40 Days - 40 Bags

We started observing the season of Lent yesterday, which is a time of prayer and penance in preparation for Easter.  My friend Lacy, over at Catholic Icing, mentioned to me a challenge that she had seen going around the blogosphere last year - 40 Bags for 40 Days. 

Basically, the point is to get rid (throw away, give away, etc.) of 40 bags of stuff from your house, one for each day of Lent.  It really fits with the Lenten theme of getting back to essentials and ridding yourself of things that may be preventing you from focusing on what's really important.

Having less clutter can really save you money as well.  When you have too much stuff, things you use and like become lost and broken and impossible to use and enjoy.  I hate to admit that as frugal as I am, I have definitely had to replace items I already own because I couldn't find them.  Case in point - we recently spent $10 on new haircutting scissors because we couldn't find our pair.  While cleaning up my room last week I find the originals - sitting on the cluttered and dusty top of my dresser.  Oops.

So I am excited to jump into this challenge for Lent, although I am simplifying it a bit.  Instead of black trash bags, I am just aiming for just a grocery bag's worth of stuff per day.  I'm also not going to be able to go through my house systematically - I'm afraid of creating too big a job and setting myself up for failure.  I am just going to gather items as I come across them - I also already have several boxes worth of items in the basement that I've been meaning to freecycle/donate/throw away. 

Any way I go about it, if I get 40 bags of stuff out of here by Easter, it should make a big improvement in how our household looks and feels.

What about you?  Are you decluttering/purging/spring cleaning right now?  Are you doing something else for Lent (or just in general) to help your household get back to essentials?