Declutter Me

Writing this to you is based on a bad (although it turned out to be great) review of my book What If I Don’t Have Enough? The person was exasperated that this was just another decluttering book and blah de blah. This made me think that my readers need context, and they need to understand where I am coming from. Otherwise, this is just another bookabout clutter.

Let me explain. I am busy, and I am a slight bit lazy; I think big and fast, and I am a tad sentimental. I love stuff and people and beautiful things. Whether it is written beauty,created splendour, or botanical artefacts (okay, shells, feathers, sticks, and rocks). I do not hoard and detest chaos; I need an organized yet inviting, highly personal but classically put-together environment to do my creative magic. To be comfortable and content, my world must represent my neat, organized, and highly individualistic personality. That is my definition of being uncluttered and at peace. What is your definition?

The reason that I share this with you has everything to do with clutter. In all my years on earth, I have wasted many years being uncomfortable in my skin and world. I spent decades trying to be like my mother, being more like my sisters, and focusing on what I thought my husband wanted from me.

Let me share this incident with you. I come around the corner of my local grocery store ten minutes before I must pick up my kids from school. The trolley is stacked high, and I am clutching some breakfast cereal under my arm; it keeps falling off the top of the trolley. I am met by my friend, who also needs to pick up her kids from school in 10 minutes. Her trolley is the epitome of order and structure; it looks like she has been playing Tetris with her groceries. Everything fits into the perfect space. That specific incident and my perceived idea that there was the tiniest smirk on her face haunted me for years. Why couldn’t I be asorganized and detail orientated as others? What was wrong with me?

My inner conversation always focused on how others did things and where my efforts fellshort of my perceived idea of excellence. Much of this perception was based on the media,but if I must be honest, even more of this negative self-talk was fuelled by my insecurities. Ihad a very organized mother who based her household on the standards she was taught inthe 1950s by her mother. My sisters have vastly different personalities than me, and nobodycriticized me for how I did things. I was my own most prominent critic.

Please do not get me wrong. I am all for being organized and neat, and well-prepared in all circumstances. When it comes to these circumstances, I believe it is essential to spend a moment and pause and reflect. My life is a unique set of facts and fantasy. My household and my family’s needs are much different from anybody else's, and nobody knows what my family and I need better than we do.

This is where I believe the trouble starts. Do we know what we want and what we are prepared to do to achieve these goals? To do that, I propose that we need to know ourselves well, and we would have to be prepared to own our own life without superimposing social or emotional expectations on our lives. We must determine what we want, why we want it, and what we are prepared to do to achieve it.

In my life, I need to accommodate many children with very diverse needs, including my child with special needs. Our lifestyle includes challenges that are very different from anything,even my extended family experience. We all need to spend some time assessing our needs and wants. Even more importantly, we need to accept our advantages and limitations.When we get to this point, it is much easier to determine what can and cannot be done. And even more important than what we must do is what we want to do. Yes, you read it right;you have a choice; you have the freedom to decide what you want to do with your environment and your life. The downside is that these decisions all have consequences. The consequences of our choices are something to be considered; otherwise, it leads to discontentment and emotional clutter or noise.

When I say: “declutter me,” I mean that we have an obligation towards ourselves and our loved ones to spend time to demuddle (my word) our minds and unpack our emotions around the why, what, where, and how’s of our unique environment. This is my understanding of living with intention. This is where I believe a unique tribe develops and where you disengage from the faceless masses that sheepishly follow the latest trend or guru. When this is done, a few decisions and a bit of self-disciple bring us much closer to a place of peace, freedom, and happiness in our life.