40 Bags - Wrap Up

Well, Lent is definitely over now, and it's time to give you the wrap up of my 40 Bags in 40 Days project.  I think I last left you at 15 bags.  Since then, I kind of missed documenting the rest with pictures, but let's see if I can come up with an approximate count:

16, 17, 18 - Trash!  Old phone books, broken pieces of toys, etc.

19-28 - I freecycled 3 TRASH bags of toys!  (Approximately equal to 9 grocery bags.)  I'm pretty excited about this.  And they were taken by an at-home daycare, which I'm sure will put them to good use.

29, 30, 31, 32 - I donated an Amazon box of size 2 diapers (that the baby kindly outgrew right after I ordered them), a package of newborn diapers, and two baby blankets to Birthright.

33-40 - These were donations to a rummage sale benefiting a friend who has cancer - talk about a good motivation for cleaning out!  I donated a huge shopping bag of my clothes, plus several bags more worth of hanging clothes; our old (working) printer; and a small shopping bag of miscellaneous household items.

There's a lot I could say about the process and effects of this 40 bags project; it was surprisingly life-changing.   I'm actually planning to write a few more individual posts about my thoughts on purging and some of the habits I'm trying to alter.

As a quick summary, I'll just say that it was an extremely positive experience to clean out, and that it was shockingly easy to come up with 40 grocery bags!  I think if I had the time and had done the purge in a more systematic and organized manner, I could have easily come up with 40 trash bags.

I can see myself doing this project every year as a way to spring clean, get organized, and get back to essentials.

Have you done any purging or reorganizing lately?  What did you learn from it?