Planning

By this time of year many of those New Year’s Resolutions have gone by the wayside.  It’s time to review them again and decide which ones really matter to you.

It could be you had great expectations of what you would be able to change and accomplish this year.  After almost two months not much progress has been made so now you’re beating yourself up.  STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!

You do not deserve a beating.  What you do deserve is some self-compassion.

It’s hard to change some habits.  It’s hard to stay disciplined and motivated especially if our resolutions are very general and vague.  It could be you need to change the way you think about your resolutions and the actions you want to take to accomplish your goals.

Have you ever found yourself being so motivated to do something that you didn’t even think about what you had to do, you just did it? What was it that made you so motivated to begin with?

A few weeks ago I found myself motivated enough to clean up an area of my finished basement without all the stress and procrastination I had been using to avoid it. I had invited some friends over for Super bowl weekend.  Our finished basement has a big screen TV on one side of the steps and on the other side is a table and old kitchen cabinets lining the walls.  This is my sewing and craft area.  It also had become a dumping place for many things that I didn’t know where to put them or I was too lazy to put them away in their proper place.

Anyway, I knew I would be highly embarrassed to have my friends see this mess.  After all, I write about decluttering/organization and here was this disastrous mess!

Hey, I’m the first to admit I’m not perfect but this mess was just plain out of control. So to avoid any embarrassment I was highly motivated to clean up the mess before they came over.  The storage room has a door I can close so a lot of the stuff went in there. Now I’ll need to tackle that area but at least my friends didn’t see it! An added benefit is now I can actually use the sewing area to sew things.

I was talking to a friend recently and she too found motivation to clean up her finished basement. Her husband was babysitting their young grandson one day.  He later told my friend that he would love to play with the grandson in the basement area but it was too messy and not safe for him. That motivated her to finally take the action to clean up the area.

We both found a motivating factor that made it easier to take the actions needed.  Mine was having company over and not wanting to be embarrassed by the mess.  Hers was having a safe and better place for her grandson to play.

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a strong motivating factor.  Just wanting to have a decluttered house probably isn’t going to motivate you to take action.  Having company over for a holiday dinner might be.

So instead of beating yourself up for not taking actions on your New Year’s resolutions try to find a motivating factor that will make you take the actions needed. Start small with something like cleaning off the dinner table so the whole family can sit down together.  Getting your kitchen cabinets organized could eliminate frustration when asking your family to help prepare the meals. It will be easier and more fun for them if they can find the right bowl or pan without having to dig through a messing cabinet.

As much as we should be motivated to do things for our own pleasure or safety I find it usually is easier to take action if the motivating factor involves the pleasure or safety of someone else, not just myself. I’m not sure if this is human nature, cultural, or family upbringing.  It really doesn’t matter.  The more you take action to declutter and organize your home not only will your family benefit, you will also reap the benefits.

It’s a building process. The more actions you take the more you will want to continue to take actions. Discipline by its self is the hard way. Find a good reason to motivate yourself to take one particular action. When that is done find another good reason or motivating factor to take another action.

To a lighter load along the way.

Janice

January is a good month to evaluate our lives and plan out what we want to change in the coming year.  Change is not always easy but it can help us clear the clutter from our lives. We have to learn how to say “no” to clutter and “yes” to living.

When we are young children we usually start declaring our independence by shouting the word “no” to our parents when they tell us to do something we don’t want to do.  Early on we are taught that it’s okay for parents to say “no” to us but not okay for us to say “no” to them.  We usually outgrow this feeling of unfairness and understand that they were just trying to teach us how to act and behave.

I believe that sometimes when we surround ourselves with so much stuff because we are rebelling against all those adults who said “no” to us when we were young. Even when we recognize that we have a problem it’s hard to get rid of the clutter because that little voice in our head from so long ago is saying they are right and we are wrong. We can’t let that happen so we hold onto our clutter just to prove that voice wrong even if we are miserable.

The word “no” is such a powerful word. When used in the right situation it can give us the freedom to enjoy the true beauty that comes into our lives.  If we are always smothered with clutter it will be hard to even recognize this beauty much less enjoy it.

There are all kinds of clutter that can build up in our homes and our lives.  There is the physical clutter we are all familiar with. These things can easily take over our homes if we don’t control them.

Then there are the kinds of clutter that are not so visible to us. Yet these kinds of clutter can take over our lives and smother us even more than the physical clutter.

These may include all the activities we get involved in with the hope they will enrich our lives. They also may include some of the people in our lives and the relationship we have with them.

Many of the following activities and relationships do enrich our lives. Many may have started out that way but no longer make us feel good.  Only you can decide which ones are clutter. Some will be easy to declutter once you decide you want to do it. Others won’t be so easy. Review the list below. After it I will give you some suggestions on to use this list to start decluttering your life.

Activities:

1. Organizations you volunteered for.
2. Groups you joined such as book clubs, garden clubs, etc.
3. Classes you signed up for such as exercise, craft, self-improvement, or a formal education class.
4. Activities you signed you children up for that involves your participation; sports, dance, Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, after school activities, etc.
5. Any hobbies you have.

Relationships:

1. Family members.
2. Friends.
3. Neighbors.
4. People from your children’s school – teachers, committees, PTA, room mothers, etc.
5. People from your church or temple.

The best way to start figuring out which activities are clutter is to take a notebook and start listing all of them you and your family are involved with. Sometimes we don’t even realize how many activities we are involved in until we see the list written down. If your list is long it’s no wonder you probably feel overwhelmed and over burdened.

Examine this list carefully and figure out which things you can start saying “no” to. If you can’t say “no” to anything just yet don’t worry. Keep this list available and review often. Eventually you’ll recognize which things can go and how to declutter them.  I’ll talk more about this in future blog posts.

Regarding relationships you’ll want to make a list of all the people you know by the categories above. Again, once you write these down you will recognize some relationships that are clutter in your life. Of course it’s a lot harder to declutter people but there may be a few that aren’t as hard as you think. I’ll talk about some ideas that have worked for me and others in future blog posts.  Right now just review the list and start recognizing those people that cause you stress or bring negativity into your life.

We can go through life on auto-pilot or we can take charge and sit in the driver’s seat.  We can learn to say “yes” to those activities and relationships that make us smile and feel good about our lives. We can also learn to say “no” to those activities and relationships that smother us under a pile of clutter.

Start the year off by taking charge and write down all the activities and people in your life. This will give you a check list from which you can decide what and who can be scratched off of the list. This is just the starting place. Give yourself time to make the decisions.

To a lighter load along the way.

Janice