My Buy nothing, cut the crap and spring clean challenges

crunchy chicken’s Buy Nothing ChallengeNow this I love. I love it when I have an idea to do something and find people across the world thinking the exact same thing.

Once April arrives, the first spring flowers have been and gone and blossom is appearing on the trees I get a kind of ‘ I-must-tidy-up-this-dump’ feeling that wraps itself around me and won’t let go.

So imagine my joy when I came across three challenges on the marvellous blogosphere that bring these elements of my need for order together?

First there is Nature Mom’s Big Green Spring Clean. It isn’t only about scrubbing your toilet bowl with a toothbrush; it’s much more holistic than that and involves organising, decluttering and getting your space to work for you.

Then there is crunchy chicken’s Buy Nothing Month. I’ve done a couple of these in the past, but it gets kind of lonely after week two, so it will be good to have others to keep some morale going when gorgeous items eBay threatens you with failure.Chile Chew’s Cut the crap challenge

Finally I found Chile Chew’s Cut The Crap challenge where we have to sift, sort, declutter and free all the excess crap in our homes.

As you might have read in the About page, living with a hoarder makes my task somewhat more challenging, but I’m prepared to give it my best shot.

I feel lighter and refreshed just from the thought of it. Whatsmore I’m going to add a little challenge of my own, which will be to make some money from selling my crap, pre-loved treasures on eBay and Amazon over the coming month.

I’ve decided to commit an hour a day to something to fulfill these challenges. That’s not oas scary as it sounds when you consider that you can do four lots of 15 minutes or six lots of ten. As FlyLady reminds us – you can do anything for 15 minutes; bless her.

I will spend my hour doing either detailed cleaning, some decluttering, listing some items on eBay / Freecycle or taking a trip to the charity shop / recycling centre.

I found these challenges late in the day yesterday, so in my eagerness to get on board I went out and started with the car. I needed to get outside as it was such a beautiful day, so I figured this was a way to start on the decluttering / spring cleaning challenges. I cleared out all the accumulated rubbish, brushed off the mats and gave the dashboard a clean.

I also learned something rather interesting about cleaning cars in an environmentally friendly way.

Nature mom’s Big Green Spring Clean challengeI learned, it is possible to wash a large car with half a bucket of water and squirt of Ecover washing up liquid. Yes, it took time, a lot of time, but I did it. I felt really pleased that I didn’t use anymore water than absolutely necessary. As we have planted grass in the front garden, the left over water was needed on there anyway, so on it went and the grass smiled in relief. I had Mr.Blackbird for company, the sun on my back and it was a very enjoyable couple of hours.

More on ‘how-to-clean-a-car-with-half-a-bucket-of-water’ another day, no doubt.

Are you going to join in on any of these challenges or have you set yourself some personal goals recently? I’d love to hear about them 🙂

6 Comments

  1. Anna-Lisa on April 2, 2008 at 8:26 am

    Mrs Green,

    I will join you with all of the challenges, I will also blog about them at GGG (advising that you sourced the challenges). Thanks for the great post and I know that we will both suceed at these challenges

    Anna-Lisa



  2. Mrs Green on April 2, 2008 at 10:04 am

    (((Anna-Lisa)))

    You’ve no idea how much you have made my day. I’m feeling on such a downer today and very isolated in my beliefs, so your comment really has lifted me.
    Thank you – I’m looking forward to seeing how you get on and will regularly check over on Green Girls Global.

    Have a wonderful day
    Mrs G x



  3. Joyce on April 6, 2008 at 7:45 am

    I’m doing these, too.
    I found you through Almost Mrs. Average. It’s really been nice to see how these efforts are being made internationally. Sometimes I wish we could all just meet up for coffee! Blogging will have to do, I’m afraid.



  4. Mrs Green on April 6, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Welcome Joyce! Lovely to see you here. I love the photo on the header of your blog 🙂

    I know what you mean about wishing you could meet more people you meet online! I have had the privilege to meet up with a few friends from forums and it has been a wonderful experience in all cases.

    I hope you’ve had a wonderful Sunday,
    mrs Green x



  5. Alana on April 8, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    Hi there – found you over at Crunchy Chicken – thanks for the links to the other 2 challenges. Great blog.



  6. Mrs Green on April 10, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Hi Alana,
    Great to see another new face on here. How are you finding the Buy Nothing challenge yourself?

    Your blog is lovely too – some gorgeous photos of Meg’s second birthday 🙂 I hope you are all over your fever now and congratulations on the birth of Kale – he sounds very content………

    Mrs G x