fits our set-up better.
For the decorations, this year I was able to get my family involved. I'm going to be decorating a tree at a family shelter soon (more on that in a future post but I'm really excited about it!). So any suitable decorations that we are decluttering can potentially be used to decorate their tree. We were able to declutter quite a lot!
Most of these will be used on the family shelter Christmas tree and I'll buy some more ornaments to add to these. Because it's going to be a family tree and the kids from the shelter are going to help decorate it, the kid ornaments are going to be great. But I won't use any of the glass ornaments for safety reasons. I'll donate those instead.
And after I took that picture I found a few other glass ornaments to donate.
These are all really cute but we have several others of each of them so we rarely put all of them up. Time to let them go and make room for the new decorations that will arrive in a few weeks :)
So that puts me at -44 items today in the #NetZeroClutter challenge and -98 overall. (I counted that set of ornaments as 1 item since it's an unopened package.) I'm happy with my progress so far!
What's Next For You?
Take some time today to declutter your magazines and newspapers. Or anything you'd like to declutter! Take some pictures and share your progress on social media using the hashtag #NetZeroClutter. Let me know how you're doing in the challenge so I can cheer you on!
Sign up to receive my blog posts by email so you get each day's post in your email inbox every morning. You can unsubscribe after the challenge is over if you don't want to continue receiving my blog posts by email.
I'd also love for you to join our 365 Items in 365 Days Facebook group as you do this challenge! You'll be able to share with others what you're decluttering and feel encouraged and inspired by everyone else who is also decluttering!
If you'd like more decluttering ideas, you can check out my Decluttering/Purging Tips & Ideas board on Pinterest.
So that's today's post in the Net Zero Decluttering Challenge! I'm enjoying doing this challenge and I'm excited to have you join me. I love hearing all the stories of how much more you're enjoying your holidays because you're not overwhelmed by all the stuff in your home!
How many magazines and newspapers did you declutter? Which magazines and newspapers can you unsubscribe from to reduce magazine and newspaper clutter in the future?
Happy
I link up at these great parties - Check them out!
Here are all the posts in this challenge in case you missed any or want to share some with your friends or family!
