Verwandte Artikel zu From Clutter to Clarity: Clean Up Your Mindset to Clear...

From Clutter to Clarity: Clean Up Your Mindset to Clear Out Your Clutter - Softcover

Richardson, Kerri

 
9781401960148: From Clutter to Clarity: Clean Up Your Mindset to Clear Out Your Clutter
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1401960146 ISBN 13: 9781401960148
Verlag: HAY HOUSE, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Reclaim your space, inside and out

When you look at the clutter in your home, does it feel like you need an excavator to find the calm beneath the chaos? Do you try again and again to implement sustainable organizational systems without any success? Does the reason for your clutter always seem to come down to too little time or not enough space?

If so, the time has come to look at the clutter beneath the clutter--the fears, doubts, and energy drains that are the true culprits of the muck.

In the follow-up to her Wall Street Journal best-selling book What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You, decluttering expert, lifestyle designer, and coach Kerri Richardson helps you to:

  • Understand the three core causes of clutter and how they directly manifest in specific rooms and forms of clutter
  • Use practical and actionable exercises to clear out your clutter hot spots
  • Reclaim your personal space for the thoughts, things, and people in your life that are important to you

    • Whether you are tackling perfectionism, procrastination, or toxic relationships, Richardson's straightforward advice will help you to finally clear those stubborn stacks, piles, and boxes for a clean start, with a wealth of space for your freedom and happiness to grow.

    Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

    Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

    Kerri Richardson is the author of What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You and a trained life coach. For more than 18 years, she has worked with thousands of people, helping them to identify and eliminate the clutter in their lives and challenging them to play bigger, shatter expectations, and fulfill their vision. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Boston Magazine, The New York Times, Woman's World, and Daily Mail. You can visit her online at kerririchardson.com.

    Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

    INTRODUCTION

    When Melissa and I decided to live in a tiny house (yes, like the ones you see on reality television), I never anticipated the challenges that would come with such a significant downsize. I knew we’d have some tough decisions to make, but I couldn’t have predicted the deep, emotional work that would be involved. However, it was that work that opened up our lives in the best way possible.

    At the time of writing this, we have been living in our tiny house for 14 months. It’s a comfortable 28 by 8.5 feet, about 240 square feet in total. It’s a modern-style home on wheels that has everything we need: a fully functioning kitchen, living room/office, and bedroom loft. Our bathroom has a big, beautiful shower that might just be my favorite part of the whole place. It’s small (tiny, if you will), but it’s home.

    Downsizing to this lifestyle was a four-year process. Our first house was 2,000 square feet and came with more rooms and storage space than we ever needed. After selling that, we moved into a 750-square-foot apartment, and then into one that was a mere 500 square feet, before settling into the tiny house. With each round of paring down, the task became more challenging. I found myself facing difficult decisions about what I should or shouldn’t keep.

    Do I keep my high school yearbook? How many spatulas do I really need? I love this dress that I wore to my niece’s wedding, but will I ever wear it again? What about this waffle iron my mother-in-law gave me in honor of the special breakfast we had the morning after my wedding? Despite thinking we had finished simplifying, there were still many possibly superfluous things.

    Why were some things so easy to let go of, while others caused me to spiral into speculation, question my character, or doubt my intuition? What was so important about all of this stuff? As I asked myself these questions, I realized that my struggle in deciding had little to do with the items themselves and everything to do with the meaning I had assigned to them.

    Of course I should keep my yearbooks! That’s something everyone hangs on to.

    I’m an adult. Aren’t I supposed to have at least a few spatulas? Just having one seems desperate and lacking.

    I can’t fit into that spring dress right now, but it sure is pretty. Remember how much thinner I was then?

    My mother-in-law would be disappointed if I got rid of the waffle iron. She was so excited to give it to us. I don’t want her to think I’m ungrateful.

    It sounds silly now, but at the time, this is what was running through my head. I realized just how often our beliefs get in the way of decluttering. So I decided to take a new approach. Any time I wrestled with the decision to keep or donate, I worked on cleaning up my thoughts first. I’d reassure my younger self (she’s the one who created these beliefs, after all) that nothing catastrophic would happen if I chose to do things my way.

