Birthing the New

There’s something new being born in my life.  I know this because I’ve felt the desire to go through my house and office looking for things that need a new home – the items that represent the past that need to go.

• You know when something new is trying to come into your life when:
• You feel ready to release the energetic weight of stuff sitting on your shoulders.
• You know, on some level, that your life today has outgrown your life of yesterday.
• You feel overwhelmed by the sight of things you no longer love or need.
• You intentionally avoid or ignore the areas in your home or office that feel cluttered, disorganized, or messy.
• You can’t seem to find the time or energy to invest in new ideas or directions.

I’ve known for a year that I needed to handle some things – the books that no longer fit in our library, the stuff left in our garage from the move five years ago, and a room in our basement filled with unused construction material.  With my busy travel schedule, I’ve had the perfect excuse to put these projects on hold.  But eventually the energetic burden takes it toll.  I know I can’t move forward without going back and letting go.

So, what makes it easier to make physical and energetic space?  Here’s what I learned this time…

• Understanding that physical stuff holds old energy that prevents evolution.  If you don’t release the things you no longer love or use, you can’t fully grow into your next stage.
• Remembering how free and exciting it feels to see an empty room, clean closets, or spacious, organized shelves.
• Recognizing that clearing out the old is a fundamental step in our personal growth therefore time for cleaning and clearing needs to be scheduled so these projects receive the attention they deserve.
• Energetic, loving, and motivated friends who are willing to help makes the process fun, easy, and infinitely more enjoyable.
• Having the perfect place to donate the things you no longer use, need, or love inspires you to let go of more than you think you can.
• Giving your treasured items to treasured people.

Finally, one of the benefits of getting older is the recognition that time is precious. While in the past it might have been easy to go through a stack of books and think, “someday I may want to read these,” you realize that someday is a limited time frame.  It’s how you spend “right now” that really matters.

A few minutes ago I returned from delivering a truckload of items to our local thrift store – a nonprofit organization that shares revenue with food pantries and homeless shelters.  I love giving to these people – they’re excited, grateful and anxious to help in any way they can.

I know I’m preparing to give birth and the de-cluttering process is a necessary step in that direction.  Care to join me?

Life Makeover for the Year 2012(sm) is written and produced by Cheryl Richardson.© Copyright 1999-2012 Cheryl Richardson,P.O. Box 13,Newburyport, MA01950,  www.cherylrichardson.com. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

1. Go on a tour around the house and take notice of all your belongings. Ask yourself – do I love it, do I need it, is it useful? If you can’t answer YES to just one of these questions it’s time to go. If undecided, pop it in a “maybe” box to decide again in six months time.
2. “It may come in handy one day” or “It was a gift from my mother/best friend/dead grandmother” are common excuses you need to overcome. If you really need something “one day” then I am sure you will be able to buy it again if and when that time comes. If the item was a gift and you are feeling guilty, change that feeling to one of gratitude and generosity and then pass the item on to someone who really does need it or will love it and use it. Feel free to take a photo of it so you will still have the memory, without the stuff.
3. Sort the items into piles, putting “like” with “like”. Make a Keep pile, a Donate/Sell pile and a Garbage/Recycle pile. Once the items are sorted into these three groups, go through the Keep pile and start sorting again into categories of items that are similar ie stationery, books, shoes etc. This makes it easier to see how many of the same items you have (and no one needs three potato peelers).
4. Get the kids involved with their toys – what have they outgrown or don’t play with anymore? Teach them the value in passing on to others who may not be as fortunate as them, or sell to make extra pocket money to save up for something they really love.
5. Kitchen items – empty utensil drawers and put in a box. Only remove items as you need them to cook. Anything you haven’t used in a month you can let go. And that goes for bigger items too – when was the last time you used that bread-maker? Don’t forget to check the pantry for any out of date ingredients too. If by chance you “may need it one day” then that is the day you can buy another one – but chances are you won’t. This usually applies to melon ballers and egg slicers.
6. Go through your wardrobe in preparation for the warmer weather. Pack away the winter woollies in airtight containers (don’t forget the moth and humidity protection). Anything you didn’t wear last spring/summer – out it goes! Donate to favourite charity or have a swap party with girlfriends.
7. Options to get rid of clutter for good: call Vinnies or Lifeline, hold a garage sale with neighbours or friends, sell things of value on eBay or put an ad in the local paper, and check out consignment stores for good label clothing. “Dress for Success” www.dressforsuccess.org is a great charity to donate your business clothing, shoes & accessories as they help underprivileged women find work. Even leaving items out the front of your home with a “Free” sign works wonders. One man’s trash…
8. Do a little at a time –Romewasn’t built in a day and if you try to do too much at once you will soon tire and get disillusioned. And little rewards along the way help to keep you motivated (think cuppa & chocolate cake!)
9. Don’t tackle it all on your own – ask for help! Decluttering your home can be quite overwhelming and an extra pair of hands can make all the difference. Make sure the kids pitch in and do their share too! Better still, enlist the services of a professional organiser who can help to ensure you won’t be cluttered again!
10. Celebrate your new home – buy fresh flowers and candles, invite friends and family over for a spring bbq or dinner party and enjoy showing off all your hard work!

