Achieving Simplicity

Decluttering

Photo by Basail

Until recently, I would proudly declare, whenever the subject came up, that clutter wasn’t a problem for me. It didn’t bother me. It made no difference to me whether the clothes were put away in the closet or strewn about the floor. I scoffed at people who hired professional organizers and laugh at anyone crazy enough to pay the ridiculous prices for California Closets (admittedly, I still do think their prices are outrageous for a product that is a relatively simple DIY project.)

For a while, my husband and I were paying someone to clean our house. Once a week we would come home to a nearly spotless home. Anything that had been laying around was put away and it did make a huge difference. There was a sense of calm walking into the house and knowing that it was clean and decluttered.

For financial reasons, we decided that we no longer wanted to pay a cleaning service to tidy up after us. That left my husband and I with a long list of cleaning chores every weekend, most of which never were accomplished.

I started getting up early and taking on one task every morning. Vacuuming was the only thing that was reserved for weekends because I didn’t want to wake up our toddler.

In the transition from being unbothered by clutter to a healthy appreciation of a clean and ordered house, I learned a few things along the way:

Don’t refuse to clean something up just because the mess isn’t your “fault”

I started off this way – leaving dirty dishes in the sink because they weren’t mind. However, I found that when I started cleaning up everything in the kitchen, my husband was much more likely to put his dishes away so as to not ruin the clean kitchen. Everyone won.

Start small.

Some mornings all that would get done is a cursory cleanup of our bathroom. Though I might have loftier goals, every little bit makes a difference and leaves less to do later.

Constantly be cleaning and decluttering.

One of my goals was that the kitchen and bathroom counters would be clutter-free. Anytime I walk through the kitchen or bathroom, I put away whatever is sitting out. Now, ideally, things wouldn’t have been left out in the first place, but this goes back to the first point – don’t assign blame, just clean it up.

Be ruthless when getting rid of things you don’t use or need.

I find this one to be especially hard when it comes to clothing. I’m scared to get rid of items that are the wrong size, because you just never know when you’ll put (or lose) a pound or two. Then there are the items with large sentimental values (the Hawaiian shirt I wore to my high school graduation is a prime example, especially considering I’ve sworn never to wear that awful shirt in public again) that tend to survive every attempt at purging.

I find that it’s easiest to get rid of things in one fell swoop. If I try to get rid of a few items at a time I may have too much time to reconsider. But try to find things a new home – Goodwill, craigslist, acquaintances that might find things to be of good use.

Remember the sense of calm that comes with declutter and cleaning.

Really, I never thought that I’d be one to say this, but having things put away really does make a huge difference in your mental state.

Photo by Joan Puigcerver

Negative habits tend to be easy to pick up. It’s easy to be a little too lazy… it’s easy to eat one extra piece of candy… it’s easy to become addicted to caffeine. So I’ve put together the following list of useful habits that I’d like to work on. In and of themselves, none of these are extremely difficult, but all together I think that they will put me on the path to where I want to be.

Morning Habits
1. Get up when the alarm goes off
2. To start setting the alarm at 5am
3. Eat a healthy breakfast
4. Pack a healthy lunch
5. Take more of an interest in my appearance
6. Allow some time so that my son is not rushed getting ready in the morning
7. Exercise
8. Getting blogging done for the day

Work Habits
9. Don’t waste time on the internet (note to self: you don’t get enough email to justify getting every hour and you don’t manage the investments so checking yahoo finance is not a good use of time)
10. Stop calculating the hours until I can go home for the day. This is counterproductive
11. Get projects done
12. Learn to accept constructive criticism and ignore the rest
13. Really think about the task at hand and whether or not there is room for improvement either long term or short term
14. Keep better track of my time so that at the end of the month when billable hours are due it doesn’t take me an hour to calculate the totals
15. Answer emails promptly
16. If a task is given without a deadline, find out what the deadline is

Healthy Habits
17. Exercise 5 days a week
18. Take the kids for a walk when the weather is nice
19. Remember to take vitamin daily
20. Stop eating takeout for dinner
21. Meditate daily
22. Take up the practice of yoga
23. Set clear fitness goals in order to keep focused
24. Floss teeth daily

Parenting Habits
25. Listen better
26. Stop saying “I don’t know” when I really mean “I don’t understand what you’re saying”
27. Achieve some reasonable level of patience
28. Stop yelling
29. Take more time to find activities that we can do together
30. Stop using tv as a babysitter

Productivity Habits
31. Put pocket calendar to better use
32. Stop wasting time on the internet (even if it means uninstalling the stumble toolbar)
33. Be more selective about blogs to read
34. Schedule worktime better
35. Learn to set reasonable timetables
36. Use the laptop less. Pretend that it’s a desktop (for the most part).
37. Stop multitasking.

Photo by Wysz

I love Christmas. I should say that I love the idea of giving. I like the idea that it’s a time of year devoted to family, even though my extended family is far away and we don’t always get to spend the holidays together.

But every year I spent months agonizing over the approaching December holiday season. I have a lot of family members that require gifts, and unfortunately no one has bothered to set up a gift exchange. Being out of town, I’m not really in a position to set up the exchange.

Last year, we spoke to my brother-in-law about making charitable donations in lieu of gifts and he was all for the idea. We donated to big brother/big sisters, an organization that he has worked for in the past. For us, he donated to a foundation that works on a condition that I suffer from. We were both happy to have a little less clutter after the holidays and as an added bonus, we got a tax deduction for our gifts.

I took the same tact with my parents, although it wasn’t something we discussed. I decided to make a donation in their name to an organization that my stepfather is very involved with.

I don’t take this tact with everyone on my Christmas list. I have a brother that could use some help with household items and clothing and so I try to give him some useful presents every year. Other people get gift cards to their favorite restaurants or maybe for a massage – something that they wouldn’t normally spend money for themselves.

But I try to give charitable donations when I can. I’m hoping to expand the list of donations that we’re making this year to cover more people on our list. There are several reasons that this is easier.

• You can give the gift anytime in December without having to fight through the crowds at the mall. Most organizations allow you to make donations through their websites.




• People can appreciate getting the same gift every year, which means I don’t have to spend as much time stressing over the perfect gift. Maybe we give a little more money as we can afford it, but it’s probably going to go to the same place.




• I don’t have to buy for shipping. All of our family is out of town, so with other gifts, unless they have free shipping offers, shipping charges can add up.

For our son, who is three, when asked what he would like for Christmas, I usually suggest that family members give us money that we can stick in his college fund. Since this doesn’t always work, we try to give him a small present and then put the rest of the money we might have otherwise spent into his college fund. Like kids in middle class families, he’s certainly not being deprived and since his birthday is in November, he has plenty of new toys to play with.

My husband and I don’t give each other presents for the holidays or birthdays. We have joint finances, so any gift would be funded by both of us anyway. So instead of trying to surprise each other with things that we may or may not need, we usually discuss any purchases we’ve been thinking about making. This year my husband bought himself the new laptop that he needed, and I’ll be getting a painting which we’ve decided that we both like.

While we still end up with new things around the house for the holidays, we’ve found that discussing what we’re going to get is a way to end up happy and have made decisions that we can both agree on financially.

And stemming the flow of presents being shipped in leads to much less clutter around the holidays – as long as we can make a little progress every year, without destroying the joy of the holidays – I’m happy.