+ Yay! It’s a new month (or was :/ ) which means a new monthly habit and a recap of last month’s. These monthly experiments help me build healthy habits, break unhealthy ones or just learn more about myself so I can figure out what’s really essential!

Hi, happy summer! I'm popping in because we are adding a new daily habit for July in addition to Duolingo Junio!

Not surprisingly, our home is pretty uncluttered and ready for most renters but now that we're going to be gone for 3 months, Greg wants to have the downstairs (a very large garage) completely empty. It currently houses a bunch of renovation materials, some beekeeping supplies and a pile of stuff we've been wanting to sell or giveaway.

As I mentioned in our October Habit: 5 Things A Day... Again, we still have to make an effort to keep our home lean. In addition to saying "no", this means regular pruning of toys and clothes and occasional trips to Goodwill and other donation sites.

We keep a "get it out of here" basket for donations and returns in our entry closet.

But when we would like to sell something or need to put extra effort into getting rid of it, we put it in a pile in the garage. It's time to deal with it. ;)

To follow my 5 Steps to a Successful Habit Shift, for the month of July, we're going to:
1. Be specific. Every day, we're going to do one of three things to help sell or dispose of an item: Photograph it for a listing, Post it to Craigslist or a Buy Nothing group, or Research the agency to help us with disposal (this is mostly for some "hazardous" renovation materials.)
2. Start small. We're taking just one action for one item at a time, even if it only takes 2 minutes.
3. Find a trigger. We're going to do this as soon as we finish our last bite of dinner.
4. Time box. If we can't get the whole task done in 15 minutes, we'll stop and continue the next day.
5. Have a simple system. We have the items listed and are tracking their status in our to-do list (Asana) so we'll know exactly the next step to take.

Sell-1-Thing-A-Day July should help us finally clear out the last of the stuff down there and give us a little more peace of mind during the sabbatical!