Every January, people rush out and get a gym membership, set a list of goals or resolutions, and get ready to take on a new year of frenetic activity.

Unfortunately, we don’t often clear space to make room for all this new stuff.

The beginning of the year is a great time for renewal of energy and taking on the things we’ve always wanted to tackle — clutter, fitness, work we’re passionate about, debt, and so on. But it’s also a great time to clear out your life, starting out the year on a blank page that’s ready to be filled.

While everyone’s life is different, I’ll share some of what I do to clear out my life.

• Review the year to think about what I learned, what mistakes I made, what I accomplished.
• Clear my schedule as much as possible. That often means saying no to people.
• Wrap up old projects, end commitments to people, so that my work plate is clearer than normal.
• Toss out old fitness and eating plans, to make room for new experiments.
• Clear my email inbox. If I haven’t answered the email recently, it’s probably not important, so I archive it. Act on or answer other emails, so that my inbox is emptied.
• Clear out other inboxes. That might be an inbox on a social network, or a list of things I wanted to do or read, or any kind of list really. File them away under someday, or delete or archive. Anything that’s taking some mental energy because I know I need to get to it, gets cleared.
• Clear my computer files. Usually this means deleting a bunch of files I don’t need, but I also just consolidate files into one folder or put them in an online archive (like in Dropbox).
• Clear paperwork. I rarely have any papers these days — I’ve slowly turned everything digital. But I still get things in the mail sometimes, so if I have any lying around, I dispose of them to clear out any remaining paperwork.
• Clear clutter. If there are areas that have become cluttered, I clear them out. Often it just means taking a box or bag of things that I’ve been meaning to donate to Goodwill.
• Clear my errands. I’ll make a list of all the errands I’ve been putting off, and do them in one afternoon.
• Clear my finances. I’ll take a few minutes to review my checking and savings accounts, Paypal, investments, etc. and make sure everything is in order. If there are little things that need taking care of, I do them so that my mind is cleared.
• Clear pantry and refrigerator of junk. Old crap that’s been lying around. Junk food if there’s any there (I don’t usually have any anymore, but I used to). Left with just good whole ingredients for healthy foods.

This might take a couple days, working off and on in little bits. For some, it might take longer. But when you’re done, it’s amazing. Your mind is clear and refreshed. You feel like you’re ready to take on anything. To be honest, I do these things regularly throughout the year, and it’s great to keep a clean slate most of the time. But the new year is always a perfect opportunity to clear everything at once.

Hear Hear Leo!

Read the original post from Zen Habits here: http://zenhabits.net/clear/

How is clutter your crutch in life?

This is such an important topic – why do we rely upon our clutter. Does it make us feel good, does it hold memories (good and bad), or is it just a habit we can’t break? Zen Habits recently posted an article on this very topic that I thought I would share:

Clutter isn’t an easy problem to solve, no matter how many times you may try to toss it out, or know that you don’t need it.

A book isn’t just an object with words on it. A jewelry box isn’t just a container. Clothes aren’t just protection from the elements.

Each of these inanimate objects means so much more to us.

We put our emotions into them. We rely upon these objects to fulfill needs in us.

