Project Purge: 15 Days of Giving It Up.

In order to help our friend Jami raise funds for an organization near and dear to her heart, Theresa & I (along with some other women) are helping to organize a garage sale. The funds raised will be passed on to this deserving organization.

Garage sales are always a great motivation for me to clear out some clutter because I have a deadline and a definite end goal in mind. This time around, because I know the items I unearth will be sold and the money will directly benefit someone else, I have extra incentive.

There's a book sweeping the Christian community right now called 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. 7 is the true story of how Jen Hatmaker (along with her family) took seven months, identified seven areas of excess {food, clothes, spending, media, possessions, waste & stress}, and made seven simple choices to fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence. 

It's next on my To Read list and until I can get my hands on it, I've been following along on Jen Hatmaker's blog. I was struck by this blog post where Jen shares seven mini-projects to help jump-start people in the mutiny against excess. Her seventh tip is turn your excess into justice, with the idea being purge your possessions, sell your stuff, and pass the money you make along to a worthy organization.

Theresa and I immediately turned to our favorite treasury of ideas, Pinterest, to look for an organizing/cleaning/purging challenge to help guide us. (We did work through 40 Bags in 40 Days last spring but I have found there is always, always more de-cluttering to be done). 

This time around, our search came back empty.

And that's when the magic {insert God} began.

What if we created our own purging checklist to work through?

What if we shared it with others via our blogs?

What if we were inspired to live with less so we could give more?

What if we dreamed big, lived big, and gave it ALL up?

Via text messages and Facebook chats and Google Docs, a new blog series was born: {Project Purge} 15 Days of Giving It Up.

Theresa and I will both be posting on our blogs throughout the next couple of weeks. Some of the information will overlap (i.e. we'll be working through the same spaces), but we'll also be writing our own individual posts from our own unique perspectives.

While we like to think of ourselves as soul sisters from different misters, we are also quite different {I'm a beaver, she's a golden}. And while I provide the nuts and bolts, she provides the heart. We hope you'll follow along on both blogs for double the encouragement, double the fun.

We'll help you get a plan in place before you start, focus your purging by suggesting 15 different spaces and places to attack, and offer encouragement along the way.

We think it's time to give it up.

We'll do this together. 

We'll do it for us. We'll do it for Him. We'll do it for them.

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