I am in! Wanted to join the 2010 (don't think I did though) but only saw it halfway through the year and had already tossed waaay more than that!
I fight sentimental hoarding and my house is getting there! I was at the point where I could have gone either way and thank goodness I have decided to beat it.
We have gotten rid of so much over the past few years and I feel like I am almost at the point where I am happy with what we have!
I also take at least a couple years to settle into a house and feel like it's "mine". We have been in our house 3 years this Jan and have done lots of renos but I am only now starting to feel like I am at home and happy with the house.
It may be counter productive but I have felt a real sense of relief since doing it. We just had an attic access cut where we have some usable storage space in our attic. I fought with myself over doing it. But our "seasonal" storage stuff was taking up regular closet space and stopping us from properly putting away every day stuff.
In the attic will go the Christmas boxes, the one Halloween box and the little bit of clothes we keep that the girls have outgrown or are between sizes. And a bit of the baby stuff we want to keep for the next baby (which will hopefully not happen for a couple more years but we would welcome one anytime anyways!)
But besides the Christmas stuff (which DH already put away) all of that stuff will be gone through again before going up and we are not going to store stuff "just because". My DH won't allow it and he's the only one who goes up there anyways.
I have a friend coming to help go through the last couple sizes of clothes that the girls have gone through and maybe some other stuff this coming week.
DH and I have to go through the playroom and toss and donate lots (our kids are ok with this) and since we have regained the playroom closet back from the Christmas storage we can rotate toys much better now!
Also my parents are moving and I know that there are MANY of my old boxes in storage with junk, books and toys (DH and I have decided that my mother is also a hoarder but because she's a neat freak and has the money to buy houses with MASSIVE storage rooms than you don't really notice it) that I need to go through and get rid of. They may not come into my house directly or they might depending on time and space but I will probably still count those as items I toss otherwise they will be coming into my house! And I really only want to keep a few things (mainly some books) out of those boxes...
As for counting I will probably count averages as I tend to declutter in large doses...
So my goal is to have a place for everything, everything in it's place and empty storage spaces.
So I'll start tomorrow. I got rid of 3 articles of kids clothes and some toys yesterday. 2011/365 = 5.5 items per day, 11 items every other day, 35.5 per week, and 165 items per month! I'll probably count every article of clothing, but for things like pens, I'll maybe count every 10 pens as one item (I have a lot of pens!).
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