Clear the Clutter

Picture walking into your house at the end of a long day and finding everything in its place.  Take in the calm scene that welcomes you home.  No breakfast dishes or coffee cups parked in the sink, no unmade bed, no laundry piling up, no bills or mail taking over the kitchen counter.  Now, what is the feeling that you get from the visual calm?

The fact of the matter is many of us need more order in our lives.  The visual clutter, the physical clutter, the work that it suggests actually produce stress.   Not finding shoes or not having a clean space to work in the kitchen makes us feel scattered and frustrated.  Negative feelings do not create good habits.  Couple those negative feelings with overwhelming feelings of dread that there is too much to do, and we end up doing nothing.  We give up before we even start.

This is not to suggest that we can't have things around that make us feel grounded.  Photos or momentos of favorite vacations are anchors to the people and things that make us happy.  We want those reminders. What I am talking about is the stuff of life that takes up physical space in your house, in your car, in your work space that makes it harder to live your life.

Instead of being overwhelmed that there is no good place to start, we can just spend ten minutes clearing out something.  This can be a drawer, the glove compartment of the car, the bottom of a closet.  By starting small, we won't dread the job.  It is not too big.  We aren't tackling twenty years of accumulation in the basement in one afternoon.  What we are doing is lightening the load.  The good feelings that come from making an effort and seeing some results will give us a feeling of accomplishment.  That feeling makes us feel like we can do more good things.

Self improvement, healthy lifestyle, less cluttered living--it's a work in progress.  There will be no perfection here because life itself is messy.  Good news--we are looking for progress.   Feeling like you are on the road to self improvement is so much better than feeling like you are stuck in the on-ramp and don't know what to do or where to go.   You do know.  Set a timer for ten minutes and lighten your load so that you can de-stress.  Lighten your load so that you have more room in your mind to take care of yourself.  Lighten your load so you have perspective on what really matters.  Lighten your load so you feel you are in control of your life.