The 2006 Clean Sweep Challenge!
September 3rd, 2006 by Lani and AllenStep right up, ladies and gentlemen! Feast your eyes on a spectacle that will boggle your mind: A home office in total, complete, and overwhelming chaos!!
But that’s okay. As we write this, we know that our “Before” pictures actually have their bright ‘n sparkly “After” counterparts. Sure, it’s 41 hours after we had hoped to be done. Sure, it’s not ALL done. But by golly, it’s in a heck of a lot better shape than it was on Friday morning, September 1st, when we entered the belly of the beast.
If you’re not familiar with “The Clean Sweep Challenge,” it’s born out of the mind of Melanie Benson Strick, the “Entrepreneur’s Success Coach” and the moxie behind SuccessConnections.com. We had the privilege of meeting Melanie at Adam Urbanski’s “Attract Clients Like Crazy” bootcamp back in April, and her programs have been a huge part of our business-overhaul-in-progress this year.
In Melanie’s own words, here’s what The Clean Sweep Challenege is all about:
The Clean Sweep Challenge is a program that allows you to completely handle those nagging tasks, incomplete projects and energy drains that you have been putting up with. Taking part in the Clean Sweep Challenge on September 1st, 2006 will allow you to create more energy, focus and momentum on the things that really count!
We have no doubt this is going to be an annual event for us and thousands of other entrepreneurs who need to clear the engines for the final push to the profitable year-end finish line. We have definitely adopted the “September is the new January” mantra around here, because now’s the time that we entrepreneurs make good on the goals we pitched to ourselves so long ago, when we still had egg-nog breath and New Year’s Eve confetti in our hair.
So here we are: The “Before” pictures!
And here are the glorious “After” photos!!!
We’ve still got the closets and the stuff inside the file cabinets, but there’s a sense of gleeful anticipation about that. Especially after seeing how painless it is to throw things out (four 30-gallon trash bags’ worth - no less than 100 pounds of crap!) when they’re not aligned with our high-payoff goals.
Thanks for putting this together, Melanie! We’ve already been inspired to make better filing systems, beautiful family photo collages, and to donate several boxes of books and office supplies to our local Goodwill store.
And coming into our office is, for the first time in eight months, an absolute pleasure!
Oh, and by the way, as we were cleaning out the massive amounts of clutter on Friday, we got phone calls for not one, but two new client projects. Coincidence?
Hmmmmm…we don’t think so.
[...] « The 2006 Clean Sweep Challenge! [...]
Pingback by Epiphanies, Inc. — September 4, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
[...] As someone who’s been downright depressed for never being able to keep a clean desk for more than a millisecond (this Herculean feat of forced clutter control broke records by lasting for two days!), this anarchical idea is DIVINE. [...]
Pingback by Epiphanies, Inc. — January 11, 2007 @ 5:03 pm
[...] Now, last year we joined in the challenge, and the following week was the biggest financial week we’d ever had to that point - over $6,000 in income, and it was a Labor-Day-shortened week! [...]
Pingback by Epiphanies, Inc. — October 4, 2007 @ 12:32 pm