40 Bags in 40 Days

Have you heard of “40 Bags in 40 Days”? My mom told me about it, there are a couple facebook pages dedicated to it and I’m sure if I bothered to google it I would find plenty on it. Rather than google I am going on what my mom told me, she’s better than google. 🙂

Basically, the goal is to remove 40 bags of stuff from your house in 40 days. It ties in with Lent which is where the 40 days comes from, in case you were wondering. Now, within these 40 bags you are not including your normal garbage and recycling, and it is not necessarily 40 bags of extra garbage. The bags can be filled with items you are selling at a garage sale, or donating somewhere, or…um…that’s all I can think of right now lol As long as the items are leaving your place and not coming back, it counts. And no, I don’t mean leave your house and live in your shed or garage or rental property or whatever, it must be gone.

I like the idea, it can really help with decluttering your space and providing you with that extra little bit of motivation to sort your spare closet or organize your drawers or wherever it is you store your extra stuff. The only thing I have an issue with is the number, 40 bags, that’s a lot!

I live in a super small apartment. Yes I have more stuff than I need, mostly books lol, but 40 bags worth of stuff? I don’t think so!

However, I’m sure I could find a combination of bags and projects that I’ve been putting off that equal 40, or maybe 30…for sure 20! 😛

So I decided that since I like the idea I am going to tweak it to fit in to my world. 🙂

For starters, I am taking away the 40 bags in 40 days thing, I think I’ll turn it in to 30 projects and or bags in 40 days. Why am I giving myself 10 extra days? Simple, some of my projects will take more than one day, like my photo album project, that sucker will take who knows how many days. Also, some of my projects will require money and I’ll want to spread those out amongst multiple paycheques.

Then of course is the addition of projects, not limiting myself to only removing bags of stuff from my place.

I’m not coinciding my trying this idea out with Lent, I’m just doing it when I feel ready to start. Hopefully I’ll start it March 1st, it all relies on my getting my list of projects figured out in time lol

Those are all the tweaks I can think of right now, as I compile my list of projects I may come up with more tweaks, we shall see! One thing that I’m certain will change is the number, the number of projects and because they are connected the amount of days to finish. I look around my place and see a lot of random projects I keep meaning to do but never get around to but as I mentally tally them I’m thinking I’m far away from 40, or even 30, it is hard to tell though…

I’m looking forward to this, mostly because these random projects that I keep putting off have been annoying me lately but even with that added level of annoyance I still haven’t gotten around to doing any of them. Why? I don’t know. Also, some of them will require some creative thinking, and I like projects like that, they get your brain working not just analytically but creatively, the end result can sometimes be a surprise, hopefully a happy one! lol

Don’t suppose anyone wants to join me in this little organizing project? Challenges like this are always more fun to do with a friend! 🙂

Tags: 40 bags in 40 days, challenges, decluttering, home projects, small apartment