Breathing Room Challenge - Week One Recap

You did it – you made it through the first week of 2022 and through the first week of the Breathing Room Challenge! I've loved seeing everyone's before & after photos and hearing how much you love the approachability of this challenge.

We have enough going on in January – inside and outside of our heads – that we could all use a little more space. Especially after the holidays, and especially with the flood of New Year's resolutions marketing telling us what would make us be/feel/do better.

If you've been following along with me for a while, you know that I'm a big believer in your external environment affecting your internal environment. With that being said, I know it's not always feasible for people to drop what they're doing, ignore the kids, and go to town purging and organizing their homes.

That's why I created a "challenge" (meant to be more of an encouragement) to guide you day by day in small, manageable ways to create that much-needed space in your homes. One drawer, phone, computer, or shelf at a time.

1. Daily Bathroom Drawer

I started the challenge with the *main* bathroom drawer since this is a drawer that's opened each morning and closed each night. By editing and organizing this space, you have the ability to positively impact the first moments of your day and the last. Not only is an organized drawer more visually calming, but it makes life so much easier when you know where everything is, and it's not full of items you don't need or use.

2. Medicines

This spot in your home is especially important this time of year. I recommend an annual medicine cabinet edit to toss the expired items, take inventory of what you need, don't need, and where everything is. Those middle of night medicine cabinet visits will be way less painful if everything is labeled, in its right home, and all the thermometers, cups, and NoseFridas are exactly where you need them to be.

3. Wallet

Since this is the first week – not only of the challenge – but of the month, we all need small victories to give us the motivation to keep going. Organizing your wallet is one of those small but mighty actions. By removing all the stray receipts, put your cards back in their proper places, and discard of expired items, you lighten your purse and your mental load. Bonus: you find gift cards you forgot you had!

4. Purse/Backpack

For this challenge you all got to see what my purse really looks like after the chaos of a move, the holidays and 3 kids. I absolutely needed this reset just as much as anyone else.

Here are a few of my favorite purse organizing tips and products:

• Use zipper pouches to contain all the little items and keep them in tidy categories.

  • Sugar Paper pouch

  • Aloha bag pouch

• To add more structure to a soft-sided purse and provide extra organization, I love a purse insert.

  • Totesavvy

5. Phone - Apps

Anyone else running out of storage space on their phones? This one is for you! By deleting and offloading apps, you'll create more storage for all those cute photos of your baby or dog. Also, this might be a good opportunity to delete that app that you don't want to spend as much time on anymore. Bonus points: yes, you can organize your apps by color.

6. Email - Unsubscribe

On the challenge calendar, it reads “email unsubscribe” but after I took a look at my fingerprint-covered screen... I knew broadening the challenge to include other computer-related tasks could be extremely satisfying.

These were the challenge options:

+ give your computer screen & keyboard a good wipe down

+ edit your computer digital desktop

+ unsubscribe from allllll the emails

7. Junk Drawer

I love weekend challenges because they require a bit more time, but they are well worth it. They're the most used and often the most frustration-causing spaces. We wrapped up the first week by diving into our junk drawers. They're like mini-garages – we throw all the random bits in there that we don't want to deal with, but don't want to see – so in it goes. We're left with a drawer we dread.

Dread no more! If you start with simply removing everything you don't need, don't use, or is broken... you're halfway there. You can easily take the next steps of categorizing and corralling in a thoughtful way that will make your life easier. The next time you open this drawer you'll be able to find that chapstick you love.

Next week we'll cover books, kids art, pens/pencils/markers, cleaning products and the FRIDGE!

Share your work and be featured by tagging @breathing.room.organization.

Can't wait to see!