Want to Organize Your Messy Life? Take Up This 30-Day Challenge

About LifehackContact Us Psychology Productivity Health More Productivity Want to Organize Your Messy Life? Take Up This 30-Day Challenge Samantha Sullivan Samantha Sullivan has a master's degree in Journalism and is is currently the Content Coordinator at TheBlaze. Samantha is also the Co Founder of Can You Actually, one of the largest arts and entertainment websites in the United States, which covers a variety of different topics including art, design, travel, culture, photography, and cool products and mentioned by The New York Times, Wikipedia, Nerdist, AOL, Buzzfeed, Adweek, Design Taxi, Cracked, Medium, Little Things, Distractify, College Humor, and GameInformer. Full Bio Becoming a minimalist takes dedication. Simplifying your life isn’t easy and requires careful thought and consideration. What can you live without? Where do you even begin? Here are several challenges you can commit to for 30 days to get you on your way to becoming a minimalist. Day 1: Define what minimalism means to you1 Does it mean carrying a 0 balance on your credit cards? Living without cable TV or WiFi? Have one less car or now cars? Does it involve giving your most prized possessions away to charity in order to lead a simpler life free of clutter? Day 2: Figure out the areas in your life you can simplify Start with your bedroom for example. Do you have too many blankets, pillows, and clothes lying around? Start by clearing this area of your home. Perhaps limit the decor and comforters. Buy a simple yet comfortable mattress2that really doesn’t need a lot of added items like mattress toppers. Day 3: Declutter common areas Your living room, kitchen, garage, and bathrooms. Day 4: Declutter social media Do you have so many contacts on your iPhone that you don’t even know where half of them came from? It’s time to minimize your contacts. This goes for emails, friend lists, and social networks. What can you do without here? Day 5: Downsize your living space With all the new room, you might consider downsizing to a smaller house or apartment. Day 6: Limit your subscriptions Think of all that you’re subscribed to. Can you do without these or limit them? You’re minimizing this area of your life while saving. Day 7: Get rid of clothes you haven’t worn in two years If you haven’t worn it in the past two years, do you really want it? Day 8: If you carry a purse or backpack, clean it out We know that old squished Snikers bar and old receipts aren’t doing you any good. Day 9: Evaluate your grocery shopping habits If it’s been sitting at the back of your fridge for over a month, chances are you didn’t really need it in the first place. Day 10: Limit the hours you’re connected to your digital device You may be surprised of all the creativity that comes with ditching your device. Day 11: Give your books away after you’ve read them This is a quick way to prevent clutter and do a friend a favor. Day 12: Minimize events on your calendar Find a healthy balance. Day 13: Clean out your makeup drawer It’s probably unsanitary to keep makeup longer than three months anyway. Day 14: Eliminate useless items in your car We all need a little help in this department. Day 15: Simplify your morning routine The plus side is getting to sleep in longer. Day 16: Give away old DVDs you know you’re never going to watch They’re really just collecting dust by now. Day 17: Eliminate old broken dishes Those old college cups just won’t do it anymore. Day 18: Eliminate the junk food like you did your junk drawer Just imagine all the toxins you’re eliminating. Day 19: Delete all those selfies on your phone Just old photos and screenshots in general. Day 20: Go for a walk without your phone Take in the scenery. Day 21: Create a relaxing space at home and in your office Now you’re starting to live like a real minimalist. Day 22: Eat and go to sleep at the same time every day You’ll feel great. Day 23: Eliminate worn out socks and underwear More space. Less clutter. Day 24: Definitely shred old mail No one needs extra paper floating around. Day 25: Delete apps You probably have ones you never use. Day 26: Donate old coats and scarves that haven’t seen the light of day in years You’re doing a nice thing for those in need. Day 27: Throw away those old nail polishes that have dried out You’ve probably got a few you don’t need anymore. Day: 28 Eliminate the useless products under your bathroom sink and don’t buy more Everyone’s got old hair products we never use. Day 29: Throw way those old vitamins and medicines Opt in for a healthy smoothies3 with all vitamins you need. Day 30: Definitely eliminate those old dusty magazine you never read The bottom line is figuring out what is truly adding value to your life and what isn’t. It’s no easy task but this minimalist 30-day challenge will help get you started. If you master the first 30 days, try going for 60.4 References [1] The Atlantic: Living With Less [2] CYA:What’s The Best Mattress? Innerspring vs Memory Foam vs Latex [3] Blend It Up:The Best Blender For Smoothies: An In-Depth Review [4] Pinterest: 60 Things to Toss Out in the Next 60 days About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide variety of content catered to encouraging individual growth and solving problems. Learn more about our mission Advertising Advertising Recommended for you Creative Brain Test: 10 Best Ways To Test Your Creative Intelligence Revealed: Body Language That Makes You Attractive at Work and in Dating Wealthy, Successful People Who Choose Less over More: 10 Real-Life Stories of Minimalists Advertising Advertising What’s Popular now? 