The 4-Box Challenge

I was challenged by the Plastic Box Shop to use their 4-box method to de-clutter my home. The idea is very simple:

•  Indentify the clutter in your home
•  Follow the chart
•  Place the item in the correct box

Easy peasy!

The four “magic” boxes are as follow:

Keep – Items which will remain in their current position and are to be kept.

Store – Items which you do not want to throw away but would be able to relocate and possibly store somewhere else.

Donate – Items which you intend to donate to charity.

Bin – Items which you intend to throw away.

I found myself lacking one more box – Sell. As I didn’t have my 5th box I just piled those items on the floor next to the four other boxes.

And the chart which can be used as an aid looks like this:

The chart is actually very helpful and clever. I did follow it for some items, simply because I wasn’t able to make me mind up about the final placement of the item in question.

My boxes arrived and it was time to get to work.

I picked the worst room in our home – my office. Terribly, terribly messy room, full of clutter, spare furniture and was actually really badly lacking in space even for just moving around. I meant to “clean it” last week… last month… I don’t even remember how many times I have promised myself “Ok, tomorrow I will take care of it”, then tomorrow came and went and my office just collected more and more clutter.

So Saturday morning after a large strong coffee I put some lively music on and started on my epic challenge.

Slowly piece by piece I was removing things from my office and placing them into the provided boxes… the pile of stuff in the boxes was growing fast.

The pile of stuff for sale wasn’t doing badly either. I decided that if I do not want it and the item has some real value I will sell it. In the end of the day who really needs 3 phones?

Once I had actually dug myself through the endless pile of weird stuff I was actually able to remove a spare futon and a chest of drawers from my office. These two pieces didn’t belong in my office, so they had to go in order to get back so much needed space.

I spent most of the day clearing out my office. I found that the Donate It box was the most popular. The next day I packed the car, drove to my local village and donated everything to our local dog charity RATS.

It was a long and tiring day but it was really worth it!

Now I have a spacious office and if someone wants to join me there is actually some space for them to join me by my desk.

This clear-out session was long overdue, so thank you ever so much to the guys at the Plastic Box Shop for selecting me for this challenge, as this gave me the impetus and a very much needed kick to do it and I thus finally did it!

Job jobbed!