How To Use The 30-Day Minimalism Game To Declutter Your Home

Decluttering your home is a big job, and it can be overwhelming and difficult to know where to start. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemis started their blog, The Minimalists, because they wanted to declutter and destress their lives, and their 30-day challenge helps others begin the process of letting go of clutter. The idea is to donate, throw away, or sell the same amount of items as the date. On day one, you'd get rid of one item, and by day 30, you'll have to discard 30 items. If you make it to the end of the month, you'll have gotten rid of 465 things.

The founders of The Minimalists decided to make this challenge into a game, asking players to find at least one friend to compete against. This adds another level of motivation and provides an accountability partner to ensure you follow through with your decluttering. The rules state that whoever goes the most days wins, but the items must be completely gone by midnight each day, or it counts as a loss.

This approach to decluttering is intense and can be difficult for those with busy lives to manage. By modifying the rules, you'll be able to tailor the game to fit your lifestyle and your goals. Rather than having everything donated, sold, or trashed by midnight, you could have a box that the items must be in by midnight, and in the morning, you could fully get rid of it. If you don't have time to commit to decluttering every day, you could group the days into a week. For example, you could combine all the days of week one with a goal to discard 28 items that week.

Christina Hidek, a professional organizer, told Homes & Gardens that playing the game with minutes rather than items and decluttering for the same number of minutes as the date can also be beneficial for busy people. "This would more quickly translate into an obvious transformation and is easier for people to fit into their schedule since they'll know exactly how long they'll spend playing," Hidek said.

When decluttering, it becomes difficult to decide what items should stay and what should go. A good method for decluttering is to pick up an object, and if five seconds pass before you can remember the last time it was used, the item should go. Another way to modify the 30-day challenge is to get more specific with the items rather than the amount. Instead of dedicating a certain amount of items per day, you could assign each day of the month a specific task, like sorting through your junk drawer or cleaning out your pantry.

If you start to lose motivation, it can be helpful to downsize your decluttering efforts rather than give up. A professional organizer, Felice Cohen, explained to Homes & Gardens that getting rid of one thing a day is better than nothing. "This makes the task easy and doable and what often happens, once we see how easy it was to get rid of one thing, we get rid of more on our own," Cohen said. "Once we see progress, we get into, get motivated, and keep at it."