4 STEPS TO CREATE AN ORGANIZED LIFE & UNCLUTTERED MIND
When I tell you I understand and empathize with anyone who struggles with this, I mean it. I know how all things feel difficult when you live in the dizzying world of disorganization. But I also know what it feels like to break free. It’s not an easy transition, but it frees us from the clutter that occupies not only our space but also our mind. Organization isn’t an area of wellness that is valued as highly as it should be but as a recovering “human wrecking ball,” (a term affectionately given to me by my mom in my teen years) being organized matters. It matters so much that I believe if not given the attention it deserves, it will inhibit our efforts in other areas of our wellness.
My mom managed my chaotic tendencies while growing up, always demanding I leave my room clean and keep our home’s common areas uncluttered. I cleared my place after dinner and put away the clean laundry she had folded for me, but once I landed in Boulder freshman year, I came undone. If it weren’t for the accountability of roommates, my dorm would have been in complete disarray as I flew from class to dance rehearsal and every social thing imaginable. Fast forward three years and I found myself completely overwhelmed under a pile of laundry with a newborn and a husband in a messy two-bedroom apartment. It didn’t take long before that exhausting, last-minute, late-to-everything, disheveled life inspired change in me. I don’t remember a dramatic, pivotal moment, I just remember being done feeling overwhelmed. I wanted to be someone who didn’t just keep up, but had it all together and felt ahead. I committed to change who I was fundamentally. I decided to not just get organized, but to BE an organized person. I completely reworked my life and way of doing things.
Here are the practices that helped me change:
1. DO WITH LESS
2. PLAN
3. CREATE A SYSTEM FOR WHAT YOU VALUE
4. SAY NO TO TRIVIAL THINGS
LESS - Our environment has an impact on us. You know the freeing feeling when you’re on vacation with only the things you actually need? It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of getting away right? One outfit for each planned experience, one set of matching towels in the bathroom and zero clutter. That’s the feeling we deserve in our everyday lives as well, but in order to have it, we must eliminate visual noise and adopt a minimalist, vacay-style lifestyle. Study after study will tell you that less leads to greater life satisfaction, not more. When we’re establishing new healthy habits, we find that they’re more attainable when we’ve created space first. This can be a fun experience if approached from a positive place. Instead of viewing the process as a loss, we can view it as gaining appreciation for what we have and love. It’s about being more intentional with the things we invite into our world and letting go of the rest. Sometimes, we end up with things that we feel connected to and don’t even remember why. In Marie Kondo fashion, I ask myself if every item in my space sparks joy for me. Just because something has always been there doesn’t mean it needs to continue to take up shelf space. I get to choose what items are meaningful or useful or beautiful enough. Once I’ve consolidated my items, the fun begins. Now I design and display them in a way that’s most conducive to the flow of my days. Everyday items should take up prime real estate in the most easily accessible areas. Everything else can be organized into drawers, cabinets or on higher shelves. If I let go of what’s weighing me down, creating visual distraction and crowding out room, I make room for the few things I truly love.
PLAN - There is no way around this one and honestly, thank God. Being a planner is actually the best once we find our rhythm. While there is certainly value in spontaneity and unplanned experiences, even those moments have probably been planned. If we clear our Sunday to have an unscheduled day, that’s a plan too. Meal planning, creating itineraries and time blocking daily tasks that matter to me are just a few ways that I declutter my life, thereby inviting in more space to breathe. I’ve already talked about my nightly practice of planning the following day so that I can sleep easy and take the next day on without the added mental weight of planning in the moment. Stepping into my day with a plan allows me to simply execute on to-do’s and happenings with undistracted attention. I’m able to truly devote my full energy to the micro components of my life.
CREATE A SYSTEM- I’m not just talking about file systems, labels and closet organization, I’m also talking about lifestyle things that matter. If weekly date nights are a priority, having a system in place that creates the space for them is essential. Joey and I realized we were going weeks without any one-on-one time, so we finally hired a sitter to take over at the same time every single week. This way, our dates wouldn’t get away from us anymore. We would take a few minutes every Sunday to decide how we wanted to spend that week’s date night together, make the reservation, book the tickets or do whatever leg work was needed to put it into motion. Then, when the day came, we could simply soak in the experience. Nutrition is obviously something that matters to me, particularly in the form of home cooked meals. One of the ways I show myself and my family love is by preparing healthy food. Because it’s so important to me that my family eat together as often as we can, and that what I’m serving is promoting good health, I had to create a system to make it more accessible. This is where things like themed dinners entered the chat. Essentially, we theme every night of the week with a specific cuisine to encourage greater creativity and because it gives me a framework, or system to ground the process. It’s what SUNDAY | MONDAY members are used to seeing week after week. At home, we have a simple whiteboard in the kitchen that we use to write out our meal plans for “Mediterranean Monday,” “Taco Tuesday” and so forth and list the ingredients necessary for each dish alongside. From there, I simply snap a photo of the board and can easily do my grocery shopping. Systems like this make the things that we care about simpler and more fun. In the same way that I view planning, I don’t see systems as rigid, I see them as freeing.
SAY NO TO TRIVIAL THINGS - This one needs very little explanation. If we get very clear about what matters the most, this one is easy to do. I like thinking of the visual analogy of the jar full of rocks. If we fill our jar (life) with sand (the unimportant things) first, the jar will be too full for the larger (most important) rocks. Instead, we are to fill the jar with the big rocks first, followed by pebbles, then sand. In this way, things that we should just say no to more of the time, or all together don’t have the space to crowd out the few things we actually want to fill our life with. Xo