Happy New Year Viphilus*
I don’t know whether or not
you are a New Year’s resolution kinda person or not. Even those who aren’t still often
see January as an opportunity to get a fresh start. Whether or not that is you,
I invite you to join me for a one month fresh-start
throughout January.
This week I want to talk
about DE-CLUTTERING.
(ironically …. I no sooner
typed the line that you just read when I got my weekly e-flyer from Staples
promoting their Storage Event to help everyone “Conquer the Clutter”)
The battle against clutter
is a battle against disorganization, frustration and chaos. Most people,
however, discern neither the real root problem nor the underlying root cause.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit first.
Clutter is something that
Deb and I have struggled with our entire married life. Like all married couples
we each bring strengths and weaknesses to our partnership. One of Deb’s
weaknesses is her propensity to be disorderly and disorganized. One of my
strengths is to be orderly and organized. [we won’t discuss my faults right now
… other than my struggle with the pot & kettle thing – please chuckle at
least at that]. One the surface of things this should mean that my strength
should help offset her weakness and I can help her. Ha ha ha ha ha If life were only that simple. We are actually MUCH better at the
clutter/chaos thing now than we have ever been, but it took things like being
empty-nesters, my retirement, trying to sell our house for over a year,
entertaining guests once or twice each week (etc.) to enable or force us to keep our home organized. It
has also taken some more extreme measures, like doing two huge purges over the
last 15 years; once we had professional junk movers haul away 7,000 lbs of
STUFF … and another occasion, Deb’s ladies’ group from church did a gentle
intervention and just showed up for an entire day to help us purge (pictured below).
Why did I tell you all that?
To display my/our experience with the power that clutter can have over you to
weigh you down emotionally. Clutter is the sign
of a dysfunctional mind and WILL create anxiety. Bottom line: I know what I’m
talking about.
Oh … and to get back to the
pot calling the kettle black … my propensity for being organized and orderly has
greyed out over the years and I have become more like Deb. For years I blamed
her for that, but that was just me playing the victim. I mean, there’s no way
that I was prepared to blame myself for devolving to her dysfunctional ways, so
it had to be “her fault.” Ha ha ha
ha Man, I was so immature back then.
Nope, my devolution was my own doing … I got lazy. But the happy news is that we are way better
now, but we are still a work in progress. What I’d like to share today is what
we’ve learned about this: TOGETHER.
We see people all around us
are crying out for order and harmony and balance in their lives because they
recognize that chaos is ruling and ruining them. Feng shui schools have become all the rage to teach us Westerners
the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement
of space to achieve harmony with our environment. Why? Because proponents claim
that feng shui has an effect on
health, wealth, and personal relationships; and you know what … there is
something to this. Organizations to help us organize and de-clutter our lives
have become very popular and successful and they can give us some valuable
tips. [For a couple of good examples, check out www.lifeorganizers.com and www.clutterbusters.ca.]
The root problem is
hurry-sickness (I touched briefly on this last March 23 when discussing the results of hurry-sickness); many people feel that they have neither the time nor the energy
to maintain an orderly home or workspace. But those excuses are simply the
result of living a hurried life (not to be confused with a busy life). And the underlying root cause of hurry-sickness? A disordered and disintegrated
heart. That’s why psychologists list clutter as an emotional disorder … a
mental illness. Therefore, our battle is not against clutter … the real battle
is to order and integrate the heart. Our emotional well-being is integral (part
of the integrated whole) to a fully functioning character … and ignoring our
emotional side (heart) will lead to the disintegration of our character.
Your actions follow your
heart, but as Aristotle pointed out, your heart also follows your actions: “You
are what you repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” You
must train your mind, heart, body and spirit through simple actions … as simple
as de-cluttering. In order to beat clutter in your life, you need simple actions that you blindly obey. Deb and I offer the following to
you as a first step ... but maybe you can think about it as a prime directive: a Prime Directive regarding clutter.
Cease setting things down in places that are
not their home
Your clutter is simply one
reflection of the disordered state of your heart and mind. Clutter around you
also feeds back into your mind and heart and opens the door for further
disorderliness, but on a deeper level. The following habits are easy-to-practice actions, which, when
they become fully-grown into life-habits, have the power to initiate other, more significant habits of orderliness.
4 RITUALS for DECLUTTERING
DECLUTTERING HABIT # 1
At the end of
each day – set aside 5 minutes to declutter / tidy
DECLUTTERING HABIT # 2
Once a week –
change your daily 5 minutes into 15 to tidy what your daily rituals missed
DECLUTTERING HABIT # 3
Once a month – change your weekly 15 minutes
into 45 to tidy what your weekly rituals missed
DECLUTTERING HABIT # 4
Once a year –
take a day to exorcise the excess
from your house and plan a better organizational strategy for your “things”
Don’t underestimate the value of these 4 actions, along with the prime directive, in your personal development and training.
I hope to see you back next
Monday.
Blessings Viphilus,
Your friend, Omega Man
* Viphilus means, "lover of life"
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