Hey hey!  I’m several weeks behind in this final post, but it’s time for me to report on the last week of the 30-Day Minimalism Challenge!  Here’s the list of the last tasks required:

• Take your time: This evening take your time – with everything. Once you relax for the evening it’s time to turn off the mental checklist.
• Focus on yourself
• Declutter the unusual spots
• Tackle your electronics
• Every item has its place
• Don’t beat yourself up
• Try something new
• Wrap-up

I unfortunately got sidetracked for the last week of the Challenge due to my brother’s wedding and my responsibilities as the wedding cake baker, then sidetracked once again by beginning my move from my apartment of 3 years (see my first Minimalism post) to a single-room of a shared apartment in the city.  For these reasons I don’t have all the best pictures to illustrate my progress, but as before here are the highlights from my final weeks of the challenge as I move into my new, vastly smaller home.

Take your time & Focus on yourself

These 2 items, I felt, went hand-in-hand, and also tied in tidily with the previous week’s virtual disconnect.  For this I decided to just continue my attempts to go to bed with only a book.  And for the record, any time I broke down and watched something instead, I definitely felt it the next day.  I stand by my “one bed, one book, one dog” mantra for my evenings.

Declutter the unusual spots

The Challenge specifically mentions areas under the sink, but in my case it ended up being “all those boxes you shoved onto the top shelf and forgot about”.  This circles back around to what I’ve said more than once: knowing what you own is vitally important to minimalism.  I went through 5 or 6 boxes of things I’d simply thrown under my bed or stuffed into my closet, boxes full of stuff I never used, all covered in dust.  90% of it went either right to the trash, donate pile, or  yard sale pile.  I could have been better utilizing that space for literally years…but I never bothered to do anything about it.

Tackle your electronics

This task wanted me to go through my electronic devices and remove items I don’t use anymore, basically to lighten their load.  This was a bit of an odd task for me, because to me the cheap cost of large amounts of hard drive space lends itself to dumping data and walking away.  Instead of going through gigs of information on my computers, I decided to clean off the desktops of my computers (1 laptop, 1 desktop) and to organize and clear out all the photos from my camera.  And unsurprisingly, it felt good to get these digital bits of my life in order.

Try something new

I had to take some time to think about what to do with this.  Emily has started going to meditation classes with a friend of hers, which I thought was very interesting.  But with my currently crazy schedule (I mentioned I was moving to a new apartment, right?), what could I accomplish effectively without over-extending myself?

In light of my move, I decided that my ‘something new’ would be to simply reject anything that doesn’t fit into my new space.  I’d taken some time to figure out the few pieces of furniture I’d be taking with me, but when it came to all the other flotsam and jetsam in my life, I’d vaguely waved my hand and said “I’ll figure it out later.”  Now I’ve decided that whatever things I can’t fit into the new place, I’m just going to get rid of.  Donate, sell, whatever – if they’re not important enough to me to make a specific space for, there’s no reason to keep them.  No more stuffing things mindlessly into boxes or under desks – I’m using it, or it’s gone.

Wrap up

It’s been an interesting month, and I’ve learned a lot from the minimalist challenges, even though I felt some were more focused on organization as opposed to minimalism.  I absolutely plan on keeping up with the basics I’ve learned – know what I own, seriously consider what things really belong in my space, etc – and hopefully expand upon them too!  I sense new challenges on the horizon, and I’ll be sure to share them with you!

Don’t forget to check out Emily’s final post!  It’s been a great experience for us both.