Anyone who's ever stepped foot inside my room or inside my classroom... or, well, even inside my car will immediately know that I'm not the clean type. Oh, what gave it away? I guess it depends where you are. Was it the mountain of clothing and bags? (room) The piles and piles of papers hiding my desk? (classroom) Perhaps, balled up gum and food wrappers in the middle console? (car) Or the eighth-inch-thick skin of dust covering all surfaces? (also car) Perhaps you were even in one of those locations with me while I was trying to locate something I'd misplaced. Hey, it happens.
By the way, has anyone seen my driver's license? No really, I lost it this week.
Lately, I've really enjoyed thinking of myself as a neat and orderly woman stuck in a lazy person's body. I think that might be closer to the truth than any other explanation. I say this because there are two major types of cluttered people: (1) There are the cluttered people who are not bothered by clutter and (2) there are people whose brains feel cluttered when the physical space around them is cluttered.
I am the second type.
Clutter for me, then, represents two realms: environmental and mental.
Clearing environmental clutter is easy. You pick $#@& up.
Clearing mental clutter is a whole different ballgame. In fact, although it may seem in my case that clearing my mental clutter is wholly dependent on first clearing environmental clutter, that is not true. While this helps, for sure, it isn't the only factor. I have this candle that says the following: Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Sounds awesome, right? Definitely. Here's how I do it. One word. Yoga.
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Cool New Project #1: Decluttering My Mind
Mental Objectives:
(1) Practice forty-five minutes to an hour of yoga daily.
Environmental Objectives: (1) Take "before" pictures of a couple physical spaces that are cluttered, and analyze them here. (2) Pick $#@& up. (3) Take "after" pictures and describe my experience/process of decluttering. (4) Develop plans to keep those areas clutter free moving forward.
Timeline: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Possible Roadblocks: Laziness, cool summer activities, procrastination.
If you would like to join me, pick a mental/environmental area of your life that you would like to declutter this week and post comments about your progress below.
Or you can simply post words of encouragement.
Kristy
Keeping order is a discipline and skill indeed. It requires constant vigilance and effort. I find it difficult to keep up order when I have projects going on; the studio becomes a mess. But then when I am done, its cleanup time and its a great feeling seeing everything accounted for and slag heaps eliminated. And some lost items found! Good luck!
ReplyDelete"Slag heaps"... yeah, that's what I've got. And I agree. When things get busy, organization goes out the window for me. Just when I need it the most, ironically.
ReplyDeleteI love your "Lesson Plan"-esque way of approaching this. :-) And I'm so impressed with your summer motivation! I have a list of things I've been compling for my summer off and it consists of lame things like, "vacuum under the fridge" and "put movie on my Netflix queue that I missed this year" and so on. Ha! Good luck, I'll definitely check in on how it goes.
ReplyDeleteThanks, A! Hey, props to you... I've NEVER vacuumed under a fridge. EVER. Perhaps this means that you are past the basics of putting "pick up dirty socks from the living room floor" sorts of reminders on your lists. Bravo!
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