    It’s okay to get rid of something that other people would keep.

    I can thrive in abundance even with just one spatula.

    I don’t have to fit back into that dress again to be worthy.

    My mother-in-law’s love for me isn’t conditional.

    I realized it’s also okay to keep things others would get rid of. After all, only I get to decide what is clutter to me and what isn’t.

    I had been convincing myself of those old ideas for years, so I knew it would take time to unlearn them. And, like going through everything I owned, it was a process. It took a lot of work. And then something cool happened.

    I realized I wasn’t just reframing my perspective about things. I was also learning about myself and how my mindset gets in the way as I pursue my dreams and goals. What a revelation to have while clearing clutter!

    It wasn’t easy to accept. Growing up, I learned that how you do anything is how you do everything. If I’m talking myself into keeping an extra spatula for fear of looking pathetic, then there’s a good chance I’m doing (or not doing) something else for the same reason.

    If I’m worried that donating a gift from my mother-in-law will change her opinion of me, I probably consider my other relationships transactional. That’s certainly not ideal, but how can I change it? By using my clutter as a tool for transformation.

    As you decide what to keep in your life and what to remove, whether it’s thoughts, things, or people, pay attention to the stories you tell yourself. By doing so, you gain incredible insight into your belief system. It’s this insight that will help you clear the real clutter and make moves on blazing the trail to your BHAG—your big, hairy, audacious goal.

    Our best life didn’t start the moment we moved into the tiny house, and the learning didn’t stop either. It just showed itself differently. For example, I knew we’d have to get creative with storage and figure out how to do the galley kitchen dance, but I didn’t think about just how “in your face” unfinished projects would be. Because clutter is amplified in such a small space, we quickly learned how to deal with all kinds of messes.

    Although our kitchen is bigger than that of most Manhattan studios, the limited space doesn’t allow for a full sink of dishes or ingredients left strewn about the counter. When I make a meal, I put things away as I prepare the dish instead of leaving them all out until the end. Melissa cleans up right after dinner because if there are dirty dishes in the house, we can see them from any angle. In 240 square feet, there’s no such thing as “out of sight, out of mind.”

    These tight quarters also prompt quicker cleanup of communication-based messes. If Melissa and I are snapping at each other, there’s nowhere to go without physically leaving the house. That’s still an option if one of us needs space to process, but we’ve been much more mindful of communicating cleanly and clearly. Instead of making a snide comment like, “I guess I’ll clean the cat box again,” I speak to the source. “Can we take turns cleaning the cat box? I’m starting to feel resentful because I seem to be doing it a lot.”

    This requires an incredible amount of vulnerability because we go right to the heart of the matter instead of wasting time bitching about the superficial issue. We’re certainly not perfect. We still gripe on occasion, but it’s much shorter-lived. It has to be, since we’re in such close quarters. That said, cleaning up messes sooner rather than later is a good practice in any home or any type of relationship.

    With less, you feel lighter. Brighter. More alive. That isn’t limited to physical clutter, either. Even if you have the shelves and drawers necessary for a lot of stuff, it doesn’t mean you have the energetic capacity or mental bandwidth to manage it all. Watch out for the mindset that says, “have space, must fill,” whether that applies to your home, head, or heart. It’s okay to have space. I should know—even in my tiny home, I have some!

    Despite us paring way down, Melissa and I have made plenty more donation runs since moving in. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I love to get rid of the things I no longer need, love, or use. After all, if my space or energy is feeling crowded, it leaves me no space to energetically expand into.

    Once I’ve created that space, I then do my best to be mindful of allowing only the thoughts, things, or people deserving of occupying a precious slot in my life. My space is sacred and not everyone or everything is worthy of being in it, so...

    „Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

    Verlag
    HAY HOUSE
    Erscheinungsdatum
    2020
    Sprache
    Englisch
    ISBN 10 
    1401960146
    ISBN 13 
    9781401960148
    Einband
    Taschenbuch
    Anzahl der Seiten
    257
    Kontakt zum Hersteller
    Nicht verfügbar
    Verantwortliche Person
    Nicht verfügbar