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© 2011  Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Do you crave to feel lighter?  Do you think of fresh air, blooming plants, new life, new starts?  Do you think of feeling carefree and lighthearted?  So, what if you felt that great in your home or office environment all the time?

Get a piece of paper and pen, or your favorite electronic list maker, and start a list of the areas you love or don’t love in your environment.  Make 2 columns and record what you notice in the Love and Don‘t Love areas.  Are the areas you love airy, clean, lovely, organized?  Is it easy to find what you need, quickly?  Now what about the areas you don’t love?  Might these include the back room with the boxes and other odd storage?  Or the closet in which it’s hard to find your favorite pants?  Or the backed-up filing system with nearby unfiled stacks?  Note how you would like the don’t-love areas to be different.

Many people have too much Stuff, in their closets, in their filing system, and on their flat surfaces.  If you feel crowded, you have too much Stuff.  If your rooms feel small, short of relocating, you have too much Stuff.  If you can’t find the files you want, you are trying to keep too many files.  Do you ever think of a document you would like to have in hand, and you know you own it somewhere, but you don’t even know what box it’s in?  Then you have too much Stuff.  The fact is that, if you can’t retrieve it, it’s the same as not having it!  So what’s the difference between having 20 boxes in storage or in your closet, from which you can retrieve nothing, and just not having those boxes?  Right now, those boxes are just sucking up your space and your energy, as well as possibly looking embarrassing.  It’s shocking to face this bit of reality, isn’t it?  So resolve now to reduce your Stuff.

Now stop whining.  You know you’ll feel better as the outdated and useless Stuff leaves.  Your job is to take a box, file, or area at a time, and divide everything into 4 piles: trash, recycle, donate, and keep.  Keep a high-speed shredder in your work area, and shred private material without stacking it.  Start with the idea of reducing the Stuff in each area by half.  Use the Magic Motivator to eliminate procrastination:  Set a timer for 45 minutes at a time and force yourself to stop for 15 minutes– break time and reward time!  Not being allowed to do more than 45 minutes of sorting at a time reverses the usual resistance to choosing to work on this project.  For papers to keep, scan what you can and file them in the computer.  Your bills and bank records are all online, so you need to keep almost none of these.  Try for one or two 45-minute spurts a day, or more, for one month.  Notice how free you begin to feel!

Next time: Closet and Clothing Control.