30 Day Decluttering Challenge for Beginners

I put together this fun 30 day decluttering challenge for beginners (and clutter bugs) to motivate myself to get my house decluttered.

And I thought it would be fun if we did this together. If you happen to have your share of clutter and want to try this out too, I hope you will join me in the challenge.

I found a ton of these thirty day decluttering deals already available on the world wide web. Some of them even have free printables, as this one does.

However, I looked at a few that are already out there, and I did not like any of them.

They are all good, I’m sure. Those challenges are not on my level though. I want one that is more on a beginner level. I did not need a challenge that jumps straight to cleaning out random drawers all over the house. Who cares about my living room cabinets when you cannot even see my coffee table for all of the clutter?

I have a much bigger glaring need to declutter the surfaces of the main living areas of my home.

So this challenge is different than the others in that we are going to focus on what everyone can see first. Plus, we are going to focus most of our effort on the rooms that you live in daily, as well as storage.

I love focusing on storage areas because that is where you can usually find the most things to give away or throw out! If it is already packed away in a storage bin, the fact is you know you rarely use it. Plus, storage can spill into the usable space of your house, sucking the fun out of every corner of your house.

What to expect in this decluttering challenge:

1. I am making a video, available here on my blog (gettingmyacttogether.com) as well as on my YouTube channel to go along with each day of the challenge. You can join me in each video in doing that day’s task.
2. I have free printable lists with ideas for what to declutter on each day. There is one in calendar format (usable for any month) as well as one in list format. I prefer a list myself, though I have no idea why.
3. The daily challenges will start out on a very macro level. We won’t go straight to random drawers. Instead, we will focus on what you actually see when you walk in a room.
4. Maybe I should call it “30 Day Decluttering Challenge for Clutter Bugs like me.”

Decluttering Methods:

You can use any method for decluttering you like. We will mostly use the timer method for this challenge. We set a timer for ten minutes and work on decluttering a specific area until the timer goes off.

The timer ensures that the tasks feel doable, and helps you hop to working. It is less overwhelming to think about working for ten minutes on a room than the daunting task of decluttering an entire messy room at a time. With a limit on it, it’s more of a challenge to see how much you can get done quickly.

Another method we sometimes use in the challenge is Flylady’s 27 Fling Boogie. With the fling method, we might go through a room and find twenty-seven things that do not belong in that area, or twenty-seven things to give away or throw away.

So long as you are decluttering a space, which method you use is not that important. You want to pick a method that makes it feel easy for you.

My best decluttering tip:

My number one tip is to always start each job with three containers: a trash can, a giveaway bag, and a laundry basket to put things in that need to be carted off to another room when you are done. Anything you have will work. Sometimes I just use three grocery bags, one for trash, one for putting things away, and one for donations.

I will be sharing tips throughout the challenge. Decluttering is a thing I have to seriously work on. We have a very busy, full household. Cleaning up after other people is not something that comes naturally to me. I am no “neat freak.” These are skills I talk about a lot because they are skills that I have to make myself work on. I love organizing, but I struggle with keeping things organized.

Honestly, I like to sit around. I enjoy watching Designing Women on Amazon Prime, drinking coffee, and things like that.

Plus, I don’t want to be known as a mom and wife who is constantly nagging everyone to clean up all the time. Yes, I know it’s important to teach my children to pick up after themselves, and we do that. But I am not going to walk around nagging everyone all the time. Who wants to live with that?

My biggest problem is that I cannot keep my house decluttered for long.

That is why I want to do this challenge. Participating in a month-long decluttering plan will help us to develop a habit of constantly decluttering, tidying up, and evaluating what we truly want to keep in our homes.

If you are as excited to try this out and get your house looking better as I am, join me!

I have two formats you can pick from and print out below, or you can bookmark or pin this page. You can also join my email list in the sidebar if you want to follow along with me during November and December as we declutter our homes together.

I can’t wait!

Click below to print the free 30 Day Decluttering Challenge Calendar View.

Or you can click below to get the challenge in list format. I personally prefer the plain old list for some reason.

My brain likes plain old lists in straight lines with no frills.

30 Day Decluttering Challenge Printable pdf:

Print these out to follow along, and I will post day one’s video on Monday. You can tailor your challenge to work with your schedule. Some days you may be out of town and not get to declutter your house, but that’s okay. Just jump back in when you are home again. I have to do that myself, but I pre-recorded the videos to make sure I will have each day available for you for thirty days.

I will post a new decluttering video every Monday-Saturday to go along with the challenge. You can find the videos both on my YouTube channel as well as here at gettingmyacttogether.com.

In conclusion, I hope the decluttering challenge helps you as much as it is helping me. Doing this helped me the most in my storage room because decluttering can be like eating potato chips. I started out to do fifteen minutes, and then sometimes I end up doing way more, just like when I try to eat just a few potato chips but then I end up eating half the bag.

Ready to dive in to day one and get to decluttering? Here are a few shortcuts:

Day One: Living Room 10 Minutes

Day Two: Storage Room 10 Minutes

Day Three: 15 Minutes in the Room that Bothers You Most

Challenge Day 4: Kid’s Closet

Day 5: Kitchen Counters

Day 6: Take Out Donations And/Or Living Room

Day 7: Storage bins

Day 8: Master bedroom

Day 9: Playroom

Day 10: Bookshelves

Day 11: Kitchen Cabinets

Day 12: Your most cluttered room

Day 13: Your desk

Day 14: Kid’s room

Day 15: Laundry Room

Day 16: Home Office

Day 17: Kitchen Pantry

Day 18: Linen Closet

Day 19: Books

Day 20: Your worst kitchen drawer

Day 21: Cabinets or shelves in any room

Day 22: Dining Room

Day 23: Kitchen Cabinets or Drawers

Day 24: Outdoor Storage

Day 25: Foyer

Day 26: Living Room Shelves

Day 27: Toy Bins

Day 28: Master Bathroom

Day 29: Bathroom

Day 30: Medicines

Thanks for joining me. Happy decluttering!

You can click here to find my YouTube channel playlist, which has the video for every single day of this challenge, in order, right at your fingertips.