FRUGAL FRIDAY

I went to Goodwill today and they were full to overflowing with everything. Workers were placing garments on the racks, kitchen items were stacked everywhere, and furniture was crowding the aisles. The place was full of college kids buying everything. We have a rather upscale Goodwill not far from our house but it is right by student housing, so today they evidently were catering to the college crowd there.

I often look through the clothes because they feature name brands such as Chico's, Coldwater Creek and other stores in our Mall. I would much rather patronize our Goodwill store than the Mall stores and the bargains I find are 1/10th the cost of the store prices.

Today I did not find anything to my liking, but I did find my husband a denim shirt that he likes to wear when he is working on the car. It was a real bargain and I was glad to avoid the back-to-school crowd at the Mall. Besides Goodwill provides education, training, and career services for the disadvantaged and those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities. I feel like I contributed something to that in my purchase today.

100 Things Challenge

I recently ran across the following challenge in a blog and thought about it for a time. Here was the introduction:

100 Things Challenge: cut your personal possessions down to 100 things?
Why go through the challenge? A few reasons:
To help you declutter your home.
To make you realize what’s necessary, and what you love, and what you don’t need.
To free yourself of the burden of possessions.
For fun.
To force you to stick to the limit, even if you get new things.
If you have a minimalist streak in you, you might want to give it a try. If you’re really minimalist, you might even want to go below 100 — perhaps 50.

I am definitely not a minimalist since I struggle with being a pack rat and having way too much stuff, but I would like to concentrate on decluttering my home. I decided that I could NOT cut my personal possessions down to 100 things, but I could definitely discard 100 things. I had been pondering the idea for a day or two when I spotted a belt in my closet that I have had for YEARS and have NEVER worn. I decided that belt was my first item to discard and I would not stop until I had at least 10 items from my closet in a discard pile. Next I looked around my bedroom and found 10 more items. Then I was digging around in the back of a kitchen cabinet and found 5 more items that I could live without. By that time I had three sacks ready to go to Goodwill, so off I went. Now I am going to work on my next 25 item discard by cleaning out another messy kitchen cabinet.

Hopefully, by the time I reach my goal of discarding 100 things I will have a cleaner closet and kitchen cabinets. Next on my list would be to move The 100 Things Challenge out into my garage, and if you have ever seen our garage you will know what I mean! However, hubby and I might come to blows on that issue! He has not yet heard about this 100 Things Challenge that I have entered into.