Hi everyone!
Happy Wednesday!
I hope you are having a great week so far. Although Valentine’s Day is behind us, I hope you continue spreading love all month long, whether it’s with your partner, spouse, girlfriends or even yourself.
No matter how long you have followed me, you probably know I am a Simplified girl through and through. I love their mission, the products and their community.
Last month, I participated in their Simplicity Challenge, which was little tasks to complete every day to simplify your life. The tasks took less than 10 minutes to complete, and they were a great way to reset for the new year. I have done the 31 Day Challenge in the past and I was excited to try it again this year.
Team Simplified changed things up this year for the month-long cleaning and organizing. They still had a daily task, but they changed what the tasks were.
The new challenges ranged from organizing specific drawers (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom), to holiday decor, accessories, specific clothing items (dresses, socks, jeans), and reworking your systems in your life to simplify.
I did many of the challenges, but not all of them since I just did a big cleaning and organizing back in the fall. You can read about it here. Therefore, I didn’t have to go through my dresses, jeans, socks and medicine cabinets etc., since I already knew what I had and what I needed to get rid of.
However, there were many that I still took part in.
Here’s some of the areas that I tackled through the 2024 Simplicity Challenge:
Followers– One of the tasks was to go through and edit down who you follow on social media. This one was super helpful to me. I try to limit my time on social media, and I hope by editing down who I follow helps that. I went through and unfollowed accounts that didn’t bring me joy, I wasn’t interested in anymore or didn’t serve a purpose. I’m hoping this makes me more intentional with my time online.
Hair accessories– This was a huge help to me. In the past, I had all my hair ties, scrunchies, ribbons etc. in one pouch and I was always digging through it looking for one thing. I decided to divide accessories up in smaller pouches for easier access. It took me 10 minutes to complete and I’m already noticing a difference in getting ready every day.
Pantry and Fridge– I try to do my best to stay on top of clearing out the pantry and fridge, especially on garbage day when I get rid of old or expired foods. We had a lot of extra people home over the holidays and that meant extra cooking and ingredients. As I was cleaning, it was good to toss expired foods and see what things I needed to restock . Plus, it felt good to reset and organize things in their proper homes.
Cups– Anyone else always have too many cups or mugs?! Yep, that’s me! They are easy gifts to give or receive but we always end up with so many cups and mugs. I did some getting rid of and organizing our cups, mugs, and water bottles. Just straightening them up made a huge difference. I’m sad to report, it didn’t stay that organized for long and I’ve had to reorganize it many times since the initial challenge.
Tupperware– Another area that gets lots of use and doesn’t always stay tidy is our storage container cabinet. We have a lot of Tupperware and use it frequently for food storage and leftovers, so we are constantly in and out of this space. I did my best to organize the bases and lids and I got rid of broken or mix matched ones too. Pro-tip, save any heavy duty plastic containers you get when you order take out soup, they make great storage containers and are easy to give away if you are sending food home with someone and don’t need the storage containers back.
That’s just a taste of how I participated in the Simplicity Challenge 2024. I thought all the daily prompts were super helpful, but I didn’t need to do all of them due to my recent clean out.
If you are interested in the challenge more, you can head to Simplified’s Instagram page for a look at all the prompts. I know I feel better by having some of my most cluttered spaces organized especially in the new year.
Happy Simplifying!