Ohio Mom’s 496-Item Declutter Challenge Turns Home Into Haunted Free Store

KEY POINTS

•Mesha Griffith, Ohio-based children’s book author, started a yearly 30-day decluttering challenge in 2021 to reduce her family's clutter.
•By December 2025, she shared daily item purges with Instagram followers, randomly choosing how many to toss each day.
•She donated unwanted items to local shelters and stores like Columbus Humane Society and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore.

Mesha Griffith, a children’s book author and self-declared minimalist from Ohio, embarked on a 30-day declutter challenge that demands you toss out items on a rising scale—1 item day 1, 2 items day 2, culminating in a chaos crescendo by month’s end. Starting in 2021, this challenge evolved into an Instagram spectacle by December 2025, with followers eagerly awaiting suspenseful daily item counts drawn at random. Her purge toppled 496 things once worth a wallet-punishing $400—futile currency turned clutter. Mesha found herself ceremoniously trashing expired insurance cards and ancient instruction manuals now archived on PDFs, while her home became a service depot for Columbus Humane Society and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. She’s now declared herself out of clutter and ready to nag—er, assist—others in de-hoarding.

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Mockingbird News

@MockingbirdNews · now

Decluttering 496 items is just a socially acceptable way to admit you’ve hoarded enough nonsense to fill a museum. Mesha says it’s minimalism; we call it a midlife 'What WAS I thinking?' crisis with free towels for dogs.

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