They are our crutches.

These crutches are convenient, because they save us from having to learn to cope with tough things. We’ve relied on these crutches often since childhood, and our culture has programmed them into us. If I point them out, some of you may get angry at me. That’s OK. Anger is an appropriate response — I’ve felt it myself when these issues came up in me.

What are we to do when we discover these crutches? We can’t just toss them out and think we’re done. We have to find new ways of dealing with our emotions and the world around us.

The 8 roles of clutter:

These aren’t all true for every person, but I’ve found they’re very common:

1. Security. When we have lots of stuff around us, we feel more secure. Somehow it’s as if we can survive the apocalyptic winter, or at least an earthquake or economic recession.

New habit: Learn to combat fears with information. What’s the worst-case scenario? What could you do in that case even without the items around you? Do you have people you could rely on? Can you learn skills that don’t require clutter? Could you live without? Try it for a little while and see.

2. Self image and self worth. Clothes and jewelry and shoes and handbags make women feel pretty, feel attractive, feel good enough as a woman. Men rely on clothes, gadgets, hats and other accessories, tools, sometimes weaponry. We feel manly and good enough. Buying these things — shopping — is an activity that fills us with more self-worth, or at least staves off the feelings of inadequacy.

New habit: Learn that you don’t need external objects to be attractive or good enough. You are already perfect. Learn to love yourself as you are, without self improvement. Most people aren’t judging you, and if they are, they are not good for you.

3. Memories and holding on to the past. Photo albums, mementos, gifts from loved ones, yearbooks and other school memorabilia, souvenirs, books, trophies, plaques, framed photos, sometimes old clothes … these objects and more hold emotions and memories from the past. They represent good times, perhaps better times, perhaps love from someone special, past glory, shared experiences. But this is living in the past, and while the past is important, it isn’t your life.

New habit: Learn to live in the present. Let the past go, like an old friend who has come to visit and has now left. You can always revisit this old friend later, but there’s no need to hold onto her. Let her live her life, and you live yours. You don’t need objects to represent memories and good times and glory, because those objects aren’t those good times or glory. Those objects aren’t the love that they represent. Live new good times, make new love.

Read about the next 5 roles of clutter here: http://zenhabits.net/crutches/

Which direction will you choose?

Last weekend I went to a master class where we learnt to breakthrough our fears and leave bad or unproductive habits behind. And lo and behold, Leo from Zen Habits writes a post on the very thing – he must be reading my mind!

Here are the 5 steps that he suggests can overcome beating our bad habits:

1. Figure out what your trigger is. Every habit has a trigger — something in our routine that directly precedes the habit. For smoking, I used to have multiple triggers — drinking coffee, eating a meal, stress, drinking alcohol with friends, meetings, waking up in the morning, etc.

2. Find a replacement habit. A small, positive habit to replace the old habit. Ideally it fills at least some of the needs of the old habit. Start very, very small in the beginning or you’ll be facing an uphill battle. If you want to write morning pages, don’t try to write three long-hand pages — do just five minutes. If it’s small, you beat the obstacle of dreading to do the new habit. When you check email, for example, you don’t say, “I’m going to do an hour of email now!” You say, “I’ll just check it for a second.” It often turns into more, but the point is there is a very low entry barrier.

3. Engineer positive & negative feedback. If positive feedback has built up your old habit, and negative feedback is stopping you from quitting the old habit, you need to make these powerful forces work for you and not against you. You can’t beat them, so use them. Engineer positive feedback for your new habit: make the writing (for example) really enjoyable, with a cup of coffee and a quiet, peaceful setting, and focus on the enjoyability of it, not the hard parts. If you want to meditate, focus on how relaxed it makes you, not how difficult it is.

Do the same for negative feedback for not doing the new habit. If you don’t do the new habit, what’s the consequence? Usually, nothing. You check email, feel a little guilty, but no one knows, nothing bad happens. So engineer a different consequence: tell the world (or a small group of friends) you’re going to change — announce it through Twitter, Facebook, G+, email, blog. And report your success (or failure) every single day. When the world is watching, you want to succeed. Have accountability partners. Don’t let yourself slide secretly.