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You're now one click away from getting all the best ideas on Lifehack for free! Subscribe to Lifehack Newsletter to end negativity and get things done fast. Scroll down for the next article Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Productivity Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Jenny Marchal Jenny Marchal is a freelance writer. Full Bio Sitting down and setting your life goals can be exciting and motivating. It gives us purpose, sets clear intention, makes us feel productive and creates the feeling of moving forward. But have you ever started out making a mental or physical list of your goals only to end up with quite a few? Then when you start acting on them, they either end up cast aside or only half achieved? Having goals has been drummed into us from an early age but are having all these goals actually hindering us? Warren Buffett, one of the most successful businessmen in the world today, questions the need for having so many goals. Instead he puts his success down to eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire. Warren Buffett asked his pilot to list 25 priorities in his life To illustrate Buffett’s idea, there’s a great story involving his personal airplane pilot of 10 years, Mike Flint, and how Buffett helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy. Buffett asked Flint to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top career goals. Once Flint spent time doing this he came back and presented them to Buffett. He then asked Flint to pick out the top 5 most important goals. So at this point Flint now had two separate lists – the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals. Like many of us, Flint concluded that he would focus primarily on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 as and when he could find the time. However, Buffett stopped him and said that this is actually the path of becoming unsuccessful because really he should now throw away his list of 20 altogether – no matter how important many of them may be – and focus solely on the top 5. Why? Because that list of 20 is essentially a distraction. Average people don’t know they should AVOID seemingly important things in their lives The reason we often never succeed with our goals is because we don’t prioritize, focus and therefore, complete, the important few. It’s human to get demotivated and distracted – two feelings that can be the death of our goals. The bigger the list of goals we have, the more chance there is to give up and move on to the next one in the hope that this one will succeed. If what Malcolm Gladwell claims is true, to become an expert in any field we must spend 10,000 hours of deliberate practice towards gaining knowledge in that area. That equates to 20 hours each week for almost a year, for a total of 10 years. So imagine Flints original list of 25 goals – that would mean it would take him 250 years to fully master his complete list. You can see how having too many goals can lead you down the path to a less successful and fulfilling life. Make sure you keep the “Avoid-at-all-cost list” Minimizing has become a hot topic when it comes to living the best life we can and this also applies to our life goals. Like our physical stuff, it can be hard to make a decision to throw certain goals out of the window when they feel important to us. But the process itself allows us to work out our priorities and what’s truly important. Try writing out 25 goals – whether it’s long term goals or even short term weekly or monthly goals – and start the process of prioritising in order to discover your top 5. Now, instead of literally throwing the list of 20 away completely, label this your avoid-at-all-costs list to serve as a reminder of what not to focus on. This is the list that will decrease your time and focus and ultimately your success. In other words, if you start working on this list you are in danger of having 20 half-finished goals instead of 5 completed ones. Whatever your top 5 goals are, whether you want to learn a new language or skill, or work towards a particular career goal, make a conscious effort to stick to these. Keep motivated to achieve these goals and don’t wander onto your second list. Remember, your time investment is key to success and this time will be compromised the more goals you take on. Get the success you want: prioritize efficiently, focus intently and stick to it. References Featured photo credit: Fortune Live Media via flickr.com About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide variety of content catered to encouraging individual growth and solving problems. Learn more about our mission Advertising Advertising What’s Popular now? Poor Sleep Quality Comes from All the Things You Do Since Morning Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Keep A "Friend Bank" So You Can Maintain The Right Kind Of Friendship! How I Become Creative by Spending 10 Minutes a Day to Exercise My Brain Muscle See How You Don't Have To Start Your Weight Loss Journey Sweaty! 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