Welcome to week one of the Spring Declutter Challenge! This week we’ll be focusing on The Lingering Stuff.

The Lingering Stuff

Let me explain. You know that broken curling iron sitting in your bathroom drawer or the pair of shorts you haven’t worn since 8th grade? That stuff. The items that you keep thinking to yourself “I should get rid of this” as you place it back where it was and don’t touch it again for months.

Sometime this week grab a box or basket and quickly go through your house, your cabinets, drawers, etc and remove all the lingering stuff that you’ve been meaning to get rid of. Since we’ll be working on each area of the house individually you don’t need to sit down and spend any time evaluating if you should get rid of something at this time. Just grab the items you know don’t fit, are broken, you don’t need, etc. and throw them in the box.

Since this should go pretty quickly without much thought this weeks task should be fun, easy and motivating!

Once you have gathered everything you know you need to get rid of make some decisions:

• Toss: broken, unusable items
• Give Away/Donate: items that might still be of some use to someone else
• Sell: items that you want to get a little money for

Don’t let the lingering stuff linger any longer!

If you’re going to sell it, put it up for sale on ebay/craigslist/local classifieds and give yourself a deadline. I usually will try to sell smaller value items for about a week and if it doesn’t sell, it gets donated. Larger items like furniture or expensive electronics I usually give a bit longer. The key is to not let it sit around for another 6 months or a year because you were unable to sell it.

If you’re going to donate, put the box of donations in your car immediately so they’re no longer in your house and it’ll be easy to just swing by the thrift store to donate the box.

I would LOVE to hear about your progress in the comments below or even via email. Feel free to even tweet or instagram your progress with the tag #ABDeclutter, I’d love to see photos! I’ll be sharing my progress in next weeks post and would love to share some of your progress as well.

Remember: If you don’t love it or it’s not useful, you can do without it and will be happier for it!