4. Do the new habit immediately after the trigger, consistently. If you can do it for a month, you’ll probably have a new habit. A new habit is built by doing an action immediately after a trigger, repeatedly, for a certain number of repetitions. There is no set number — it depends on how easy the habit is (which is why I suggest starting as easy as possible) and how consistent you are in repeating it. Report to your accountability group after you do the habit.

5. Beat the urge to do the old habit. The urge will come, I guarantee you. This is where you say, “But I don’t have the willpower!” Yes, you do. Everyone does, but they just don’t know the tricks. I’m going to teach you the tricks so you have no excuses:

Continue reading the full article here: http://zenhabits.net/will/#more-8349

Take a minute and let it go...

A friend of mine just sent me this in an email and I thought it would be perfect to share with you my readers:

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, ‘How heavy is this glass of water?’ Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, ‘The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.’

He continued, ‘And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, The burden will become increasingly heavy: And we won’t be able to carry on. ‘

‘As with the glass of water, You have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.

So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down: don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, Let them down for a moment if you can.’

Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don’t pick it up again until after you’ve rested a while.

Downsizing with the Dalai Lama

Although I didn’t get to see the Dalai Lama when he was in Australia recently, a friend of mine gave me a little scroll that she bought at his event called “The Paradox Of Our Age”. I found the words so profound, I thought I would share them with you:

We have bigger houses but smaller families;

more conveniences, but less time;

We have more degrees, but less sense;

more knowledge, but less judgement;

more experts, but more problems;

more medicines, but less healthiness;

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.

We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies then ever, but have less communication;

We have become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;

Tall men but short character;

Steep profits but shallow relationships.

It’s a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Can we do without beautiful books?

I received this very interesting and thought provoking email from my sister-in-law in Sydney today who thought that I would find point No. 8 particularly interesting. And I did. But as I read each point I found myself thinking that apart from the TV, I have already done away with most of these items from my life already. How about you?

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term.  E-mail, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Cheque. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checques by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn’t read the newspaper. They certainly don’t subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music.

The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can’t wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you’re holding a gadget instead of a book.

 5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don’t need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they’ve always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It’s the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem.

The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is “catalogue items,” meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit.

7. Television.   Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they’re playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It’s time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. “Things” That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future… They may simply reside in “the cloud.” Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents.

Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest “cloud services.” That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud.. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.

In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That’s the good news. But, will you actually own any of this “stuff” or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big “Poof?” Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

 9. Privacy.   If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, “They” know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.. And “They” will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

All we will have that can’t be changed are memories…

Repeat after me "Ooommmmmmm"

Decluttering as meditation? Are you crazy? Actually no I am not and this is why I love what I do.

Decluttering is very much like a “doing” meditation – no sitting cross legged on the floor of course – but working through your “stuff” is a sort of therapy; one that will leave you very much on a high as you progress and achieve results.

Zen Habits wrote an article on this very topic would I thought I would share with you today:

Clutter is holding onto the past, or fear of the future

Why do we have clutter in the first place? Why do we keep it when we don’t really need it? Maybe we think we do need it — for two reasons:

1. We don’t want to let go of the past. Often clutter comes in the form of emotional attachment to objects that have significance to us. They might remind us of a loved one, or a vacation, or a special event like a birthday, funeral, graduation, etc. It might be a gift from someone. All of this is living in the past. I’m not saying we should forget about the past, but letting go of these objects (and they’re only objects, they’re not the events or loved ones themselves) … it is a way of releasing our hold on the past. It’s a way of living more in the present. I never forget the past, but it’s not a place I try to dwell.

2. We’re afraid of the future. Clutter might be things we think we might needsometime in the future. We hold on to them just in case. Over-packing for a trip is a good example — we bring more than we really need, just in case we need them. It’s the same in our houses — we have a ton of things we don’t really need or use, just in case. We’re afraid of being unprepared for the future, but the truth is we can never be totally prepared. We can’t control the outcome of the future, and trying to do so means that we’re never really living in the present moment. We’re always preparing for what might (or might not) come.

Look at your clutter carefully, one object at a time, and ask yourself why you’re holding onto each object. It’s probably for one of these two reasons, if you’re honest.

