Stop the Clutter!

I came home last night and completely lost it. You know what I mean by “lost it”; where the ugly twisted sister, that you stuff way deep down within, rears its ugly head. It’s never a pretty picture. But it happens to the best of us if we’re not careful.

Against my better judgment I made a late night grocery run in -15 degree wind chills, which added to the excitement I’m sure. By the time I got home I was tired and chilled straight through to the bone. I walked into the kitchen, and there it was…the island counter of clutter that had been staring me in the face for almost two weeks. I’m sure you can picture it; where you almost have to remind yourself that yes, there is a countertop under there. And when you look at it you kind of tilt your head and think, “There must be some sort of space vacuum occurring here to support this type of balance.”

How do countertops get that way? Most of us have them; the one counter area in the house that’s a catch-all for all the items that we need, maybe need, or might need someday. Heck, there’s probably even stuff there for the shear reason we needed a pit stop on the way to the garbage. And before you know it, you can’t find your counter. It’s gone.

For someone like me, this was a recipe for disaster. Clutter has never been my friend. So why was the mess still there? Who knows? I’m sure I was busy, or lazy, or didn’t feel like spending 2 hours cleaning it up…again. Strangely enough I seem to be the only one in the household bothered by this particular type mess.

This monstrosity had been sucking my energy to live! I couldn’t think straight, I felt depleted, it was hindering the potential of my kitchen, and it was draining my positive energy. But in what must have been my cloudy thinking I made the choice to leave it there. So there it sat, eating away at me…for two long weeks. I’m not sure why it seemed like such a surprise that it was still there when I arrived home. Did I really expect that it would have magically cleaned itself?

So I sent my husband to bed (it would be better for him to not be around for this) and I dove in to finally clean the mess. How I had built the job up in my mind to be a 2-hour ordeal, I’ll never know. Just ten minutes later (yes, it took me a grand total of 10 minutes) the mess was clean and I was sane again. Ten minutes well spent!

What clutter do you have in your life? By tackling this clutter head-on could you free up your energy and harness new power? What shift would occur by focusing just 10 minutes on one area? There’s only one way to find out. Now roll up those sleeves…

Becky,
Sister of Soul

Soulspiration of the Week:

"Clutter is stuck energy.  The word "clutter" derives from the Middle English word "clotter," which means to coagulate - and that's about as stuck as you can get." ~Karen Kingston

Spring Cleaning Your Life Continues with the Junk Drawer

Bear with me here as I continue on the topic of spring cleaning for one more week…

My husband and I tried to jump on the “spring cleaning” bandwagon last week. We worked diligently on things for a day and that’s about how long it lasted. While picking up some random clutter I gathered things into the palm of my hand and headed for the “junk drawer”.

We all have them – a place to keep the things we don’t know where to keep. I pulled open the drawer; it opened about an inch and then stopped. It was jammed.

Don’t you hate when that happens? You stuff so much into a drawer that it doesn’t even open anymore. And this time it didn’t even open far enough to stuff my fingers inside, in hopes that I could loosen the jam. My husband came around the corner as I was cursing “the stupid drawer”, as if it was the drawer’s fault that we had jammed too much into it. And then I stopped, looked at my husband, and said, “This is the subject of my next blog!” He looked at me kinda crazy-like – but I’ve come to learn that when I get a crazy look from my husband, I’ve usually got a good idea!

Our lives sometimes become a “junk drawer”. We allow others to stuff us full with their schedules, their needs, and their plans. And just like a junk drawer, we rarely notice there’s a problem until things don’t work anymore. We feel unmotivated, unfulfilled, stressed, and just plain unhappy. You see, when a junk drawer gets too full, it doesn’t work anymore. And so it is with our life; we keep cramming and cramming until we reach a breaking point.

So what do we do when the junk drawer gets too full? We stop and take an assessment. What items are necessary and which are not? What belongs in a different area of the house? We need to do the same assessment with our own lives. What schedule hogs are really necessary? What could we probably say “no” to? Just as we need to prioritize what gets a space in a junk drawer, we need to also prioritize what gets a space in our lives.

Becky,
Sister of Soul

Soulspiration of the Week:
“Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.” ~Unknown

What Does Your Purse Say About You?

They come in all shapes, colors, and sizes these days. Gone are the times of the one size fits all, in your favorite shade of brown or black. Most women own more than one and they switch them out like their shoes to accent their personality, outfit, or mood of the day.

A few days ago my girlfriend hurriedly burst into the office, plunked her purse on the table and declared, “Look at this…This purse represents my life!” It didn’t take much pondering to realize what it was she was talking about. Her purse…was a disaster. Although, I didn’t think of her life in that way, her purse on the other hand was stuffed to overflowing; receipts, papers, and notes spilling out over the top. Normally a narrow oblong form, it had now taken on more of an almond shape; narrow at the ends and wider in the middle. Stuffed so full it was way past the point of ever being zipped again. She was eating healthy that day however; the two oranges that she had balanced on the top of her purse had rolled off onto the table. We exchanged a quick laugh and she was off to her meeting.

My thoughts quickly moved to my own purse . . . my everyday purse is more on the larger size. That just means that I can cram more stuff into it before it spills over the top. If I took everything that I had in my purse at that moment and tried to stuff it into my girlfriend’s purse it would’ve looked much the same as hers; exploding and unorganized. But I never thought about whether it represents my life or not.

I suppose that perception could go for anything … the way we keep our desks, our cars, our bedrooms, our homes, our lives. I came home that day and weeded through the items in my purse. I was afraid what I might find. I’ve been known to win many a prize playing the ever-popular party game, “What’s The Most Unusual Thing In Your Purse”. I was able to trash 3 pens that didn’t work, an old grocery list from 3 weeks ago, an “I Voted” sticker from last year, a broken piece of jewelry, and numerous receipts, wrappers, and reminders that I no longer needed. I put everything else back in my purse in the most organized fashion I could and quickly planned to move on to my desk next.

Take some time during this first week of spring to clean out the parts of your life that really need it. The disorder that can pile up and make your life feel unorganized and overwhelming can be hiding in the most common places; the magazine rack, the front door catch-all basket, the garage, your email inbox, your computer desktop, and of course your purse. My challenge to you is to start with your purse and move out from there. Oh, and I’m curious to know, what’s the most unusual item you found in your purse? If I find it to indeed be odd, there’s a prize in it for you! We’ll be tracking responses under the comments here on our blog, as well as on our Facebook fan page (hey, drop by and become a fan!).

Jenny,
Sister of Soul

Soul-spiration of the Week:
"Being clear of clutter is one of the greatest aids I know to discovering and manifesting the life you want." ~Karen Kingston