Fellow military spouse Kristine from kristinespeaks.com  has created a Happiness Challenge to help bring happiness to military spouses and people everywhere. 

I don’t think I am necessarily unhappy but I do think that there is always room to add happiness to our crazy life. Lately I have felt off, I wasn’t able to find my Christmas spirit last Christmas and now, here I stressing on what comes next. So I have decided to embrace the Happiness Challenge and share how I accomplish each challenge. I hope that if you’re looking for something to pull you out of a funk or to simply just add even more happiness, you come along on this journey with me! As always I would love to hear you feedback and if you’re looking for a Happiness Challenge partner I am here! 

The 1st Challenge: Declutter one Room

Challenge number 1: in the next 7 days, pick one room or space and declutter. Donate, sell, or pass the goods onto someone who could use them. Your goal this week is to work towards a less cluttered and more organized space. Caution: do not take more than one room or area on, baby steps! -The Happiness Challenge Facebook Page

I am completely in love with this first challenge and have already begun! We recently decided when our lease runs out at our current rental we will be moving to a new one.  This won’t be the first time we are moving on our own from one house to another at the same location; however, this is the first time we will be moving a house worth of stuff as a family of three. I am already stressed about moving all of our stuff and we still have months before the big move.

This seems like the perfect time to downsize as much as possible. Why pack up and move a bunch of stuff we really don’t want or use? 

I am taking the advice of starting with one room at a time. I am starting with our kitchen. For Christmas I got a brand new fancy food processor* that made some of our other small appliances obsolete. So I started packing up all of the kitchen gadgets we don’t really need. I knew I would have a lot to donate, so I made myself a donation worksheet to keep myself originated for tax time. I just wrote down the quantity, item, and value…then stabled the receipt from the donation center onto the back of the form. 

Click to download and print a pdf version of this Deployment List. 

If your interested in following along and participating in the Happiness Challenge you can join the Facebook group here. 

The Happiness Challenge simply came from being unhappy because of the challenges that face our community — you know, months of loneliness with deployments, hardships of moving and lack of job opportunities, etc. I started this as a way to find more joy in life and hope others can as well.  -Kristine 

If you want to follow along with my happiness challenge I will be using #happinesschallenge on twitter and Instagram.