Getting Tough on Stuff 2015 - January

This year I've decided to 'Get Tough on Stuff' in our home and am challenging myself to donate, sell or give away 1000 unwanted or unused items in 2015.

January got off to a pretty good start.  I'd already put aside 20 or so items prior to the festive period, ready to send to the charity shop in the New Year and a good clear out of Little Bird's bedroom post-Christmas resulted in another 100 things being put aside to take.

Here's the pile outside her bedroom door ready to go to the charity shop after our clear out. (Apologies for the quality of the photo, but it was late afternoon and the light wasn't good when I took this.)

I was going to leave it at that for January, as I'd well exceeded my monthly target of 84 items, but I then decided to have a good sort through the Christmas decorations box and bag, before putting them back in the loft. This also rendered quite a few unwanted items, 22 in total, which were added to the charity shop pile.

I added more things here and there and the total number of items leaving the house this month is 168, which has given me a bit of a head start on the 1000 item total that I'm aiming to donate or sell this year.  In addition, to the pile of toys pictured above, here is another pile of things I will be taking to the charity shop this week.

For February, I have a few ideas of ways to tick more items off the total.  The first is that I have a small number of items of children's clothing and shoes to list on eBay. I've been meaning to sell these for quite a while and any money I manage to recover can go towards buying Little Bird some of the new clothes that she desperately needs at the moment.

The second idea is that I am going to blitz and deep clean our bedroom, prior to some work we want to do in there. I'll be delving under the bed, into the depths of the wardrobe, shelves, drawers and have a major clear out of any items I no longer wish to keep.   I've made a start on one corner of the bedroom and on my costume jewellery collection and have amassed quite a few things so far. There should, however, hopefully be lots more things uncovered to donate next month.

I'll let you know how I get on.