To conclude the painful year of 2020, I got down to my favorite habit in the habit series – Decluttering. Last year in December, I played the minimalism game but I didn’t have that much stuff to let go of this year. So the decluttering challenge I took up this year was 1 item a day. It was not always a physical item. And I did get rid of more than 1 item on some days.

Here are the 21 things I decluttered:

The Closet:

• Day 1: Clean out your closet – I already had an optimized closet with 40 items. But there were some new additions which demanded me to get rid of a few existing ones. I am trying to stick to 40 items by donating one item whenever I buy one. I ended up letting go of at least 5 pieces of clothing one this first day.
• Day 2: Donate unused clothes – I am good at filtering out the clothes that I don’t like periodically. But I am also guilty of bringing some of them back to my wardrobe if I see a purpose for them. This back and forth can be avoided if items are donated right away. Last month, I took out a day to get rid of the clothes I had put aside for donating.
• Day 3: Clear your wallet – Because a lot of receipts and change gets accumulated in the wallet, I keep feeling like my wallet is always too full of junk rather than money. This time I came up with a system to clean it and keep it clear. Especially targetting the denial of receipts at shops.
• Day 4: Get rid of old shoes – In all honesty, I did not discard any shoes. I have just 6 of them. So, there is not much to give away. But I basically stored away some formal shoes which are not getting utilized enough lately.

The Shelf

• Day 5: Organize your books – 2020 got me reading rigorously. Though most of the books were pdf or audiobooks, I did read at least one handheld paperback a month. I deleted some of the online pdfs that I know I wouldn’t read again and reorganized my bookshelf.
• Day 6: Organize your dresser – Makeup is something that is the least utilized during lockdown time. A lot of such cosmetics and creams had expired and needed decluttering.
• Day 7: Go through old papers and mail – I have a beautiful folder to hold different documents. I have unsubscribed from physical mails on all sites. But still, sometimes I get a letter from a bank or insurance, here and there. The folder needed decluttering and I got down to it finally.
• Day 8: Clean out medicine cabinets – in the initial days of the corona, many of us bought medicines like vitamin c, calcium, and general supplements for preventive medication. Some of them were not usable anymore and needed to go out of the medicine cabinet.

The Kitchen

• Day 9: Organize your pantry – There was no expired item in my kitchen pantry. But there were some overlooked items for sure. Reshuffling the kitchen made these items easier to access and eventually better utilized.
• Day 10: Clean your fridge and get rid of expired items – vegetables keep drying up every week when I order sometimes randomly instead of cooking what I bought. Though this is rare, there are oftentimes instances of poor utilization of fresh produce I buy. I cleaned up the fridge from this clutter this time. Hopefully, I stick to better meal prep and save future groceries.
• Day 11: Empty your freezer – My freezer looks like the arctic circle all the time. Full of ice. Defreezing it means that I should wipe a lot of melted water under the fridge. This is not an exciting chore. But I planned it and did this as well.
• Day 12: Organize your kitchen – After having cleared the pantry and fridge already, there was not much for decluttering in the kitchen. But I tried to clear out some boxes which I had stored away hoping to recycle or reuse.

The Work desk

• Day 13: Clear out your desk drawer – While working from home last year, I have set up a dedicated work desk. But the drawers were getting crowded with papers and wires lately. I was able to dispose of some bills and receipts off the desk and the rest were organized.
• Day 14: Sort through your mail – Not a tough job for me, as I regularly delete unnecessary emails from my inbox. But there were some emails from the past which I had archived for referring someday. I had a look at those and cleared them out.
• Day 15: Clear space off your computer – My work and personal computers, both were full of photos and documents that could easily be on cloud storage or be deleted. The Clearing of space off the computer also helped its performance.
• Day 16: Clear off your desk – A clean desk is a clear mind. My work desk doubles as my entertainment station after work. I connect a big monitor to a laptop to watch online content. This means wires and digital devices like Amazon Alexa, speaker, mouse, and modem clutter the table. I taped a lot of wires at the back and found a place for some of the devices in the desk drawer instead of laying out everything in the open.
• Day 17: Organize everything into folders on your computer – I had a very top-level folder structure where personal files and work files got divided. It often took me a long time to find what is needed. I came up with a more useful folder structure and multiple categories to access the files better. Keeping in mind that I should be able to access the most common files with fewer clicks.

Miscellaneous

• Day 18: Remove apps you don’t use anymore – I zipped underused apps and deleted addictive ones from my mobile. Decluttering distractions is one of the main goals of minimalism.
• Day 19: Organize your bedroom – My bedroom had way too many pillows. Some of them needed to leave the room. Fortunately, I did not have to throw them. I repurposed a couple of those pillows as seating cushions on chairs.
• Day 20: Clean your bike – My scooter gets washed by the rains in an open parking space in front of my house. But natural rain wash can’t be a substitute for a dedicated handwash. I decided to clean it up, rather than leaving it at the mercy of rain.
• Day 21: Organize your cleaning supplies – We often buy multiple liquids to do the same kind of cleaning. I removed the unnecessary boxes and liquids that were expired or underutilized from the kitchen, bathroom, and around the washer.

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