Be the change you want to see.

I'm writing today because this subject is Relevant To My Interests at the moment. My house is cluttered and I need to put stuff away, throw stuff away, fold stuff up... Yeah. STUFF.

I'm sure most of us have heard the acronym KISS: it usually stands for Keep It Simple, Sweetie (if we are being kind to ourselves, which is something I DO strive to do)...

This is a good starting point for clutter clearing and house clearing. Keeping It Simple will look different to each one of us. It might mean making our bed every morning so we have one flat clear surface in our house to sit on. It might mean remember to recycle your food scraps out to the compost bin, because you want to keep food out of the landfills when it makes perfectly good dirt, if left alone long enough. =) It might mean OMG I HAVE TO CLEAR OFF MY DESK BECAUSE I CAN'T FIND THE BILLS!

Keep It Simple, to me, means build between one and three good habits at one time, no more than that. And don't kill yourself with guilt if you make a mistake, forget, or otherwise fuck up. Seriously. More good habits go down the toilet because we (the collective We of Puritannically-Inspired America or Western Civilization generally) kick ourselves so violently, and even quit trying when we make a mistake or fail to keep up with a particular habit, or else we spend time in self-castigation or self-loathing at our "inability" to Do Whatever It Is, Perfectly...

Especially if the Habit is a Should. (and THAT is another post, it deserves a detailed examination)

How do we teach children new skills? we encourage them to make mistakes and try again (unless we've got our ego involved in our kids being PERFECT, which I feel "should" be another dirty word, tbh...) How did I practice cross-country-skiing this weekend? I tried, failed, fell down, had to get help getting back up because I couldn't figure it out for myself.

We need to be forgiving of ourselves when we try something new. Be kind, and allow for errors, inconsistencies, and mistakes.

In service of that, let me offer another meaning for the acronym KISS, one that I find very useful in building my clutter-clearing habits:
Keep it Small and Significant.

To explain: OK y'all, I'm Pagan. *waves hello* I find it easier to do household tasks if I assign value or meaning to them beyond the "this has to get done" rationale. What I choose to do is to think of those tasks as service to something larger than myself. I sometimes dedicate tasks to the marriage (i.e. washing the dirty sheets or clearing off the bedroom bureau, which is what I did yesterday) or to my Patron Deity, Hestia (i.e. that's almost the only way you'll get me to wash the floors without someone else helping in the task.)

Keep it Small and Significant. Yesterday I cleared unnecessary things off the bureau, and selected a fresh tablecloth in springtime colors (Hey, I can anticipate!). Today I plan to take *everything* off the bureau, wipe down the surfaces and clean the dust off the candle and candle-plate, and re-make the bedroom "altar". Though, it's not really an altar, it's more like a meditation space.

returning to comment on clutter clearing: Over the weekend I went to visit family, and picked up a big mirror that used to be my grandmother's, and also a bag of smaller items that used to be hers. I know that my spouse doesn't really approve of me bringing more STUFF into the house, but I did it anyway. I have emotional clutter around her, my mom's mom, Inez. I feel the need to spend some time meditating on her and her life, and what she meant to me and to my mom, and by incorporating some of her former possessions into the new iteration of the meditation space, I hope to facilitate that work. This is SIGNIFICANT To Me. Which means that even taking more Things into my house? I'm okay with that, since the Things have a definite purpose.

So. Small and Significant. When my bedroom surfaces (and floor) are clear, I think better. Hell, when ALL my surfaces are clear I think MUCH better. But today I'm only going to hold myself accountable for the bedroom. Anything else I get done is gravy. (though I am fairly strongly motivated to clear off at least the kitchen table) (and that's what SMALL looks like to me.)

Small to me, means doable in a single session, usually between 15 minutes and an hour.
Significant can mean any of a number of things:
It will make Jeff happy. It will make me happy. I will enjoy looking at it. I will use the space if it is a) cleared, b) cleaned, c) empty, etc. We have friends coming over, and I want to be proud of my living space. We're coming up on a festival celebration and I want the whole house clean in honor of the festival.

You get the picture! Just remember: both Small and Significant will look different in how they want to manifest in YOUR life (as opposed to in MY life).

So this is my advice to you: Keep it Simple, Sweetie, and Keep it Small And Significant.

Next Post will be about Not Shoulding All Over Yourself.

ciao!

Once upon a time there was a little girl.
This little girl trustingly swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the cultural meme that having more stuff will make you happier. She was not a happy little girl, and there were many hungers in her life that were never properly satisfied.

She started accumulating and collecting stuff. Meanwhile she was puzzled about why she seemed no happier, because she continued to hear the message that having enough stuff, will make you happy. She continued accumulating stuff.

Of course it wasn't really about the STUFF. It was about the unsatisfied hungers.
But it took her many many years to realize, that if you find out what the shape of the hunger is, and you feed yourself appropriately to satisfy all of your hungers, you don't need your "STUFF" as a pacifyer anymore.

and then you can get rid of the pacifyer.