Btw, books are usually examples of one of these two reasons. We hold onto books we’ve already read, as trophies of our reading accomplishments. We hold onto books we might read in the future (but probably won’t), with the optimism that our future selves are going to be more amazing readers than we’ve ever been in the past. In truth, you only need three or four books — the ones you might read in the next month. Then after you’ve read those, donate those books to charity, and check out a few books from the library.

Let go of clutter to live mindfully

So if clutter is holding onto the past, and fearing the future … how can we live in the present instead?

I slowly get rid of clutter, and in doing so, I release my mind of these attachments and fears. It’s a liberating process. Clutter is the physical embodiment of these attachments and fears — emotional stuff that we don’t realize we have. By decluttering, we are clearing ourselves of these tangled webs.

And when I’ve gotten rid of clutter, I’m freed. I can forget about those things, and live instead in this moment. I can fully appreciate life as it happens, instead of looking back on what has happened before, or looking forward to what might happen later.

It’s of course possible to live in the moment even if you have clutter. There is no prerequisite to mindful living. But decluttering can be a beautiful process of helping ourselves let go of the things we don’t realize we’re holding on to.

Clutter as mindfulness practice

And so, as I declutter, not only am I freeing myself up to live in the present … I am living in the present during the process of decluttering.

It’s a form of zazen — which is sitting meditation, but at its core zazen is really a way to practice being mindful. It’s a way to prepare us for dealing mindfully with the rest of the things we do in life. And really, anything can be used as a way to practice mindfulness. I’ve often used running and walking, but also washing dishes and sweeping.

And decluttering is one of the best mindfulness practices, in my experience.

Read more here: http://zenhabits.net/zen-clutter/

That's the last one gone...

I have been asked to talk next month at a function for women who are around the age of empty nesters and my topic is going to be: Reclaiming your home after the children have gone.

Not having kids myself I can’t really relate to this topic, but I have two sisters who are going through this stage as we speak: one is quite depressed, while the other is jumping for joy!

So I have been doing some research and found this fabulous blog post called Views from the Empty Nest which pretty much summed up the syndrome quite well, from someone who is actually going through it herself ; take a read:

I wanted to discuss downsizing today. No, we are not selling everything off and moving, but I hate being taken by surprise, so I have started the process. It is painful. It is painful to let go of stuff because of the memories attached to these things, whether it is a book we read when she was little, or something she made in high school.

We have been on our property for almost 20 years. I can’t believe how all the nooks and crannies have filled up. I know what happened, we got busy living and enjoying life, and so we just didn’t deal with the stuff.

“What should I do with this?”  “I don’t know!” And so another thing would get put . . . in my office. Since my job ended, I haven’t used my office much. Still, it should not become a dumping ground for things without a home. It has become the room where everything gets shoved when we “clean house.” This past weekend I started working on clearing my office out so that I can work in there.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have a laptop. So why would I want my office back? Well, want to be able to do “office stuff” in my office–stuff like pay the bills and file them away, work on my ongoing education (taking some FREE tax preparation classes to perhaps become a volunteer tax preparer), work on my photographs, etc.

And I want to be able to leave my stuff out if I want. Right now, I schlep it all into the living room, do what needs to be done, and then schlep it all back into my office until the next time.

To get myself geared up for serious cleaning, I watch a few episodes of “Hoarders”.  A couple of things always come to mind:

1) We hold on to things because of the emotion: She was so cute in that.

2) We shop for comfort, for that adrenalin rush, for the thrill of a deal. And who knows, some day we might need it. We never do use “it”, so it sits on a shelf gathering dust.

3) We let our kids store stuff at home when they begin their voyage into the wide world, and 10 years later it is still in our garage. So, they come home and go through it, and say “Oh, just get rid of it.” So now it is my job–my time, my effort– to get rid of their stuff. (Learning to say “E-bay” for this and “it is yours, you deal with it”)

4) Also, older family members give us stuff. They give it to us because they know we will “take care of it.” Yikes!! I personally have all the family history for my husband’s family. I can’t make decisions on what is important and what isn’t. It isn’t mine. He has to decide that — or his son or his daughter. But not me.

To read more go to: http://markbarendt.com/anna/2010/07/12/downsizing/