20+ Home Decluttering Challenges To Try

Spending the whole day (or week, or month…) decluttering sounds like a lot of work. What if we made it fun?

Here are lots of decluttering challenges and games you can try alone or with housemates to make the process much more enjoyable. Having fun is a great way to stick to your plan until you’ve hit your goals!

If you’re lagging in your decluttering journey and looking for a little push, try one of these.

30-Day Declutter Challenges

Many decluttering challenges wrap up within the month! If you’re ready to dig in and really get your house cleared out and functional, here are some fun monthly challenges you can try.

1. Mins Game

Mins Game is a decluttering challenge invented by The Minimalists. The rules are simple! We’ve even got a free spreadsheet for you to download and print:

(We made one for each month–just search our blog for the current month to find the free download!)

2. The Pantry Challenge

The Pantry Challenge boils down to pausing on the grocery shopping for a month while you work through the food you’ve got stored!

The benefits are twofold–for one, you clear out your pantry, using things up before they’ve spoiled.

For two, you save a month’s worth of groceries! That would be around 500 extra dollars in my pocket, which is swell. I actually did it myself, if you’d like to read the details: My Experience With The Pantry Challenge.

3. Personalized 30-Day Decluttering Challenge

Leslie over at Real Simple customized their own month-long challenge. It’s an interesting read, and it’ll give you lots of ideas! Check it out here: This 30-Day Declutter Challenge Transformed My Home.

4. Home Heal: De-Stress Your Space

Home Heal is a 30-day decluttering guide designed to help folks with chaotic, dysfunctional homes find a little logic and peace in their space.

Annual Clutter-Free Challenges

Looking for something that runs a little longer? Here are three great ways to structure your whole year of decluttering!

1. 2026 in 2026

Every year, we host a massive decluttering challenge! This year, we’re ditching 2,026 items before the end of it. You can join in anytime–we even have a chart for you to download and track your progress.

2. The Crowned Goat 52 Week Challenge

This is an incredible year-long challenge from The Crowned Goat. They lay out specific goals and assignments for each week, along with so many helpful tips and tricks.

I highly recommend checking it out here: 52 Weeks to a Simplified & Organized Home.

3. No-Buy Year

Doing a No-Buy Year challenge is great for decluttering, because it cuts off the clutter at the source! Stop bringing new things into your home, become a master at controlling your spending, and deprogram consumerist culture from your habits.

Here’s our comprehensive guide for your No-Buy Year.

And, of course, you can edit the rules for your own goals! Maybe try a month–or even a week–and see how that goes. There are still many lessons to learn and skills to gain from a shorter no-buy period.

Decluttering Guidelines

Then we’ve got some easy rule of thumb thoughts to keep in mind while we declutter. You can consider these to be “challenges” or just lifestyle tweaks!

1. 20/20

The 20/20 rule is easy–if you’re stumped on if you should declutter an item, ask yourself if you could replace it within 20 minutes (from your current location) for under $20. If the answer is yes, you can feel a bit better about letting it go!

I believe this rule was also invented by The Minimalists. Those guys stay making stuff up.

2. 12/12/12

This challenge is great for quick bursts of cleaning. You simply find twelve items to put back in their designated spots, twelve items to throw away, and twelve items to donate.

You might try tweaking those numbers to some more relevant to your situation (some people have no trash hanging around, for example). The general idea is to give you some sort of structure with which to approach decluttering.

3. Sparks Joy

This is KonMari’s classic advice: Pick up the item and ask yourself if it sparks joy.

If it does, keep it! If it doesn’t, maybe declutter it! There is a little gray area here, because your water pick and microwave might not necessarily spark joy, but they have a practical use.

So if something does not spark joy and does not have a practical use, you’re probably good to get rid of it.

4. Swedish Death Cleaning

I wasn’t sure which category to drop this one in, but Swedish Death Cleaning is basically decluttering with the intention of making things easier for your family after you’ve passed. It’s mainly meant for older folks as they iron out end-of-life plans, but you can use this mindset to declutter your home at any time.

I don’t know if you’d call it a “challenge,” but it’s certainly challenging! The Swedish Death Cleaning Method: A No-Nonsense Approach to Decluttering.

Fun Decluttering Challenges

If you’re looking for an outright good time, these decluttering challenges are a blast.

1. Scavenger Hunt

Make decluttering a fun game with a scavenger hunt! These are especially great if you have a friend group or kiddos you want to get involved. This one involves some creativity (unless you just use our Decluttering Scavenger Hunt ideas).

You could theme a hunt for extra fun. Here are a few options to try:

Bathroom cabinets – hunt for items that belong in the bathroom or medicine cabinet throughout the house
Paper trail – collect old receipts, paperwork, used notebooks, things to be filed in the office, and all of those random piles of mail to be dealt with
Junk drawers – track down items that you might find in junk drawers, like office supplies, rubber bands, loose screws, household tools, lost money, and mystery wires
Check our Scavenger Hunt post for more ideas and printable checklists!

2. Decluttering Bingo

Bingo fan? You can create your own cards or cop some ideas from this Let’s Live and Learn post (there are a few other fun decluttering games there, too!).

Or, here, I made you one:

3. Dungeons & Dragons Decluttering

This is an idea I remember seeing somewhere on Reddit. If you love tabletop RPGs, this might tickle your fancy!

Separate your house areas into numbers (Living Room-1, Kitchen-2, etc.) then do two dice rolls to determine:

1. The area you’ll tackle, and

2. The number of items to declutter.

Roll the dice and get going! This method adds some fun while taking away the drag of decision-making by calling the shots for you.

Capsule Wardrobe Challenges

Here are a few challenges to help you declutter your clothes and closet, specifically.

1. 333 Closet Challenge

Project 333 is a capsule wardrobe challenge created by Courtney Carver where you select 33 items of clothing and accessories, and that’s your whole wardrobe for three months.

It’s a lot of fun! I’m doing it now, so expect a post about it soon! (Hey future Mia, please remember to link that here. 😅)

Meanwhile, check out the official rules here: Project 333 Challenge.

2. 10×10 Challenge

The 10×10 wardrobe challenge is a shorter-term commitment where you select ten items of clothing to use for ten days. This gets you creative making new combinations you otherwise may have never considered!

3. Jo-Lynn Shane’s 30-day Capsule Challenge

If you’ve got a packed closet, you might need something more intense or detailed to get things under control! I recommend Jo-Lynn Shane’s post about her 30-day Shop Your Closet Challenge.

Decluttering Checklists

For a straight-forward and flexible decluttering challenge, try one of these themed checklists! They tell you exactly what to declutter–you just have to check off boxes until you’re done!

A decluttering journey can be long and arduous. It’s important to pace yourself and do what you can to make the experience enjoyable. The whole point of this list is to make it fun while still making progress. Sometimes we just need to take a break and rest, but sometimes we need to mix things up!

Our 100 Easy Items To Declutter checklist is printable, or you can use it on your phone with interactive check boxes:

If you try one of these challenges, let me know if it makes a difference and which one was your favorite!