Spring cleaning is a practice that has endured for a reason. It’s impossible to make a fresh start in an environment burdened with clutter.
The problem with traditional spring cleaning is that it only scratches the surface, rather than undertaking a comprehensive decluttering based on the principles of KonMari.
There’s an even more significant issue to address, however.
Spring cleaning, and even decluttering, often only address half of the equation.
The other half is mental clutter, the hidden twin of physical clutter and disarray, which prevents many of us from achieving lifestyle equilibrium.
Both can leave you feeling overwhelmed and hinder your ability to live fully and authentically making it difficult to enjoy things, and make progress with your goals—at the same time they cause stress and anxiety that further the cycle of feeling trapped in your own life.
Only when both your mind and your home are tidy will you be able to effectively create and sustain a new, happier, and more peaceful way of living.
Inspired by the full blossoming of spring, let’s take a look at five ways to begin the process of decluttering and unburdening your mind:
- Don’t procrastinate. Nothing burdens the mind more than tasks, challenges, and goals that go unaddressed for many reasons. We all know from experience that addressing things as they come up is liberating, and even in difficult situations, taking a first step seems to lift the burden away. My favorite example of this advice is an everyday one: Open your mail when it arrives, take whatever action is necessary to process it, such as paying bills or responding to an invite, and then discard anything that doesn’t need to be saved.
- Create a list of priorities and stick to it. This is the other side of the address-things-as-they-arise coin. You know what you like, you know what’s most important in your life, and you know what you’d like to achieve or accomplish. Make a list of those things, perhaps in a journal, be realistic and then devote your “bandwidth” to those priorities and don’t let yourself be dragged into focusing time and attention on non-priorities.
- Manage your bandwidth more diligently. One reason our minds get cluttered, leaving us feeling disquiet and overwhelmed, is that we allow ourselves to be subjected to the deluge of things coming at us from all directions, especially in the Digital Age. It’s time to pull the plug on everything that’s not necessary to address (refer to #1), and that doesn’t fit into your list of life and lifestyle priorities (#2). One quick example involves unsubscribing from all the things that arrive in your physical and email inboxes that you never end up reading. Be realistic and set a time frame for the things you choose to keep and read.
- Be more mindful. This is certainly a challenge for some, but finding the path to mindfulness is essential for lifestyle equilibrium. For some, meditation is the key to achieving mindfulness, and for others a daily ritual of long walks in the woods brings about a state of clarity and serenity. The more you live in the moment and become attuned to your true feelings, the less of a foothold mental clutter will be able to achieve.
- Address the clutter in your physical environment and reform your living spaces, inside and outside, all of which your peace of mind depends upon. Yes, it’s finally time to KonMari your home to create a welcoming new environment perfectly in tune with the new clutter-free status of your mind.
As always, also feel free to get in touch if you need help, or want to talk about the KonMari Method and all the ways it can help transform your life not just your physical space. Contact me by phone at (203) 772-8883 or email some notes to me at [email protected].
If you need professional help with that decluttering, I offer virtual sessions, while also having resumed safe in-home visits. The details are on my Packages & Rates page. Also see my Tidy Lifestyle Doctor page for a sense of the full scope of my services, extending to my role as Dr. Christine Thorn, a Chiropractor, Reflexologist, Reiki Master Practitioner, and Acupuncturist for 30 years.
Meanwhile, check out my other blog posts, view my YouTube videos, and follow me on Facebook and on Instagram.